Just a Geek (3 page)

Marina Sirtis, who played Counselor Troi on
Next Generation
and was the object of a very large teenage crush, came out of different door and approached us.

"How are you doing, Teen Idol?" she said.

"I'm okay, I guess," I said. "What's up with them?" I pointed at the original series cast, who were now posing for pictures and signing autographs.

"Oh, they're just having a good time," she said.

"Oh," I said.

"Okay. I'll see you on the bus. We are going to have so much fun on this cruise!" She hugged me and walked away.

My brother pointed at one of them and said, "Dude! He is
fucked up!
" and began to laugh, but I couldn't join him. In 1989,
Star Trek
was my life. At 16 years old, I was a veteran actor—I worked on the series for 50 hours a week—but I was also a veteran of the
Star Trek
convention circuit. Three weekends out of the month I entertained audiences at Holiday Inns all over the country. When I looked at these original series actors, I saw The Ghosts of My Career Yet To Come.

I had no idea at the time that it was probably not that big a deal to have a few drinks early in the morning while you were on vacation. I had no idea that some of the
Star Trek
alumni were quite happy traveling around the country and performing for Trekkies at conventions. It also didn't occur to me that some of those actors, who had only done three or four episodes, had willingly chosen to live out their lives recalling their time on the
Enterprise
.

I spoke with the arrogant surety of a 16-year-old. "Look at that," I said. "That's my future, if I don't get out of
Star Trek
and do movies. There is no fucking way I'm going to spend the rest of my life talking about what I did when I was a kid. I'm going to prove to everyone that I can do more with my life than just be on
Star Trek
."

"Dude," was all he could say. It was a multipurpose word in our vernacular. "Dude" could stand in for several words and phrases, such as "Check out that hottie," or "Stop talking now because Mom's standing right behind you," or "This is seriously fucked up."

"Exactly," I said.

A couple of hours later, we were on the ship, and today, after 15 years, all I can recall about the entire 3-day cruise is that conversation, because at that moment, I made a choice that would drive my life and haunt me for years: I would get out of my
Star Trek
contract, and I would go on to a huge career in movies. I would prove to everyone that I was a great actor and that
Star Trek
was just a small part of my resume.

Yeah. It didn't quite work out that way, and it's probably my karma for having such a negative impression of those original series actors, who I have come to know as kind and wonderful people. Actually, I have such regard for them now, I almost hate to open this book showcasing such a negative view of them, but that moment in 1989 was the foundation upon which the last 15 years of my life have been built.

I thought about that moment often, especially over the next few years, when the writers reduced my role on
The Next Generation
to little more than saying, "Aye, Sir. Course laid in," and the producers of
Next Generation
prevented me from taking a major roll in Milos Forman's
Valmont
.
^[
2
^]

As an adult, getting paid thousands of dollars a week to say, "Aye, Sir. Course laid in" is a seriously sweet gig, but when I was a teenager, it sucked. I felt like I had to prove to everyone
^[
3
^]
that
Stand By Me
wasn't a fluke, that I
deserved
all the attention that I got from that movie. I never considered that most actors go their entire careers without one film like
Stand By Me
to their credit. I never considered that I could have stuck around on
Star Trek
until the end, and then stepped off into a film career, like, say, Patrick Stewart. Because of that moment on the dock in Miami in 1989, I was convinced that if I stuck around until the end, I'd be stepping off onto a dock in Miami in 1999.

I have often wondered how different my life would have been if my brother's "Dude" had meant, "Hey, why don't you relax? You're young, and you have your entire life ahead of you. You have an opportunity to work on a great series for a few more years, build up a nice bank account, and then parlay the success of
Star Trek
into a film career. But don't quit now, or you'll regret it for the rest of your life. And stop staring at Marina's ass. That's just rude." Maybe that sentiment was a little too deep for a couple of teenagers.

Of course, I'm still talking about what I did when I was a kid, and I never got that big film career I was hoping for. When I was released from my
Star Trek
contract, I was 18, and like most 18-year-olds, I knew everything. I realized that I had never had a childhood, and I'd never really just gone off and done things that I wanted to do. I also realized that when I looked in the mirror, I saw the reflection of everything I hated about Hollywood and humanity staring back at me from behind angry and unhappy eyes.

How the fuck did I let this happen to me? I have to get out of here
.

In the early 1990s, I vanished from Hollywood and moved to Topeka, Kansas. I spent a little over a year there, working on computers during the day, and on my incredibly screwed up psyche at night. When I felt like I'd put myself back together, I returned to Los Angeles, and enrolled in a five-year acting program. I remember thinking that I'd gotten all the way to
Star Trek
on instinct alone, and if I wanted to move beyond it, I'd need some technique.

When I was in drama school, I passed on several film opportunities, among them,
Primal Fear
. You may know it as the movie that started Ed Norton's career. I know it as The Huge Opportunity That I Completely Fucked Up. When my agent told me that I was making a huge mistake, I told him, "Look, man. I'm in drama school now, and I can't leave until I finish. It's like when Luke was on Dagobah, and he wanted to go to Bespin to save his friends. Yoda told him not to quit in the middle of his training, but Luke didn't listen, and he was never able to be as great a Jedi as his father."

I foolishly thought that Hollywood would wait for me. When I graduated from drama school five years later, I had a rude awakening. Not only had Hollywood forgotten me, they'd completely forgotten my type of actor. The everyman was out, and a new type, called "edgy," had taken my place.

