We are all actually up for the move and B and I could use a bit of a getaway right now. Traveling and reading were always my prime educators anyway, so I get the tickets, buy our boys some books, and away we go. So what am I thinking at this point? Why am I so ready to jump on board this show and go halfway around the world to film it? Mr. D would fucking well like to know!! He loves the house we’re living in now. It looks like the place we sold, only it has smaller windows and more tree growth around it so it’s dark and gloomy in here. Sunbeams don’t reach very far inside this “house of shadows,” and my Darkness likes it that way because it tends to keep me down longer. “Why are we moving?” he asks, but I know it’s a rhetorical question.
I’m still disillusioned and lost with my music. My focus is now on making money (never a good place for me to operate from), and acting has always been my back-pocket go-to gig when I’m feeling financially challenged. I love music and my muse so much when I’m writing and playing that it would feel like I was whoring her out if I let money rule me there. I never have and I never will. I am, however, okay with whoring out what acting talent I possess. I have always been okay with that (see: the GH years). I’m worried about my family’s security now that my finances are so precarious. And I need a friggin’ break. We all do. The prospect of living abroad is actually pretty exciting, and my family is eager for the journey. Mr. D says he’s staying in LA, and that is so okay with me that I offer him the use of one of our cars, the surly bastard.
And so I inch toward building my second fortune. I figure if I could do it once, then a second time should be easy. I also get some well-timed advice from one of the richest guys I know. He says to me, “Always sign your own checks, and always deposit your own checks.” I do that to this day. And I’ve learned a lesson: no one cares about your money like you do.
The scripts to High Tide (as it is now called) are fairly good for the first season of the show. They’re funny, and the action zooms along from car chases, to houses being blown sky-high, to bedding bodacious babes, to kicking bad-guy butt. George Segal plays our boss but refuses to learn his lines, insisting on cue cards instead, which is a bit distracting when you’re in a scene with him and he keeps searching madly off camera for his next line. The production values aren’t great and it’s pretty poorly shot, as most of the guys responsible for The Lord of the Rings are still in grade school or pooping in their diapers at this point.
The crew we use are a bunch of misfits and loonies from around New Zealand. The focus puller, who looks like he’s never had a bath in his life, picks boogers all day long and drops them onto the director’s unsuspecting bald head. The lighting guy is a cross-dresser who often shows up on set in full drag and makeup. Then there’s the uptight, sexually repressed sound man who shouts “No good for sound” after every take and makes us have to shoot the whole fucking scene again. And if we ask the crew for fifteen minutes extra at the end of the day to finish shooting the scene we’re right in the middle of, they refuse on the grounds that the pubs will be closing in an hour.
The director is an East End cockney who lucked out and married a baroness and now insists we all call him “the baron.” He makes the sweet New Zealand production company jump through hoops to get him a bloody Rolls-Royce so he can tool around on weekends in style. He’s a hilarious storyteller, though, and some of his tales are even true. He was Cary Grant’s wingman for a while and was on hand to perform services such as standing lookout while Cary banged Sophia Loren behind a sand dune on some movie set. And then there’s the beautiful Czechoslovakian girl the producers cast as a beach babe in every third episode because she’s so amazing-looking but whose husband keeps turning up on the set to yell at her and tell her to put her clothes back on and come home.
I beat what I’ve always considered to be a healthy fear of man-eating sharks long enough to try surfing at Piha, one of the primo surf locations on the globe. The New Zealander who happens to be the current world surfing champion pushes my board into the waves trying to teach me how to ride the thing. It’s kind of the “surf” equivalent of having Andre Agassi lob tennis balls to you so you can practice your crappy forehand.
But the best part of the trip is that Barbara, the boys, and I are together as a family. And I don’t cheat once! Fucking whoopee! It’s kind of pathetic that I feel like I should get a medal. You mean I’m supposed to act like a human being with a conscience? It’s expected? A change is as good as a rest, and B and I are feeling stronger and more connected now that we’re in a new, “clean-slate” location and away from anything that reminds us of the shit we’ve just been through. She is the mom and caregiver and I am the mammoth-slaying breadwinner. It’s very clear-cut, and right now simplicity is good. Our boys settle into school pretty well, and unlike me as a kid in England, where I was the Dork of the Century, my sons are from the U.S. of freakin’ A. and are hipper than next week’s haircut.
We have a beautiful home right on the beach outside Auckland with the Fuji-shaped island of Rangitoto as our morning view and the constant waves of the Pacific beating at the edge of our front lawn. It doesn’t suck. To my dismay though, Mr. Darkness has changed his mind and hitched a ride to this fair island. He’s missed me. And by the way, he totaled the car I lent him. Occasionally he’ll chime in as I’m sitting in the makeup chair getting ready for a day’s shoot. “You’re looking a little tired there, pal. You can’t do those late nights like you used to when you were young, huh?” But I’m working twelve to fourteen hours a day on this show and I don’t have time for him. The long arm of the Screen Actors Guild doesn’t reach as far as New Zealand, and we are not getting union breaks. But we are excited for the show and up to the task.
