Coreyography: A Memoir (19 page)

“Corey, we’re in Santa Cruz. I don’t know anyone here.”

“What about that girl your mom hangs out with? The Asian girl?”

“I guess you can call her…?”

“Can you call her for me?”

I set down the picture of my girlfriend, Katie, and sighed. “I really don’t know her that well.”

“Come on, man. I just need somebody to take care of me.”

And then suddenly I remembered a story, something Jason Presson had told me about Marty, a month or so before I left town. Jason had spent the night at Marty’s house; Marty was living, at the time, with his parents and his brothers and sister. At same point during the overnight, Marty had admitted to Jason that he was gay.

I’m not sure what made me think of that, or what made me say what I said next. It just sort of slipped out—it wasn’t something I thought about, it wasn’t something I meant to be in any way taken seriously. It was just a flip comment, a weak attempt at a joke.

“Marty’s gay,” I said. “Why don’t you ask him?”

Haim looked over at Marty, sitting sheepishly in a chair in the corner. “Is that true, man? Are you gay?”

Marty was clearly flustered by this; he sat up a little, wiped his palms on his pants. “Well, uh, I mean … I don’t know about
gay.
I don’t really like to talk about it. I mean, I like boys as much as I like girls, but I don’t know if you’d call that
gay.
…”

“Well, if you’re gay,” Corey said, not missing a beat, “then why don’t you take care of me?”

They walked single file into the adjoining room—the room that had originally been intended for my mother. I heard sounds, banging, thumping. I felt my stomach flip-flop. I felt sick.

CHAPTER 13

“Your butt is mine.”

“Hello?” I gripped the phone receiver tighter against my ear.

“Corey, it’s Michael. Your butt is mine.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Gonna make it right.”

“What?”

“Do you like those words? They’re the lyrics to my new song. It’s called ‘Bad.’”

Michael and I hadn’t spoken in a few months, but his timing proved to be somewhat prophetic. Once filming on
The Lost Boys
resumed in L.A., bad is what I was gonna be.

*   *   *

As planned, I
moved into my dad’s apartment so he could take over as my official guardian. It was a one-bedroom in Hollywood, on the third floor of a seedy building on Cahuenga, and minimally furnished—there were a table and two chairs in what passed for a breakfast nook, plus a desk and a chair and a foldout couch in the little living room. This is where I slept. I was working on what would become my fifth hit film in a row (
Stand by Me
would open within weeks and become the sleeper hit of the summer); Haim and I were hanging out more, and “the two Coreys” was quickly becoming a “thing” in Hollywood; people everywhere assumed I was rolling in money, when really I was living in a rat-infested hole straight out of
Midnight Cowboy
and sleeping on the sofa.

One thing I can say for my father: he sniffed out Marty Weiss right away, told me I was no longer allowed to see him. “There’s something not right about him. I don’t want him around.”

When, at my father’s insistence, I severed contact with him, Marty went on to form a business partnership with my mother. Together, they created a talent agency for kids.

Meanwhile, my father had formed an agency, too. New Talent Enterprises, an acting workshop/management company, was located directly across the street from our apartment in a rundown three-bedroom house-turned-office building. My dad would place ads in the paper, and people would pay a couple hundred dollars to listen to him lecture about how he had built my sister’s and my careers. (
The All-New Mickey Mouse Club
may have been a high point for Mindy, but she did continue to work throughout her teens and early twenties; she had a bit part in
Say Anything,
the Cameron Crowe–directed cult-classic starring John Cusack. She eventually left the business in order to lead a “normal” life.)

A few weeks after I moved in, my father took me with him to a friend’s home in Marina Del Ray.

“Son?” he said, extending a freshly rolled joint, “do you want to smoke?”

I had admitted to my father that I was smoking weed shortly after his trip to Shasta to visit me on the set of
Stand by Me.
This wasn’t exactly something I was afraid to reveal; my father was clearly a stoner, he’d never really attempted to keep his smoking a secret. In fact, when I told him I’d tried it, he actually seemed sort of impressed.

“Sure,” I said, taking the joint from his hand.

