Coreyography: A Memoir Page 7

  “Can I take one home with me?”

  The special-effects guys looked at one another, before one of them decided to speak. “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”

  “How about just a piece of the fur?” There were yards and yards of the stuff lying around. I figured that if I could just have a piece to carry in my pocket, I’d have something that no one else in the whole world had. I would be ahead of the curve. And if I could take it to school and show it off, maybe I would—finally—be cool.

  Things at school, however, did not go as planned.

  “What the hell is mogwai fur?” someone yelled out. The kids in the back of the class—the cool kids—erupted in a fit of guffaws and snickers.

  “Mogwai are part of a movie that Steven Spielberg is making called Gremlins,” I said, completely undeterred. “Trust me when I tell you, this movie is going to be huge.”

  “Who the hell is Steven Spielberg?” A spitball flew through the air, landing on the floor near my shoe. Needless to say, my mogwai show-and-tell did nothing to help my reputation.

  CHAPTER 5

  I ran out of the school trailer as soon as I heard the commotion. Joseph Zito, the director, was pacing along the lakeshore, alternately mumbling to himself and screaming at the producers. Several members of the crew had donned wetsuits and were now bobbing up and down in the water. “What’s going on?” I asked, running up alongside Joe, my feet sinking into the muddy shore.

  “It’s Crispin,” he said, visibly distressed. “He was out in the lake, playing with his submarine. I guess it went down too far and didn’t come back.” He put his hands on his hips and gazed at his men in the water. “Fuck,” he spat. “It’s gonna be awhile.”

  Camp Crystal Lake, the fictional stomping grounds of the serial killer Jason Voorhees, has been created and re-created in small towns in New Jersey, Connecticut, and California for each of the three Friday the 13th films. To make Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, the fourth movie in the franchise and my follow-up to Gremlins, we’re shooting near the tiny town of Buellton, two hours north of L.A. It was my first road trip—Grandpa sat up front with a teamster; he’ll be my on-set guardian for the duration of the shoot. And though I am by far the youngest member of the cast, Crispin Glover is easily my favorite. He reminds me of a young James Dean, a shadowy figure, good-looking but in an off kind of way, always dressed in a long trench coat pulled tight at the base of his throat. While the other young actors spend their free time drinking and flirting and socializing, Crispin can usually be found down by the lake, alone, staring out at the water, into nothing.

  A few days earlier, most of the cast had driven into the neighboring town of Solvang, a village of half-timbered houses with thatched roofs and four different windmills, all done in the Danish provincial style, in search of a bar. But Crispin had wandered into an antique store and come out with a thousand dollars’ worth of toys. His favorite was a novelty yellow submarine. I remembered hearing the story—the way he had whined and complained until the other actors reluctantly squeezed themselves into the already overpacked van in order to make room for his purchases—but that still didn’t explain why production had been delayed. By the time I popped up alongside Joe, we’d been shut down for nearly two hours.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

  “He won’t come back to set until we find it.”

  I looked over at Crispin, who was now in the middle of a full-on star fit, huffing and puffing and stomping on the ground, and laughed out loud. I couldn’t help it—this was hilarious. I was also totally impressed. Here was a fully grown man (at twenty, he seemed fully grown to me), throwing a childlike tantrum—and it was working! I thought that’s what it meant to be famous. And being famous, to me, meant that you were loved. It would be many, many years before I learned the difference.

  * * *

  Nobody seemed to think it was strange that, immediately after wrapping a PG-rated family film for Amblin, I would be starring in an R-rated slasher flick. In fact, the greater concern among the casting directors had been whether or not I was big enough and strong enough to properly wield a machete. In the final scene, it would be my character, twelve-year-old Tommy Jarvis, who violently hacks a deranged serial killer into pieces.

  “They think the machete is almost as big as you are. They’re worried you won’t be able to pick it up and swing it,” my agent explained.

  Pretending to be a serial killer, however, was not my particular concern. I was much more worried about a scene several pages earlier, when my character was supposed to shave his head.

