I'm Not High (19 page)

“Tim,” he said, clearly unhappy. “Could you please get these guys’ names right?”

“Why?” Tim said sarcastically. “Is it upsetting the suits?” Chilly.

Looking back, I don’t blame him. I think he didn’t like the whole setup. You take a super-successful television guy and use his show to spin off two new guys’ show and he gets no credit? That’s ballsy.

But at the time, I just thought Tim Allen was a jerk. I’d hoped we would bond, but instead I walked around wondering why he didn’t know how awesome I was. Soon ABC shortened our “guaranteed”
Home Improvement
run from three episodes to one episode. No biggie. Except for the next bit of news. Leon called my hotel room one night.

“They want to let go of Dave,” he said.

“Let
go
?” I said.

“Fire him,” he responded. “ABC doesn’t like him. He didn’t test well.”

“They can’t get rid of Dave,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” Leon said, “we’ll work it out.”

Also, at that time, HBO was trying to sue Dave for walking away from his deal. Even though nothing had been signed, there was trouble. So from what I understood Disney/ABC was going to have to pony up to make things good with HBO. Maybe they just wanted to get rid of Dave to end the drama. And to top it off, all of Leon’s clients were now banned from HBO. There was no way any of us were ever getting on HBO. Eventually we moved forward with taping
Buddies,
and just as strangely as they surfaced, the rumors of Dave being let go drifted away.

Despite the on-set chilliness of
Home Improvement,
my gut telling me I’d made the wrong decision (while my ego told me I’d made the right one), and Dave’s constant car issues, the thing that troubled me the most in L.A. was the ever-present feeling I had that I was going to cheat on Dee. I’d parachuted into a town of hot, superficial women who were interested in me only because I was going to be a TV star. I never had so many females wanting to hang out and be with me, inviting me to parties and hot tubs and parties in hot tubs. I had never dealt with that, and now I was confronted with it several times a day, and I didn’t know if I was strong enough to handle it.

As always, when I got in a jam, I started to talk to God. Actually, I was praying my balls off to Him that he’d help me avoid ruining my marriage. In my heart, I was fully into Dee—but my ego was trying to overrule my heart just like it had overruled my gut.

I made rationalizations based on what I saw all around me. There was no way I couldn’t have a girl on the West Coast
and
my wife, just like everyone else. Why not? That was just what you did in L.A., especially if you were a TV star.

I begged God, constantly, to step in and save me somehow.

What made the situation worse was that Dee said she wasn’t going to quit her nannying job, even though she’d complain about it every time we talked.

“Why can’t you quit and come out here with me?” I’d ask her. “Isn’t this what our dream is?” To me, the solution was simple, but Dee wouldn’t do it. And that was pissing me off.

“Listen,” she’d say, “it’s not that easy. This family needs me. It’s a regular job, and we don’t know yet how the show’s going to pan out for you.”

All that told me was that she didn’t respect what I was doing. She didn’t understand. And all of the frivolous attention I was receiving only fueled my anger toward Dee even more. Did she not realize that everyone out here knew that I was a star with a bright future? Why couldn’t she? As far as I was concerned, I already had a hit show. I didn’t want to sit and listen to her complain about laundry.

And she also knew my eye was wandering. All of her instincts were spot-on. “Are you cheating on me?” she’d ask.

“No,” I would say, which was the physical truth, if not emotionally honest.

And the thing was, all of these arguments, discussions, and tough questions took place via telephone, at my hotel. This was the pre-cell phone era. So once I hung up, I could just disappear and stay out of touch, with no calls or texts to help remind me what I had back East. The temptation was intense.

There was a sea of resentment brewing inside of me, and it took me further away from the guy I thought I was—the one who not so long ago had cleverly plotted his seaside proposal, then cried tears of joy when his girlfriend said she’d marry him. Where the hell was
that
guy?

