The Importance of Being Ernie: (24 page)
CHAPTER 45
A Brave New Nerd
I was asked to audition for a new kind of role, an authority figure. The part was Doctor Rickett on the hit TV showDoogie Howser, M.D
. This was a first. I had spent my entire professional life playing nerds: the child nerd next door, the teen nerd at college, the twenty-something nerd who can never get laid after college, the middle-aged nerd whose record store gets blown up by Skeletor. I was always the clueless goofball asking all the dumb questions. Finally, I had a shot at portraying an authority figure, the guy who has all the right answers. I read for the producer, Steven Bochco, and got the part. One small role for Mr. Bochco, one giant leap in Barry’s career.
To be honest, the role of Doctor Rickett wasn’t all that pivotal in the storylines. My job was to blow into a patient’s room, make a diagnosis, and educate young Doogie with tongue-twisting medical terms. Not every actor can rattle off this kind of complicated verbiage and make it sound as easy as reciting a grocery list. I could. Casting directors could now envision me in a whole new vista of mature roles: doctors, lawyers, and professors. I fit the description of a cutting-edge 1990s prototype: the yuppie (young, urban professional).
Ironically, there was another factor that made me seem more mature and professional, something that I’d been fighting for years: hair loss. Talk about a blessing in disguise. The more hair that fell out, the more I began to work. That may seem like a silly way to account for my new image, but it’s a pretty silly business. In my mind, the hair-loss theory is just as valid as my cosmic fan thesis. Take your pick.
I noticed another shift in my universe while working on
Doogie Howser:
the younger actors treated me like the “old pro.” Suddenly, people wanted to hear stories about my days working at Desilu, MGM, and Paramount when I was a kid. It felt good, like the circle was completing itself. I was becoming William Frawley! Okay, maybe Roddy McDowall.
Doogie Howser:
the younger actors treated me like the “old pro.” Suddenly, people wanted to hear stories about my days working at Desilu, MGM, and Paramount when I was a kid. It felt good, like the circle was completing itself. I was becoming William Frawley! Okay, maybe Roddy McDowall.
I even passed along Roddy’s advice to a young Neil Patrick Harris:
If you want to make it as an adult actor, go to New York and learn your craft onstage.
Harris, in fact, did exactly that and had a big career breakthrough on Broadway with the musical
Rent.
I’m not trying to take credit for his success. He’s earned every adult accolade on his own. Then again, who knows? Maybe my words, courtesy of Roddy, stuck. If I ever run into Harris, I’ll have to ask.
If you want to make it as an adult actor, go to New York and learn your craft onstage.
Harris, in fact, did exactly that and had a big career breakthrough on Broadway with the musical
Rent.
I’m not trying to take credit for his success. He’s earned every adult accolade on his own. Then again, who knows? Maybe my words, courtesy of Roddy, stuck. If I ever run into Harris, I’ll have to ask.
After finishing
Doogie,
I played another medic, this time acting as O.J. Simpson’s doctor in a TV movie,
The O.J. Simpson Story.
The one amazing thing about this Fox project is we started shooting
one week
after O.J.’s famous Ford Bronco “slow speed pursuit.” The script was literally written on the fly, ripped from the daily headlines as the Simpson story unfolded.
Doogie,
I played another medic, this time acting as O.J. Simpson’s doctor in a TV movie,
The O.J. Simpson Story.
The one amazing thing about this Fox project is we started shooting
one week
after O.J.’s famous Ford Bronco “slow speed pursuit.” The script was literally written on the fly, ripped from the daily headlines as the Simpson story unfolded.
Now that I had two doctor roles on my résumé I branched out into the legal profession with a recurring attorney role on the TV series,
Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.
I played Sheldon Bender, the unscrupulous consigliere for Lex Luthor. This role added a new dimension to my widening list of characters. It was my first adult “bad guy.”
Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.
I played Sheldon Bender, the unscrupulous consigliere for Lex Luthor. This role added a new dimension to my widening list of characters. It was my first adult “bad guy.”
One of the show’s producers, Paul Jackson, told me an interesting story about how I won the role. My job interview was being held in the office of the series show-runner, Robert Singer. Right in the middle of my scene, a long-winded monologue, a telephone rang in the room and Singer answered it.
Now I was in a pickle and had a choice to make: do I stop reading because the executive producer, the man who might hire me, is ignoring my performance, or do I press on, ignoring the slight? Believe it or not, the latter option is the smart choice and that’s what I did, even though I was secretly irritated as hell.
I finished my monologue just as Singer concluded his phone conversation. He uttered the typical critique,
Thanks for coming,
and I left the room, crestfallen. My shot at a terrific “bad guy” role was blown by a phone call ... or so I thought.
Thanks for coming,
and I left the room, crestfallen. My shot at a terrific “bad guy” role was blown by a phone call ... or so I thought.
