I'm Not High (18 page)

I’d been friends with Dave for a couple of years. One night Phil, my old buddy from the Jefferson Avenue gang, came into the city from Valley Stream to check out some comedy clubs. As luck would have it, we wandered into the Boston Comedy Club, near NYU in the West Village, took our seats in the back, and waited for the next comedian to take the stage. It was Dave—and before he even opened his mouth, Phil and I were sold on him. He had quick, funny gestures and a way of exaggerating his body language without forcing it.

“Who’s he?” Phil whispered.

“No idea,” I said, “but he’s going to be a star.”

“No kidding,” Phil replied.

And we just sat for the next twenty minutes with our mouths hanging open. Dave just improvised the whole time, asking the crowd questions, then going into riffs about apartments, cops, getting high. As soon as he came offstage, I went out of my way to introduce myself, and that was something I usually didn’t do. It didn’t always seem genuine, but in this case, I was really approaching the guy with praise.

After that Dave and I would see each other on the circuit all the time, and we’d goof around trying to make each other crack up. Pretty soon, we shared the same manager, Leon. He’d helped me wrangle free from the Rat, with whom I’d be tied up in litigation well into the midnineties. Leon worked hard at finding projects for us, and before too long Dave and I each had these wonderful
almost
-
completed development deals—where a network pays you not to do anything else while they try to develop a show for you. I was on the verge of a huge one at NBC, with the guy who produced
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
They’d work on a sitcom for me, while I would collect $250,000 and sit still for one year.

Dave had an even bigger deal in the works at HBO. A completely unheard-of, pants-crappingly huge amount of cash for a stand-up special
and
his own talk show. To top it off, he was only nineteen or twenty. He was on fire. I remember my wife and I went to see him in
Robin Hood
:
Men in Tights,
the Mel Brooks movie, and both of us thinking, “Wow, this is the coolest thing in the world. Look at Dave! He’s in a movie! He has it totally made!”

While this stuff was going on, unbeknownst to Dave and me, Leon scored himself a producing deal at Disney/ABC. He then went to them and said, “I have two of the hottest young comedians working now. They’re about to do separate deals, but
I
can deliver them to you together. Let’s develop a sitcom around both of them.” If ABC bought it, Leon would be making money on both ends of the equation. My gut told me not to leave the
Fresh Prince
guy and NBC dangling. My agent Ruth was really against Leon’s plan, too. She and I were introduced by Leon, and I knew from the get-go that she had my back. She helped my career tremendously.

“There’s a lot of passion for Jim at NBC,” she’d tell Leon during these long, drawn-out conference calls.

“Well,” Leon would grumble, “we’ll go and get an on-air guarantee from ABC.” And we went around in circles for a few days until one day that’s what he did. The money Disney/ABC offered Dave and me was drastically lower than what else was on the table, but they promised Dave and me three guest appearances on
Home Improvement
and a minimum of six episodes of
Buddies.
No matter what, I was going to get the money. But I wasn’t thinking of the money. I was thinking, “I am going to be on TV very soon.”

Still, my feeling on this was awful. But just like when I signed with the Rat, I had a way of letting my greedy brain overrule my gut. I called up Dave to see what he thought.

“I gotta be honest with you,” I told him. “I don’t know if I would walk away from an HBO deal. That’s every young comic’s dream—to have their own HBO special.”

“Jim,” Dave said, “it’s not one special. It’s two.”

“Then you’re really crazy.”

“And don’t forget the talk show.”

“So, why are we even on the phone?” I said. “I really have to advise you against this ABC thing.”

Still, ABC was going to put us on the air. The other things were
likely
to happen, but not 100 percent, and Dave and I found ourselves sucked in by the immediacy the
Buddies
deal offered. We made a pact with each other.

“I’m not going to do
Buddies
if you don’t do it,” he said.

“Well, I’m not going to do it if you don’t do it,” I said. “But again, I’ve got to stress, I don’t know if I would do it if I was you. I’m not too worried about me, but you’re a little farther ahead in the game than I am.”

