A Star is Born (17 page)

“So they announced my name, and I was frozen.” Now you’ve got to understand that when Bill talked with people he didn’t just talk. No, he was animated, he gestured, his facial expressions alone were priceless. “I was stunned. I thought there was no way that they said my name. It must be a mistake. But everyone started looking at me, and people started pulling me to my feet, hugging me, and then they were pushing me toward the stage.

“The only problem was… I didn’t have a clue what to say. I didn’t have a speech ready. I didn’t want to do the traditional ‘thank you’ speech. I don’t have a dog, so I don’t have a dog groomer’s second cousin to thank.”

And then he got more serious. “They handed me the statue.” Which was my cue to walk forward with the Oscar and hand it to him. He held it up for people to see. “I looked at it and realized that it was all real. It was really happening. To me! To me! It was real! And I suddenly knew what I had to say. I didn’t need a speech. I just opened my mouth… and I told the truth.

“I know that in Hollywood everyone tries to be somebody else—somebody that they think others want them to be. In other words, there is a lot of lying and deception going on. But, you see, that’s not me. I can’t do that. So I simply started talking about me, about the moment, about what it all meant to me.

“As I stood there that night,” he said, continuing to walk amidst the audience the entire time so that he hit every part of the room, “I realized how far I had come. You see, some of my life wasn’t very good. No. That’s too mild. Some of the years of my life sucked.” He paused, looked down for a moment.

“I want to show you a couple of pictures. I’ve looked at them a thousand times, but I still hate to look at them because it brings the whole thing back for me. I flash back on those living nightmares.” He asked for the first picture. “This is my mother.” He walked a little bit with his head down. “Next.” Another picture flashed on the screen, this time showing his mother after a particularly violent encounter with his father. They looked like police photos to me, but I had never actually asked Bill.

“And that’s my mom.” More walking. “Next.” Another picture appeared, this time showing Bill as a happy, smiling, albeit younger guy. “And you know who that handsome devil is,” he said with a smile. And now, I know, came the tough part. Bill took a deep breath and said, “Next.”

And I knew how they would react. He had worked to get the audience comfortable with him by talking with them, by walking amongst them, and by talking about things they could relate to.

As I expected, there were gasps, a couple of cries, and a lot of sad-looking faces. Bill kept his back to the screen. He couldn’t look. He paused longer than usual, so I walked up to him and put my arm around him and asked him if he was okay. He nodded, took a deep breath, and turned toward the screen. With a ragged edge to his voice, he said, “And that’s me.”

He walked back toward the front of the auditorium. “My mom and I had a common problem—my dad. He started out being a good dad, but something happened. He changed. It all went bad. So bad.” He gestured up toward the screen. “So bad.”

He looked out at his audience. “I wasn’t doing well. No. Neither of us were doing well. I wasn’t sure if we were going to survive. I wasn’t sure if the next time he beat us would be the last time. It was really, really bad.

“And then one night, one night that is burned forever into my memory, one night that I can still see as clearly as if it just happened two minutes ago. One night after he had beaten, punched, kicked both of us until we were a mess. That night we were trying to stay out of his way, when someone knocked on our front door.

“Now, you’ve got to understand: no one ever knocked on our front door. We didn’t have friends anymore. We didn’t have family. No one dropped by. We lived in the middle of freaking nowhere. My dad opened the door, and my friend Mark—you met him a moment ago when he handed me the statue—came to check on me when he knew I was having a tough time. Mark and his mom were there at the front door. They’d never been to my house. I couldn’t tell anyone where we lived, because they couldn’t come there. It was embarrassing.

“But Mark and his mom were there, and they just started talking. My dad tried to push them away—verbally—but he had met two
powerful
people who didn’t take crap from anyone. Mark’s mom knew my mom—they had gone to high school together. She came pushing into the room like a force of nature, she hugged my mom, Mark hugged me, and then they turned to my dad and told him that they were taking us out of there because he was a hazard to our health and safety.

“When I heard her say that, I was terrified for her safety. You see, she stood between my dad and my mom, and Mark was standing between my dad and me. They had put themselves between us and what was killing us.

“Now, as you might imagine, my dad didn’t take well to this. But Mark’s mom had done this before. Her calling in life was to find situations where women and children were being abused and misused. She would go into those situations, get the people who were in danger out of the house, and get them into safe houses where they could get help, be safe, recover some of their physical well-being, some of their self-respect, and learn how to live in the real world again.

“I was worried for her safety. But I shouldn’t have worried.” He chuckled. “You see, Mark’s mom came prepared. She came with a whole backup crew, and when she needed them, they filed into the room and stood with her. They helped us pack a bag, and they got us out of the house. My mom went to a safe house, and I went home with Mark and his mom and dad. They had become more a family to me than my own had been in years. They took better care of me than anyone else ever had.

“She was my angel. When I was at my lowest point, when I was ready to give up and… just give up, this beautiful ray of hope flooded my world, and I moved into a new life.

“So what am I trying to say here? Several things. Thing one: no matter how dark the moment might be, please, please, please don’t give up. When you least expect it, out of nowhere, what you need may appear in a totally unexpected way. Thing two: the only person that gets to define your life is you. People might pick on you, they might kick you, they might throw things at you, they might call you names, they might mock you, but in the end, the only person whose opinion matters is your own.
You
get to define who you are and how you live your life. And finally, thing three: if I can make it out of the mess I was in where I was ready to simply give up and end it all, and end up a maybe halfway decent actor in a couple of movies, then anyone can do it. The moment you are in is not all that there is. It gets better. Don’t ever give up. You are a person of great worth, and you have great things to do with your life ahead. Thank you all so much for having me here today.”

