Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition (8 page)

The scene would mark the only time in my career that I wished
for a stunt double. While I may be the only actor in Hollywood
who hasn't slept with Shelley Winters, I can lay claim to having
had her smack the daylights out of me.

As we prepared to shoot our scene together, Ms. Winters pulled
me aside and explained that to make the film more realistic, she
wanted to really slap me, not just pretend. It would make for a
more honest reaction, she explained. Not wanting to offend her,
and with my budding adolescent machismo assuring me that I
could easily take her best shot, I agreed. "Besides," I thought,
"How hard can the old lady hit?"

POW!

On our first take she hit me so hard that I saw stars, got dizzy,
and nearly went down for the count. Mind you, I may have been
just twelve years old, but I was no wimp. This woman just plain
pounded me. The force of her blows caught me so completely offguard that I forgot my lines, my blocking, and probably my name
for that matter. Mercifully, the director yelled "Cut."

Nobody had bothered to explain to me that Ms. Winters was an
esteemed alumnus of the Lee Strasberg school of Method acting,
which, can be helpful in portraying honest emotions, and reactions. It can also be taken to extremes. For instance, if a scene calls
for you to drink beer, and you insist on real beer, you may be fine
for the first couple of takes, however, come take 36 you've got a
problem. Ms. Winters was one of the Strasberg school's most
devout disciples ever. Legend has it that during one of her class
acting exercises, she was asked to act out a private moment, and
her contribution was to get up in front of the class, hike up her
dress, and actually take a dump ... on stage. She then got up, pretended to flush, pretended to wash her hands, and left, leaving her
mound of do for someone else to clean up.

I had not heard of Method acting, and my gut feeling was "I may
be dealing with a crazy woman."

Anyway, we did take after take of this thing. I took my whacks,
and after each shot it took a little more makeup to cover the red
handprints on my cheek.

Finally, after we'd shot the thing eight ways to Sunday, I was
convinced that we must be finished. I was wrong. Instead, the
director was so happy with my pained expressions that he wanted
to film one more angle-an extreme close-up. The camera was to
zoom in, catch the slap, then zoom even tighter to focus on the
horror in my eyes. I was told this would be a powerful moment, a
break in my blossoming career, and that it was no time to think
about pain. I figured this was to be the actor's "sacrifice" I had
heard so much about.

Boy, did I sacrifice! Ms. Winters pounded me with tooth-loosening ferocity, until finally we got it perfect: just the right reaction,
the right look, the right amount of pain, and hurt, and anger. Surely, I was on my way.

But no. Turns out, long after I'd completed impersonating a
punching bag, the film editor noticed that Chris Jones, playing the
grown-up version of me, had brown eyes. Mine are blue. That led
him to ask the obvious question: "How does a maniacal kid with
blue eyes grow up to be a maniacal adult with brown eyes?" No
one could offer a logical explanation for the oversight, so all of the
excruciating close-up footage that I'd painfully endured ended up
on the proverbial cutting-room floor.

In retrospect, I learned a couple of things on that shoot. One
is that acting can be a great deal harder than it looks. And two,
Shelley Winters packs a mean right hook.

Over the course of the next few days, the red handprints disappeared from my cheeks, and though I was still a bit traumatized, I did manage to survive. In fact, all it took was one very
exciting phone call to slap a smile back on my face.

Y'see, everybody has a favorite TV show, and having grown up
as a Peter Graves maniac, mine was of course "Mission: Impossible." You can imagine how thrilled I was when its producers chose
me to play the young king of a fictional Middle Eastern country
known as Sardia. In the episode, those closest to me were taking
advantage of my youth and trying to gain power for themselves
before killing me off. Mr. Phelps's mission, should he decide to
accept it, was to prove that my "friends" were in fact deadly enemies and allow me to retain my rightful position as king.

The role was farfetched, even dumb, but of all the roles I had
played, it was the most challenging, the most dangerous-and the
kinkiest.

Challenging, because I wasn't just playing some street punk or
beach bum but the king of a faraway country. It required an accent
which had to be determined, then studied. And the character
would have to undergo major changes within the span of an hour.

Dangerous, because at the end of the show, my "friendly"
uncle, proves himself to be a traitor by trying to (get this) shoot
me in the face-three times!!! Nice guy.

Now, to shoot that scene you obviously employ special effects,
and on "Mission: Impossible" the goal was to be as realistic as possible. Thus, the old water pistol schtick was out of the question,
and even blanks were deemed too phony. In short, the "Mission
Impossible" effects guys decided to really shoot at me.

I'm serious! These guys were obsessed with perfection and
determined that the most realistic way to shoot me in the faceshort of actually killing me, which they probably consideredwould be to get hold of a large, hand-held pellet gun (it actually
shot big ball bearings), aim it at my face, pull the trigger 3 times,
and have the projectiles stopped at the last second by a thick double pane of glass that would separate me and death by about six
inches.

In theory, the ball bearings were designed to crash through the
first pane of glass and be stopped by the second. My response to
the situation was the perfectly normal one-sheer, gut-wrenching,
lunch-losing terror. Once again a production-conscious assistant
director assured me that I'd be all right, but I wasn't happy.

