Easy Street (the Hard Way): A Memoir (39 page)

Which brings us back to public acceptance and rejection. Let me be specific: at the beginning of our relationship he would come in depressed and demoralized, trapped in a dark cloud he couldn’t see his way out of. The darkness was usually his reaction to professional setbacks. “Setbacks” is putting it mildly: when he says the phone stopped ringing he means that literally. If he got one call all day, it would be from one of those guys who interrupt your dinner to sell you worthless penny stocks, and even that guy would hang up when he realized he’d gotten the coldest actor in Hollywood.

It didn’t seem funny at the time. He’d get some kind of an unusual role, play it in a way no one had ever seen before and, for awhile, electrify the public and most of show business. Then nothing . . . and more nothing. This could go on for months.

All the while he’d fall further into his abyss. When all hope was gone he’d call me for a session. (That should be on my business card.)

His sessions always followed the same pattern: he’d spill out his latest tale of woe for fifteen or twenty minutes until he felt I had all the details. Only then would he stop. Okay, sometimes I had to stop him with a judiciously placed, “Shut the fuck up.” But at that point he’d look to me to make sense of whatever had just happened to him—near bankruptcy, poor reviews, the cold phone, and so on—in a way that made him feel like it didn’t mark the end of the world.

No matter how articulate and persuasive a therapist is, you can’t talk someone with a crushed spirit into a positive view of himself or his future. People need tools that give
them
the power to change their inner state, no matter how bad their outer circumstances are. Without that, your words are just that: words. I call it “loose talk,” and I hate it.

As it turned out, so did Ron. Maybe ’cuz we were both from New York, where “money talks and bullshit walks.” In this case “money” would translate into “that which has real, permanent value.” And spiritually the greatest value is the ability to turn yourself around and climb out of whatever hole you’ve let yourself fall into. When you can do that, you don’t just get through adversity; you grow from it. The real star is the person who has that ability, even if no one has heard of him. Ron turned out to be that kind of star.

But it didn’t seem that way at first. In those early sessions, once he’d finish talking, he’d sit quietly while I explained how he could create an identity that didn’t require approval or recognition from other people. Then I’d teach him tools to achieve the emotional independence that required. This isn’t the place to describe what the tools were, but they work—as long as you use them consistently.

This was where Perlman surprised me the most. In the beginning I had no idea whether he understood what I was saying—or if he was even listening. I certainly had no reason to believe he’d go home and do what I’d asked him to do. Yet that was exactly what he did, time after time. And time after time he’d drag himself back to the realm of
the living. His recovery time—the true test of psychological strength—went from a few days to a few hours.

A couple of years after I met him I was giving a seminar, and Ron came. There, while helping someone with problems similar to his own, he explained with perfect clarity what they needed to do to heal themselves. He wasn’t repeating my words; rather, he was describing his own experiences. At that moment I realized he wasn’t just committed to mastering acting; he was also committed to mastering himself. Now you know it too.

—Dr. Phil Stutz

(CHAPTER 22)

Meanwhile . . .

While all this trivia was playing out, there was something lurking in the nether regions, something that, while starting out millions of miles away from my orb, would eventually wind up not only intersecting with it but also sweeping it up into an energy force responsible for the momentum that led me to this very day.

From the moment Guillermo del Toro and I met, it seemed like there was a really good chance it would lead to one of those rare things not only in showbiz but, indeed, in any endeavor: a real and lasting friendship. And like I said before, having presided over the event that literally set me on the path that was to carry me through the entire second half of my life, which included an enduring love affair with a culture I was to revisit heartily from that point forward, Guillermo had already taken his place among the most important figures to affect my destiny forever and always. All that being said, he was a pal, somebody I couldn’t wait to hang with, have meals with, shoot the breeze with.

