Just a Geek

by Wil Wheaton

So Ryan ends up sitting on the couch, eating the totally burnt popcorn and all was right with the world.

  See what I mean about kids being cool? Nolan made the effort to do something for his brother and Ryan made the effort to appreciate it, even at his own peril.

  I wish adults were more like that.

  When I wrote about my family I felt like I was showing school pictures or vacation slides, and even though it was personal, it wasn’t about my struggles in Hollywood. I liked writing about my wife and stepkids, because I knew that I was a good husband and stepfather. I didn’t feel like I had anything to prove to anyone—a dramatic difference from the way I felt when I wrote about auditions and my (lack of) acting work.

  I was “blogging” almost every day, and even though Prove To Everyone spoke more often than I did, more and more people were stopping by to read what I wrote. Where’s My Burrito? was a fine place to start, but I was outgrowing Geocities. I was ready for a real website, so I bought the domain name www.wilwheaton.net and spent the next several weeks teaching myself how to build a website from scratch.

  I thought Where’s My Burrito? had a certain unpolished charm, but Prove To Everyone knew that if we were going to rejuvenate the acting career, we needed to have a more professional-looking presence on the Internet. The problem was, I couldn’t afford to hire a designer, and I was afraid that even if I did, I would end up with a “celebrity” site that would be just be a marketing tool.

  Prove To Everyone thought this was a fine idea, but I wanted to do something more than that. I compared the entries I wrote to the entries Prove To Everyone wrote, and saw a remarkable difference in the responses and the way I felt about them. I locked Prove To Everyone in a shed in my back yard and spent several weeks learning HTML and PHP. I bought a copy of Macromedia Dreamweaver, and surfed around the web for design ideas. I looked at “celebrity” sites, and “personal” sites. All the “celebrity” sites were exactly what I expected: marketing tools, controlled by publicists and professional image-meisters. But the “personal” sites felt like there was some dude sitting at a computer, putting up stuff that he thought was cool. The “personal” weblog sites gave me a window into the writer’s world, and I decided that I would do the same thing.

  * * *

  [2] This is detailed in Appendix A.

  [3] As you’ll see, having something to prove to people was a major motivating factor in my life right up until about a year ago.

  Chapter 2. WIL WHEATON dot NET

  I OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED WIL WHEATON DOT NET on August 23, 2001. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but that would have been River Phoenix’s 30th birthday.

  Word of its existence spread quickly around the Internet, and I was asked to give interviews to several popular websites, including Salon, Wire Slashdot and BBspot. Prove To Everyone did most of the talking, but I managed to get a few words in myself. I began to get e-mails from people I . . . uh . . . admired, like Asia Carrera. Friends who I hadn’t talked to in years heard about it around the water cooler, or in the chatroom, or via the prison grapevine, and got back in touch.

  Here is an early review of WWdN from Chris Pirillo’s Lockergnome, a very popular and respected technology and Internet culture newsletter:

  Wil Wheaton

  http://www.wilwheaton.net/

  {Stand by him} He was the scrawny writer in Stand By Me, and then he became Wesley Crusher of the Starship Enterprise. If you mention the name “Wil Wheaton” to anyone in my generation, they’ll know exactly who you’re talking about. But what has this actor been up to lately? You can find out at his official Website—written, designed and maintained by Wil (himself ). And ya wanna know what makes it cool? He isn’t afraid to kick back and let his hair down. He’s actually a pretty funny guy. Just goes to show you that who you see on screen isn’t always who that person is in real life. Dude, he always seemed so mellow . . . walking along those railroad tracks.

  Chris Pirillo was one of the first people to “get” that I was just a geek, and when I saw myself reviewed favorably by him, I was euphoric. Yahoo’s Net Buzz for August 31, 2001 mentioned “The triumphant return of Wil Wheaton!” That made me and Prove To Everyone happy.

  The interviews created a lot of buzz around the Internet, and thousands of people came to my site to see what the big deal was. Ironically, many people praised the honesty and humor, and admired the insights into my personal life.