Yannick Bisson, my Canadian co-star, is a really decent actor with a wicked sense of humor. He has two young daughters around the same age as our two boys. We all think it’s pretty safe here in good old New Zealand, where there are no guns, sheep shearing is big news, and crime is infinitesimal compared to the States. That’s why it comes as a bit of a shock when my youngest son Joshua—then four years old—is abducted while walking along the beach with Barbara and Liam. I’m running the opposite way down the same beach with my headphones on when a very out-of-breath Liam stops me (he’s been chasing me for five minutes) and says some guy has taken Josh.
The world does one of those camera moves where I stay in place and the background zooms out surrealistically. I take off at full speed after my precious son. For ten minutes I live every parent’s nightmare. I reach Barbara, who is screaming and pointing along the beach and rocks. I run on. This isn’t happening. You only read about this stuff; you never actually go through it. I have only one thought: God, let him be okay. I ask the few people along the way if they’ve seen this guy with my son. They all point in one direction—farther down the beach and farther still away from me. I keep running. My wife has called the police from one of the nearby houses on the beach, and I see a chopper in the sky already, circling.
I turn a corner running at full speed and almost trip over Josh. He’s casually making his way back to where he’d last seen his mom and brother. I scoop him up in disbelief and kiss his eyes, nose, and ears (we’ve always loved his ears). I ask if the guy hurt him, and he says no. We meet up with Liam, who’s taken it upon himself to go after his little brother. The three of us head back to their mom. He is our beautiful boy again, and not some tragic memory we can never erase. A cop brings a stuffed toy lion around to our house and gives it to Josh. Josh calls the lion Hairy. He calls the guy that grabbed him “a dickweed.” I would have to agree with that assessment.
Apart from the odd abduction, the trip to New Zealand is energizing and healing. The country is spectacular, life is simple, work is plentiful, the weather is beautiful, and the people are caring and soulful (except for the fucker who tried to steal our kid). What’s not to like? We spend two weeks filming on an island called Pakatoa and every evening, after the shooting ends, I grab one of the dirt bikes the stunt
guys are using and put little Josh on it, and we ride to the top of the island to watch the sun set over the Pacific. We are all sad to leave New Zealand when shooting is completed. We know that the second season won’t be filmed here because the producers are already talking about San Diego.
The upside of shooting in San Diego is that it means we return to Malibu, which still feels like home. They replace Oscar-nominated George Segal with a “Playmate of the Year” who can’t act, but whose boobs are bigger than George’s. I know by this move that High Tide isn’t long for this world. It becomes a “babe of the week” show with actors like Lucy Lawless and Denise Richards doing their best with the dialog from the ever-worsening scripts. The producers of High Tide are great at selling a show, but they suck pretty hard at quality control. We end up with a fairly successful show in South America and certain parts of Europe, but one that is relegated to the wee hours of American TV, where the only people who see it are lonely insomniacs and the occasional bored night watchman. I want out. Unfortunately they have sold one more season and I am contracted to it.
Then pale blue eyes peer at us through the fence of a dog adoption center one fine morning and my animal spirit comes home. Barbara names him Scooby and I name him Gomer. I tell everyone that he’s so awesome we had to name him twice. He is the coolest. Friends tell us he reminds them of Ronnie. Not in looks, because he is a brindle pit bull mix with eyes the color of Paul Newman’s, but in his vibe and his connection to me. We film the final season of High Tide in Ventura, so at least the locations are getting closer to home. And Gomer accompanies me everywhere I go. I think he especially likes the bikini-clad girls, who ask if they can walk him on the beach during lunch breaks. The High Tide scripts get worse. Barbara and I are renting a house in Malibu and flying to different parts of the country to see if there’s anywhere else we would prefer to live.
When we walk out one morning and see a “For Sale” sign in front of the very house in which we are currently living, Malibu wins by default and we decide to buy the house we’ve been renting. It’s a modest three-bedroom family home set in a spectacular canyon in a family section of Malibu, and when we make an offer on it, our landlord—an ex-FBI agent who drives a Rolls-Royce and also owns a yacht (?)—says that he thought we were looking for a mansion! He didn’t even consider we might want to buy this place. But we do. We remodel. And our kids beg us never to leave it. So we don’t. It’s a soulful home and we know it. There’s something that resembles a “good spirit” around this house. It’s already been the backdrop for some healing for me, and the size of the place allows for room to breathe, but visitors don’t get lost and we don’t need an intercom to find each other.
I’m trying to write again now that High Tide is on its last legs and my focus is shifting, but I can’t seem to finish a single song. I’ve been working full-time as an actor over the last few years, but I’m still a musician at heart. I’m just having trouble finding my way back to it. Halfway through every song I’m writing, the Darkness confirms what I fear: each song is shit. I have never been so blocked. Since writing songs is at the core of my identity and in recent years has been the wellspring for what little self-worth I have, this inability to compose even one song erases most of the gains made in New Zealand. Plus, now that we’re home I’m back on the “playing field” and starting to feel some of the old pressures. So I reach for the phone to call Robert Stein, my confessor. But my friend and keeper of all my secrets has died of cancer and taken everything I ever confided in him to his great and well-earned rest.