We went back and forth on this for a while, until in a stroke of pure genius we decided to do
Buddies.
By the time Dave and I landed in L.A. to make the pilot episode, every celebrity-chasing woman in Hollywood knew why we were there, and every aspiring actor en-vied us. At night, we would go out to the Improv and I would strut around with an attitude like “Get used to it, you’re gonna be seeing me everywhere.”

One night Drew Carey was standing next to me—this was long before his show even aired—and he said, “No offense, but I hope your show tanks, because I’m next in line after you guys.”

I said, “No offense taken, but I’m pretty sure we’ve got a hit. And we’re guaranteed six episodes, either way, so enjoy the wait.”

“Okay,” he said. “No problem. I’ll just be hanging around. You know, waiting for you to fail.”

I liked Drew and his deadpan humor, and knew he was half-joking, but that conversation underscored a truth I’d soon discover about Hollywood—envy, pettiness, and competition fueled every part of the machine. That attitude permeated every conversation and seemed to serve as people’s main motivation for doing what they did—trying to be a star at any cost. I began to fit right in.

Our home for the next few months was the Sheraton Universal Hotel. Even though we were newlyweds, Dee stayed behind in New York, working her job as a nanny. She wanted to make sure this sitcom was going to fly before she quit her job. I felt single again. Single in a city full of young women, with skies that were sunny and blue, and where I was cruising around in a free Ford Mustang convertible.

Dave, on the other hand, was given a Lincoln Town Car. It was too nice to be a taxi and too small to be a limo. But still, it had
chauffeur-driven vehicle
written all over it. The studio used a special car leasing company for long-term rentals, and since Dave didn’t drive much, when it came time to pick out a car, he told the lady, “Just bring me whatever. I’m cool with anything.” Well, Dave definitely wasn’t cool with the Town Car.

The car leasing company had a guy drive it up to the hotel, and I think when Dave saw him pull up, he just thought the guy was picking someone up to take to the airport. But then, the guy parked the car, jumped out, tossed Dave the keys, and handed him the paperwork.

Dave turned and looked at me and whispered, “It’s because I’m black.”

“You think the woman on the phone knew you were black,” I asked him, “and decided to give you a Town Car?”

“Oh, she
knew
all right,” he said with a sneer. “Always givin’ the black guy a pimp mobile,” he muttered. “And not even a good pimp mobile at that. Stupid Town Car.”

But it didn’t take long for Dave to get the itch to start driving that pimp mobile around. Our first stop was an acting lesson at Gordon Hunt’s house in Beverly Hills. The directors had been all over us about developing our craft. To me, this was exciting because Gordon was
Mad About You
star Helen Hunt’s dad. Dave and I both wanted to drive our new cars, so we did just that. I’d follow closely behind Dave because, well, he sucked at driving.

Dave had grown up in D.C. but spent a lot of time in New York City, obviously, and had never really gotten a handle on driving. And that was no biggie. But the thing was, this was L.A., a whole new sprawling territory where you used a car to get around, not the smelly Q train. So he couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel.

“Dave,” I said, trying to warn him one day as he was about to leave our hotel, “traffic here is nothing like anyone has ever seen. Even people that are from here can’t take it. That’s why they have freeway shooters in California. People get so aggravated that they just shoot random drivers. It’s practically legal.”

“I hear you, man,” he said.

“Just be careful,” I said.

“Yes. I hear you, man.”

“Check your mirrors and your blind spot before you change lanes,” I told him. “And don’t give anyone the finger. Never, ever do that.”

Dave just nodded, tossing the keys from one hand to the other impatiently.

“Better yet, don’t even make eye contact with any other driver,” I said. “And keep your driver’s license in your shirt pocket. That way they’ll be able to identify you quicker, in case something happens.”

Dave pulled cautiously out of the hotel parking lot and I followed behind him in my Mustang as we made our way to the freeway. I could see him getting more comfortable behind the wheel, bobbing his head to his car stereo. Then came the moment of truth—the on-ramp. Dave coasted down it flawlessly, put his turn signal on, changed lanes, and drove perfectly for about three hundred yards before he got into a fender bender. It looked almost calculated, like bumper cars. He tapped the back bumper of a Chevy economy car, driven by a little Asian guy.