The effects guys tested their theory and it worked perfectly, so
now it was time for me to stick my face where it didn't belong, and
film the scene. I was horrified, but I promised God that if I survived, I'd be a changed kid, and went ahead with it. Luckily, everything came off as planned; the effect worked, my face survived,
and only my promise to God was broken.

Kinky, because a good portion of the episode revolved around
my escape from Sardia disguised as a young, guitar-strumming
gypsy ... girl! The kind of thing that creates Enquirer headlines
like BARRY WII.IdAMS A TEENAGE TRANSVESTITE.! Anyway, here I was, in full
cross-dressed regalia, complete with skirt, lipstick, rouge, false eyelashes (how did women ever wear those things?), and long flowing
brunettte wig. It was uncomfortable-and only got tougher when, a
couple of hours later, I desperately had to use the bathroom.

First, I had to decide which facility to use. At first I thought it
might be wise to use the ladies' room, but when push came to
shove I just couldn't go in. Finally, when my bladder threw up a
white flag, I was forced to hike up my skirt, throw out my pride,
and, in my most macho posture, march into the men's room.

Naturally, Murphy's law was running rampant, and the men's
room was packed, loaded with big, burly crew members. They
looked at me first in surprise, then in disgust. Homophobic anger
was rising in their eyes. I nervously muttered something at them
like "How 'bout them Rams?"

With that, I flicked my long hair back and locked myself in a
stall.

In the weeks that followed I was working pretty steadily, auditioning for parts about twice a week, with the entire process
becoming fairly routine. Usually I could count on a day or two's
notice before an interview, but once in a while they'd just pop up out of nowhere at the last minute. I'd ride the bus home
from Paul Revere Junior High, change, and bound back out of
the house only to have my Mom track me down in the family
station wagon. I'd hop into the backseat, and she'd haul me off
to an eleventh-hour meeting.

On one hectic occasion, we ran off for not one interview but
two, both at Paramount Studios. We sped to the studios, arrived at
the gate, and as I frantically tried to spit-fix my hair and tuck in my
shirt, found out that my first meeting would be for "Gomer Pyle,
U.S.M.C." and the second for "That Girl." In an odd coincidence,
both shows needed a kid to play the part of an overzealous fan. In
an even odder coincidence, I got both parts.

Two meetings, two successes-pretty lucky, especially since
there isn't much you can do to prepare for them. Basically, you
show up, meet the producer and the director, lay the energy and
enthusiasm on thick, read a scene, and if they like you, you're in.
Still, that doesn't stop anybody from trying to stack the odds in
their favor.

My own tricks of the trade included wearing my lucky shirt
(white with fat red stripes) and trying to intimidate the fifteen or
twenty guys who made up the competition. I'd stare them down,
then haul out the big gun. "I was talking to RJ. the other day when
I was doing `It Takes a Thief,"' I'd say, planting the seeds of selfdoubt in anyone who could hear, "and he gave me some really
great character-building tips. I think I'll try them out today." Yes,
Mr. Wagner's advice was helpful in more ways than he'd known.

The "Gomer" meeting came first. It went smoothly, and I left
very encouraged by the producer's comments. Twenty minutes
later I was on the opposite end of the Paramount lot, doing my
"meet and read" for "That Girl." Some more energy and enthusiasm, a little more intimidation, and I left feeling good once more.

Mom and I arrived home, and my hunch was soon proven correct by a dinnertime phone call from my agent.

When it came time to shoot the episode of "Gomer Pyle," I was
less than thrilled. My cocky thirteen-year-old's all-encompassing
sense of "cool" had convinced me that Jim Nabors was going to be
a complete and total geek. I mean, anyone who could make a living playing Gomer Pyle has got to be a world-class nerd, right?
Wrong. Mr. Nabors turned out to be a nice guy. Friendly, pleasant,
and very funny, he seemed completely unaffected by his celebrity.
My definition of "cool" expanded that day.

"That Girl" was another story. Much less accessible than Gomer,
Mario Thomas made it abundantly clear that her hair was the most
important entity on the set. Between each camera shot, we'd stand
around wasting time, waiting for her personal hair stylist to lacquer up that big do until it looked like she could hammer nails with it.
Over and over again the hair spray flew and the hair got bigger and
bigger. Global warming may in fact be directly traceable to Marlo's
head. Next time you watch an episode of "That Girl," notice how
the size of Marlo's hair changes from shot to shot. It's often much
funnier than the show.

Anyway, the most significant part of working on this doubleheader would be meeting director John Rich. Mr. Rich directed
both of these episodes. He was one of the most respected and
most active directors on the Paramount lot, and in less than one
year, I'd be screen-testing for his newest directorial project, "The
Brady Bunch."

bile I was trying to figure out if I could bounce quarters off Marlo Thomas' hair, the idea for "The Brady
Bunch" was being born. It didn't come from a Hollywood brain trust or a formal "power meeting." It came
from the newspaper.