The audience gave Bill thunderous applause. They all stood, tears were shed, people cheered him, and Bill acknowledged their approval with his beautiful smile. He always seemed to hate these moments most of all, because he hated to be the center of attention. He moved down the aisle to the stage and said, “Now, I want to meet every single one of you. I want everyone to come up on stage and say hi.” He pointed to where he wanted people to line up and where they could exit. “I’d love to talk with every one of you, but there just isn’t time for a conversation, but I at least want to meet every one of you.”

Bill moved into position. I moved over to stand beside him (at his request). The town was small, so the student body was not that large, and therefore the idea of shaking everyone’s hand was manageable. In less than an hour, we had shaken hands with everyone and were walking back to the principal’s office with him. The man was far more relaxed after the event than he had been before. He seemed to have been terrified that Bill was going to do something radical (as he defined it) but was impressed with the job Bill had done.

Everyone thanked us profusely for coming all the way out, and at our own expense. Bill thanked them for the opportunity to speak with the students, but said we had to be on our way back to the airport to get back to LA. On our way out of town, we made a quick stop at the local gas station/convenience store to buy a couple of bottles of water. Of course, Bill was recognized immediately and in a rather dramatic fashion by one woman. He smiled, posed for a picture, and shook several hands before we had to leave to head back to the airport.

That night, when we finally got home, I was beat. Of course, Bill was energized. We called for carryout and settled down for the night.

Television

I
T
WAS
harder this time to select the next script. Part of the issue was that there were just so many of them. We were absolutely snowed under with scripts following the Academy Awards, just as Moira had predicted. Not only was it an issue of volume, it was also an issue of quality. The scripts that were getting to them now were of a higher quality, which made it tougher to decide.

After weeks and weeks of reading, considering, debating, we once again put it to a vote. The only problem was that, this time, instead of ending up with two and an option for a third, this time we ended up with three. The guys decided to enter into negotiations to do all three in sequence. If all three negotiations were successful, their next year and a half would be packed with work.

The first movie that they did was something totally new for both men: a romantic comedy. When we were reviewing scripts, we all kept coming back to that one as something that was just zany enough to be unique for these two actors. And yes, that was how I saw Bill now: he was an actor, every bit as much as Derrick was.

Their doubts about the movie persisted right through filming, not because there was anything wrong with the movie or the script—it was simply different from anything they had ever done before, so it was harder for them to judge how it was going or how it would be received by the viewing public. Derrick and Bill’s collaboration was still new enough that one bad or mediocre movie would cost both of them in terms of future moviegoers.

But they needn’t have worried. Their first romantic comedy was a runaway hit. Not only did it draw in the female viewers, but it also captured the comparably aged male demographic as well. It was the rare movie that captured both the male and the female viewer at the same time. But this one somehow bridged the divide between the sexes, telling a story about two hapless straight jocks looking for love without a clue about how to do it.

When the movie opened nationwide, it topped the charts for weeks on end. With the fickle attention span of the American public, it was remarkable that the movie remained as popular as it did for as long as it did. As we watched week after week tick past with the movie still very much in command of the box office numbers, we were all grateful that Moira had negotiated a percentage factor into their contracts so that they received a significant boost in income as people kept going to see the movie. The basic costs of the production had been satisfied a long time ago. And in typical Hollywood fashion, those costs were most likely well padded. Still, we had left that number in the dust a long ways back. Every dollar now was pure profit, and the boys were sharing in that profit.

While the world was still enamored of the romantic comedy, the boys were already at work on their next movie. This one was utterly different than anything they had done before as well. Certainly no one could complain about their work becoming stale or predictable. Each time they appeared on the screen, it was a completely new experience.

In their next movie, Bill played someone stalked by Derrick, a crazed man who was out for revenge for some past wrong. I won’t give away the ending in case you haven’t seen it (and if you haven’t, you should).

The third movie fell apart through no fault of theirs. The guy who was going to produce ran into a rather significant financial problem that caused him to renege on all of his commitments. If he hadn’t declared bankruptcy, there might have been something Moira and her lawyers could have gone after, but there wasn’t anything so they didn’t bother.

And, fortuitously, the fact that the third picture fell apart was actually a very, very good thing. Based on the wildly popular romantic comedy the guys had done, a studio put forth a proposal that caught everyone’s attention. Their idea was simple: the movie had been such an unexpected smash hit, they wanted to take that idea and make it into a weekly half-hour comedy series for television.

Neither Bill nor Derrick had ever done a television series. Neither had ever considered doing a television series, nor did they have any great desire to do it because it got in the way of doing movies, which was Derrick’s true passion (and all that Bill knew to that point). But when Moira put the terms they were offering in front of the guys, it changed everything.

Both men were big names by now. Derrick, of course, as the bigger name, would get more money. In some ways this still pissed me off, because Bill worked just as hard as Derrick on anything they did. It still seemed unfair to me that one man got paid more than another man for doing the same work. But it was a battle I wasn’t willing to fight, because I know I wouldn’t win.