If at Birth You Don't Succeed (12 page)

Thanks in large part to Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, Google's YouTube Creator Innovation Program, and my online fan base, within two months of losing
Rollin' with Zach
, I was given the opportunity to hit the road again. With the Web series
Riding Shotgun
, I got to make the travel show I'd always intended, this time on the Internet. Basically, my brother and two of my friends from college traveled with me around North America in the wheelchair-retrofitted Chevy Suburban I'd won from Oprah, meeting up with Redditors in person, and embracing every wrong turn and stumble along the way. We did whatever the Internet told us to do, even if it meant my having to be carried on an army stretcher through the woods or confronting my worst fear—hairless cats. Brad, Aaron, Josh, and I were the cast, crew, editors, and producers. Sure it wasn't as prestigious, and I made less for an entire year of work than I did for one episode of
Rollin' with Zach
, but I was still doing what I loved. I was humanizing disability in a way that traditional media wouldn't allow and making good on the promise and the premise of my initial Oprah audition video.

While on the road for
Riding Shotgun
, I'd often call Kristina to see how her post-Oprah life was going. In the time since her show,
The Ambush Cook
, had been canceled by OWN, she had been in talks about projects on the Food Network, NBC, and Oxygen. She'd had book deals, formal offers, and even a pitch for her story becoming a Lifetime movie where she would play herself! Her most promising opportunity was a show on NickMom. There were contracts signed, a production company on board, and excited network executives. Both of us were getting a second chance neither of us had been sure would ever come. And just as we had been on
Your OWN Show
, we were each other's biggest cheerleaders. I was thrilled for Kristina and sure that she'd be the breakout star of NickMom (a network I'd shockingly never watched), and Kristina was confident that all the episodes of
Riding Shotgun
would go viral and my legions of online fans would make me the Rick Steves of YouTube.

Our expectations for success had been raised. I mean, winning a show from Oprah is definitely starting from the top, but I think both of us would have gladly accepted shows from Ellen, Barbara Walters, or, if it came to it, Ryan Seacrest. It would be fair to say that we had a slightly unrealistic perspective about how easy it was to get a show on television. After all, our first television shows only required us to put a homemade video online, spend a month in a hotel not talking to anyone (except the celebrities we had the pleasure of interviewing), and being better at this than the eight other people we were in competition with. As it turns out though, there's no such thing as a sure thing in the entertainment industry.

The NickMom deal fell through at the last minute because the production company and the network couldn't agree on budgets. It was devastating for Kristina. Despite the enthusiasm and commitment of her agent, she hadn't had any paid work in over a year. This was the most recent, and by far the biggest, of a series of near misses for her.

“I honestly think I might have to go back to waiting tables at my old restaurant if I don't get something soon,” she confided to me over the phone. “The thing is, I would be
fine
with waiting tables. It would just be hard to wait on the same people who celebrated with me when I won and expected me to do more with my life. Do you know what I mean?” And I did. I knew exactly how she felt. We'd experienced such an extraordinary high together that there was no such thing as going back to normal. We were expected to do big things. We'd grown up with much less than we had now and were still by all accounts very fortunate, but everyone assumed we were set for life. People think that once you're on TV, you've made it. What they don't understand is that there is no such thing as making it. The only thing you can do is seize the opportunities you have, keep working, and be grateful for everything but feel entitled to nothing.

By the time
Riding Shotgun
made it to the Web, I was grappling with my own disappointments. When we wrapped, we had over three hundred hours of raw footage to slog through. The original plan was to release the fifty proposed episodes on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule with the season finale around Christmas 2012. But it was June 2013 by the time we uploaded the last episode. At the height of my media exposure, I was used to my videos getting upward of a hundred thousand views apiece on YouTube, so it was disheartening to watch each segment of
Riding Shotgun
crawl its way to its first thousand views. The lackluster response and the strain of the workload made the unending postproduction schedule feel very lonely. The show turned out exactly how I wanted it to and I was proud of the journey and the work, but almost no one was there to watch it. We'd taken so long that the Internet had moved on. Feeling stuck in Austin, I needed to move too, but I had nowhere to go.

Kristina had one pretty strong suggestion on this front. Every time we talked, she'd prod me, asking, “When are you moving to LA?” I always told her that I'd only relocate to her town if I had a reason to be out there that provided a means to pay the absurdly high rent without selling my body, my wheelchair, or my soul.

Luckily, it turns out you don't have to sell your soul to make pancakes out of it.

Rainn Wilson's inspirational media company SoulPancake had been interested in doing a show with me since they saw my Oprah audition. The chance to make
Have a Little Faith
came to me not through divine intervention but, like most important connections in my life these days, via Twitter.

@soulpancake:
We want to get in touch with you about a potential collaboration! Pls DM us your email so we can get you more info.

It's a pretty unassuming, unofficial way for a spiritual journey to begin. But over a period of months I developed the concept for a new show and with it my reason to become a Californian.
Have a Little Faith
is a Web series that explores different world religions from my perspective as a self-proclaimed religious idiot. In each episode, I interview one person about what their faith means to them. The goal was to take the judgment and politics out of interfaith discourse and make a human connection to people with different beliefs. With a six-episode commitment, my brother and I headed to the West Coast, and my mom came along to help us find and move into an apartment.

The City of Angels gave the Anner family the first impression of being an unlivable shithole where
Keeping Up with the Kardashians
is filmed. It's hot, needlessly spread out, and every lunch you have begins with the waiter telling you about the audition they're going to after their shift because they're up for a part in the pilot of a podcast. It's a place where delusions and hope are the same thing. Everybody wants to be there so nobody really cares about making you feel at home. Nobody, that is, except Kristina.

