Coreyography: A Memoir (20 page)

“Isn’t she a little young for me?” I had asked at the time. She was ten. But Hollywood agents and producers love to arrange these little meet-cutes; it’s like casting a movie, but with real-world results.

Drew’s mother, Jaid, had called me to arrange the meeting. It was all very innocent, of course. Drew and I went to a movie; her mother drove. Despite her age, though, Drew was already a huge star; the fact that
she
had wanted to meet
me
was quite the ego boost.

This, however, was different. By the time
The Lost Boys
wrapped, you could tell that things in my life were really starting to change. And it happened fast. Almost, it seemed, overnight.

The first indication was the fan mail. I had received fan mail before, especially after
The Goonies
premiered in the summer of 1985, but it had trickled in to my agent’s office, a letter or two at a time. Now I was getting bags of it, delivered to me twice a week. Nearly half of the contents were from Japan; I knew that some of my films had been big overseas, especially
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter,
but that still didn’t explain what I was supposed to do with the giant box of plastic sushi someone sent me from the other side of the world.

Next were the billboards. Just like the fan mail, there had been billboards before, too, including a giant one for
The Goonies,
with moving parts that swayed in the breeze, perched high above Sunset Boulevard. But there were more now—billboards, newspaper ads, including a full-page “For Your Consideration” ad in the back of
Variety,
lauding the success of the newly released
Stand by Me.
The film was distributed, at first, in limited release, playing in only a few theaters in New York and L.A. When those showings sold out, it was clear that
Stand by Me
would become the sleeper hit of the summer—within four weeks we were number one at the box office.

The rise of “the two Coreys” was even more surreal. You could sense that people were excited to see us together. The paparazzi had started paying attention to us, following us around, asking us questions—“You’re both named Corey? And you’re both actors?”—snapping our pictures whenever we went out to eat. The very next day you’d see the snapshot splashed across the pages of magazines. Fans had not yet started to stalk us, but that would come soon enough.

My father had taken over as my manager, and was practically drowning in publicity requests, for personal appearances, photo shoots, interviews. Suddenly, I was invited everywhere, L.A. opened itself to me like a flower. The Comedy Awards—where someone snapped a photo of Shari Belafonte and me, wearing Groucho Marx–style fake glasses, with the mustache and the oversized nose; it ran in practically every entertainment and teen magazine—the American Music Awards, the Grammys. I was invited to ride in the Hollywood Christmas parade, where I got to meet Stevie Wonder. And everywhere I went, my father was right there with me, introducing himself as my dad. “Hi, I’m Bob Feldman, Corey Feldman’s father”—that was his opening line. I may have been the burgeoning teen heartthrob, but dropping my name was getting him laid.

Anytime anybody asked me to do anything, my father would book me, without hesitation. I was doing a photo shoot or an interview—most often for one of the teen magazines—practically every day of the week. Having strangers ask me about my personal life was unsettling. I had no intention of speaking plainly about the realities of my life at home, so I kept things nice and fluffy; told them my favorite color, told them my common nicknames. Even back then, at age fifteen, I was conscious of wanting to stay positive, to affect people positively, so I aimed a lot of my spare time at doing charity work, showing up for pediatric cancer fund-raisers, cooking for the homeless at soup kitchens, making appearances at the children’s hospital, becoming a spokesman for the “Just Say No” campaign. I had watched Michael Jackson navigate this side of fame; this was, of course, long before his first brushes with scandal, when he still had an almost unimpeachable reputation and had become one of the most philanthropic of all entertainers. I was consciously molding that part of my career after him, albeit on a much smaller scale.

I hadn’t seen Michael in months, but we finally made plans to get together. He picked me up in his Mercedes—Bill Bray, his longtime security chief, was driving—Michael and I sat in the back. He was location scouting in preparation to shoot the video for “Smooth Criminal”; we were headed to 20th Century Fox to check out one of the sets for
The Two Jakes,
the sequel to
Chinatown
. He thought he might get inspired, since what he wanted for
Smooth Criminal
was a 1930s gangster-era vibe.