  “There is no way in hell I’m having my kid out of operation for three months because he shaved his head for a movie,” my mother yelled into the phone. For once, I actually agreed with her. I ended up wearing a bald cap for the final scenes of the movie (and though I was able to master the machete, I had blood-soaked, gory nightmares for months).

  * * *

  Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and Gremlins both hit theaters in the spring of 1984; their premiere dates were less than two months apart. I had actually gone to the movies with Mindy and a few of her friends to see Friday the 13th when I noticed a poster for Gremlins hanging up in the lobby. “This is my movie!” I shouted. I couldn’t wait for it to come out.

  When I saw that poster, I could sense that something was starting to happen. I felt like I was on the cusp of something. Not really stardom, which seemed unthinkable, too outrageous then to be true. It was more like a promise, the hope that good things were on the horizon. The idea that if I could just hold out a little bit longer, I might find a way out of my shitty life. It was around that time that I started “running away” from home, usually to Mann Valley West, a giant movie theater on Ventura that has long since closed. Saturday matinees ran for three dollars; I would usually pilfer enough money from my grandmother’s purse to get in, then sneak from theater to theater, watching as many movies as possible until nightfall, when I was typically ready to return home.

  Later, after Gremlins debuted at number-two (right behind the original Ghostbusters), and raked in nearly $150 million, it occurred to me that I should probably be getting in to see movies for free. I caught a bus from Northridge to Woodland Hills, where I transferred and took a second bus to Tarzana, walked right up to the box office and pointed to a nearby poster.

  “You see that movie? Gremlins?” I said to a bored-looking teenager, chomping on a piece of gum, seated behind the glass. “I’m in it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Can you let me in?”

  I spent most of that afternoon bouncing in and out of screening rooms, watching all the movies I wanted, including my very own. By the end of my second viewing, though, people had started to recognize me.

  I had been recognized in public before, of course, as far back as my time on The Bad News Bears. Between that show and The Shining, actually, I got recognized—or mistakenly recognized—quite a lot. I did look an awful lot like Danny Lloyd (mostly due to our matching bowl haircuts), the kid who had become famous for the creepy way he said “red rum” in Stanley Kubrick’s classic thriller. People sometimes asked me for my autograph even after I explained that I was Corey Feldman. But I had movies in theaters now. Things were different.

  A lot of people dream about getting famous. And I would be a liar if I said it didn’t have its perks. But that day in the theater, I was just a sullen twelve-year-old, sneaking in and out of movies and hiding from my mom. I was contemplating the strangeness of that while waiting in line for some popcorn, when a young girl approached me. “Can I take a picture with you?”

  She was just shy of fourteen, nearly two years older than me, and pretty. She told me her name was Laura.

  “So, what are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I ran away from home.”

  “Oh. I’m here with my family.” She gestured to some adults milling about behind her. Later, I would find out that she was Laura McAnally. Her father,
John, was a horse trainer, famous for his work with John Henry, one of the most successful thoroughbreds in racing history. “So, you’re a tough runaway kid, huh?”

  I smiled. She had managed to see through my tough-guy exterior.

  We exchanged numbers, and then I watched her disappear into the darkness, ambling slowly behind her parents, peeking over her shoulder at me the whole way. I watched as the heavy metal door to the screening room swung shut behind her. Laura would eventually become my second “girlfriend,” though I think we only went out on one official date, to a horse race with her parents.

  I stood in the lobby for a while, half hoping Laura would reappear, before finally scrounging up some change and dialing my grandmother’s house from a nearby payphone.

  “Where have you been?” Boobie answered. “We were so worried about you!”

  “I ran away.”

  “Oh, Corey. We love you. Come on, now. It’s time to come home.”

  It was dusk. The streetlights along the boulevard were blinking to life. It was quiet, and I was alone. Also, I had run out of money.

  “Okay. Have Grandpa pick me up on the corner by the theater.” I felt a gurgling in my stomach. I was hungry. “And maybe we can stop by Burger King on the way home.”