I am desperate for help and don’t know where to turn now that Stein is gone. I read a book about a new pill. It’s called Prozac. I go to a psychotherapist and he says I am a classic candidate for it—and that’ll be $350 please, thanks so much, shut the door on your way out. He says I have what he calls “clinical depression” and prescribes twenty milligrams. My Darkness, of course, has a word or two to say about this doctor’s diagnosis. “You think a fucking pill is going to keep me away forever? Not a chance, Rickyboy. Oh, as a side effect of Prozac your dick may not work. Yeah, that oughta keep your wife happy.” I’m not at all sure what I’m expecting to feel on this stuff, but I am a little concerned that it’ll turn me into some kind of permanently high pill-popping happy freak. What I do feel is that, for a while, it puts Mr. D in a closet and shuts the door so I can finally finish a song. Prozac blows the black cloud away, and I focus on the things I can do something about, rather than the things I can’t. The drug allows me to still have my emotions, though; it hasn’t turned me into a non-feeling automaton and it doesn’t blow away all the bad stuff.
Now that we’re home owners in Malibu once again, I start getting recurrent feelings of shame and inadequacy about losing our first house in such a typical, rock-star new-money, clueless-about-what’s-really-going-on kind of way. But I’m also feeling strong enough to try to do something about overcoming this self-flagellating regret, powered either by my strengthening spiritual path or the vitamin P I’m dosing myself with—or maybe a combination of both. So I get in my car and take a drive by our old house to see what happens. I’ve always been big on confronting a problem head-on, and I think this is what I’m aiming at with the drive-by.
I enter through the old canyon gate, past familiar streets we used to walk with Liam when he was a baby. I pass our once-upon-a-time house. So many memories here—so much pain still associated with it that I can’t seem to get past, no matter how I try or how much better everything else seems to be. This is where I failed as a man, and my family suffered for that. I think about how my dad never put us, his family, in such a position: moving because of financial troubles. I am ashamed again. This house was also the material proof that I had made it. I could look at it every day and see the validation of all my struggles and my persistence. Here it was, in one big three-dimensional representation. For all the world to see. It was the only concrete illustration of fame that mattered to me. Not all that shit I listed for myself around the swimming pool that morning: the platinum albums, awards, financial gains, sold-out tours.
Revisiting the scene of the crime doesn’t help. I turn the car around and head back up the road to the highway, disappointed that I still feel such overwhelming pain. I don’t know what I thought I’d find in here, but it certainly doesn’t resemble any kind of closure. All I feel is a deep sense of loss and failure as I drive away.
I am half a mile from where the old street empties out onto Pacific Coast Highway when suddenly a huge hawk, with a three-and-a-half-foot wingspan, swoops down in front of my car and, staying ahead of me by about ten feet—neither changing direction up, down, or sideways—guides me out of the neighborhood for the final two hundred yards. Near the mouth of the street, he veers to the left and is gone. My heart is hammering in my chest and I have to pull the car over to the side of the road. Did that just actually happen? I sit there for minutes rerunning it in my mind. I think back on the hawk that came to me when Ronnie died, caught in the flue of a fireplace, and know that this was no coincidence. When I start the car up and hit the highway, something in me has been healed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A BETTER DESTINATION
IN THE STUDIO AND ON THE ROAD
The ’90s
This recent visitation by the hawk has left me with the renewed understanding that there is more to our existence than I can possibly perceive through my five senses. There’s something out there in the hard, bright cosmos that’s bigger than just we humans, who live, breed, ponder, and die on this little ball floating in space (the Rock of Life). Our world has been witness to some amazing stuff, not all of it powered by us hominids. And this latest memo from the hawk is all the confirmation I need. I’ve drifted in and out of this conviction for most of my life, but moments like this make me wonder why I ever doubt at all. And I think the signs all started when the hangman’s knot came unraveled that morning in the shed. I’ve always felt that I was singular, unique, destined for something special—
as we all are. It’s just that at times, some of us (yes, that would include me) gravitate more toward fear than faith, and fear and faith cannot occupy the same space at the same time. But it’s in our power to choose. So if it’s a choice between believing and not believing, then I’d rather believe. And that’s my decision at this point in my life—to believe.
Prior to this, I have intelligently (by my own reckoning) looked at the facts, rationally thought them through, and come to the conclusion that God cannot exist. He just doesn’t stand up to reason. Which makes sense, because having faith is, by its nature, an irrational act. But now I’m done with being the discerning snob who’s superior to the ignorant, faithful masses because he’s figured it out. So it’s with open arms that I decide to believe again: I embrace God and accept every little miraculous sign I’ve been fortunate enough to witness. From here on out, my heart and mind will be open to all the very real possibilities. I feel like a dry and empty lake bed as the first drops of a monsoon rain hit its baked, cracked surface. I think this is what Stein was helping to push me toward. My faith and the Prozac seem to be keeping Mr. D at bay most of the time, and I’m curious to find out if I can do it on my own. But I’m not ready to get off the “vitamin P diet” just yet.
Late, Late at Night Page 27