Jackson told me later, after we’d become friends, that the call was from the studio head, Les Moonves, and Singer had to take it. My buddy also confided Singer’s assessment of my talent: “If Barry is that good during a phone conversation, he’s good enough to hire.”
I really was becoming the “old pro.”
CHAPTER 46
My Dad
On the home front, my dad moved in with my family. He was eighty years old and ailing with Parkinson’s, emphysema, and congestive heart failure. This did not prevent him from driving to Las Vegas whenever the mood struck him, which was often. We feared for his safety, as well as the other drivers on the road, but a parent rarely heeds the warnings of their children. Long-standing roles don’t change easily, at least not without outside intervention. That’s where the CHP finally stepped in and put an end to his reckless road trips.My dad was driving back from Vegas and stopped at a Bun Boy coffee shop in Barstow. He missed the driveway entrance by a good ten feet, went up over the sidewalk, and came to a stop in front of a CHP officer sitting in his car eating lunch. Dad’s driver’s license was promptly revoked, which was a good thing. The downside was his morale and health declined quickly.
He succumbed to his illnesses after living with us for three years. It was a very difficult thing, taking care of a parent at home, but it also had a silver lining. My kids, Spencer and Hailey, spent a lot of hours with their grandpa that they wouldn’t have had otherwise. I was grateful that he lived long enough to see my career start to turn around. I know he feared that might not happen. He was a pessimist to the end.
CHAPTER 47
Nerd in the New Millennium
The twentieth century was nearing an end. I was in my fourth decade of acting and still picking up momentum, booking television roles onThe Nanny, Ally McBeal, Sliders, Boston Common,
and a slew of movies for the Hallmark Channel. Some of these projects were quite good, others were not. That’s the curse of a journeyman actor: you don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing your work like Brad Pitt. Sometimes you wind up in a real stinker, being grateful just to be employed. Case in point: a miniseries titled
Final Approach
. It was an “airplane in distress” story and about as realistic as John Wayne playing Genghis Khan. I recommend catching this epic in reruns for its unintended comedic moments. I play a passenger, an aeronautical engineer (just like Steve Douglas), and Dean Cain is my seatmate, a disgraced FBI agent. Once we vanquish the hijackers, I’m forced to take control of our Boeing 747 since the pilots have been killed. My character has never flown a plane before but somehow manages to land the damaged jumbo jet on a desert airstrip that’s about the size of a postage stamp. It was akin to dragging a rookie nurse into an operating room to single-handedly perform open-heart surgery. I suppose it didn’t hurt to have Superman as my copilot. Sorry, Dean.
My musical side had an unexpected renaissance in the new millennium, too.
I was sorting cassette tapes in my office one day, and I came across an unmarked one. I put it into the player and was surprised to hear Karen singing a song titled “It Always Sounds Good.” It was a rough demo and obviously a tune that she was writing. The lyrics were about a spouse considering a relationship with a former lover. That really piqued my curiosity. Since she had kept her vocal talents secret, I wondered if her lyrics were about a hidden affair as well. We’d always had a great marriage—honest, passionate, and full of laughter—so I approached her with the evidence (the tape).
Karen admitted that she was writing the song and that it was autobiographical. She also pointed out that the hero of her little ditty didn’t succumb to temptation as the song’s title, “It Always Sounds Good”, suggests. Her logic put my paranoia to bed.
We embarked on a musical career as a singing duo, with me playing guitar, one of my lifelong passions. It was fun and exciting, especially since we had been married for fifteen years. Every longtime relationship occasionally needs a boost, and this was a perfect one for us. I began writing songs for us to perform, too. One of my better efforts was a humorous story song titled “Pretzel on the Rug.” It was based on an unusual, albeit traumatic, experience I had at the White House. Let me digress ...
I was in Washington, D.C., doing publicity for a project, and was introduced to a woman who worked at the White House in public relations. She said that President Bill Clinton was a big fan of
My Three Sons
, and she arranged for a private tour of the West Wing when it was officially closed, Sunday evening.
My Three Sons
, and she arranged for a private tour of the West Wing when it was officially closed, Sunday evening.
Karen and I and the kids showed up as planned, and a guide escorted us on a walking tour of the White House kitchen, the Rose Garden, the Press Room, even the basement where the foundation for the first mansion still exists; the masonry footings still show the black burn marks after the British torched the place in 1814.
We arrived at the Oval Office at ten in the evening, far past Spencer and Hailey’s bedtimes. I came prepared, though, with a pocket full of pretzels hoping to keep the kids fueled up. Our guide gently swung open the office’s curved door, revealing the president’s private sanctuary. The Oval Office was the coolest stop on the tour. Spencer, who was seven at the time, was disinterested. He was worn out and starting to whine, so I slipped him a big pretzel to keep him occupied.