Instead, I’d gotten to the point where I was more committed to cheating than I was to upholding my marital vows. I’d even set a date in my mind when I’d act upon my selfish desires. Dee hadn’t planned a single visit yet, so to me her absence and preoccupation with taking care of someone else’s kids was as good as a green light. If she didn’t care, neither did I. I was doing a set at the Laugh Factory one night—I was doing two sets a week while I was in L.A. to keep my stand-up skills fresh—and after it was over, I was going to go for it with whoever was around.

Still, I’d been praying like crazy for a sign that my marriage wasn’t over. Sure enough, just as the host was about to introduce me, Dee surprised me by walking into the club. I couldn’t talk to her or hug her because I was going onstage, but I was elated and relieved. But despite this obvious sign that my future was with Dee, my ego still kept screwing with me. When I saw her walk into the club, a part of me was also angry that her showing up had ruined my chance at cheating. I was so messed up that I looked past the fact that my prayers had literally been answered when Dee walked into the Laugh Factory.

Dee and I had fun during her visit. Dave and I were on the front section of
USA Today
, and as she and I drove around apartment hunting—she was warming up to the idea of moving—we looked at it together and cried. For that moment, we felt like we’d won the lottery. But after Dee went back to New York, my feelings about cheating and my disillusionment about the fact that I still wanted to go through with it only grew more urgent. I came to the conclusion that this town was going to beat the snot out of our marriage, and I was going to cheat. Heck, maybe Dee was going to cheat. I prayed and prayed for yet another sign.

And soon one came. A big one. The commercials were already airing for the first episode of
Buddies.
We were on the cover of
TV Guide.
My friends from Valley Stream Phil and Gene flew out to see us film an episode.

One day the three of us rented a limo and went to Disneyland. When we got back to my hotel room, there were messages from Leon. He was staying a couple floors down from me. I picked up the phone and called him back.

“Hey,” I said. In the background, the guys were raiding my mini-bar and plotting out elaborate room service orders, and I didn’t care. I was psyched to be showing off for them.

“Hi, Jim,” Leon said. “Can you come down here for a second?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Mind if I bring the guys down to meet you?”

“You should come alone,” he said solemnly.

“Okay, no problem.”

I took the elevator down to his room and he told me to take a seat on the couch. He was lying on his bed and he didn’t look well. He was pale. My first thought was, “Oh my God, they actually fired Dave Chappelle.” But we were too far along. There was no way they were going to fire him now. The ABC machine was up and running.

“Jim,” he said, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but you and the show are not going to go.”

“What do you mean?” I asked incredulously. “The show’s not going?”

“No,” he said, propping himself up on his arm. “The show is going. You’re not. They fired you.”

I didn’t see any of this coming. Not a rumbling. No rumors. Nothing.

“What about Dave?”

“We can’t find him to tell him,” Leon said. “He’s not answering the phone.”

When I walked back into my room my friends could tell immediately that something terrible had just gone down.

“What happened?” Phil asked.

“They fired me from the show.”

They started laughing. I didn’t. “You’re kidding, right?” Gene said.

“No,” I said. “I’m not kidding.”

“Can they do that?” Gene asked.

“They just did,” I said.

“Well,” Gene said, “we’re still taking the limo out all night, ’cause it ain’t like you got a job to go to in the morning.”

And we started to laugh. He brought it all right back to being a teenager. There was nothing to wake up for in the morning, so we might as well party. It was pure Valley Stream logic, and it was exactly what I needed to help me process what had happened.

So we went out in the limo. Once we were driving around I told the guys, “I’ve got to do a spot at the Improv just to get this out of my system.” We pulled up at the club and I was immediately set upon by a random comedian who shook my hand.

“Hey, lemme ask you something,” he said.

“Shoot.”

“Let me get your perspective on your character.” Before I could even ask what he was talking about, he added, “Sorry you got fired. But I’m going in to read for your part tomorrow, and I just want to know how I should play the guy.”

