thinks I look like the kid from The Omen . Every time he sees me, he starts whistling the movie’s haunting theme song, and shouting, “Daaaamien … DAMIEN !” The producers like me, too, so I’m quickly written in to another episode, and there’s talk of bringing me back later on in the season, perhaps as a regular guest star.
By the second episode, though, things at home are starting to take their toll. I am desperate for some kind of positive attention, but I have no idea how to get it. So, I whine. I complain. I act out. I ask repeatedly when we’re going to wrap, when I might have a break, when is it going to be lunchtime. The word obnoxious is thrown around a lot, and my chance to become a series regular is quickly scrapped.
I get rebooked on another episode of The Love Boat, but things aren’t any better over there. I am inconsistent and bratty. I am nominated for a Young Artist’s Award for Best Young Actor, Guest on a Series, but there are a lot of calls to the agent. Then comes strike number three.
All the Way Home, a Pulitzer Prize–winning play by Tad Mosel, was nominated for a Tony award when it debuted on Broadway in 1960. Now it’s going to be adapted for television, but the producers want to broadcast it live on NBC. It’s an ambitious project with an impressive cast. Sally Field, fresh off an Oscar win for Norma Rae, will star in the role of Mary Follett, a newly widowed woman in 1915-era Tennessee. William Hurt will play her dead husband. I assume that I will be cast as their son, Rufus, but the role goes instead to a boy named Jeremy Licht. He seems like a nice enough kid; I’ve palled around with him at auditions, but he doesn’t have much of a résumé. (Eventually, he will play one of the Hogan boys on the 1980s sitcom Valerie alongside Jason Bateman.) I am cast in some tertiary supporting role, way, way down in the billing. I have one, maybe two, whole lines.
Rehearsals for the play, which are scheduled to last for a couple of months, start out well, though I have such a small part that the majority of my time at work is spent at “school” (which, for this production, is a room in the basement), banking hours. Some days I don’t even get called to the set at all. Jeremy, however, quickly proves to be a bit of a prankster. He starts out innocently enough, flicking my ear or tugging on my hair or tripping me on the way to lunch, but he is a master at making me out to be the troublemaker. As soon as I react, he raises his voice just loud enough for the nearest adult to hear. “Hey, why are you fighting with me?” he says. “I’m here to work. I’m trying to do my job .” You have to hand it to him, actually. He really is one hell of an actor. And I am an easy target.
I sink deeper and deeper into despair. My parents are divorced, I have virtually no relationship with my father, my first real television show has been cancelled, and now here I am doing this tiny part in this stupid play and taking crap from Jeremy Licht. The more he teases me, the angrier and angrier I get. And then finally I decide I can’t take it anymore. Instead of being a punching bag, I hit him back.
For the first time in my life, I get fired.
* * *
“Please, please, please don’t tell my mom.” Sheri is driving me home and I am begging her—pleading with her—not to break the news to my mother. The closer we get to the house, the more desperate my begging becomes.
“I have to tell her, Corey,” she says. “There’s really no way around it.”
“But she’s going to kill me.”
“She’s not going to kill you. You’re overreacting. Your mother seems like a lovely woman. I’m sure everything will be fine.”
Everything will certainly not be fine, I know, and I’m convinced that Sheri must be some kind of a moron. I glare at her. How does nobody else see it? That my mother has gone completely and utterly insane? I make one final plea as she steers the car into the mouth of the
By the second episode, though, things at home are starting to take their toll. I am desperate for some kind of positive attention, but I have no idea how to get it. So, I whine. I complain. I act out. I ask repeatedly when we’re going to wrap, when I might have a break, when is it going to be lunchtime. The word obnoxious is thrown around a lot, and my chance to become a series regular is quickly scrapped.
I get rebooked on another episode of The Love Boat, but things aren’t any better over there. I am inconsistent and bratty. I am nominated for a Young Artist’s Award for Best Young Actor, Guest on a Series, but there are a lot of calls to the agent. Then comes strike number three.
All the Way Home, a Pulitzer Prize–winning play by Tad Mosel, was nominated for a Tony award when it debuted on Broadway in 1960. Now it’s going to be adapted for television, but the producers want to broadcast it live on NBC. It’s an ambitious project with an impressive cast. Sally Field, fresh off an Oscar win for Norma Rae, will star in the role of Mary Follett, a newly widowed woman in 1915-era Tennessee. William Hurt will play her dead husband. I assume that I will be cast as their son, Rufus, but the role goes instead to a boy named Jeremy Licht. He seems like a nice enough kid; I’ve palled around with him at auditions, but he doesn’t have much of a résumé. (Eventually, he will play one of the Hogan boys on the 1980s sitcom Valerie alongside Jason Bateman.) I am cast in some tertiary supporting role, way, way down in the billing. I have one, maybe two, whole lines.
Rehearsals for the play, which are scheduled to last for a couple of months, start out well, though I have such a small part that the majority of my time at work is spent at “school” (which, for this production, is a room in the basement), banking hours. Some days I don’t even get called to the set at all. Jeremy, however, quickly proves to be a bit of a prankster. He starts out innocently enough, flicking my ear or tugging on my hair or tripping me on the way to lunch, but he is a master at making me out to be the troublemaker. As soon as I react, he raises his voice just loud enough for the nearest adult to hear. “Hey, why are you fighting with me?” he says. “I’m here to work. I’m trying to do my job .” You have to hand it to him, actually. He really is one hell of an actor. And I am an easy target.
I sink deeper and deeper into despair. My parents are divorced, I have virtually no relationship with my father, my first real television show has been cancelled, and now here I am doing this tiny part in this stupid play and taking crap from Jeremy Licht. The more he teases me, the angrier and angrier I get. And then finally I decide I can’t take it anymore. Instead of being a punching bag, I hit him back.
For the first time in my life, I get fired.
* * *
“Please, please, please don’t tell my mom.” Sheri is driving me home and I am begging her—pleading with her—not to break the news to my mother. The closer we get to the house, the more desperate my begging becomes.
“I have to tell her, Corey,” she says. “There’s really no way around it.”
“But she’s going to kill me.”
“She’s not going to kill you. You’re overreacting. Your mother seems like a lovely woman. I’m sure everything will be fine.”
Everything will certainly not be fine, I know, and I’m convinced that Sheri must be some kind of a moron. I glare at her. How does nobody else see it? That my mother has gone completely and utterly insane? I make one final plea as she steers the car into the mouth of the
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