No Regrets (24 page)

There were a lot of bad ideas surrounding that TV movie project, the main one being: who in their right mind thought the four guys in KISS could act? I suppose you could argue that all rock stars are actors, and obviously more than a few of them have made successful transitions to the big screen. In KISS we were already wearing makeup and portraying characters whenever we went onstage, so maybe it seemed like we’d have an easier time than most. When I first heard about the project, I thought it sounded like it might be kind of fun. But I didn’t take it seriously at all, and in very short order I discovered that acting was a lot less interesting and enjoyable than I’d suspected.

I should have had some idea what to expect when I got the original script and discovered that I didn’t have a single line of dialogue. Not one! Every time my character was supposed to speak, the only thing that would come out of his mouth was the sound of a parrot: “Awk!”

That’s exactly what was written on the page. Three capital letters:
A-W-K
.

“Awk!”

I guess the writers had picked up on a quirk of my personality, although I’m not sure where they got the information. Sometimes when I’d get loaded and didn’t want to engage in conversation, I’d mimic the squawk of a parrot until the other person gave up and went away. Pretty silly, I admit. And that was the Ace Frehley persona the screenwriters wanted to present. Or maybe they just thought I was too stoned or drunk to remember any of my lines, so they tried to keep it as simple as possible. When I first saw the script, I didn’t know what to think. Was it a joke? If so, I didn’t find it particularly amusing.

“What the fuck is this?” I asked Bill. “I’ve got no lines in this stupid fuckin’ movie? Why am I wasting my time?”

He laughed. “What do you want me to do, Ace?”

“Tell them to rewrite it.”

They did, and almost magically I had the ability to talk! I even had amazing superpowers that allowed me to transport the whole band at will to another location. So I took a deep breath and decided to give the project my best shot.

A lot of
KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park
was filmed on location at Magic Mountain, where we actually performed a somewhat staged KISS concert, although most of the interior scenes were done at Culver City Studios. Regardless of where we were filming, I had to be on set at eight o’clock in the morning, which was a complete drag for me in those days. The band was staying at a posh hotel in Beverly Hills, a good forty-five minutes away by car. And it wasn’t like I was getting eight hours of beauty sleep each night. I was busy being Ace—hitting the clubs, sometimes partying until the wee hours. Who the hell wants to get up at 7
A.M.
with a hangover? Not me, that’s for sure. Especially when I never knew exactly how much of my time would be required.

It didn’t take long to figure out that most of the moviemaking process
was about hanging out in your trailer all day, waiting for someone to tell you that you were needed on the set. A couple of times during the movie I arrived bright and early, threw on my makeup and costume, and got all ready to go… and then sat in my trailer. After an hour or two one of the assistant directors would stop by and say, “You know what, Ace? We’re doing some close-ups on Gene this morning, so I don’t think we’re going to need you until after lunch. Why don’t you relax for a while?”

That really made me crazy. Here I was, one of the “stars” of the film, and you’d think maybe they could have been a little more considerate? Maybe let me know the night before? Don’t these fuckin’ people plan? Truth is, I was doing a lot of coke at the time and my nerves were becoming frayed, to say the least. I was getting an ounce of blow delivered to my trailer about once a week! The delivery boy was actually one of the actors on the set (he had a minor role in the film). It was really nuts. We each had our own trailer to hang in. I filled my fridge with cold beer and champagne, and since there was a lot of downtime I indulged in the white powder frequently and followed up with whatever was handy. (You’d be surprised what was handy on a movie set in Los Angeles in the seventies.) The actor supplying me used to put the coke in his character’s hat and act like we were buddies just having a cold one together in my trailer. He actually went on to become a pretty well-known character actor down the road, with roles in several big Hollywood hits.

For the most part, I was clueless. I didn’t realize that this was the way movies worked, that downtime was a big part of an actor’s day—maybe the biggest part. And so the third or fourth time that it happened, I snapped. Totally went off on the producer. When confronted, he really didn’t have much to say in his defense in regard to how the shooting schedule was being handled, which didn’t make me feel any better.

