My Booky Wook 2 (16 page)
The first duty I had to fulfil upon my frazzled arrival in Los Angeles was the Table Read. An integral part of the rehearsal process, it’s often the first time the cast has got together. The table is given undue titular prominence in my view, it’s a damning indictment of the standard of acting that the process gets named after the table – I’d like it to be renamed the Actor Read at very least. The fact that the table is taking all the plaudits is an indication that we need to buck up our ideas – I shall write a letter to the union.
Judd, Jason and all the cast of the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall were present – the brilliant Jonah Hill, Paul Rudd, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis and myself. The four central characters ( Jason, Kristen, Mila and me) sat centrally, then the other actors – such as Jack McBrayer from 30 Rock, a brilliant comic and a fine and unusual gentleman – flanked us.
I was incredibly nervous and wanted to impress. I was also ludicrously over-dressed because I’d got the part of “myself ” and thought I’d better stay in costume, even in the sweltering Los Angeles hum. I have never known whether to be flattered or insulted by the decision of those at Apatow films to alter the part of Aldous Snow from a Hugh Grant bookworm to a rock star version of me after my audition. On one hand it suggests that they were so impressed with me that they decided to rewrite the part to accommodate me, and that, through my performance, they glimpsed an unimagined world of possibility for the character. On the other it seems to imply that they thought I couldn’t act. Which one is it? Will we ever know? I try not to think about it too much.
Kristen Bell and I had a bit of a flirt. I was wearing – as was the custom at the time – a belt where the excess leather swung in front of my flies.
During a break from the table read, which the table itself had demanded, claiming it had a migraine before retreating to its trailer, Kristen noticed this surplus flap of leather. That was, incidentally, why it existed: to draw the eyes of attractive women (in the case of Wonk-eye Bell, one eye is sufficient – the other one seems to have its own portfolio to wander freely, finding space, like Joe Cole). She noticed then daintily tapped it, and I thought, “Hello, the aphrodisi-belt strikes again.” That flap of leather was right in front of my unmentionables (that’s rich coming from me), very much the gatekeeper of my genitalia, standing there, a stout, tanned sentry guarding the door to a world of wonder. Once the sentry was accosted the treasure within stirred. As did my fragile, hungry mind. I at once conjured an on-set romance with Kristen in my mind, probably as a diversion from the angst of the situation, in addition to her sweetness. Alas, there was an obstacle – I’d brought a girl specifically to prevent problems of this nature.
Get ready for one of those bits of the book where I demonstrate such a lack of compassion that you may be tempted to track me down and hurl your copy at my selfish face. Any normal person would, I’m sure, think, “I’ve brought a girl – I’ve made my bed – I’ll lie in it.” That is not how my mind functions, so instead of a reasoned response to a bit of innocuous flirting I immediately went back to my hotel and told Jordan she might as well return to London. I didn’t tell her why, more likely I contrived some daft argument about a comb. Booky Wook 1 had the huge advantage of being the tale of a man with a troubled childhood behaving badly as a result of crack and heroin addiction, this book differs because the drugs and childhood are gone but the madness remains. Well this, I’m afraid, is the way with addiction – you must know an alcoholic or a junky – we’re all like it – we’re nuts. Getting off drugs is just the first part, after that you’ve got to learn to use a brain that’s previously only been employed as a filter for chemicals. Expecting good moral conduct from a junky is like expecting a clockwork mouse to cry biscuits. Stupid.
Once Jordan had packed her cases I thought I might have been a bit hasty, not to mention unbelievably brusque and cruel. I backtracked and asked her to stay. At least until I knew if Kristen fancied me.
I was socially crippled then – I’m getting better now, but on the flight over to Hawaii (or Hawaii-not? as I used to quip. Jason Segel loved that and nicked it and used it in interviews, but I think he credited me. Not to mention the fact that he did write me that lovely part – so I should probably overlook him using my not-actually-that-good Hawaii pun) with the rest of the cast I just didn’t know what to say, assumed that everyone knew each other better than I did and if we crashed in the Andes, which would’ve been a strange route from LA to Hawaii, I’d be the first to be eaten. In fact they probably wouldn’t wait for the peanuts and tiny cans of Coke to run out before gnawing on my collarbone. I thought about eating a cellar of salt to dehydrate them on the mountain – the selfish cannibal pigs.
