Dreamseller

by Brandon Novak

  The kids would look at each other in horror! Doom.

  Phil then nailed the gas, screaming, “Oh, no! Bam, listen! It’s the alarm! This thing is gonna blow! We have to get the heck out of here!”

  Bam and anyone else in on the joke would have to hold their hands over their mouths to contain their laughter. Meanwhile, the other kids were terrified. “Pull over! Pull over! Let us out! We don’t want to die!” they cried.

  Phil would swerve the car all over the road, yelling, “I can’t pull over! I can’t! The traffic is too bad! We only have fifteen seconds! Bam, kids, get ready to run! We’re almost out of time!”

  Phil prolonged the charade of trying to pull over for almost twenty seconds, as each kid braced for the explosion that would consume them all.

  After Phil pulled the car to a stop on the side of the road, the action would begin—the clawing, scratching, pulling, pushing, as each kid fought for his life to be the first to escape flaming red death. Outside, they scattered in all directions, leaving Bam, Phil, and whoever else in on the joke in a fit of laughter that wouldn’t stop for an hour.

  As time passed, our weekend excursions to Bam’s house in West Chester became less frequent. Bam and his Pennsylvania crew came to visit us in Baltimore, but before long they grew tired of what few skate spots our city had to offer.

  I was kind of relieved when Bam didn’t show up for his weekend visits anymore. It wasn’t that I didn’t want his friendship, but we seemed to be growing apart. He would want to skate non-stop, all day, every day. When he would fall asleep at night, he would dream of the tricks he wanted to learn, and he’d wake up with an eagerness and determination which seemed to increase as each day passed. It was as if he had almost too much energy for me to keep up with. And another factor weighed in. I had discovered a companion more suitable to my life, Drugs.

  A few months passed since I had seen Bam around. Then one hot summer day, I was skating with Bucky Lasek at the National Skateboarding Association contest in Bricktown, New Jersey. Suddenly, from the opposite side of the half pipe, a little guy of about twelve dropped in frontside ollie to late shuvit, came back to do a pop shuvit to nose stall, hit the other side with a nose blunt, came back to do a one-foot ollie to fakie, then ended with a chink chink 270 out! Every trick he landed had great speed and precision and a unique style.

  Bucky laughed and applauded. I squinted at the figure.

  “Wait, is that Bam?” I asked.

  “Yep! He’s been practicing, obviously,” Bucky replied.

  Later during the contest, Bam had a great run. The most memorable trick of the day was when Bam pulled off a one-footer in front of Bill Weiss, a skater of about six-foot-three, who reacted as if Bam had delivered the kick right to his face. The judges placed Bam in the top ten. As I watched the crowd cheer him, the smile on his face brought back vivid memories of our friendship. I truly understood that, regardless of how talented I was, Bam’s drive to succeed would make his name endure through the future of skateboarding, while mine would fade away.

  As the years passed, I watched as Bam’s career took off and he became a celebrity, while my skateboarding career dwindled to nothing more than a memory.

  It was springtime, and I was twenty-three when I got a phone call from Bam, out of nowhere.

  ME: Hello?

  BAM: Brandon Novak!

  ME: Who’s this?

  BAM: It’s Bam! Long time no see!

  ME: Bam?

  BAM: Yep! I saw Bucky the other day, and we got to talking, and I asked, “Whatever happened to Novak?”

  ME: Cool! What’s going on?

  BAM: Well, for one, I hear you’re addicted to heroin!

  ME: Well, not anymore [lie]. I’m sixty days clean now [lie]. Other than that, everything’s going great [lie]!

  BAM: You still skate at all?

  ME: Yeah, from time to time [lie]. Since I’m clean, I’ve been skating more and more [lie].

  BAM: Cool. Well, I’m making CKY 3 right now. You feel like coming by to make a cameo? I have a skate ramp in my backyard at my parents’ new house. You should come by for a couple of days and lay the hammer down. I have a new house, you can stay there with me; it’ll be just like old times.

  CKY stands for Camp Kill Yourself. The CKY videos were top-selling films that Bam directed and produced. They were skateboard videos with a twist.

