Actors Anonymous (26 page)

But when I went home to arrange the funeral with my mother and my two brothers, my meditator brother told us that my father told him to burn all his journals. My father has hundreds of journals in which he worked out his problems using the I Ching. I guess my brother was closer to my father, and maybe there is some dark stuff in those journals—my father was involved in some weird things when he was a young man at Stanford—but by God, I want those fucking journals.

2. Tell the Truth

I wanted to tell the truth all the time. I wanted to use my life as a model for my work. I thought that I was interesting enough that this would translate, truth = interesting stuff that people want to read. I could go around to everyone and say only true things, but would that mean anything? When would it get interesting? Who would I have to tell the
truth
to for it to be art, when would people begin to notice
that I was doing something artful? I suppose I realized that it was the press that wasn’t used to people being honest, not that people always lied when they spoke to them, but the big celebrities were good at not revealing too much—K____ E_____ doesn’t sleep with tons of women, and M______ P_________ has never done drugs—and sometimes when celebrities
did
reveal too much they were crucified for it: Look at Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah’s couch because he was so in love. It’s the snarky little fuckers that write for
South Park
or
Family Guy
and hide behind cartoons that get revered. They are honest, but honest about everyone else, not about themselves.

But I couldn’t get the truth out, unadulterated. Everyone had a way they wanted me to talk about things, and even when I did speak the truth in full, these shows would cut up what I said and put it into a package that served what they wanted to say. And, in addition, what could I tell the truth about? What did I have knowledge of that was valuable if it was known? All I could do was reveal things the way they were; I had an insider’s knowledge of how things worked and from the inside I could begin to peek out to the outside and say, “Hey, look, this is what it’s really like, not like they show on TMZ or on Paris Hilton’s reality show.”

So, yes, I did it. I had lots of sex. Lots. Most actors seem to do it, capitalize on their celebrity appeal. It’s funny, lots of guys that become actors were shy or nerdy or sensitive when they were younger, so when they become famous they really cash in to make up for those years when they were overlooked and rejected. S_______ N_______ was one that cleaned up, man, he slept with (big time actress), really, and (big time pop star). A______ A_________ , N________ D__________ , S_______ M________ , ha, not only did these dudes have girls on the side, they also went out with the celebrity girls of their
day. V_______ R________ , H________ P__________. M_______ P_______ had models (all ages), politicians, and actresses.

I had something going with most of my female costars and worked up a routine so that I could see someone every night. One of my favorite approaches was to ask the young girls that requested to take a photo with me to email me a copy of the photo; that way I can give them my info very quickly in front of a crowd of fans and later work out a way to see them. Usually this happens at an event, which means I am usually away from home, so I have girls I can see all over the world. Usually they are ready when I go back to that city, whether it is Rome, Portland, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, Asheville, or D.C.

So I was in Toronto: It was 2010; we premiered
127 Hours;
a person fainted during the arm amputation scene, then another one fainted before the movie ended. Ambulances were called. It was the first time we screened it for an audience, so we were not used to that kind of reaction, something that would become more common as we screened it more often. Danny and I went up onstage with Aaron Ralston and gave a Q and A. That was during the day. That night, we screened it again. As we entered, a girl, okay-looking, stepped out of the crowd and asked for a picture. I asked her to email it to me. We watched the film and a couple people passed out. Later, at the end of the festival, the girl emailed me the picture, but it was too late to see her in Toronto where she was going to school, and I had already spent the night with a Princeton student who was volunteering at the festival. But, as luck would have it, I kept in touch with both of them—in addition to a Berkeley student that gave me her info in front of a crowd that had gathered to listen to me talk to Peter Sellars—and
the Toronto girl, Barbara, eventually came to New York to visit her grandmother. Well, in the intervening months she had sent me plenty of photos of her body and especially her ass bent over in a G-string, so when she arrived at my Lower East Side apartment, I was ready and she was ready. Not only did she allow me to do everything I wanted to her, she let me film it on my phone.

TRADITION 7

Every film ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside financing.

Faith & Victory

T
HE ONE THING I HAD
going for me was that I wasn’t an actor. Thomas and I were friends and I went to the clubs where all the actors were, but at least I wasn’t one of them. Going to acting class, doing scenes about abortions and being gay, going on auditions, thinking about yourself all the time, trying to be pretty, going to the gym, doing your hair, taking headshots, being vacuous and insecure, fuck that.

I drove through Silver Lake. Long streets of single-story buildings. Strange offices, acting schools, video stores, bars with old world signs, and new age coffee shops. Debris and graffiti. Everything was run down.

I was a volunteer at Faith & Victory Church, an orphanage/hospital for “retards,” way way west on Sunset, deep in the funky part of
town, where paper and trash floated in the air and stuck to the bushes and scuttled on the sidewalks next to the cement embankments.

I worked with the retards because it made me feel good. Actually, I usually just worked with one of them, Miles. I didn’t like working with the others because they were too busted up. Most were missing their throats or pieces of their brains or their limbs so that they were just writhing things in messy sheets. They lay around and drooled out of deformed orifices and made disgusting wet noises that made no sense. It was stupid to talk to the ones that were that far gone. You could stand there and be a warm loving body for only so long. After a while you started to feel like a retard yourself.

But Miles had a working mind and was actually pretty funny. He was fourteen and told me he was banging the two good-looking Filipino nurses, Maria and Angela. He wasn’t. Miles had a mouth that looked like a ragged anus because his father and stepmother had abused him when he was a young child. Most of his teeth had been knocked out by a stick that was shoved in his throat and his stomach was messed up too.