And the same thing kept happening the rest of the night. That’s how fast the powers that be were casting for my part. It made me think ABC must have known for a while that they were going to get rid of me. Why didn’t they clue me in earlier and salvage a little bit of my dignity? Back at the hotel, the phone rang with calls from different people on the cast. I walked into the bathroom, away from my friends, to talk to the woman who played my character’s wife.

“I feel so terrible,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Did they tell you why? Did they tell you anything?”

“No. I don’t really know why,” I told her. “All I heard today is that they might cast Brendan Fraser for my part.”

Her mood changed immediately.

“I love Brendan Fraser!” She squealed. “That would be so awesome.”

That’s really when it sank in that L.A. was nuts. It was a cold town.

I caught up with Dave a couple of days later and we went out for lunch.

“I gotta stay on, man,” he said, half frowning, referring to the show. It was true. What other choice did he have?

A twentysomething waitress/actress came up to our table, and as she was taking our order, she looked us up and down. “You guys look familiar,” she said. “Are you in town for pilot season?”

“Um, yeah,” I mumbled. Dave started laughing.

“That’s so cool,” she said. “So”—she leaned into the table, lowering her voice to a whisper—“did you hear about the guy who was
fired
from his sitcom after just one show? All the commercials were already airing with him in them. It’s crazy.”

Dave laughed even harder.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I heard that he doesn’t even know why he was fired. They gave him no answers. Nothing.”

“Gosh, that’s terrible,” she said, putting a hand over her mouth. “I can only imagine how he feels.”

“I know!” I said. I thought Dave was going to fall out of his chair. “I can only imagine how he feels, too.”

The first of several final insults was set in motion the next day. In
Variety,
there was a story about my getting fired. “He’s a great talent,” the suits at ABC/Disney said. “We just had to go with more of a veteran for that role.” Reading that, Fox called immediately and had me audition for a show called
Herman’s Head.
I went over, auditioned, and got the part, right there on the spot.

That night my phone rang. It was my agent Ruth.

“Jim,” she huffed, “you’re not going to believe this.” She sounded like she was dying to throw something.

“Now what?”

“Disney won’t let you out of your contract. So you can’t do
Her-man’s Head,
” she said with a sigh. Sometimes she got the bad news before Leon, and this was one of those times. “They said to just sit tight, and they’ll find a pilot for you to jump onto.”

Now I just wanted to get the hell out of L.A. God had already answered my prayers. I wasn’t going to cheat on Dee. Getting fired made me put the truly important things in perspective real quick. I just wanted to be back in New York with my wife. I called Dee.

“Why can’t you just tell them you’re going home?” she asked.

I didn’t have an answer. What could they do to me if I left? I didn’t want to find out. Dee’s whole point of view was based on simple common sense. But there was no common sense in Hollywood, so I couldn’t ask those kinds of questions because I was worried I’d piss the wrong person off. I wish I had the strength to listen to her back then, instead of trying to stick it out. When you’ve got stars in your eyes, you’re a dog chasing the stick.

Soon Ruth got a call about
Clerks,
a series based on the Kevin Smith movie of the same name. I loved Kevin and I was glad to hear he was writing the show. I was given the part of Randall without an audition. On my first day on set, one of the producers approached me.

“It’s been kind of a dramatic time around here,” he said. “We hope you’ll bear with us.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“We parted ways with Kevin,” he explained. Super. Kevin was the whole reason
Clerks
existed in the first place. That would be like doing
Star Wars
without George Lucas’s involvement. He was why I was excited to do the show, and I never even got to meet him before they got rid of him. That meant another call to Dee.

“Is that all they ever do is fire people out there?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s why I am getting out of
out there.
”

We filmed the pilot and I got released. I could go home for a month. If
Clerks
was picked up, the show would be a midseason replacement on the WB. Back in New York, I got another phone call. They’d fired my
Clerks
costar because he didn’t test well. So they needed to reshoot the whole pilot, which meant I had to go back to L.A. for a couple more weeks, only this time I didn’t ask for a Mustang convertible.