We stood in the doorway, behind a blue velvet rope, gazing at the inner sanctum of the most powerful man on earth. There was so much history that you could feel: Nixon plotting Watergate, Roosevelt plotting World War II, Clinton plotting his next (fill in the blank). I glanced down at Spencer to see if he was taking in this special moment just as he bit down on his pretzel.
To my horror, a large curled section, the part hanging from his mouth, snapped off and took flight like a Scud missile. Its trajectory sent it flying straight into the Oval Office, where it landed on the plush yellow carpet. It was about three feet into the room, within my reach, but my mind raced with concerns:
Should I reach over the velvet rope and pick it up? No, I better not because our guide said to stay behind the velvet rope. Do not enter the room, under any circumstances.
Should I reach over the velvet rope and pick it up? No, I better not because our guide said to stay behind the velvet rope. Do not enter the room, under any circumstances.
I furtively glanced around; nobody noticed what had happened. Even Spencer was oblivious; he was more interested in licking the salt off his fingers. Once again my attention was drawn back to the offending pretzel on the rug. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It’s like nothing else existed in the room except for that brown, curvy piece of junk food. A little voice in my head spoke up:
“It is just a pretzel, no big deal. Forget about it!”
“It is just a pretzel, no big deal. Forget about it!”
Our guide closed the curved door and that, mercifully, ended my moral crisis ... or so I thought.
We continued our tour, walking down the hall for a peek into the Chief of Staff’s office, and Spencer’s whining began again. Without thinking, I whipped another pretzel out of my pocket. Before I could hand it to my son, two secret service agents grabbed me like I was Squeaky Fromme back for another assassination attempt. They literally pinned me to the wall and pried the crusty hunk of fried dough from my hand like it was a revolver.
“Did you throw a pretzel in the Oval Office?” one of the agents sneered.
I was dumbstruck and sputtered, “I ... Huh? ... Well ... it ... uh ...”
“Did you?!” the other agent demanded. He was more determined to extract a confession than his partner.
I considered telling them the truth, which would have put the blame on my son. Then an Orwellian fear stopped me.
This kind of incident might go on a permanent record somewhere
. I decided to take the rap instead of exposing the true culprit, Spencer. He could be haunted by such an episode for the rest of his life knowing how wacky the government can be.
This kind of incident might go on a permanent record somewhere
. I decided to take the rap instead of exposing the true culprit, Spencer. He could be haunted by such an episode for the rest of his life knowing how wacky the government can be.
I whimpered, “It was an accident. It broke off and flew into the room. I didn’t want to reach over ...”
The first agent waved the pretzel in my face and growled, “You’re not allowed to bring snack food in here. This isn’t the city zoo, you’re at the White House!”
I nodded with shame, accepting my traitorous act and emptying my pockets of pretzels.
The agents still weren’t satisfied and gave me a quick pat-down, making sure I didn’t have a few Fig Newtons stashed in my underwear. They finally concluded that I was
clean
and shooed me away with disapproving scowls.
clean
and shooed me away with disapproving scowls.
Later that night, after the tour, the family and I deduced that the Oval Office must be full of high-tech sensors that can detect foreign objects left in the room, things like listening devices or tiny explosives. We were impressed. It was very James Bond. Here are the lyrics to the song I wrote about the experience:
Pretzel on the RugNobody touch it
It might explode
How it got here
Nobody knows
We’re the secret service
Today we found a bug
In the Oval Office
There’s a pretzel on the rugMaybe it’s a camera
With a microphone and lens
To catch our private conversations
And our sneaky little plans
Probably planted
By a third world thug
In the Oval Office
There’s a pretzel on the rugDon’t take chances
Always fear the worst
The last man standing
Is the one who shoots first
Assassins and rivals
Are usually hid
Behind the face
Of a junk food eating kidCall the bomb squad
Get that danger loving man
Bring the robot
With its ever-steady hand
Lift it lightly
It might be a deadly drug
In the Oval Office
There’s a pretzel on the rugDon’t take chances
Always fear the worst
The last man standing
Is the one who shoots first
Assassins and rivals
Are usually hid
Behind the face
Of a junk food eating kidSo they took it to the lab
Here’s what they found
Flour and salt
Cooked golden brown
Made by Nabisco
A snack that we all dug
In the Oval Office
There was a pretzel on the rug
There is a strange coda to this story. A few years after our visit, President George W. Bush actually choked on a pretzel. The incident made headlines because he nearly keeled over and died. I couldn’t help wondering if a second hunk of Spencer’s pretzel flew into the room and eluded the secret service’s high-tech sensors. President Bush might have accidentally found that piece of junk food under a sofa, popped it in his mouth, and gagged. It’s just a thought.
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