Fuck this! I said to myself. Then I shouted, “I’m outta here!” (Which, as I realize now, was extremely unprofessional behavior.)

I went back into my trailer, quickly washed off my makeup and changed into my regular clothes, snorted a couple of lines and washed it down with a cold one, and then jumped into my Mercedes. I drove quietly off the lot, trying not to attract too much attention, but in the rearview mirror I could see my bodyguard and road manager in hot pursuit. Well, not so hot, actually. I let them follow me for a while as I bided my time until we got into a more familiar area. The traffic was becoming dense, and I began making lefts and rights, slowly and methodically trying to lose them, until finally I just hit the gas and pulled away, leaving them stuck behind a truck at a red light. The next thing I knew, I was on my own, somewhere in the suburbs of Los Angeles, hanging out at a bar, washing down some tranquilizers with a beer. I calmed down after a while and soon began feeling very guilty about sounding off to the producer. Hell, he’d only been doing his job, and I was making it harder for him. Maybe the script and schedule changes had occurred that morning and there was nothing he could do about it. And I was acting like a spoiled brat! I realize now that all the cocaine and alcohol was really starting to affect my judgment and how I perceived life in general—not just within the band.

But now I faced a dilemma: do I run back with my tail between legs, or skip a day of shooting and hope it all blows over? I had similar experiences at times with KISS. Something would piss me off and I’d lose my temper and disappear for a while. I didn’t really like confrontation, so I’d just go off on my own and medicate myself until I felt better. It was typical behavior for an addict. I see that so clearly now; unfortunately, I was oblivious to my actions at the time.

In any case, for some strange reason that day I left the bar and decided to get some fresh air. The sun was shining, but not too hot, and it seemed to improve my mood. I wound up cruising by the La Brea Tar Pits, which is one of the coolest places on earth. I parked the car and got out and began walking around, trying to forgive and forget what had happened earlier; suddenly I noticed a huge sign promoting a new exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which is located just down the block. I stopped in my tracks.

The Treasures of Tutankhamun

Holy shit! The King Tut exhibit was in town!

A little background is probably warranted here. I’d always been fascinated with the Pyramids and Egyptian culture. I remember reading a book as a teen called
Pyramid Power
that captured my imagination, and since then I’d dreamed of visiting the Pyramids. Well, at this time the Tutankhamen exhibition was touring the United States, and attracting massive crowds wherever it went. Everybody wanted to see the golden mask and the artifacts of the Boy King. People would stand in line for hours in cities around the world. A novelty song by Steve Martin called “King Tut” was a hit single that year.
Tut-mania
gripped the nation! I know, because I had a pretty good dose of it myself.

Funny thing is, I had completely forgotten that the exhibit was going to be in L.A. while we were filming
KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park,
so I was completely taken aback when I stumbled across it that day. I thought to myself,
Wow, if I could just get in there, everything will be all right.
But you couldn’t get in without a ticket, and that day’s exhibition had sold out weeks in advance.

I wandered around outside the museum for a while, staring at the window, trying to imagine what it looked like inside, until suddenly a young woman approached me.

“Excuse me, sir?” She was probably in her early thirties, with a couple of kids in tow.

“Yes?”

“Would you like to go inside? I have an extra ticket.”

“Really?” I asked. “How much do you want for it?”

She smiled and shook her head. “That’s okay. You just enjoy the show.”

She pulled the ticket out of her purse and placed it in my hand. Then she walked away, leaving me standing there alone, dumbstruck by my good fortune. This lady could have scalped that ticket for a couple of hundred bucks. I would have paid that much. Instead she gave it away, and I don’t think she had any idea who I was. I was just a guy with
long hair hanging out in front of the Museum of Art, looking like he needed a ticket for the King Tut exhibit.