My father was something like a used-car salesman in those days, or a slick game-show host. His hair was always perfectly coifed, brushed and parted and reeking of Vitalis, his plaid shirts always unbuttoned to mid-chest, revealing the glint of a gold chain, his pants always a bit too tight. Every time we walked outside together, he would tilt his head to the sky, forever at work on his tan.

He looked over at me then, through a haze of pot smoke, as if he had never been more proud. “You know, I’ve dreamed of this moment, when you and I would finally be able to share a joint. This is an exciting day.”

I had to admit, I thought it was pretty great, too. Living with my dad was nothing like living with my mother. He was more like a friend than a father, and I was able to do more or less what I wanted. I could have friends over—my cousin Michael and Jason Presson became regulars at the apartment—and Katie and I were free to do as we pleased. She visited me on the set of
The Lost Boys,
I took her to the studio to meet Michael Jackson. It was my first real relationship, and I was hopelessly in love. After three months, we slept together. To me, it was tender, and romantic, and precious—even if I did lose my virginity on a pullout couch in a rundown apartment I shared with my dad.

Mere days after consummating our relationship, however, Katie informed me that she was moving to Mexico to live with her dad. Other than a role in
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie,
which premiered in 1987, she wasn’t getting much work. Later, she would become a well-known star of Latin telenovelas, but I was shattered that she was gone. Anytime something good came along in my life, it seemed to be quickly snatched away.

*   *   *

I was back
to working on the Warner Brothers lot.

The final scenes of
The Lost Boys
would be filmed on closed soundstages rather than on location, and—just like on
The Goonies
—we were shooting on more than one soundstage at a time. Though Joel was flamboyant and funny and fun, when he got angry, he got livid. By the time we returned to L.A., he was getting angry a lot. The demands and the pressure were mounting, and most of the cast was fairly stressed out.

The Lost Boys
is, of course, a movie about hunting vampires. In the final stages of the film, most of the actors are covered in thick, gooey slime—Hollywood’s answer to vampire blood. There were enormous vats of this stuff in the special effects department, and to it were added little chunks of Styrofoam to simulate guts; we’d get hosed down with this concoction, from what looked like a fertilizer sprayer one would attach to a garden hose.

There is a particular sequence of the film in which Haim, Jamison, and I are crawling through tunnels with the vampire gang of Santa Carla in hot pursuit. The tunnels themselves—merely crawlspaces, barely wide enough for us to pass through—were positioned high in the air, above the practical sets inside one of the soundstages; atop the tunnels was a complicated system of trusses, from which members of the lighting department could perch or, in this particular case, pelt us with “debris.” As we crawled through, with Joel yelling, “Faster! Faster! This is no joke! These vampires are going to
kill
you,” grips threw handfuls of dirt and bits of Styrofoam to simulate the crumbling nature of the caves. By the time we were finished, I was wet and cold and covered in slime, sweaty and weighed down by several layers of dirt-covered costume, my fingernails caked in grit and grime.

Movies, however, are rarely shot sequentially. One minute you might be filming such a scene, and the next you might be needed on another set, to redo a shot from the beginning of the film, pre-gore and guts, when you’re supposed to be completely, angelically clean. Dick Donner had allowed us the use of the private shower in his office, so I would run across the lot to his bathroom, where I’d have to untie my laces, get out of my sopping vest, my harness, my flak jacket, my T-shirt, pants, and underpants, shower, then put the whole thing on again, strap up, lace up, boot up. Then I’d run over to makeup, where the ladies would wipe me down and make me back up again. And the entire time, Joel would be screaming for you, wondering why you still weren’t on set. “I already fired you once,” he would holler, “don’t make me fire you again! What the fuck is taking so long? Stop being such a prima donna!” Meanwhile, I’d be finding unwashed bits of slime encrusted to my scalp, pulling my hair out in chunks.

In one of the best-known (and oft-quoted) scenes in the film, Brooke McCarter, playing the role of the vampire Paul, descends on the home of Sam (Haim) and Michael (Jason Patric).

“Garlic don’t work boys,” he says when he sees that we’ve filled a bathtub with about a thousand bulbs.

“Try holy water, death breath!” I shout, before splashing him in the face with my hands.