  CHAPTER 6

  My hand was trembling as I opened the envelope and pulled out the pages. It was another Spielberg project, which meant that—like so many of his films—it was completely and utterly top-secret; you had to sign a nondisclosure agreement as soon as you pulled out the script. I thumbed through quickly. Every single page, all 120-plus of them, had a giant red stamp on it, proof that what you had in your hands was an authentic original copy. Scripts with black stamps, sure signs they had been (illegally) run through a machine, were strictly verboten. I let the pages flutter through my fingers until I was staring at the big bold letters printed across the cover. There were the words I had been waiting more than six whole months to read:

  Amblin Entertainment and

  Warner Bros. Pictures

  present

  The Goonies

  The ceiling in my grandparents’ kitchen was rather low; it couldn’t have been much higher than seven feet, but I jumped up and down, higher and higher, high enough to brush the exposed beams with my fingertips. High enough to reach the roof.

  “I just got the Goonies!” I yelled. “I’m a Goonie! I’m a Goonie! Wha-hoooo!”

  My grandfather, halfway through his evening shot of whiskey and a cigarette, looked up from his black-and-white television.

  “What’s all this racket?” he grumbled. “And what the hell is a Goonie?”

  * * *

  Almost a year earlier, not long after finishing up on the set of Gremlins, I had gotten another call—again, at home—from the offices of Amblin Entertainment. Steven was requesting to meet with me the following Saturday. I had never heard of taking a meeting on the weekend, so I figured it had to be important. It had to be something unique.

  When I got to Amblin, it was just Steven and Kathleen Kennedy, Steven’s coproducer, waiting for me in the boardroom.

  “I’ve got this idea for a kids’ action-adventure movie,” he said. “Think Indiana Jones, but with kids. We’re thinking it would be you, and maybe Ke Huy Quan—Short Round from the Temple of Doom—and a bunch of other young actors. What do you think?”

  “That sounds like a great idea!” I said. “I’d love to see the script.”

  Steven chuckled. “Yeah, well, we’d all love to see the script. But we’re a ways off on that. I just wanted to get a general meeting to gauge your excitement level.”

  “Well, of course I’m excited,” I said. In fact, I was ready to go right then. “Sign me up!”

  I didn’t hear another word about it for about six months.

  Making movies is a slow, arduous process. Even after a project has cleared the two biggest hurdles—securing funding and getting a green light from the suits upstairs—there are still a million potential pitfalls in the preproduction process, from script approval and rewrites, to finding an appropriate-sized hole in everyone’s schedule (when you’re Steven Spielberg, you tend to get a little busy), to location scouting and procuring filming permits, to culling together the perfect cast and negotiating everyone’s salaries. Some movies can get bogged down in this process, stalled for months or even years. Some films never wind up getting made at all. Deep down, somewhere in my sub-conscious, I knew that. But it was still tough to wait.

  Eventually, I got another call from Amblin. This time, though, they were requesting that I come in and audition. That was odd. I had been under the impression that I was one of the chosen ones, one of the kids Steven wanted to, essentially, build the movie around. I consoled myself with the idea that, maybe, he just wanted to get all of us together, see what our chemistry might be like.

  It wasn’t until I arrived that I realized I was walking into a massive cattle call. There were easily a hundred kids there, milling around the lobby and the waiting rooms of Universal Studios, where the Amblin offices are housed. I quickly scanned the room, looking for familiar faces. Any kid who’s ever been in this business can write you a term paper on those rooms; you might find yourself there for three, maybe four hours, waiting and waiting and waiting, depending on the size and scale of the project, and you never knew who might show up. (Back in the late ’70s I was more than a little starstruck when Danny Bonaduce breezed through the doors, igniting a firestorm of whispers and murmuring in the process.) I scanned the room until my eyes rested on an unknown actor, also reading for the part of Clark “Mouth” Devereaux, the wise-cracking smart alec of the group. It would be several years before I learned that this had been a young Corey Haim.

  The audition—pretty much old hat by then—had gone smoothly. “You’re great, you’re great. You know I love you for this. We just have to go through the protocol,” Steven said. And then another two months went by and I still didn’t have an offer on the table.