  Unfortunately, the reaction wasn’t entirely positive. Several people viciously attacked me for all sorts of reasons, mostly related to my work on Star Trek. Sentiments like, “You ruined Star Trek, and your blog is stupid! Shut up, Wesley!” were very popular. Many people e-mailed me, in great detail, about what a washed-up, has-been loser I was.

  These personal attacks hurt. A lot. They hurt so much, I almost abandoned the website before it really got going. In retrospect, I should have ignored them, but it’s hard to drink in praise and discard criticism. The opinions of anonymous strangers shouldn’t have mattered to me, but their comments struck at the heart of my own insecurities: my deep-seated fears that leaving Star Trek had been a huge mistake and that I’d never be able to leave Wesley behind.

  “Why am I doing this?” I wondered one morning while I read the hate mail.

  “Because we’re going to show them all,” Prove To Everyone said. “We’re going to prove to everyone that you didn’t make a mistake by quittingStar Trek! You’re going to get that part in Roger’s movie, then you’re going to get more parts in other movies! Producers will read your site and see how popular you are. This time next year, we’ll be drinking Pina Coladas in Cancun.”

  “I don’t think I want to do this,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I put up with enough personal attacks when I was on Star Trek.”

  “Here, let me write for a while,” Prove To Everyone said.

  24 AUGUST 2001

  Audition Update

  If you’ve read the old weblog, you may remember an entry I made about some auditions. Here is the status of those auditions:

  The Young Person’s Guide To Being A Rockstar: I was “in the mix,” which is Hollywoodspeak for “we’re considering you until someone bigger comes along.” Apparently, someone bigger came along.

  Waiting . . .: I had the audition for this last week and the casting director told me that the director has someone in mind, but she thought I did such a great job, she was going to send the director my tape and try to change his mind.

  Since it’s been a week, I guess he was pretty committed. However, this is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever read. Ever. I really hope the guy they cast gets gangrene (and recovers, of course), so that they call me and put me in it.

  Rules of Attraction: This is my friend Roger Avary’s movie, based on Brett Easton Ellis’ novel. Roger and I have been friends since I worked on Mr. Stitch with him. We talked about three weeks ago and Roger offered me the COOLEST ROLE EVER in the film, “A Junkie Named Marc.”

  So Tuesday, I went in to read the part. I guess the producers of the film are making everyone read (or, more likely, Roger wanted to be sure that I didn’t suck and is too nice a guy to say that to me).

  Anyway, I went in a read and I still haven’t heard anything back . . . so . . . I dunno . . . guess I shouldn’t be shopping for that PS2 just yet.

  I Just got off the phone with my agent, who called while I was making this entry. The casting director for Rules Of Attraction called this morning and told us that “It’s between Wil and another guy.”

  What the fuck? I wonder how I went from, “I want you in my movie” to “It’s between you and another guy.”

  Wow, the Universe sure does like balance, doesn’t it?

  Talk about understatement. I felt betrayed by my friend, and I was despondent, but Prove To Everyone wouldn’t let me reveal just how unhappy I was.

  “If you let them see how upset you are,” he counseled, “you’re just going to prove all those people right who are attacking you. You just keep showing the
world that the kid who once had it all still does, and that will shut them up.”

  “I don’t know if that’s the best idea. All these people think they’re getting this inside look at my life, and we’re not exactly telling them the truth.”

  “Do you want to be a famous actor again or not?” he hissed.

  “I just want to be happy again,” I said. “I can’t keep lying like this.”

  I took the keyboard out of his hands, and I gave the Internet a look inside my mind.

  25 AUGUST, 2001

  A look inside my mind

  I just got this e-mail:

  “You’re funny, you’re smart, you have experiences that are go from ordinary to out-of and back and again and yet . . .

  . . . most of what you talk about is your friggin’ website!