Who was she, really? Possibly a messenger sent from above intervening in my life? I have no idea, but this kind of thing has happened to me before—too often for it to be dismissed as coincidence. People come out of nowhere to provide assistance or demonstrate kindness. A mysterious luck seems to always pull me out of deep or deadly shit. Luck and guardian angels have always been something I felt were with me, and I believe they still are today.

Five minutes later I was inside the museum, wandering around, blissfully soaking up the Egyptian atmosphere, looking at all these fascinating artifacts, feeling like I’d been transported thousands of years back into the past. By the time I walked out of the museum some three hours later, I felt completely at ease with myself and the world around me. Thinking back now about that afternoon and remembering how upset I was before visiting the exhibit, there are really only two words that best describe what happened to me:
divine intervention
.

I left the exhibit with a feeling of extraordinary well-being and peace. I drove to the set, apologized to the director and producer for my short fuse and absence, and promised that I would behave better in the future.

They accepted my apology and everything seemed to be okay. I didn’t learn until much later, when I saw the movie for the first time, that filming had gone on without me that day, including a scene in which our characters waged an epic battle with Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolfman in the park’s Chamber of Horrors. My character was a big part of that, and in the opening scenes I am present, but once the action starts to pick up someone else takes over. Under the best of circumstances the whole thing would have looked silly, but on top of that the director had enlisted the services of my stunt double to finish the remaining shots in the scene. Usually a stunt double is used only in distant shots or quick cutaways. But in this case my double was a black man. A terrific guy. Hell of a stunt double, too, but he didn’t look anything
like me facially, and even with all the makeup on it was painfully obvious. I mean, you can see it clearly if you watch the movie. During the fight scene in the Chamber of Horrors with Frankenstein, he gets knocked around and thrown into a pillar with a couple of skeletons tied to it. Just hit the pause button. “Hey, man, that’s not Ace. That’s a black dude!” Very funny stuff, and let’s face it: would you expect anything less from the producers who made the
Scooby-Doo
cartoons?

The funniest day of shooting, though, was probably the one when we did the scene at the pool, in which we are confronted by the park manager and head of security about Gene knocking around a few security guards the night before. In the beginning the park manager rapidly walks into the scene and toward us, from the other side of the pool. Well, on the first or second take he tripped on one of the rocks and took a bad tumble and fell flat on his face and hands. For every take after that I was completely overtaken by the mental image of him stumbling; I must have ruined at least twenty-five takes with my laughter! On the first few takes the other guys joined in, but after that I was pretty much alone. It was very embarrassing for the other actor and me, but I absolutely lost all control of myself. The incident reminds me of when I was a little kid and routinely got busted for cracking up in school or in church.

That was the funniest part of the movie, but the most fun was at night while we were shooting at Magic Mountain. I bought a motorbike while we were out there. The park was closed to the public after dark so I had free rein on the smooth asphalt roads throughout the facility. Between takes I’d jump on the bike with a nice buzz and ride around the whole park without a care in the world. Remember—back in the Bronx when I was a kid we didn’t have motorbikes, so it was really my first chance to enjoy myself without having to worry about other traffic. It put a smile on my face, for sure, but I nearly broke my neck a few times.

Typical for me, though. Just being Ace.

Oh, well. Those were just some of the many things that happened (or went wrong) on
KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park.
None of it meant all that much to me. The whole thing was a goof. If you take it
in that light, it’s okay, almost like a Saturday morning kids’ show or a Japanese sci-fi flick. Come on—who doesn’t like Mothra and Rodan! From day one I thought it was going to be campy and silly. Gene, unfortunately, took the whole process very seriously and was infatuated with making movies. I also believe it was the spark that got him thinking he could become a movie star. In fact, he did a few more films afterward, too, mistakenly thinking he could act.
KISS Meets the Phantom
… was a huge embarrassment for him, I think. For me? I had a few laughs and made some new friends and had a very interesting experience off the set. I didn’t really take it seriously from the outset and didn’t think much about it once it was over. To be honest, I thought it was a natural step in the devolution of KISS. We got exactly what we deserved, and exactly what most people expected.