Being friends with Michael had its difficulties—either no one believed me (at least no one outside the entertainment industry; the kids I knew from school tended to be rather skeptical), or everyone wanted me to arrange an introduction. On that day, I had brought with me a little tape recorder. I put it in the pocket of my parachute pants.

“What is that?” he asked as I climbed in the car.

“What?”

“It looks like you have a brick in your pocket.”

“Oh!” I had already almost forgotten it was there. “It’s a tape recorder. I was wondering if I could record some of our conversation today, just to have it? You know, just to keep?”

“Sure,” he said, without a second thought, without a care in the world about being recorded. During the hour-long drive from Encino, talk shifted from the abuse I had suffered at school and at home, to the abuse he went through with his parents (at nearly thirty years old, he was still absolutely terrified of his father), to, suddenly, matters of business. He started grilling me about my management, about things I had never even thought of, let alone knew anything about. Did I have a lawyer? An agent? A business manager? Who was my accountant? What kind of instructions did I give him? What kind of percentage were these people taking from me? Where was my money invested? Did I have a portfolio? I remember laughing; I thought it was funny, like he had forgotten that I was still just a kid. What the hell did I know about business managers and portfolios? I wish I had thought a little more about what and why he was asking.

At some point, conversation shifted to a discussion of his upcoming sixteen-month, fifteen-country world tour, which would launch the following summer. “After the tour, I’m done,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m changing everything. I’m going to have a whole new look. No more glove. No more hat.”

“What do you mean no more glove?” I asked. “You can’t get rid of the glove!”

“I have to, Corey. I can’t keep doing the same thing forever. You have to keep changing and evolving. That’s the magic of what we do. You can’t be predictable. The second your fans think they know what they can expect from you, you become uninteresting. You have to keep moving forward.”

“That makes sense,” I said, playing with the tape recorder in my lap. “You still have to wear the glove, though. At least wear it when you sing ‘Billie Jean.’”

“You think?”

“If you don’t wear the glove for ‘Billie Jean,’ your fans are going to be disappointed.
I’ll
be disappointed. You have to at least wear it for that one song.”

He thought about that for a while. “Okay, what I’ll do is, I’ll do all the other songs. Then at the end, I’ll pull out the glove, and everyone will know what’s coming.”

“They sure will.”

“Okay, I’ll do the glove and the hat, but only when I sing ‘Billie Jean.’”

*   *   *

Ralph Kaufman was
moving up in the world.

Gone were the days of hosting young actors inside his modest home in Hollywood; he teamed up with a businessman based in New York and grew the parties in scale and size, relocating them to penthouse suites or ballrooms at Hollywood hotels. On the surface, “Ralph Kaufman’s club” was a private social space for famous teens; in reality, it became a promotional tool to popularize a new brand of soda. The soda came in a lot of kid-friendly flavors—strawberry, bubble gum, cream soda—and exploded in popularity, thanks to its unofficial endorsement by those who frequented the club: Sean Astin and his brother Mackenzie, Scott and Heather Grimes, Ke Huy Quan, Alfonso Ribeiro, Drew Barrymore, Ricky Schroder, Harold Pruett, Christina Applegate, David Faustino, Tina Yothers, Corey Haim, and Alyssa Milano and me; Ralph asked Alyssa and I to cohost the first of his flashy new parties.

At the outset, Ralph’s club was very exclusive, aside, perhaps, from the presence of photographers and members of the Hollywood press; it proved to be a safe and comfortable, age-appropriate place for all of us to hang out with one another (no alcohol was ever served, neither officially nor even in secret, and most of the kids there—at least in the early days—were more or less still sober). Ralph’s club could also reasonably take credit for bringing together a number of young Hollywood couples. Haim, in particular, began dating a string of ingénues; first Kristy Swanson (star of
Flowers in the Attic
and, later,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
), then Alyssa Milano, and finally Nicole Eggert, of
Charles in Charge
and
Baywatch.
But as more and more celebrity kids showed up, the pressure to expand began to mount. Ralph’s quickly morphed from smallish get-togethers of about fifty people, to elaborate affairs with two hundred or three hundred guests, relocating along the way from private suites to expansive roof decks and, eventually, to warehouse-size ballrooms.