Interestingly Jason Segel, who’s become a great friend and will be troubled to learn I was in such anguish on that isle, as he’s such a shimmering comet of loveliness, has a view of me as some kind of swashbuckling womaniser. This always surprises me. I know that I’ve done a lot of womanising and a fair bit of swashbuckling – I mean I’ve hung off the edge of boats, drunk rum by the bottle and brawled with sailors – but those were all just hobbies and misdemeanours. On the inside I’m rather refined and delicate. The opposite of what Jason imagines.
Being in his movie was a big deal. Working on a movie is a big deal full stop. Millions of dollars have been spent and hundreds of people work on it. The actors, the director, the burly, surly teamsters, the camp costume folk, the nurturing but gossipy make-up people – all lazy clichés that you may as well observe as usually they’ll serve you right. Perhaps entertainment has always attracted these types; even medieval bands of travelling players would, I imagine, have forged an immediate community amongst themselves as people on film sets tend to now. I had to try to bend my natural urge to isolate into a malleable rod of friendliness to survive this shoot.
We were living in a resort called Turtle Bay where the majority of the film was shot. It had the air of a joint built in 1974 on Cosa Nostra money, like Bugsy Siegel had slung it together on a wing and a prayer. It should have been called Turtle Beige, because everything was beige: the waiters’ uniforms were beige, the wallpaper was beige, the food was beige. Beige, beige, beige. When the film’s set dressers decorated areas of the hotel for shooting they did such a monumentally grand job of it that if I had been the manager of that hotel I would, on seeing the unrealised possibilities that had been under my nose, have sprinted on to the shore and opened a vein with a piece of coral then offered myself to the gods of interior design. The hotel itself was festooned with tatty talismans, the odd pertinent watercolour of a turtle and a couple of actual parrots forever tethered in the lobby. I couldn’t make friends with them though. I’ve always wanted a parrot as a result of Enid Blyton filling my head with pipe dreams as a little boy, but it is very hard to befriend a parrot, all they really want is sesame seeds and to tear your eyes out with their cruel beaks.
Hawaii, I learned, is actually a big base for American military personnel to holiday on, there were platoons of service people there. I’d see hostile aircraft darting across the sky like angry, hard confetti showering a shotgun wedding between imperial America and an unrelated distant Pacific island. The hotel didn’t take advantage of the splendid view, they didn’t use any of the beautiful natural artefacts, because when America marauds its way on to an island that’s as near to Japan as it is to Los Angeles the indigenous culture gets ground up into beige powder.
I didn’t feel employed in Hawaii, I felt marooned, shipwrecked, stranded. It took me about half an hour after arriving to turn into Robinson Crusoe. I roamed the beach looking for trinkets, any sign of civilisation, like Edward Scissorhands dressed in rags.
I racked my parched brain for cultural references to make the time pass more quickly; I remembered Tom Hanks in Castaway getting pally with that ball, Wilson. I thought, that’s the solution, a relationship with a football. I didn’t give it a name but I did build a league around kicking it through a hoop suspended from an air-vent in my room, which was rapidly becoming a madman’s shack.
Due to the film’s producer Shawna Robertson’s relationship with Edward Norton, suddenly and without the siren that I’d’ve considered polite, Woody Harrelson out of Cheers turned up. I’d glimpse him occasionally from my one-man shanty-town, socialising with the adept members of the cast. I was of course in self-imposed exile in case my presence at gatherings revealed to the others what I was actually like.
If I’m left alone too long I regress to my childlike state, in which I’d invent games, build cultures and pass the irksome days. In Hawaii it was football that I turned to. Obviously, I played football alone, kicking the still nameless, lightweight ball through the suspended hoop in my room. I’m not very good at football and would miss most of the time, but that was actually good as it made the league I’d invented a lot more competitive – the other teams had what ought to have been the disadvantage of having no human players. They didn’t have a team of animals either, I hadn’t snatched a vindictive parrot from the foyer – I’m not that mad. No, I rolled a dice to ascertain their score, which I had to then beat within ten attempts. Because I was on my own I started to take it a bit too seriously and worried about upcoming games. “Wigan? Oh God, they’re really on form, what are we going to do?”