  Before CKY skateboard videos consisted of skating segments with skits in between. Most people grew tired of the generic and formulaic skate videos that were being released. The videos lacked mass appeal; they were entertaining only to those who were heavily involved in the sport. Essentially, if you weren’t a diehard skater, you would watch a skate video once or twice and shelve it forever.

  Bam Margera, who fate had somehow thrown in the midst of this video/skateboarding zeitgeist, changed all that.

  This was a time in history when broadcast quality video technology first became affordable to consumers. Three-chip mini-DV cameras had just been released to the public and were on sale at department stores and camera shops. Now, finally, independent filmmakers could shoot on a format that yielded beautiful color and resolution and would not degrade with each subsequent copy. One more advent of this period was central to the video revolution: digital nonlinear editing. For the first time, an edit in the middle of a program could be changed without causing the editor to redo all the edits that followed. The creative process was no longer secondary to the technology that once had restricted it. And the affordability of the equipment required for digital nonlinear editing made the concept even more appealing. Anyone with a few thousand dollars could buy a computer, be their own editor, and bypass large editing studios, saving thousands of dollars. In these new developments in the film medium, Bam saw opportunities to make his own videos. And now, Bam needed inspiration.

  A few skate videos at the time featured “slam sections,” consisting of rapidly edited tricks that were not landed, in which the skaters were hurt. These segments became many people’s favorite part of skate videos. They appealed to people’s strange infatuation with pain while reminding audiences what the sport was all about—the danger of landing the tricks. Bam decided to place himself and his friends in situations in which they could not win and pain was sure to follow. For example, he invented a sport in which a participant would ride in a grocery-store shopping cart that was pushed by a friend full speed into a curb. The impact would cause the person in the cart to fly through the air, and land on the concrete. Bam called these “shopping cart slams.” Painful? Yes! Entertaining? Hell yes!

  Bam incorporated skating, skits, slams, and his own sensibilities into his CKY videos. What he offered to the public wasn’t just a series of skateboard films. He showed the world through the eyes of a suburban skate rat. Finally, the world had skate videos that were entertaining to skaters and nonskaters alike. Everyone could watch these films over and over.

  No one could predict the social significance of these videos or their influence on pop culture. They were far removed from big Hollywood productions, they were never on the shelves of top retailers, and they were never advertised. Yet the fans sought them out and bought millions of copies worldwide. The CKY videos changed the way people videotaped, the way people watched movies, and the way filmmakers worked. Bam, his pal Ryan Dunn, and the rest of his crew would eventually join forces with the staff at Big Brother magazine, leading to the inception of a television show and a motion picture series called Jackass.

  Even though I had no idea how important these films were to become, I was excited to be a part of the video project, and to see my old friend Bam as well. I stayed for a week at Bam’s house and made an appearance in the video CKY 3.

  When Bam picked me up from the West Chester bus station, we hadn’t seen each other for years. But the moment we made eye contact, I knew the bond we had shared as kids still remained. Strangely, although he was on the verge of worldwide fame, he felt an allegiance to me because I was one of the friends
he had prior to making it big. Even more strangely, he felt that he owed me. When we were younger, my presence had challenged him to be his best. I was the more popular skater. I was in the magazines. I was on the Powell Peralta team. In his mind, he felt that I was the one who should have been famous, not him. As a result, he felt the need to help me set my life straight.

  In the time we spent together, the topic of conversation often turned to my addiction. Bam would always conclude the dialogue with the possibilities of my recovery and “comeback” to the sport of skateboarding. At that point I had never for one second entertained the notion of making a comeback, or stopping my drug use. Recovery was something I had gotten into the habit of agreeing to when others would mention it. But Bam, in his naïveté, took the idea of recovery seriously.

  I remember the first day of shooting CKY 3. The guy who filmed it was Joe Frantz, a Philly boy who used to work in big advertising and had dropped out of the game to become an indie filmmaker. Bam introduced us. “Hey, Frantz. I want you to meet a friend of mine. This is Novak. Novak used to be a skater on Powell Peralta. But then he became a heroin addict and threw it all away.”