  Talk about your day, what you ate for breakfast, rant and rave. But pretty please, make a separate section for the site updates, HTML and greymatter coups and the linking excitement. All of that is certainly worth keeping track of, but it doesn’t communicate much about you.”

  So, I think that’s a point well taken . . . here’s some insight into my mind, because you asked for it:

  I am fighting tears today, with each passing second. Why? Because the defining characteristic of my work as an actor the past few years has been, “It came down to you and another guy and they went the other way.” Translated, that means, “You didn’t get the job.” If I had a dollar for every time that’s happened in the past two years, I could retire. It always seems to come down to me and one other guy, usually some flavor of the month, and they always hire the other guy. And you know what I hate? I always hear, “You are the best actor we’ve seen” or something similar . . . yet I always seem to lose to the guy with the perfect hair and the Kirk Douglas jaw. Let this be a lesson to you aspiring actors out there: being the best actor is NEVER enough.

  I took some classes a long time ago and the teacher always admonished us to not let our jobs become our life—because when we don’t work, and there are times when we won’t, we’ll freak out, because we don’t know what to do with ourselves. It’s advice I was unable to heed.

  Here’s something you may not know about me: I love acting. I love working and creating, more than anything. I love it so much, I’m willing to suffer the extended periods of unemployment and the constant rejection, as well as the constant attacks from people who really should either try this themselves or shut the fuck up.

  Sorry, I digress. Back to point: since yesterday, when I got the “It’s you or another guy” phone call, I’ve been sliding deeper and deeper into depression, because if I can’t get hired by MY FUCKING FRIEND, who practically promised me the part, I don’t know what to do. I’m sorry, but I am getting so sick and tired of having a project dangled in front of me for weeks and then having it yanked out from under me at the last second. It hurts. It hurts a LOT and I don’t know if you can understand the depth of the hurt, unless you’re an artist or some sort, because I think that type of rejection is really a personal one, regardless of what they say.

  Put in typical, irreverent “Wilspeak,” it’s like this: you get hooked up with the hottest girl (or guy, if that’s your thing), EVER. You’re all naked and ready to go. She’s dancing around, telling you all the crazy shit she’s gonna do to you and how she’s calling her sorority sisters over later, so you’d better stay ready. She’s just about to jump you and she tells you to close your eyes and get ready. The next thing you hear is the slamming of the door and the squealing of the tires as she drives away.

  (You know what I’m thinking right now? Those morons who have some primal need to hate me are going to have a field day with this one and I almost deleted it. Well, fuck them. You wanted to know what goes on in my head and I want to share . . . I think I’ll feel better when I’m done with this. I hope.)

  So I feel like I was punched in the stomach. I feel hurt. This movie is going to be AMAZING. It is going to do AMAZING THINGS for the people who are in it, because Roger is an AMAZING writer and director. And I am this close to having a complete rebirth in my career and it will only take one part to do that.

  This movie would do that for me. Roger asked me to play a junkie in this movie . . . if that doesn’t shatter the image people seem to have of me and gets people to stop seeing me as 12 years old or in outer space, I don’t know what will.

  There was a movie that I recently did, which may have helped the career. The script was great, the cast was great, but the director was the biggest flaming asshole I’ve ever worked with in my life. As a matter of fact, calling him a director isn’t right. He couldn’t direct traffic on a one-way street, and I have absolutely zero confidence in his ability to properly edit this film.

  And if that wasn’t bad enough, I worked on the film for 3 weeks, and earned less than 500 dollars, because the producers promised me a role in a film that has never materialized. These producers have jerked me around for 4 months with empty promises of a project that will most likely never happen now. Thank Bob I have sketch comedy shows and late-night comedy talk shows to perform in, or I’d go crazy.

  There’s a chance that Roger will still cast me and this whole entry and the awful way I’ve been feeling will be for nothing and I’ll look back at this and laugh and I can get back to the normal me, who is too busy making jokes to feel sad.

  But you wanted to know how I was feeling and what was going on in my mind . . . well, there it is.

