Coreyography: A Memoir Read online

  That was really all I was planning to say—that I think pushing kids into the spotlight is almost always a bad idea. But by the time I was sitting down in front of the cameras, weeks after I initially agreed to the interview, Corey had been bumped from the In Memoriam segment at the Oscars; it was the second awards show to snub him that season, and I guess I just sort of snapped. Despite the release of the autopsy report, people were still reporting that his death was the result of an overdose. I was fed up with people insisting—loudly, and in public—that Corey’s tragic death was really his own damn fault.

  “Well, whose fault is it?” the reporter asked me. “His parents? Who is really to blame?”

  “I blame the entertainment industry,” I said.

  “How so?”

  “Nobody talks about what the real problem is.”

  “What’s the real problem?”

  I could feel it coming, the words bubbling up in my throat. “The number-one problem in Hollywood,” I said, “was, and is, and always will be pedophilia. That’s the biggest problem in this industry, for children. It’s the big secret. There’s only one person to blame for the death of Corey Haim.”

  The Nightline episode aired in August 2011 and was instant national news. That part wasn’t surprising. Neither were the accusations that I had done the interview to stay “relevant” or to try to advance my career—after nearly forty years in this business, I’ve come to expect that kind of cynicism, although it’s still hurtful and difficult for me to hear. What I hadn’t anticipated—and here you could make the argument that I was extremely naïve—was that trying to “guess the pedophile,” trying to figure out who had molested and abused Corey Haim, would turn into a cheap parlor game. The comments sections of countless blogs, on YouTube, and even ABC’s Web site turned into a veritable who’s who of Hollywood. Suddenly, I was getting hundreds of phone calls and tweets and e-mails from people I had never even met—who, mind you, had absolutely no idea what they were talking about—saying that if I was really Corey’s friend, I would stop “protecting” his abusers, if I really cared about Corey, I would publicly name names.

  I can tell you that over the course of our more than twenty-year-long friendship, Corey and I often discussed going public with our respective stories. The closest he ever got, though, was in 2008, two years before he died. In a dingy diner in Studio City, during episode one of season two of The Two Coreys, Haim accused me of knowing that he had been molested at age fourteen and of having done nothing to stop it.

  It’s true that we were both molested by men in the industry, and that we knew each other’s assailants. But the incident that we almost never discussed, the one that haunted Haim for the rest of his life, happened three years before we met.

  Corey was raped at the age of eleven. And like many, many victims of sex abuse, drug use became an easy, if also tragic, way for him to escape the weight of that shame.

  There is nothing I would rather do than publicly out the man who molested—and ultimately destroyed—my dearest friend. Unfortunately, that is not the way the world works. You can’t go around publicly accusing industry titans without expecting to find yourself in the middle of a nasty lawsuit, to say nothing of the potential threat to my career, as well as to the personal safety of myself and my son. As for the idea of going to the police, it will perhaps surprise you to know that I have. Of course, I don’t have any evidence, and Corey Haim is no longer alive to testify on his own behalf. As for opening cases against my abusers, there is a statute of limitations on sex crimes in California; and, apparently, I am too late. The only thing I know how to do, then, is to try and raise people’s awareness, to somehow protect other children before the same thing happens to them.

  * * *

  In the fall of 2011, just a few months after the Nightline interview aired, a young boy and his parents came forward and pressed charges against Martin Weiss, a forty-seven-year-old Hollywood talent manager who specialized in representing underage actors. The news went viral instantly—Weiss had worked with hundreds of young stars since opening his talent agency in the early ’90s; I’ve known him since I was twelve years old.

  During the months leading up to Weiss’s pretrial hearing, I spoke with the victim and his parents and discussed the case with the prosecutor. I offered whatever kind of help or guidance I possibly could. But, as is so often the case in these types of proceedings, Weiss was able to make a deal. He pleaded no contest to two counts of oral copulation with a minor. His one-year prison sentence was suspended in June 2012; he was released early for time served and “good behavior.”