The kids at Faith & Victory were all way gone mentally, and either their families couldn’t provide for their needs or didn’t want to. Lots of actors and agents volunteered at the hospital and did art with the kids. It was through a program called CALove. I suppose, like me, they all wanted to feel better about themselves. I wasn’t an actor, but my friend Thomas was an actor, pretty successful, and he told me about the place when he heard I was feeling bad.

Thomas used to party with me back when I was working as a production assistant on big movies, about five years ago. Monday through Thursday I would work on sets in the day, bringing actors coffee and shit, and then at night Thomas and I would go to the clubs.
Then on weekends we would do speed and watch three or four movies in a row, in the theater and at his house. We watched so many movies. Mostly action shit, but we were into comedies, and sci-fi, and old foreign stuff too. But suddenly after a couple years of this, Thomas stopped, he told me it was over, and then he started trying to do good things. I didn’t.

Time passed. Then when Thomas called and told me he heard I was feeling bad, I hadn’t talked to him in a couple years. He was right, I
was
feeling bad. I hadn’t done any drugs in four months, so I felt like shit. I just lay around the apartment and watched television, and smoked cigarettes, and sometimes I would go to the shitty golf course and play a little. I used to hang around the Starbucks near UCLA and look for girls, but it stopped working after I let my beard grow. So I was at the apartment most days.

When Thomas told me about the volunteer work, I told him I was busy.

After his call I stared at my carpet for three days. It was beige and there were patterns that spoke to me. After that, I called Thomas. The next day I went to Faith & Victory Church for the first time.

Thomas was working on his TV show that day, so he didn’t come with me. There was one other newcomer that day, a tall and handsome blond guy in shorts who I hated immediately and didn’t want to look at. And there was Casey, a famous actress. She was probably twenty-four. She wasn’t the best actress, but she was hip and was not bad-looking. I used to see her around the clubs when she was eighteen or nineteen. She was always drunk back then. But here she was. It wasn’t her first time at Faith & Victory Church; apparently she volunteered all the time. We were briefed in the hospital lobby by a woman from
Alabama. She was about twenty-eight and had started the CALove program. She and Casey were good friends.

Be loving and don’t be shocked by anything you see, the Alabama woman told us. The main thing was to just be available for the kids. They didn’t get any love in their lives, so just our presence was helpful. And be prepared, our clothes might get ruined.

Then Casey chimed in. She gave me and Blondie a serious look and said, “It can get pretty intense in there.”

“I bet,” said Blondie, as if he knew all about servicing retards.

“What do you mean intense?” I said. I stared hard at Casey. I was trying hard to pretend I was in the lobby with only Casey and the Alabama lady and tried to block out Blondie. He was part Swedish or something. He made me think of candy canes stuck in people’s asses, and gray rooms where people said nothing but inanities. Whenever I looked at him I started hating myself, and I would chant “suicide” in my head over and over; just a little whisper in my head. But when I tried hard, I could block him out pretty well.

Casey said, “The kids are so beautiful here. But it’s
intense,
that’s all.”

That didn’t explain things for me, but I didn’t ask any more questions. The Alabama woman went back to arrange things and we waited. I looked at the wall and tried to think about nothing. Blondie and Casey chatted a bit about acting schools and mutual friends, and smiled politely.

I thought about knives crossing my veins. I was nothing, I was resigned to it. I was just an empty organism using resources until I died. Their little chat buzzing in my ears made me think about mass murder, and I tried my hardest to concentrate on a photograph of a little brown barn in an idyllic snowy landscape.

Then Alabama came back and we all walked down the hall past a bunch of orderlies and nurses and into a community room full of broken toys and painting supplies and stench. We stood in silence, and a minute later they brought the kids in. Misshapen heads and broken bodies with limbs too long or short, walleyed, all hobbling like goblins.

I saw the blond fucker, Christopher, light up like it was a real treat to see such distorted kids.

Alabama directed us toward the kids. She introduced me to a little Asian girl named Kim. I sat down in a children’s chair, my knees up at my chin. Kim stood beside me. She couldn’t speak. Her mouth was pulled back on one side exposing stubby, jagged teeth stained by plaque. In the pulled-back corner of her mouth, there was white-yellow crust and it was in the inside of her eyes and her eyelashes too. And her face was wet from the constant drool that she would smear about with the back of her hand over her cheeks and eyes. There were large wet spots on her My Little Pony T-shirt.

I sat there and she gripped my forearm with both hands and twisted and regripped and twisted and did it again. She was pretty strong. Then she held my wrist to her face. At first I didn’t know what she was doing, but she kept doing it. She liked to feel the blood pumping against her face. A few times she tried to pull my shirt up so that she could get at my heart, but Alabama or the nurses would stop her. Then she started drawing on her arms with the markers and then my arms and then my shirt. They didn’t make her stop doing that.

I spent an hour like that and that was it. When I drove away, it felt good. Driving back down Sunset, Silver Lake looked better. The McDonald’s arches were a glowing symbol, and I took its meaning like sunlight into my smiling face as I drove by.

When I got home I watched
L’avventura
. It was the third time I had tried. This time I finally got into it and it paid off. I liked how guilty and empty everyone was. At 1 a.m. I walked down Sunset to Hyde to see what was there. The usual was there. I sat in a booth with some people I knew. We sat and looked at each other and didn’t say anything good. I drank a few things and looked around the place. I couldn’t work up the energy to meet anyone new. Then I thought a little about the Asian girl, Kim, and the power was still there.