On one of his growingly more frequent trips to LA now that his career was getting into gear, we went for one of our signature meals of arroz con puerco at one of our most favorite eateries. I was already aware that, among all his boyish obsessions, among his most rabid proclivities was his love of comic books. In fact, even at that young age, he was already on his way to building a collection of comic book
art that would eventually rival the most important on Earth. Anyway, as we got closer to paying the check, he hurried me up, claiming that there was something he had to show me. Sure enough, we got back in the car and drove to a very large comic book store on Sunset Boulevard. We walked in the door with great purpose and walked up to a beautiful scale sculpture of this very exotic, very red superhero. “Ron, meet Hellboy! He is my favorite comic book character of all time! In a perfect world, if there were ever to be a movie of Hellboy, you would play him. That is my dream!”

“Wow!” I said. “That’s some dream!”

There are just some things that are too good to be true, and this definitely had to be one of them, and I expressed this to Guillermo at that moment and, indeed, many, many times thereafter in the ensuing years. The fact of the matter is that comic book movies are expensive to make, especially those that are heavy on alternate universes. Not only that, but if they resonate to an audience, it can become a franchise, which represents huge profit potentials for studios. So regardless of what you do or do not think about Ron Perlman as a talent, the studio is gonna need, even demand a big-name movie star on which to hedge such a big bet. Nuthin’ personal—it’s just how it is. But the notion that this movie giant even thought to give me a part that had such a personal meaning for him, well, that made me adore him even more. So anyway, even though the big G insisted on buying me a copy of
Seed of Destruction
, which is the first installment in the
Hellboy
series, and even though I took it home with me, I resolved to never open it, lest I fall in love with the character like Guillermo did and then be invested enough to suffer once I saw the part go to someone else.

It wasn’t long before Guillermo did indeed get Universal Studios to purchase a five-year option on his
Hellboy
project. He set up meetings, and everyone was excited to get this thing going, but there was one obstacle upon which the studio heads and Guillermo could not agree. When they asked who would play Hellboy and he told them that Ron Perlman was perfect for the part, well, all he could hear were crickets!

“It’s not that we don’t like Perlman,” Guillermo was told. “It’s just that . . . what about Nick Cage?”

“I love Nick Cage,” Guillermo said. “Let’s set up a meeting.” And then for some strange reason, Guillermo didn’t show up for the meeting.

A few months would go by, and Guillermo would bring in busts of Hellboy as sculpted onto my likeness just to show them how well this fusion would work, and they would say, “What do you think about the Rock?”

Guillermo would say, “The Rock is great. Let’s get a meeting together.” And when the meeting time came, no Guillermo. This little charade went on for five long years. Movie stars got mentioned, meetings got set up, and no del Toro. Finally, after five years, with the option running out, Universal decided to wish Guillermo luck and give him his project back because, well, by now, the reasons were obvious.

Meanwhile, the copy of
Seed of Destruction
remained unopened ’cuz I kind of agreed with Universal on that one. In fact, I said as much to my friend: “Guillermo, this movie is too good, too important to not make. I love you for sticking by me, but this is Don Quixote pissing into the wind—it’s just never gonna hit the mark! Please go make this movie, and I promise I will cheer you on from the sidelines, be there on opening night to celebrate with you!”

“Yes, my friend, you are right,” said the Mexicano. “That is what I will do.” The little devil!

Around 2000 Guillermo pitched an idea to do a sequel to the movie
Blade
, starring Wesley Snipes. The studio guys at New Line flipped over it and then proceeded to give him the green light and the funds to direct
Blade II
. So after a long absence between films, the Big G was off to the races again and, not only that, finding a way to bring me along with him. And so off to Prague we went for what was to be our second flick together. Once I was on the set, my small role got bigger and bigger, with Guillermo giving me lines to say and new scenes to play right on the spot. It turned out fantastically and was released in March 2002.
Even more stunning,
Blade II
earned $35 million the first weekend, thus becoming, far and away, the number-one movie of the week. This proved what anybody who knew Guillermo already knew: the hombre knew what he was doing and was more than capable of directing a major-studio, action-packed film. Suddenly everyone in Hollywood wanted to get into the Guillermo del Toro business.