  For a brief time after that, I lost faith in the system. Why should I put a target on my back or set myself up to become some kind of poster child for sex abuse if the courts can’t protect abused children? But then I realized that something was happening—for the first time in years, people were starting to talk.

  Weiss’s arrest came just two weeks after arrests in two other high-profile Hollywood cases. In November 2011, an award-winning composer for Sesame Street was arraigned on charges of producing and distributing child pornography, as well as coercing a minor to “engage in sexually explicit conduct.” One month later, news broke that Jason James Murphy, a registered sex offender and convicted kidnapper, had been working for years as a prominent casting director; he had placed underage performers in such high-profile films as Super 8 and School of Rock. The following January, an article in the Los Angeles Times revealed details of more than one dozen arrests of various managers, casting agents, and production assistants on counts ranging from child porn to molestation, all in the last ten years.

  How does this happen? How do so many innocent, talented, and even famous children wind up suffering in silence? The obvious answer is that pedophiles will flock to an industry where they can surround themselves with eager, ambitious children. But there’s another answer, too: the bright lights of Hollywood are blinding, and the sanctity of childhood is easily trumped by the deafening drumbeat of fame.

  In September 2012, a bill affording greater protection for underage actors was signed into California state law. For the first time, managers, publicists, and other Hollywood professionals who work with children will be required to submit to criminal background checks. The bill also prohibits registered sex offenders from representing minors in the entertainment industry. It’s incredible that legislation like this has been such a long time coming, but it has a real chance of protecting children like my friend Corey—more real, I think, than just naming names.

  * * *

  I have always been a polarizing public figure; I know what gets written about me in the press. To the casual fan, I may come across as immature, or self-absorbed, or unsophisticated, or flat-out crazy, and—certainly—I’ve made my mistakes. Despite some of the more sensational headlines, though, I actually lead a relatively normal life. I’ve been sober for more than two decades. I make an average of one to three films a year. I’m a passionate environmentalist and an advocate for animal rights. I tour occasionally with my band Truth Movement and have a thriving solo music career. And I have a son, Zen, my most precious gift.

  But in the three years since Corey died, I’ve spent less time thinking about where I am and more time wondering how I got here. I guess that’s natural; thinking about the end of something—his life, our friendship—inevitably dredges up thoughts of the beginning. When I look back on my life, however, the memories that are the most vivid, the most complete and fully realized in my mind, are from times when I was on film sets and in television studios, from times when I was working. In fact, I’ve always marked the chronology of my life not by the year, but by the film, because so much of the rest of it I’d just as soon forget. There are entire chapters of my life that I don’t want to remember, and some moments in time have been lost to me completely. But in the three years since Corey’s death, I’ve been trying. In order to figure out how I got here, I have to go back to the start.

  CHAPTER 1


  I am three years old, sitting at the small round breakfast table in our tiny kitchen, eyeing a half-open box of cereal. There’s a toy surprise buried somewhere inside, and I’m itching for it. I bounce my feet impatiently atop the wooden rung of my chair, feel a cold dribble of milk slip across my lip and down my chin. As consumed as I am by that prize, however, I sense that there is something different, something even more exciting, about today. It’s still early morning in the San Fernando Valley—the sun is streaming through the little stained glass window above the door frame, casting a rainbow of shadows across the linoleum floor of the foyer—but the whole house is already buzzing with energy.

  “Boobie?” My childhood nickname for my mother’s mother is a slightly more anatomical version of the term bubbe, the Yiddish word for grandmother. “What am I excited about?”

  “Today is your first commercial.”

  “My first commersmal?” I ask between bites. “The things before cartoons on TV?”

  “Yes. Now finish your breakfast, please. You don’t want to be late on your first day.”

  I scoop up the last few spoonfuls of cereal, slide down my chair, and pad down the hallway to my bedroom, where my clothes have been carefully laid out for me. Even though I didn’t know much about commercials (or commersmals, as I would call them for the next few years), I understood that this was serious business. I was a professional now.