Both Dave and the little Asian guy pulled over to the side of the road as cars whizzed past. As I pulled up behind them, I could see the Asian guy looking kind of cautious as he got out of his car, because it was such a weird accident, like maybe the collision was done on purpose, a setup in order to rob him. Dave hopped out of the Town Car, shaking his head, hands up in the air, saying, “My bad. My bad.”

Then, as Dave started to reach into his pocket, probably to show the guy proof he was actually allowed to be driving, I jumped out of my Mustang laughing my ass off. This totally spooked the little Asian guy. He freaked out and looked at us like we were going to carjack him. He started running backward, glasses falling off, yelling, “This is a setup! I know it.” And he jumped into his car and got the hell out of there.

There wasn’t, in the end, just the one accident. When we got to Gordon Hunt’s, I saw that his driveway had an elaborate rock wall and as I pulled in I stared at it and drifted too close to it, completely scraping and mangling the side of my Mustang. I never reported that. I felt like it was one of the hazards of lending out a Mustang to a comedian. You shouldn’t expect to get it back perfect. I didn’t even tell Gordon, because I didn’t want to have to pay to repair my acting coach’s driveway wall.

We hadn’t been in California too long before Dave went through three more cars. He just kept calling the car leasing company and trading them in. He didn’t like any of them. It was like the princess and the pea with that guy. I started to think that maybe Dave and driving didn’t mix.

Finally, late one night, just as I was ready to go to bed before a big day of rehearsing, there was a knock on my hotel room door. I opened it reluctantly and there was Dave, just standing there, smiling.

“Let’s go cruising!” he said.

“What? ” I asked. “Come on. Do you realize what time we have to be on set?”

“I got a new Toyota.”

“We’ve been through this before,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “You’re gonna hate it in twenty-four hours.”

“No,” he insisted, “this time it’s real. I went out and got a new leather jacket. A
driving
jacket. And a bunch of new CDs. This car is changing my life.”

“All right,” I said. “But I’m driving, too. I’ll follow you.”

So we pulled out of the hotel parking lot and drove through Laurel Canyon down into Hollywood. I saw Dave’s head bobbing up and down, Dave getting into his music. I had my top down. We were living the dream.

We got to Melrose, parked our cars, and went into a coffee shop. We were eating some dessert, drinking coffee, talking about how great everything was, and then Dave looked out the window and said, “Man, I think I just saw my car go by.”

“What?” I asked. I thought maybe he was hallucinating.

“I think I just saw my car go by,” he repeated. “Out the window. I’m sure of it.”

“Dave,” I said, trying to reassure him. “There’s a lot of Toyotas in the city. Relax.”

“I gotta get out of here and find out.”

We paid the check and walked down the street. We passed by my Mustang. Top down. CDs were scattered all over the seats and the floor. I think I even had a gym bag sitting on the backseat. All of it was untouched. We strolled by a couple more cars, nothing unusual, and then we turned the corner and saw an empty space where Dave’s car had been.

“Maybe the cops took it,” Dave said, scrambling for an answer. “Maybe it got towed.”

“I think the first stage of loss is denial, Dave.” While he stood there in shock, I looked around at the parking signs to see if maybe it had been towed.

He folded his arms together and gritted his teeth. “This is some foul, foul shit.”

“Who cares?” I asked him. “They’ll just bring you a new car.”

“It’s the principle,” he said, boiling over. “I just put gas in that car. And my leather jacket was in there. Some brother,” he said, “is driving my car, wearing my leather jacket, blasting my Mary J. Blige CD, with a full tank of my gas. Damn, that burns my ass up!”

Maybe Dave’s car hex was an apt metaphor for my whole time in California, because professionally, things were just as screwy. For starters, we were going to do the three episodes of
Home Improvement,
and when we got on set, Tim Allen was
such
a dick. Froze us out. Could not have ignored us any more if he tried. And whenever he did address us, he purposely called us by each other’s names. We were taping one day, in front of a live audience, including some ABC executives who were involved with
Buddies,
and after about the eighteenth take, the director became frustrated.