  Forget what I said about the movie-making process being slow and arduous. This was ridiculous. I thought I was a shoo-in, then I was made to come in and read for the part, and I still hadn’t gotten a callback. What was going on here? I called my agent at the time, Iris Burton. She was a legend, and also something of a crazy lady. (She once told People magazine: “I hate to say it, but kids are pieces of meat. I’ve never had anything but filet mignon. I’ve never had a hamburger. My kids are the choice meat.” Though she did have a point: at various points in their careers, she represented virtually all the Phoenix kids—River, Joaquin, Rain, and Summer—as well as Henry Thomas; Fred Savage; Kirk and Candace Cameron; Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen; and Kirsten Dunst, to name but a few.) She gave me a slew of assurances—“They definitely want you”; “You’re definitely in”; “Everything is going to be fine”—and then two more months went by without another word.

  Finally, I got another call from Iris. “There’s been a little hiccup,” she said. “Steven is no longer directing the film.”

  My heart sank. This is what I was afraid of. I could practically feel the job slipping through my fingers.

  “The new director is open to you,” she continued. “But you’re going to have to go in and reprove yourself to him. And from what I hear”—she lowered her voice a bit, a sure sign that she was about to dish some insider dirt—“he’s tough, kid. Don’t be intimidated.”

  I wasn’t intimidated. I was terrified.

  * * *

  The first thing I noticed about Richard Donner was his size. He’s only actually about six foot two but to me he seemed like a damn giant, just a towering hulk of a guy with a big, booming voice—he was usually, always, yelling. The second thing I noticed were the toys. There were models and toys and trinkets on every available surface. I remember, vividly, the skeleton from Tales from the Crypt propped up on a chair in the corner (but that must have come later; the show, of which he was an executive producer, didn’t premiere until 1989). And everywhere—stashed on ta
bles and bookcases and sofas and on the desk in the center of his office—were mementos from Superman, the film that launched the career of Christopher Reeve.

  “You directed Superman?” I blurted out. My whole life, up to that point, had been about dressing up in superhero costumes. The fact that Richard Donner had directed what was easily one of my favorite films made him, officially, one of the coolest men I’d ever met. Suddenly, he didn’t seem all that scary. I immediately relaxed.

  “I just have one simple question,” he said, reclining a little in his chair. “Tell me why you should play Mouth.”

  I took a deep breath. I exhaled. And then I launched into a twenty-minute dissertation, just an absolute onslaught, an avalanche of words. He kept trying to interrupt, trying to get a word in, and I absolutely would not let him. I was like a little used-car salesman. “Whaddaya want? You want character voices? I can do character voices.” Then I’d run through my whole carefully rehearsed repertoire, all those voices and sketches and improv routines I’d honed with my cousin Michael and a tiny cassette recorder. “You want a cool guy? I can be a cool guy.” Then I’d pop the collar on my jacket, pretend to slick back my hair, and do my best impression of The Fonz, the coolest guy I knew. When I finished my sermon and finally shut my mouth, Donner leaned forward a little in his chair.

  “Well, I’m not going to argue with you,” he said. “You definitely seem like Mouth to me.”

  The Goonies was the first job that I really, really wanted. I wanted to perform. To deliver. I wanted to redeem myself from that earlier streak of being an obnoxious brat on the set. Plus, I knew that if Steven was producing it, it would be a great movie. And if Richard Donner, the director of Superman, was doing it, it would definitely be a great movie. Now I just had to wait around and see if they would give me a chance.

  I will never forget the day that script arrived. I had been sitting in my grandparents’ kitchen when Iris called to tell me I got the job, that they were messengering the pages right over. Not only did this mean I had done it, it meant at least three months of freedom, of shooting on location. It meant being around other kids my age. It meant three months of a normal life. Ironic, considering that I was signing on to make an epic adventure movie, for three months of intense work, for more professional pressure than I had ever before experienced. But all of that sounded like a field trip. And I needed one. Because only weeks before that initial call from Amblin, I had swallowed a bottle of aspirin. That was the first time I tried to kill myself.