by Scott Ian
It was 11:50 a.m. The charity event I was playing in started in ten minutes. I had no idea how I got back to the hotel. No memory at all of getting into my room. Blackout.
My wallet was on the nightstand. I checked it, and my cash and credit cards were all accounted for. There was a crumpled piece of paper next to the money. Taxi receipt. Somehow I had gotten in a taxi from the Palazzo at 5:08 a.m.
My laptop was open to the Ultimate Bet online poker site. I logged in and saw that I had played online at 6:18 a.m. for about forty-five minutes. I had won quite a bit of money as well. I checked my hand history, where you can see all the hands you played and how you played them to see how I had managed that, and apparently a drunk Gorilla Grodd had taken over my brain and the ultra-aggressive, abusive-style hold ’em he played was very successful. I made a mental note of that for future poker endeavors.
My timeline piecing together, I did a quick scan of the room: no blood or puke—check. No other humans alive or dead—check. Remains of a cheeseburger and fries all over my bed—check.
Still sweating, I slowly got out of bed. There was no time to shower or even change my clothes. I quickly brushed my teeth, found my other sneaker, and threw on a hoodie, hoping it would at least mask the fact that I was in the same clothing from the night before. Oh, and also maybe put a layer between the booze stench coming off me and the people I’d be sitting next to at the poker table.
I made it out of the room and down the hall to the elevator. That’s when I realized I was still drunk. The initial clear-headedness and ability to take stock of my surroundings I had felt when I first woke up was now replaced with a loopy giddiness that wasn’t all that terrible. My head still had a vice on it; I’d need to deal with that immediately. I got off the elevator and kept my head down, not because I didn’t want to be recognized but because I had to watch my feet as I walked so I wouldn’t trip over them. I didn’t want to be late for this event, especially for a lame reason like being a hungover pile of crap.
I got to the venue and was relieved to see I wasn’t late. They were still registering people to play. The tournament was for a charity that supported injured soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. MMA superstar Randy Couture was hosting it, and 150 people entered the tournament—celebs, poker pros, MMA fighters, and the public. It was a great turnout for a worthy cause.
I got my seat assignment and sat down at my table, oozing Fernet from my pores. I figured I wouldn’t last long in the tournament, bust out, and go back to bed was my plan.
I start to focus on actually playing cards and look around the table at my opponents, and sitting right across from me is David Wells. As you know from another story in this book, I am a huge Yankee fan, and Boomer (his nickname) was my favorite player on those 1997–1998 teams. He played the game hard and partied even harder. Wells was a throwback and embodied everything I loved about seventies baseball.
I found it difficult to concentrate on the poker game. I was next-day drunk and sitting at a table with one of my heroes. I wanted to talk to him, but I never want to bother anyone. My nerves were shot. I made an adult decision to order a Bloody Mary to take the edge off. I was very quickly halfway through my beverage when Wells asks me what I’m drinking. An icebreaker! I told him it was a Bloody Mary, that I usually don’t drink so early, but I needed some help, as I had just got up and barely made the tournament. Turns out he was in the same boat as me. He said he had ordered a real drink when he first sat down but didn’t want to be “that guy” so he changed his order to a soft drink. When he saw me order booze he figured that made it okay. So now that we had established that we were both degenerates, we became fast friends. The waitress was instructed to keep ’em coming, and I was already feeling better and having a blast picking his brain about all things Yankee and baseball in general—his love of Babe Ruth, his hatred of Joe Torre, cranking metal in the locker room, and partying with the notorious New York Mets. Of course I asked him about the perfect game he pitched in 1998. He didn’t seem to mind talking about anything; the man had no sacred cows. Wells pitched the fifteenth perfect game in baseball history. There had always been rumors that he was high when he took the mound that day. And after he pitched the perfect game he partied so hard the next four days that he didn’t make it out of the first inning of his next start.
We’re talking and talking, and the hours slip by, and somehow Wells and I both make the final table. I was short stacked in chips and finished tenth, busted by poker legend Phil Gordon. Wells busted in eighth place. They raised $100,000 for the charity.