I was too naïve to know that all of us should have been compensated with appearance fees; Ralph and his promoters were able to charge for tickets, sell out of soda, and pack the place with kids who were trying to break into the business. None of our parents were savvy enough to discern this, either. As the parties grew, however, the atmosphere started to feel exploitative. I felt like I was being clawed at. What had been a respite from the madness was fast becoming the primary cause of it. Ralph’s stayed popular for nearly two years, but I outgrew it fast. By age fifteen, I was ready to enter the world of adults.

By late 1986 or early 1987, my father had hired a man I’ll call Ron Crimson, a young, good-looking guy in his early twenties, to work in the offices of New Talent Enterprises. Every time I walked across the street to talk business with my father, Ron would saunter over and manage to say something outrageously funny. We hit it off immediately. It was almost eerie how similar we were. It was as if he had studied me and was copying my every move. Before long, he was spending most of his time at the apartment, or driving me to restaurants and clubs around town.

One night we headed to dinner at The Palms. Just as I was opening the doors, out walked Sam Kinison, wearing his trademark beret.
Back to School,
the 1986 film he starred in with Rodney Dangerfield, had just come out; I recognized Sam immediately from the late-night talk-show circuit. We had never met, but we bumped right into each other.

“Hey,” I said, startled, “you’re Sam Kinison, right?”

“You’re Corey Feldman!”

“Yeah?”

“I’m a big fan. You’re fucking awesome. You’re a great actor.”

“
You’re
fucking awesome,” I said, delighted that he knew who I was.

“Hey, do you ever come down to The Store?” The Comedy Store, the legendary comedy club on Sunset Boulevard, would end up being one of three or four places in Hollywood that would actually let me in, even though I was only fifteen. “Why don’t you come check out my set?”

The Comedy Store was inherited by comedian Pauly Shore’s mother, Mitzi, after her 1973 divorce; she also owned Cresthill, a Spanish-style mansion in the hills above West Hollywood. It’s a massive four-bedroom home with panoramic views of the Sunset Strip, but in those days it was just a big empty shell of a house, used to accommodate up-and-coming comedians when they traveled to L.A. to perform. Richard Pryor, Robin Williams, and Jim Carrey have all stayed at Cresthill. By mid-1986 Sam had moved in, along with friend and fellow comedian Carl LaBove. I became a regular at both places.

On any given night you might find as many as ten or twelve comedians at Cresthill, crowded around the massive oak table, in the center of which was a mountain of cocaine. This was my introduction to the bacchanalian nature of Hollywood nightlife—half-naked women draped over fat, out-of-shape funny men, booze and drugs flowing freely. I was offered coke nightly, but after what happened on the set of
The Lost Boys,
I felt more comfortable sticking with what I knew: marijuana and alcohol. What I was interested in
trying
were hallucinogenics. Taking a tab of acid and seeing imaginary characters and dreams come to life sounded like magic to me. Within weeks, I would have an opportunity to try acid and much, much more. And the opportunity would present itself right inside my very own home.

I was rifling through my dad’s things one afternoon, hoping to score some weed. In the back of his closet, on the floor, hidden behind piles of clothes, was an old leather briefcase with a shoddy combination lock. It didn’t take long to figure out the combination—000—perhaps it had never been properly set. I snapped the briefcase open; inside was a veritable treasure trove of drugs, an entire block of blond hash, a bag of mushroom crumbs (plenty enough to get high on), and a gallon-size Ziploc of pills, all different shapes and sizes. I held the bag up to Ron. I didn’t know what any of them were.

“Oh, man.
These
are a score,” he said, pulling out the pills marked 714. “These are Quaaludes. These are amazing.” He continued picking his way through the bag—“These are uppers. These are downers. These are painkillers”—easily identifying each drug, its manufacturer, and its probable effect.

Quaaludes were my favorite. I felt like I was drinking without actually being drunk. I felt like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. High on Quaaludes, Ron and I went back to The Store.