  (And I will talk about my website, because I worked hard on it and I knew nothing about HTML or CSS or ANYTHING six weeks ago when I started it, so I’m proud of it, such as it is.)

  The business of acting puts great importance on the appearance of success, even if the reality is very different. Actors spend thousands of dollars a month on publicists and image doctors to ensure that they look good to the public. Prove To Everyone knew that was risky to be so bold and honest with my pain and frustration, but those words came straight from my heart, and he didn’t get a chance to edit them before I posted.

  The reaction to my entry was amazing. I was flooded with e-mails and comments from people all over the world who had experienced the same frustrations—the same unfairness—in their jobs. In fact, a theme emerged: I wasn’t alone in my struggles, and many people took comfort in knowing that they were not alone either.

  I felt validated, and the clouds of depression began to lift. I had made myself vulnerable to the world and the world hadn’t kicked me in the nuts. I was certain that this revelation of my inner demons would humanize me in the eyes of my critics.

  “See?” I told Prove To Everyone, “Now they know that I’m just a regular guy, trying to make it to the end of the day the same way they are!”

  It turned out that I was wrong. The very real honesty and vulnerability I had shown just fed their cruelty.

  26 AUGUST, 2001

  My Velouria

  First, I have been overwhelmed with the support, the kindness and the sheer volume of comments and e-mails regarding my last entry.

  I have to say “Thank you” to everyone. It’s simply amazing, how many different people, separated by distance, culture, career and whatever, are feeling the same things I’m feeling. People said things to me that I’ve thought at one time or another and forgotten . . . about “risk” and about “giving up.” I thank you, all of you, from the bottom of my heart, for opening yourselves to me and sharing with me your advice and experiences. I’d like to post them all in the future, and share your wisdom with the masses.

  Mixed in among the e-mails was one from my mom. My mom told me that she’d read my weblog and that she was “proud to have given birth to a person like me.” She told me that she could feel my hurt and that I should “be sure to cry all the tears, because the joy is waiting in the last tear.”

  So that’s what I did. I went into my bedroom, sat on my bed and this 29-year-old man sobbed like an 8-year-old child. Big sobs. The kind that hurt your throat. The kind that shake your
body and soak your face with tears. I cried so long and so hard, I don’t even know what I cried about. I cried for the hurt of losing the job and for the hurt of being attacked by idiots who don’t even know me. I cried for all the times I picked on my little brother when we were kids and all the times I’ve sat here at my computer and let my wife go to bed alone while I worked on this site. I cried for every bad choice I’ve ever made, but mostly, I cried for myself. I cried and when I thought I was done, I cried some more. Then, just as quickly as it started, it stopped. And I felt better.

  Then I made the enormous mistake of checking my logs, so I could see where people are coming from and thank them for linking to me, and I found that some guy uses my site as “hell.” Thanks, fucker. Some dude at metafilter says “I’m too good” to join them. Yeah, I can’t wait to get into that shit. Please, can I join your little club, so you can hold me up to further vilification, without ever getting to know me? Can I PLEASE spend even LESS time with my family, sitting here at this computer, so I can try to change the minds of people who are going to judge me no matter what, without EVER walking an inch in my shoes?

  So you didn’t like my fucking character on a fucking TV show I haven’t even worked on in 10. Fucking. Years. Thank you for blaming ME for the writing of a fictional character, on a fictional TV show. That makes complete sense, considering all the input the writers would take from a 15-year-old kid. Have you ever bothered to ask? Did it ever occur to you that I just said the lines I was given? I’m sorry Wesley messed up your precious television show.

  Fortunately, there were whole seasons without me after I quit. Watch them and feel better. But don’t take it out on me. I’m just an actor, doing the best job he could with what he was given. So I worked on a TV show. So I have made a living as an actor. Big deal. I’m no better than anyone else and I have never said I was, or thought I was. I am just a geek, looking for validation from his fellow geeks.