Wells asked if I was done or did I want to meet up in a few hours for dinner? I could sense the hidden agenda behind the word done, meaning was I down to party like a big boy or was I going to puss out. I told him I needed to take a nap and shower and then I was up for anything. This was my chance to hang with a Yankee!
I woke up from my nap feeling almost human again. I met Wells for dinner, and he was a man with a plan. Dinner turned into drinks, drinks turned into the Spearmint Rhino strip club, Spearmint Rhino turned into the 40 Deuce burlesque club, 40 Deuce turned into us walking through the parking lot of the Hard Rock Hotel with triple vodkas for the road in hand on the way to a club called Body English, where I called my lady Pearl to let her know what was happening and that I’d be taking a later flight home in the afternoon, and then Wells grabbed the phone out of my hand to manically harangue her for ten minutes yelling about what a great time we were having and how crazy I was and to not worry because he was taking good care of me. Pearl was unfazed.
By this time I swear I could see actual fire in Wells’s eyes. If I hadn’t been with him all day, I would’ve been scared of the dude, and even then he was a little scary. I would never have wanted to face him in a game if he was pissed off.
We had a table at Body English with a bottle of vodka waiting for us, and Wells told me that Jason Giambi was on his way to meet us. Boom. I just doubled down on my Yankee night out. The three of us finished that bottle, and then that turned into us heading (sans Giambi) to another strip club, and all of this became me doing my best to keep up with this six-foot-five badass motherfucker for twenty hours.
We gave the sun the finger and then said our good-byes. I headed to my room, and this time I was conscious of the fact that I was going to sleep.
I made my flight home and called Wells that afternoon to thank him for the good time. I asked him if at any time during the evening he had thrown a fastball at my head. Can a hangover kill you? This one certainly tried to. No hair of the dog this time—I sweated it out for three days and didn’t drink for a month.
Thanks for letting me share.
Yep, it really happened. Reveling in Yankee glory with Jason Giambi and David Wells. Courtesy Scott Ian.
THE WALKING DEAD
My Life as a Zombie
“Okay, so Andrew is going to be fighting the walkers, and they are going to back him up to right in front of where you are laying under the garbage. As soon as he is within your reach I want you to lunge out with your hand and grab his leg. And I mean really grab it, as hard as you can, and don’t let go until he rips his leg out of your hand. Got it? Then you start crawling out, okay?”
I was trying hard to listen to director/executive producer/effects legend/metalhead/friend Greg Nicotero give me direction for my scene with Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Carl (Chandler Riggs). I really was trying to pay attention—the last thing I wanted to do was screw up and have the whole production waiting on Greg’s friend to get it right. My comprehension issue stemmed from it being very hard for me to get past the idea that I was actually IN The Walking Dead.
IN IT.
I was lying under a pile of garbage, made up as a walker, about to attack the main character of the show. This was truly the biggest who-the-hell-let-me-in-here-moment of my life.
Ever since I was a kid imitating Flyboy’s zombie walk from George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, I’ve spent countless hours thinking about getting to be
a zombie in a movie or TV show. Dream big, kids—it pays off! My path to zombie-dom was a long one. You don’t just get made up by an effects guy and bam, you’re a zombie. No, it takes a lot of hard work and disappointment, and ultimately it’s your love for the genre that will allow you to triumph and represent the undead.
The Walking Dead premiered on Halloween 2010, and it quickly tapped into a heretofore-unknown vein, the mainstream’s love of zombies. Who knew? I don’t need to tell the story of how a horror genre-specific show based on a comic book became the biggest show on television. All of that is well documented and written about by actual television writers. This story is about how a zombie-obsessed nerd became one.