I was in the middle of a tricky fixture against Spurs (I was West Ham, obviously) wearing my away strip of green under-pants when through the window I saw Woody Harrelson in the distance walking towards my hut. I nervously watched him get nearer and nearer until he was actually at the patio door of my room. Because he’s a Hollywood star he doesn’t observe proper desert island protocols.
If I’m going to walk through someone’s patio door I’ll knock first, then once I have the inhabitants’ attention I’ll silently mouth, “Can I come in?” So they don’t feel threatened.
Woody Harrelson just bowled in and with him came the crashing awareness that I’d been living outside society’s conventions and had somehow found myself in the middle of a difficult season dressed in an unacceptable kit. I’d only been in Hawaii a day. I couldn’t let Woody know I’d gone loco – I had to make the situation seem normal.
He noticed the still swinging hoop – I’d just had a shot come off the crossbar – squinted at it for a bit while I sweated, and said, “What’s that hoop for, man?” I paused to see if I could think of something better than the truth to fling into the air between me and Woody; which I resented because when I invented that game I didn’t think at some point I’d have to justify it to the intruding cast of Cheers.
I also thought, “Oh no. I’m in my green pants and there’s a suspect noose-like object dangling ominously from the ceiling – he’s going to think I’m into some weird Michael Hutchence-auto-erotic-asphyxiation-wank-type-thing.” Here’s a sex tip if you are into auto-erotic-asphyxiation: if during a wank you “start to die” – STOP WANKING, don’t think, “I’ve started this wank, now I’m committed to it.” If during a wank an ethereal, heavenly tunnel of light appears with Christ at the end of it gently beckoning you – STOP WANKING! Don’t let that holy image spur the wank on to new supernatural, breathless heights. Don’t think “Fucking hell there’s Jesus, I’ll fuck him in the stigmata.” I’ll say it again: STOP WANKING. Take your penis out of your hand, loosen the belt from around your neck, apologise to Jesus and go and have a nice cup of tea.
There was an uncomfortable silence while Woody tried to work out how mentally ill I was. Until I was forced to say, “That? What, the hoop? Oh that’s just where I play this football game in here on me own, day after day, hour after hour, Woody Harrelson out of Cheers.” He looked at me. With his piercing blue, “Natural Born Killer” eyes.
It was awkward, I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I went, “Would you like to play, Woody?” He studied me like David Attenborough regarding an ape that had just thrown poo at his cornet, then eventually said, “Yeah, alright.”
Woody Harrelson walked over to the penalty spot, which was actually just a shower cap, put the ball down on it, looked up at the hoop, took a single breath like he were a noble Roman emperor, and said, “First time every time” – then, with hardly any back lift, took aim and struck the ball. In slow motion I watched as Douglas (I’d named him by that point – it was the panic) sailed through the air, spinning on his axis like the Earth viewed from space. Woody lowered his foot, my mouth began to gape as Douglas curved with the grace of a silken veil in the hand of a Turkish dancer and penetrated the swaying hoop like an Olympian sperm.
Then Woody smiled, strolled over to the refreshment kiosk that was being run by a cushion, picked up some Brazil nuts, didn’t pay, and then meandered out the door. I watched as he marched purposefully across the green lawn and without hesitation started climbing a palm tree.
The whole sorry event totally destroyed the league, because he’d had one shot, scored one, which was an away goal – plus he hadn’t been registered as a player with FIFA – it devastated the whole system. I couldn’t relax after that. I disbanded the league that afternoon in case Ted Danson burst in and start querying the offside rule. This all goes to demonstrate that no one should stay in a hotel room for three months.
What should have been happening on that island, what this chapter ought be about is me becoming a movie actor, developing friendships with the lovely people I was privileged to be working with. About how my scenes with Jonah Hill made people laugh so much that Nick Stoller wrote a film around the pair of us where I would reprise my role as Aldous Snow. And how Paul Rudd, a great character comedian, and I did a scene and how I knew as he improvised the line “You sound like you’re from London” that I’d have it repeated to me all over the world – which is weird. (Sometimes people want me to say it, but, as I say to them, it was Paul Rudd’s line. Then I have to say it anyway.) All these wonderful things happened in Hawaii, thanks to Jason, Nick and Judd, and now I have the chance to work as an actor in America and have my own films made.