Brooke had on the makeup, the hair, and the contact lenses, he was snarling and chasing us, but no matter what he did, Joel was just not having it. He thought Brooke was expecting all the makeup to do his work for him.

“Get pissed! You need to get pissed! You want to
kill
these kids! You’re a fucking vampire, for Christ’s sake!”

We shot multiple takes, Joel got more and more angry, until finally he was full-on screaming at the top of his lungs. It put the fear of God in us.

If Joel was acting that way with the grown-ups on set, there was no telling what he might do to one of us kids. Things got much more serious after that.

*   *   *

Haim and I
were back at the apartment. We had wrapped for the day, but my dad was still at the office. Corey pulled down our stash of triple-X magazines from their hiding place high in the cupboard, and before long he had an idea.

“Hey, do you know some girls? We’re in L.A. now, man. I know you know some girls. Let’s call some girls.”

I hated when Haim was like this. These moods of his drove me crazy. “Dude, I just broke up with my girlfriend. I don’t know any girls right now. I’m not Hugh Hefner, okay?”

“Okay, I’m sorry,” he said, pacing around the apartment. A moment later: “But can you just call up some girls, please? I really need to hook up with a girl right now. I just need, like, five minutes. I just need someone to put her arms around me and hold me. It’s not even about the sex. I mean, a blow job would be great. If you know any girls who would come over here and blow me, that would be awesome. Look at my dick, dude. It’s hard as a rock.”

I went to the fridge to get myself a soda. “That’s great, man. I don’t need to see your dick.”

“I’m just showing you because this is how frustrated I am right now. I just want to get laid. Is that really such a bad thing? Is that really such a big deal?”

Before I even realized what was happening, he started in with, “Hey, why don’t
we
just mess around, why don’t we just touch each other?” I was used to his persistence; I was not accustomed to being hit on myself. I said no, I scooted farther away from him on the couch, I repeated that it wasn’t “my thing” until finally, exasperated, I said, “Corey, are you
gay
?”

“I’m not gay, man. This is just what guys do. It’s totally normal. Why don’t we just do it?”

I yelled. We nearly came to blows. I smoked some weed of my father’s, tried to settle myself down.

“Okay,” he said after a long silence. “What about that one guy, Marty Weiss?”

I glared at Haim. “I’m not talking to him anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because he started a company with my mom, and my mom and I aren’t really talking, and I think what happened in Santa Cruz was really fucked up and I just don’t want to be responsible for that again.”

“Okay. Don’t you know anyone else?”

Actually, I did know someone. Every time I had seen Tony Burnham at one of Ralph’s parties, he would be on and on about Corey Haim, about how good-looking Haim was and how much he wanted to meet him. At that moment, I wasn’t thinking about the fact that Tony was an adult and Haim was a minor; I was thinking that I would do just about anything to get Haim to shut up, to stop him from hitting on
me.

“Okay, who is this guy?” Haim asked.

“His name is Tony. He’s older, and he’s kinda fat. He’s really not at all attractive.”

“Have him come over.”

“Are you serious?”

Haim raised his eyebrows and gave me a frustrated nod.

“Look, I don’t feel comfortable with this,” I told him. “Why can’t you just go out and get yourself laid like everyone else?”

“Just call him up, man. Just please do me a favor and call him.”

Whatever happened between Tony and Haim that day, I cannot tell you—they went off to the laundry room in my father’s building. Next thing you know, Tony was always at Haim’s side, driving Haim around town, hanging out with Haim’s mother, passing himself off as a friendly big-brother type. Looking back, I think Tony must have thought of Haim as his boyfriend. I think he believed they were having a real relationship. I didn’t understand that what he was doing was wrong, or what it would eventually do to Corey Haim. I just thought that if Haim seemed to be okay with it, I should learn to be ok with it, too.

*   *   *

I probably should
have been prepared for the strangeness of fame when, a year or so earlier, I got a call from Steven Spielberg’s office. Drew Barrymore, apparently, had a crush on me and someone had finally decided, on her behalf, to intervene. She had been calling in to Amblin regularly, begging someone to give her my phone number.