Think about that for a second.
Edgy
. What does that conjure up in your mind? Now ask the person next to you what their description of
edgy
is. Your descriptions didn't match, did they? They weren't even close, right? Now talk about it for a minute and see if you can reach an agreement on exactly what it means. Can't do it, can you? Don't worry, it's not your fault. I'll let you in on a dirty industry secret: nobody knew what
edgy
meant, beyond "unwashed" and . . . uh . . . "unwashed" and . . . er . . . well, that's it. I've just spent several unproductive minutes staring at a blinking cursor, trying to come up with another word besides "not Wil Wheaton," which is really three words and more of a descriptive phrase than a synonym.

While Hollywood didn't quite know what
edgy
was, they were certain that I wasn't it. I am passionate, too smart for my own good, unfulfilled, caring . . . but not
edgy
. So I spent several years struggling, unable even to book a commercial. I wasn't well known enough for product endorsements, but I was too well known to be some random guy extolling the virtues of floor wax. The flood of opportunities I enjoyed when I was a child and teenager slowed to a trickle, then stopped. I "used to be an actor, when I was a kid."

It was so hard to get work, I often contemplated giving up life as an actor and going back to college.

"You have to love the work more than you hate the rejection, and the unemployment," my mom said.

I
did
love the work, and I believed in my abilities as an actor. I felt that I could take direction well, and understood the vagaries of storytelling: those ephemeral things that make an actor's performance greater than the words on the page. I was compelled to act.

That compulsion became obsession. Success as an actor had always come my way without any real effort when I was a kid (resulting in that feeling of undeserved success). After I graduated from drama school, I felt like my acting chops were better than ever, and spent several years being just one big part away from making that elusive comeback. That drove me crazy. I was in my twenties, but I looked like I was in my teens, so I often auditioned to play a teenager. Since I didn't have the same energy or mentality as the
real
teenagers around me, I never got cast. When I walked into auditions, I was rejected before I opened my mouth, and I felt like I was wasting everyone's time—including my own. It didn't take long for the word to spread around Hollywood: Wil Wheaton may
look
young, but he can't
play
young. After countless failed auditions where I was 10 years older than everyone else, I became cynical and pessimistic.

On the very few projects where I was reading for an older character, I would often be one of the final two or three actors to be considered. But consistently coming in second or third was actually worse than not making it past the first round of meetings. It was like scaling Mount Everest, only to die within sight of the summit . . . over and over again.

I couldn't understand why I kept getting so close to booking jobs without anything to show for it, so I asked my agents to pursue feedback from casting directors. The answers provided more questions: "Wil was absolutely the best actor for this job, but he just wasn't handsome enough, or
edgy
enough, for the part." I suppose telling me I was "absolutely the best actor" was intended to make me feel better, but it only made me feel frustrated and depressed. Each time I heard the word
edgy
, I seriously wondered whether I would ever be able to support my family by being an actor.

Family?
That's right. I was 27 years old and I had a family. Shortly before I graduated from drama school, I had fallen in love with a wonderful woman. Five years later, we were married. I had taken on the responsibility of helping to raise her two children, with little financial and no emotional support from their father, who actively worked to disrupt not only our marriage, but our relationship with the kids as well. I'd taken everything I had saved from
Star Trek
and
Stand By Me
and invested it in our home and our wedding.

My life as a husband and stepfather was very rewarding, but a desire to regain the success I'd enjoyed as a child and teenager pulled at me constantly. It kept me awake at night and was a constant distraction. Like the Not Me ghost from Family Circus, Prove To Everyone That Quitting
Star Trek
Wasn't A Mistake slept between my wife and me in our bed and ate with us at every meal. When I could have been playing with my stepkids, Prove To Everyone That Quitting
Star Trek
Wasn't A Mistake and I would sit and stare vacantly at the TV, wondering what could have been.

The weekend after the Hooters Incident (as it came to be known), my wife was out of town and Prove To Everyone That Quitting
Star Trek
Wasn't A Mistake and I found ourselves in front of my computer. I surfed the Internet, played Diablo II, created WinAmp play lists . . . I did everything I could to get that Hooters waitress out of my mind.

Yes, that's how badly it hurt me: I was actively trying to get a Hooters waitress
out
of my mind. While my wife was out of town.

Somewhere in that day, while I was battling the forces of polygonal evil on Battle.Net, Prove To Everyone tapped me on the shoulder, and said,
"Dude. You should make a website and let the world know that you are still alive and still acting."

I paused the game and looked back at him. I had wanted a presence on the Web for a long time, but I didn't have the skills to build a website. I'd been given the names of several designers, but wanted to do the whole thing myself, for better or for worse.

"Oh my god. That's a fantastic idea! Maybe we'll even get noticed by Hollywood again!"

"Just make sure you make the website
edgy," he said.

"If you were real, I'd cock-punch you for that,"
I said.

I quit the game and went to Yahoo! Geocities, where I created an account called "tvswilwheaton." (Get it? "TV's Wil Wheaton!" Because I'm still on TV, except I'm not.) Because I had absolutely no idea how to write HTML, and I knew nothing about tables, CSS, RSS feeds, or the W3C, I spent the next few hours clumsily learning my way around the Yahoo! Pagebuilder. I used their WYSIWYG editor to—ahem—"design" my very first web page. The result was incredibly lame, but it was mine. I named it
Where's My Burrito?
after one of my favorite episodes of
The Simpsons
.

When it was done, Prove To Everyone That Quitting
Star Trek
Wasn't A Mistake and I shared a high five. I was proud of what I'd created. I posted a link to it in a small Wil Wheaton online fan club and wondered if anyone would care.

Boy,
did
they care! I had over 700 visitors in a couple weeks, without being listed in a single search engine. The response excited me, and I started updating the site quite frequently by hand-coding "news updates" into the main page. Here's the very first "news update" I did, way back before I had even heard of a weblog:

22 JULY, 2001

Hey party people
.