Not long after The Walking Dead took a big bite out of our TV watching habits I got a call from my agent, asking when I’d be in New York City because there was a show being put together, some kind of “talk show about zombies,” and the producers wanted to see me. It just so happened I was in New York City, and I was intrigued—a talk show about zombies? I could do that all day. Shit, I already did that all day and no one was paying me for it. The next day I spoke to a producer who told me that the idea for the show was a Walking Dead postshow. They wanted a couple of guys sitting around talking about the episode they just watched. I thought he was kidding. “That’s a show?” I asked him. I wasn’t being a jerk about it; I was genuinely curious. He told me they had Chris Hardwick as the host, and my role would be zombie expert and field reporter. He also told me to not talk about this with anyone; it was top secret. I was trying to visualize the show in my brain, like a football postshow where the hosts discuss the game and give replays of the best plays. Like if Chris and I watched Dawn of the Dead and then broke it down afterward: “What a movie, Chris! Let’s see that helicopter blade-cut through the zombie’s head again in slow motion.” “Oh yeah, Scott! That was awesome. And how about that biker who just had to have his blood pressure taken right in the middle of the mall surrounded by zombies? What the hell was he thinking? Let’s take another look and see where he went wrong.” Was there really an audience for that?
I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation. An actual TV producer was telling me he wanted me to be a “zombie field reporter” on a pilot episode for a not-yet-titled Walking Dead postshow. That’s a dream job I couldn’t have conjured myself, even in my wildest fantasies. And I was already friends with Chris from way back in the nineties when I first saw him doing stand-up comedy in Los Angeles, so that made it even better. I told the producer I’d love to be on that show and when and where did they want me?
A couple of days later I was on the set of Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live show watching some stagehands redecorate Andy’s set with some horror accoutrement, zombifying it. Chris and I talked to the producers, who ran us through what we’d be doing. It couldn’t have been easier. We talked about the episode we had just watched and speculated on the characters’ fates. Chris introduced my field segment, and I talked about that (even though it hadn’t been shot yet), and we basically nerded out for thirty minutes. The producers said it went great, and we all went out for food and drinks. Easy peasy. Chris and I were all smiles as we talked about the idea of doing this show. It was really too good to be true.
My field reporter segment was going to be filmed the following week in Los Angeles, where Greg Nicotero was directing the first Walking Dead webisodes about the life of the “Bicycle Girl” zombie, the crawling torso zombie that Rick puts out of her misery in episode one, season one. The webisodes were going to be her backstory. My job was to report from the set, show how things are done, and get made up to be a walker. Yeah, I know, tough job. I wasn’t just excited about this gig; I was losing my mind. And I’d be working with effects master Greg Nicotero. Cofounder of the KNB EFX Group, the man is a fucking legend. It’d be easier to list the movies he hasn’t worked on. I knew Greg from the late 1980s; we had met through our mutual friend and horror nerd Kirk Hammett. We had one night out in particular that bonded us as lifelong friends in the early 1990s.
Kirk was staying at the Chateau Marmont in bungalow 3. That’s the bungalow where John Belushi died. Kirk, Greg, my friend Rich, and I got very drunk that night, and when we got back to the bungalow we decided we’d go on a hunt for Belushi’s ghost. Yep, we were that drunk. First we had to get back into the bungalow, as Kirk had lost his key and we were all too drunk to find our way back to the front desk through the dark labyrinth-like grounds of the Chateau. Rich fixed that problem by punching his hand through a pane of glass in the door and reaching in and opening it from the inside. I still don’t know how he didn’t cut the shit out of himself. Maybe Belushi’s spirit was watching over us and enjoying the mayhem. We started searching the bungalow for signs of I don’t even know what, anything that seemed to evoke Belushi. This was at least ten years after he had died, and the place had obviously been cleaned thousands of times, but in our compromised states we weren’t thinking clearly. Mostly we were all just giggling and stumbling around. Greg—at least I think it was Greg—found a door that led to a space underneath the bungalow. Jackpot! We found a flashlight (I have no idea where we found a flashlight), and all of us headed through the mystery door and down the steps into the basement. There was a dirt floor and some trash littered throughout the space. I found an old Budweiser can and that’s all we needed—it was 100 percent absolutely Belushi’s old beer can. We had proof! I was yelling, “It’s proof, it’s proof!” Proof of what, I have no idea now, but in that musty dark basement it meant everything in the moment. I was holding it up over my head triumphantly as we all ran back up the stairs yelling that we found it. Short-attention-span drinkers that we were, we were onto something else pretty much right after we found the beer can. We’d make shitty ghost hunters.