At the time, Kristina, her husband, Philip, and their two kids lived in a modest two-bedroom apartment. Despite the shortage of space, they welcomed us with open arms and said we could stay until we found a place of our own. Her kids were visiting their grandparents in Croatia for a month, so we got free rein of the bunk beds and Legos. We thought we'd be there for three days before we'd find and move into a new apartment with palm trees, an umbrella drink vending machine, and an ocean surf wave pool.

As it turned out, we'd grossly overestimated the number of safe, affordable, handicap-accessible living spaces in the city. On more than one occasion, after what we thought was a promising lead, we drove up to the address, admired the graffiti, noticed the bars on the windows and the broken glass behind them, and decided to cancel our showing. Day after day, we'd go back to Kristina's and she'd do her best to convince my mother that her sons would be safe and find their way.

Ever since our destinies had aligned on Stage Two of OWN Studios, Kristina and I had helped each other keep perspective as we navigated through things that would have been much too foreign and scary to go through alone. To their credit, OWN made good on their promise to keep me in the family and were always quick to help by providing any materials or references I needed. After
Rollin'
was cancelled, they even let me out of my contract early so that I'd be free to move forward with my career and participate in other projects. Brad and I did eventually find a one-bedroom in Sherman Oaks, and I was grateful to sleep on a foldout IKEA sofa in the living room with a roof over my head and reinforced walls to protect me from earthquakes.

In July 2013, I began a year in the Golden State that was filled with personal milestones, and Kristina was there to see all of them:
Have a Little Faith
became my first show ever to be renewed for a second season, and an episode from my personal fitness series,
Workout Wednesday
, became my first video on YouTube to surpass a million views post-Oprah.

What I learned during my time in Los Angeles is that it's full of people who want to get together and make things happen, but everyone is so busy chasing a dream that life almost feels like an afterthought. When I was there, I had a full calendar occupied by meetings and potential collaborations and lunch and dinner dates, yet somehow with all of this I was still free 90 percent of the time. I can't count how many industry people came up and said, “Man, I love your work! We gotta do something someday!” But to the best of my knowledge, you can't call up your dentist's office and say, “I need a root canal. Mark me down for a nine a.m. on Someday.” Hollywood is the flightiest place on Earth. But when Kristina and I made plans, we always stuck to them.

Even though we had started off as competitors, we grew to be like family. I spent my twenty-ninth birthday with her and as proof that she knows me better than just about anyone else, she got me the perfect presents—six pairs of pajama pants and a mountain of Skittles. That Christmas, we released our first collaboration together in a segment called “Cooking with Zach,” in which I do absolutely no culinary labor and require Kristina to make a completely fictional family recipe for something called Apple Scrumples.

Kristina, like me, has found a new audience on YouTube and recently had a video about breast-feeding go viral that has, as of writing this, accrued over three million views. She freelances for various other DIY cooking sites, writes for parenting blogs, and added a new member to her family with the birth of her third child. Even though Kristina had been very receptive to my suggestions of names for her cooking shows, she refused to accept the brilliance in my proposal of “Han Solo” for the name of her newborn son.
1
We made a video together the week before he was born called “Talkin' Pregnant,” and Brad and I went to see her in the hospital two days after “Han” arrived.

When we stood under the bright lights of OWN Studios waiting to hear our fates, Kristina and I had no idea of the journey that we were about to start together. At the time, I didn't really understand what Oprah meant when she said that no matter the outcome, having someone to share the experience with would make it better. Neither of us lost on that day, but my friendship with Kristina, which was bound together at our highest moment, ended up being the thing that got both of us through the lowest ones.

When you win, good friends make the experience even sweeter, and when you lose, they're the ones who help you appreciate what you have. We won shows together, we lost shows together, and we were able to navigate all of the things in between because we had each other. I don't know if Kristina or I will ever end up with shows on network television again, but I do know that whatever successes we have in our lives and careers, we'll always be rooting for each other. Oprah gave me many things. I lost the show, spent the money, and sold the car. But of all the gifts that Oprah gave me, a sister in California was by far the best. I'm grateful she's the one I've been able to keep.

 

II

Friends in Search of Benefits

 

CHAPTER 7

Destiny in a Red One-Piece Bathing Suit

“Check it out. I got your manual wheelchair,” Dave whispers, crashing into the side of the tent and dropping his flashlight.

“But I already have my electric,” I tell him.

“I know. It's for me.”

“What?”

“I'm not walking all the way to the bus station!” he scoffs. “You're not the only one who gets to be lazy.”

“Don't yell. You'll wake up my mom,” I say, checking to make sure her light is still off. “We should leave in an hour. Are we forgetting anything?”

Dave shrugs. “We got a pillow and a blanket.”

“What about the sandwiches?”

“Well, we don't want to make those or the chocolate milk until right before we leave or they'll go bad. And if that's not enough food, we'll grab some Arby's,” he assures me.

“Five for five?”

“Hell yeah.”

Unable to contain my enthusiasm, I blurt out, “What're you gonna say when we meet Cindy?”

Dave presses his hand to his chin, deep in contemplation. “I don't know,” he says, “but I'll have to stand behind your chair because I'll have a
huge
boner.”

So, with everything set into motion, we prepared to venture into the great unknown, bringing a Tiny Toons thermos filled with chocolate milk, six peanut butter sandwiches, two wheelchairs, two hundred dollars of stolen bar mitzvah money, and our suits with matching clip-on ties. To two ten-year-olds with a dream, this list comprised everything we would need to make the four-hundred-plus-mile journey from Buffalo to New York City for one reason, and one reason alone: to track down, meet, and marry Cindy Crawford.