  At seven, my older sister Mindy was already a seasoned actress. She was the youngest cast member of the 1970s-era kids’ show The All-New Mickey Mouse Club and often spent two-week-long stints at Disneyland in Anaheim, performing bad renditions of Beatles songs in bright satin jumpsuits and oversized mouse ears for throngs of screaming, preteen fans. As the family breadwinner, Mindy was granted a wide berth by my parents; she was enrolled in a fancy private school and, when she wasn’t working, usually locked herself away in her room. I used to spend hours outside that door, straining to hear the music that sometimes rang out from her tiny record player (my favorite was the Wizard of Oz soundtrack). But when she was performing, I was generally allowed to wander through the theme park alongside her and her teenaged castmates. I watched, awestruck, as she navigated those early brushes with fame, signing autographs and posing for pictures, mobbed by her very own circle of groupies. I thought that being a Mouseketeer meant she had a perfect life. It made sense, then, that by following in her footsteps, my life was about to become special, too.

  My first professional acting job was a minute-long spot for McDonald’s gift certificates. The setup was fairly simple: I would wake up in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve, stumble downstairs in my blue-footed pajamas, and leave a fifty-cent gift certificate for Santa, right on top of his plate of cookies, next to his glass of milk. When my mother and I arrived on set, a rented two-story home in the Valley, the director, Rob Lieberman, came over to say hello. He had a warm smile and a hippie-ish, Cat Stevens–like beard, a popular style back in 1975.

  “Today is a very big day, Corey,” he said, kneeling down to speak to me at eye level. “Today, you’re going to meet Santa Claus!”

  “But it’s the middle of summer!” I said, nonplussed. Rob patted my head and winked at my mom, and that was the end of that—off I went to be fitted in my pajamas.

  As the day wore on, we shot take after take—I climbed in and out of bed, I teetered up and down the stairs—until, finally, it was time. Santa was going to reach his hand into the scene to collect his gift certificate and shout, “Ho, Ho, Ho!” while I looked on from between the wooden stair railings. I was crushed, however, when I realized that “Santa” was really just a regular-looking guy wearing a red coat sleeve with fluffy white trim.

  “Where is the real Santa?” I asked. “Can I meet Santa Claus now?”

  “The real Santa is going to come later,” Rob said, no doubt aware that his three-year-old star was headed for a production-halting meltdown. “Right now we just have to pretend.”

  If shooting a Christmas commercial in July was my first clue that things in Hollywood are rarely as they seem, this sad excuse for a Santa was my second. And I never did get to meet the real Santa Claus that day. The McDonald’s ad, though, would run for the next eight Christmases and win a prestigious Clio award, the Oscar of the advertising world.

  When you ask most people to reflect on their very first memory, the recollections usually fall within a range of familiar vignettes—that first game of catch with Mom or Dad, playing with a beloved stuffed animal or favorite toy, or watching Saturday morning cartoons. My first memory is shooting that McDonald’s commercial. I can’t remember anything before the start of my career.

  * * *

  Until the age of five, I lived with my parents, Bob and Sheila Feldman, and my big sister, Mindy, in a modest three-bedroom California ranch in the once-sleepy community of Chatsworth, a district of Los Angeles situated in the northwest San Fernando Valley, bordered to the north by the Santa Susana Mountains. My father, a musician and producer, wasn’t around much; most of his time was spent on the road, performing with his cover band, Scream, at Los Angeles–area theme parks, like Knott’s Berry Farm and Magic Mountain. So most of my days were spent at home with my mom. Boobie might come over to babysit, or to take Mindy to rehearsals and act as her on-set guardian, on the days when my mother had a headache or was too sick to get out of bed.