  Frantz shook my hand, probably wondering if this strange introduction was some sort of joke. To please Bam, I confirmed it. “That’s right! I used to be a skater, and I blew it all because I got addicted to heroin.”

  Frantz’s eyes turned toward Bam, who said, “But now, he’s skating every day and he’s trying to make a comeback. Right, Brandon?”

  “Yep!” I agreed.

  Frantz said, “I’ve known a couple junkies in my time. How long you been clean?”

  “A couple months,” I told him.

  “Then I’m sure you’ll enjoy this joke: How can you tell when a junkie is lying?”

  “How?” asks Bam.

  Frantz delivered the punch line. “When his mouth is moving.”

  I didn’t laugh.

  Guy Leeper stops my story and asks, “Did Bam think this joke was funny?”

  I run my fingers through my hair, staring at the ceiling of the counseling office. “Well, Guy, Bam was pretty young and naïve. He was only twenty, and other than seeing bums on the street in Philly, I was the first junkie he ever had contact with. So, to answer your question, Bam didn’t laugh at Frantz’s joke because he did not yet understand its full implications. But he soon would.”

  chapter twenty-seven

  Haggard

  After the production of CKY 3, Bam and Frantz discussed shooting a motion picture follow-up to the CKY series, a movie called Haggard. Bam wanted me to be a part of it.

  I was living above a Laundromat in one of the worst sections of Baltimore City. For me, this neighborhood was perfect, as Dope shops were plentiful. Although I was the only white person for blocks in any direction, the locals began to accept me, which made it easy to score.

  The owner of the house I lived in was Ida, a fifty-something heavyset black woman who wore glasses so thick that when talking to her, I couldn’t tell which direction she was looking. Ida was the mother of one of my running partners, who had recently gone to jail. She treated me like a second son and allowed me to live in his room while he was away. I didn’t have a job, but every so often I would pull a hustle or make a deal that allowed me to give her fifty bucks or so.

  When I got Bam’s call, I had just stolen Ida’s VCR and sold it for a few bags of Dope. I hoped she wouldn’t notice that the VCR was missing, since she never used it. I returned to her house, prepared to deny everything, to find a note by the phone listing Bam’s name and number. I dialed him up, and in less than five minutes, he gave to me the opportunity of a lifetime.

  BAM: So, me and Frantz and the guys are making a movie called Haggard. It’s gonna be a legit indie film. There’s a part in it for you, if you want. I’m paying for the movie out of my own pocket; it’s not a huge Hollywood deal or anything, but I can pay you a few hundred bucks…

  ME: Yeah, sounds great!

  BAM: And guess what? Bucky Lasek and Tony Hawk are gonna be in it, too, in cameo roles. How’s that for coincidence?

  ME: Man, I haven’t seen those guys in forever [nor did I want them see me in such pitiful condition].

  BAM: And listen, I’ve been thinking, you should stay at my house, too. That way, whenever we’re not shooting the movie, you can skate my miniramp and come with me to FDR skatepark. And you’ll stay off drugs, because I’ll be keeping an eye on you all the time. Who knows, with us skating all the time, and no drugs around, you could get good enough at skating to make that comeback we’ve been talking about!

  And there it was, an opportunity presented to me that would eventually perpetuate my drug addiction!

  The part I was supposed to play in Haggard was that of a computer tech-head named Shorty. But my lack of sobriety and inability to memorize lines led Bam to change my part to that of a drug dealer.

  After a week in West Chester, Bam gave me my first payment, a check for three hundred dollars. I hightailed it back to Baltimore and bought two hundred dollars’ worth of Heroin and a two-way pager, which I thought might be an easy way for me to communicate with my drug connection (cell phones were very expensive at the time). I was so high on Dope, I never did figure out how to get the goddamn pager to work. I became obsessed with it, fiddling with it for hours. On the production, Bam and the guys devised a way to get the pager out of my hands. They wrote an impromptu gag into the film in which Bam took the pager out of my hands and threw it across the room. I never saw the pager again.