That week Guillermo made a decision to use this moment of being considered a money-making genius to his advantage, knowing that, in Hollywood, windows like this don’t stay open very long. He also knew that if, at this time, with all this heat on him, he couldn’t get
Hellboy
made his way, on his terms, then he was never going to get it made at all. The town responded in kind. There was no studio that didn’t want their next picture to be with him. But they knew enough about Guillermo’s penchant for doing original, self-generated projects that most of them were smart enough to ask him what
he
wanted his next project to be. The answer was always the same: “I have a lot of things I have developed that I would be happy to do, but if you ask me what my number-one priority would be, I would tell you unequivocally that it is
Hellboy
.”

They would invariably ask who he wanted to star and what the budget would be, and once he told them, for the most part the response was, “We’ll get back to ya!” That is, until he got to Joe Roth and Tom Sherak at Revolution Studios. Joe asked, “How do we get in the Guillermo del Toro business?” And he got the same response. Joe said, “I know the
Hellboy
project, and I’m a fan. Are there any caveats?”

G took a deep breath and said, “Yeah, a big one: Ron Perlman plays Hellboy.”

“And what’s the budget?” Joe asked. And G told him. There was a thirty-second pause, and then Joe said, “Well, I can’t do
Hellboy
with Ron—who I like by the way—for that price. But I can do it for . . .” and he said a number that was about $30 million less than Guillermo’s. “If you tell me you can make it for that, we have a deal.”

Guillermo stuck out his hand and said, “We have a deal.” And that, as they say, is that! Seven years, two studios, 875 doors slammed in his
face, the prospect of never,
ever
making this beloved project at all, and, as if the whole thing was this well-oiled plan/Apashe dance,
Hellboy
, starring yours truly with an option for two sequels, was a reality. Now I’m no linguistic expert, but I do know that the English translation for Toro is bull. Ya know how to get Guillermo del Toro to really do something? Tell him he can’t!

To him, to make a movie any other way than how he envisioned it was a waste of creativity and a betrayal to his art.
Hellboy
was going to be made his way, and he refused to compromise, choosing art over money, and this made him, believe me, a rare type of person in Hollywood. But then again, Guillermo was not from Hollywood. Nor was he
of
Hollywood. No, he was clearly more like the guys my dad couldn’t get enough of watching and studying when I was a kid growing up. He was a guy who stood for a principle, even when everyone around him told him he was nuts. I never saw that before in Hollywood. I’m not sure anyone did. And I’ve certainly never seen it since.

What ensued at this point—and I have to direct hand-to-God and swear to its veracity, because, for the life of me, it has remained to this day something too strange to even process, much less believe possible—is that at the time the offer came in I was looking to move to more exclusive representation: which agency represents an actor plays a large part in the direction that actor’s career travels. I felt that by walking into an agency with a firm offer for the title role in a potential huge studio franchise for a world-class director, I could call my own shots, that they’d all be salivating to take 10 percent of a deal they didn’t have to work to obtain in the first place. My manager and dear friend Erik Kritzer and I identified the big five we wanted to target, and I asked to put in the calls and set the appointments. It turned out no appointments were forthcoming. One by one, each of these agencies, William Morris, ICM, Endeavor, CAA, and UTA, decided to pass. When all the dust finally settled, I was dumbfounded. I asked Erik how was it possible that none of these players wanted free money? I mean, for Chrissakes, even if they never planned on lifting another finger on my behalf again, WHO THE FUCK WOULDN’T WANT
FREE FUCKING MONEY? Wanna know who? Those five, that’s who. I noticed that Erik, even as smart as he is, was not able to answer the question. By the way, I’m not ruling out ever having an agent in the future; it’s just that I haven’t had one since. That was eleven years ago. Fuck me? Nah . . . .