  If the door to her bedroom was open, I would grab my toys and set up camp in her king-size bed or lounge on the floor beneath the television for hours, staying up late into the night to watch Saturday Night Live with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi or my mother’s favorite show, the soap opera parody Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. With the shades drawn, bathed in the blue light of the television screen, I would sit and study the hodgepodge of artifacts displayed around her room like talismans, the little ceramic frog statues that lined her windowsill (her favorite color was lime green), or the gilded frame that had sat on top of her nightstand for as long as I could remember. The pictorial had been torn from the pages of Playboy, and from it she smiled proudly, hand on hip. At five foot one she was the shortest among the waitresses at the Playboy Club in L.A. If I carefully picked up the frame to admire it, she might tell me stories about how she served drinks in a bunny uniform and did the famous bunny dip, bending at the knees instead of the waist so she wouldn’t “fall out of her top.”

  “Hugh Hefner was a gentleman,” she would say with a certain reverence, taking the frame from me and putting it carefully back into place. “And he always left big tips.” I liked the way she winked when she said this, and I pictured Mr. Hefner as some sort of benevolent father figure, merrily dolling out “big tips” to other working women like my mom.

  When she finished describing her days as a bunny, she might tell me about the wild parties she used to attend at Spahn Ranch, the sprawling five-hundred-acre stretch of land in the mountains above Chatsworth, once the backdrop for spaghetti Westerns and episodes of Bonanza and The Lone Ranger before Charles Manson and his “family” moved in, rent-free, around the time of the Tate-LaBianca murders in the summer of ’69. It was strange to think of my mother that way, as a single, carefree woman in the days before she had children. She was beautiful but, as I sensed even then, somehow dangerous.

  On the good days, we’d pile in the car and drive the hills and troughs of the Valley, searching for strays or wounded animals in need of a “good home,” even though we already had a vicious black lab called Shadow, plus an Irish Setter and a little cream-colored Chihuahua, Twinkie, multiple cats, several ducks, a smattering of chickens, and two horses, a black-and-white gelding called Flash, and Wildfire, a brown mare.

  More often, though, she was down, relegated to the confines of her bedroom, suffering from a mysterious range of maladies. In those days, I was too young to anticipate the high-highs and low-lows of someone with a depressive disorder, or to successfully navigate the unpredictable, violent swings that are borne of substance abuse. I just thought she needed my help.

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nbsp; “Corey?” she would call out, no matter where I was in the house. “Come in here and rub my feet.” I would trudge into the darkness and take her foot in my hands while she lay in bed, her forearm thrown over her face to shield her eyes from the light, her naked leg sticking out from deep beneath the blankets. She would cry and fidget and whine, and sometimes scream and curse and kick, even when I was brushing her hair or bringing her food or running her a bath. Those were the worst days—when her moods became like black holes, sucking the life from every corner of the house into that cold, dark room.

  Sometimes her door would stay closed all day. If I had an audition, she might call my grandmother and demand that Boobie ferry me around town. If I wasn’t working, or if my grandmother was busy with Mindy, I would make my breakfast, feed the horses out back on the farm, and then retreat to my room, locked away for hours with my action figures, acting out elaborate fantasies, playing heroes and villains or cops and robbers or pulling them apart at the joints to inspect the elaborate system of hooks and rubber bands that held them together. I wasn’t allowed to have friends over, and I wasn’t allowed to leave the house. So, sometimes I just zipped myself in the giant gray suitcase, warm and dank, smelling of sweat and leather and the sea. In those early days in the Chatsworth house, I learned to entertain myself.

  * * *

  “You were supposed to be a blond.”

  My mother is alternately scrubbing my scalp with her fingers and shoving my face under the faucet of the bathroom sink. The peroxide burns, and the smell is making me nauseous but, apparently, I was supposed to have been a blond-haired, blue-eyed child. Instead, she got stuck with me. With my head still wedged under the faucet, water rushing into my nose and mouth, she pauses long enough to wipe the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. “This is who you were supposed to be,” she keeps telling me, though it’s difficult to make out what she’s saying with so much water in my ears.