  In one shot, my character was supposed to be making a drug deal outside Fairman’s, a landmark skateboard shop. The camera, positioned inside the shop, was filming me as I stood across the street, passing a conspicuous-looking package (supposed to be drugs) to a black guy. Now, keep in mind we were in West Chester, a white bread college town. These people were so afraid of black people, that they considered a block on which several blacks lived “the ghetto” and were afraid to drive past there at night in fear that they might be carjacked or murdered.

  As soon as we were done with the shot I walked back into Fairman’s. Suddenly, five cops ran around the corner with nightsticks drawn! Apparently, a concerned citizen had seen me and this black guy passing the shady-looking package back and forth and phoned in our descriptions. Bam and Frantz watched from Fairman’s window, laughing their asses off. “Where’s Novak?” Bam asked. “He should see this!” I’ll tell you where I was, I was in the basement of Fairman’s, hiding my Heroin in the inventory, in case the cops came in and started asking questions.

  Later, we did a couple of takes inside Fairman’s. I thought I was doing great but, apparently, I was not. Frantz was shooting the movie in super-16-millimeter film, which I had no idea was expensive as hell. I was expected to get all my lines right on the first or second take, but I was fucking them up, big time.

  On a break, I went back to the basement to recover my Dope. I stared at the wall of inventory, and to my horror, I realized that my precious Dope was shoved into a single sneaker in one of sixty boxes, and I couldn’t remember which fucking one. As I was fighting my way through this wall of sneakers, I could hear Frantz and Bam upstairs, having an argument. This wasn’t out of the ordinary, because the two were killing themselves to make this film, staying up for days at a time, and tensions ran high. But the subject of this particular argument was me.

  FRANTZ: Dude, what the fuck is up with Novak? We did seven fucking takes and he still didn’t get his lines right.

  BAM: He’s never made a movie before. I don’t know, he’s just nervous or something…

  FRANTZ:Nervous? He’s strung like a fucking violin! Look, I don’t give a shit if he wants to kill himself, but he’s wasting fucking film, which is expensive! Every time he screws up a line, it costs fifty bucks!

  BAM: Well, I’m trying to help him out, okay? Novak is a friend of mine.

  FRANTZ: Yeah, great! For our movie premiere, you and your “friend” can sit in your basement, eat popcorn,
and watch half a movie, because we ran out of film during production.

  BAM: All right, all right! I’ll talk to him and see what’s up.

  FRANTZ: Oh, I’ll tell you what’s up, you gave a junkie a paycheck and guess what he spent it on?!

  BAM: Let’s just talk about this later.

  I found my precious Heroin and entered the bathroom, ready to fix. As I closed the door, I felt it being forced open. I turned and was face to face with Frantz, who closed the door behind him. I knew right away that a speech was coming.

  “Brandon. Listen and listen close, because I’m only gonna say this once. I’m older than Bam and the rest of these guys. I’m not taken in by this self-serving feel-good let’s-all-jump-on-the-band-wagon-to-help-the-poor-junkie-joy-ride. I’ve known addicts. One of my best friends in college died of a heroin overdose.”

  I interrupt. “Frantz, I don’t know what you believe about me, but look—”

  “No, you look! This isn’t a debate. This isn’t even a conversation. It’s a monologue. It’s me telling you, if you’re gonna scam everyone in West Chester, fine, but I know you’re on dope and I’m here to tell you, if you do one thing to harm Bam, Phil, or April, I’ll come down on you so fast that you’ll wish you OD’d years ago!”

  Jesus Christ, does this guy ever shut the fuck up?

  He continues. “Look, Novak, I like you. I see the good in you but I also recognize the bad, and that’s why I’m prepared to be your good friend as well as your worst enemy. Every time you’re high, every time I catch you with drugs, every time you fuck up, I’ll call you out in public and draw as much attention to you as possible. Understand?”

  I decide that the easiest way to deal with Frantz is to comply with a nod of the head, looking down to the ground as if I have been humbled, to let him feel as if he has won the battle. “Yes, I understand.”