Back to the zombie postshow, I got to the set of the webisodes and was immediately sent to the makeup trailer to start the process of transforming me into a walker. I met Garrett Immel from KNB, and he explained how they had already made some of the pieces they would put on my face just using photos of me as reference, which would speed up the process a little bit. He wasn’t starting from scratch and had a good idea of what he wanted to do to my face, walker-wise. Usually they would use a life cast of the actor’s head to make the pieces, but I had not had one of those done (yet).
Even with some of the pieces already made, it still took about three and a half hours to glue all the pieces on and paint them. I loved every minute of it. I didn’t want Garrett to finish. I’ve read about actors who hate having to spend so much time getting made up for a role as well as actors who love it and totally go with it. And they’re getting paid millions to do it. I would show up and do this for free just because it was that much fun. Seriously, if I could get made up by KNB every day, I would.
Looking in the mirror and seeing a different face looking back at me was awesome. It felt liberating. Any nerves I had about having to act disappeared into my new face. My only issue was that my eyes were still my eyes, distracting from the brilliant job Garrett had done. I told him my eyes made my new walker face just look like my old face. He told me not to worry: once I had the contact lenses in that would all change. But I was worried about the contact lenses. I’d never had lenses in before this, and like most people, I’m sensitive to stuff getting put into my eyes. I met with the lens expert, and she calmly talked me down off the ledge. If she could put lenses in Johnny Depp’s eyes (she was his personal lens person), I guess I could trust her.
I sucked it up and did my best to relax. Unlike getting the makeup on my face, having the lenses put in was not enjoyable. It took multiple attempts on each eye, mainly because I was so nervous. I could barely deal with the eye drops she used to lubricate my eyeballs before the lenses were put in. Then she’s telling me to look up and off to one side, and I’m sweating and trying to breathe through it, but there’s a finger in my eye and the lens feels giant and weird, and then it’s in and she tells me to close my eye and move it around. I co
uld feel the lens—no pain, just the size of it. The lenses she made for me were almost opaque and are larger than the everyday contacts people wear. She told me to open my eye, and I could barely see. And that was just my left eye. I still had an eye to go. The second lens was a little easier, as I knew what it’d feel like. With both lenses in I really couldn’t see. I had a production assistant who was supposed to help me walk around set, but that made me feel lame, so I walked very slowly and deliberately. The lenses were helping me get into walker mode. Method acting! And they looked great. The discomfort had been worth it. I didn’t look like me to me anymore. Well, except for my beard. We talked about what to do about my beard while I was in the makeup chair. It’s very recognizable and wouldn’t take that keen of an eye to spot me. They didn’t have a piece made to go over my chin, so I said, “Why can’t the walker just be me? I was bitten protecting my family, and now there’s a Scott Ian zombie walking around.” We were probably really overthinking the whole thing, but hey, it’s all about the details. And now I had a backstory!
I shambled from the makeup trailer over to “walker boot camp,” where Greg introduced me to a walker named Joe Giles. Joe worked for KNB and was their number-one walker. He was one of the first people they tested to be a walker on the show and became their go-to guy for really intense, close-up walker action. Joe had that shit down. He asked me to show him my walk. I wasn’t nervous about this part; I had been practicing and visualizing this moment since I was eight years old! I did my walk, slow, jerky, letting extremities hang, leaning where weight would sag to one side, imagining my brain was disconnected from my body, that I had no control over my movements. I even loosened my left shoe so I could bend my foot inward at the ankle, creating the effect of my shoe meeting the ground sideways so it looked like I was walking on a broken ankle. I finished my walker runway walk and anxiously waited for Joe to weigh in. He smiled through his completely torn-off cheeks and said, “You got it. Excellent. I have no notes.” Triumph! Validation from a zombie expert! I had passed walker boot camp with decaying colors.
