Just a Geek

by Wil Wheaton

  Late on a Wednesday night. Long hours. Most of the cast has been released, because they’ve got a long day tomorrow.

  It’s like I never left, and I love it.

  There’s much, much more, but I have to go back to the studio in a couple hours, and I’ve got other work to do, so I’ll write more tomorrow.

  I never did write more, tomorrow or ever. Actually, if I can steal from Stand By Me and paraphrase just a little bit, I haven’t written about it at all until just now. Thank you for your indulgence.

  I fell into bed shortly after that, and 10 hours later, I was back on the set.

  The day is a blurred composite of images, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t get my brain to separate them into individual memories. All I can clearly recall is how I spent the day spiraling around the Yin and Yang of joy and sorrow, until the director called cut on the final take.

  “Thank you, everyone!” the First AD called out. “That is a company wrap for today, and picture wrap for Wil Wheaton!”

  There was some polite applause from the crew, who really didn’t know me, and some very genuine applause from Patrick and Gates, the only cast members who were still on the stage. They walked over, and embraced me. We knew that this was the real Journey’s End for me and Wesley Crusher, but we didn’t talk about it.

  This is all about family, and I’m a big part of this family.

  “I’m going to walk back,” Patrick said to me. “Would you like to walk together?”

  “I’d like that a lot,” I said.

  It was late, but not nearly as late as it had been the night before, and it was very cold as we walked through the “New York Street” area of the back lot.

  “Remember when they built this for Bronx Zoo?” I said. “I used to come over here and pretend it was real.”

  Patrick slowed, then stopped. A huge arc light towered over us. Apple boxes sat on the curb, cables ran into the façade of a deli, and someone had left a styrofoam cup half filled with coffee on the window ledge.

  “When I first came here to audition for Next Generation,” he said, “I didn’t know if I’d ever get a chance to be on a back lot again, so I left the casting office and spent nearly an hour’s time walking round here.”

  He began to walk again.

  “That’s so weird,” I said. “I mean . . . here you are, 15 years later.”

  He smiled. “I know. I remember worrying that the security department would catch me, and I’d end up in a great deal of trouble!”

  We laughed together.

  “I’ve lost count of the number of times I had run ins with the security department,” I said. “Most of them involved dangerously speeding around the lot in a ‘borrowed’ golf cart or playing music too loudly in my dressing room.

  “I wish I’d been able to hang out with you guys when we were doing this every day,” I said.

  “Oh, my dear, you missed out on a great deal of fun!” his voice became excited. “The late Friday nights when we’d close down Nicodell’s[9] were great!”

  “Can I tell you something?” I said.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “I really blew it when I was here before. I should have treasured the experience that I had working with you guys, and I didn’t. I’m really sorry that I was such a dick when I was a teenager.”

  He stopped again, and put his hand on my shoulder. “Wil, my dear, you were a teenager. We all understood.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. And when we worked together, I always related to you as an actor, first, and you were a lovely actor. You know, I wasn’t thrilled about working with a child, but working with you was a great pleasure.”

  What do you say to that? How do you respond, when it comes from the man who was, for all intents and purposes, a father figure, mentor, role model, and hero? If you’re me, you say, “I’m so sad that this is over for me.”

  “So am I,” he said. We began to walk again. As we turned the corner and neared Stages 8 and 9, I saw someone come out of the stage.

  “Hey! That’s Brad Yacobian!” I said.

  “It is!” Patrick said. “Hello! Brad!”

  Brad started as a First AD on Next Generation and has worked on all the incarnations of Star Trek since then. He was working as the coproducer and unit production manager on Enterprise.

  “Hey you guys,” he said. “Are you just wrapping?”

  “Oh yes. It’s Thursday, you know.” Patrick said. Brad smiled a knowing smile, and I laughed. See, production usually starts out with early calls on Monday, but the Screen Actor’s Guild requires a 12-hour break for the actors between their release and the next day’s call time. So if we start at 8 but don’t wrap until 10, we won’t start until 10 the next day, and so on. This doesn’t happen very often, because it’s very expensive for the studios. If a show doesn’t start until the afternoon on Thursday, it usually means that the director is incompetent, the schedule is very complicated, or a little of both.

  “Director or schedule?” Brad said.

  “Schedule,” Patrick said. He pronounced it with a soft “ch” sound, like “shelf.” I suppressed a giggle.

  “Who’s working tonight?” I asked, hoping the answer would be “Jolene Blalock, and she wants to see you without your pants in her trailer right now.”

  Brad looked at his call sheet. “Let’s see . . . Scott is still here—”

  “Is he in his trailer?” Patrick asked.

  “I think so. You want to say hello?” Brad said.

  Oh my god. I’m going to stand with Patrick while he talks to Scott Bakula!

  “I’d like to, yes.”

  Brad walked us to Scott’s trailer. It was in the same place where Patrick’s trailer was so many years ago.

  That’s a little weird.

  He rapped twice on the door, and from behind it, a muffled voice emerged. “Yeah?”

  “Scott, it’s Brad. I have someone here who wants to say hello.”

  I thought back to all the times I heard this when I was on the other side of that door, and felt a little uncomfortable. The door opened, and there was Scott Bakula, in that cool Enterprise jumpsuit.

  “Hey, Patrick! How are you?” he said.

  Oh . . . they know each other. Interesting.

  “I’m well,” he said. “Scott, this is Wil Wheaton, he plays Wesley Crusher.”

  Plays Wesley, not played Wesley. That was cool.

  He extended his hand and I shook it.

  “It’s really nice to meet you,” I said. “How are you guys doing?”

  “It’s Thursday night,” he said with a tired grin.

  “Some things never change, I guess, " I said.

  We all laughed.

  “Listen, Scott,” Patrick said. “I’ve been on and off the lot for several weeks now, and I should have come over much sooner to say hello to you.”

  “Thank you,” Scott said. “I’ve seen you pass by several times, but I’ve always been too busy to say hello myself.”

  They talked for several minutes about the things that you talk about, I guess, when you’re the captain of the Enterprise. I remember Patrick said, “You’re doing a wonderful job,” and I realized that he was having the conversation with Scott that Shatner should have had with him in 1987. He was passing the torch to—well, to the next generation.

  I looked at Brad, and before either one of us could say anything, his walkie said, “We’re ready for First Team on the bridge.” How many times had I stood in this exact spot and heard those exact words over the years?

  “Gotta go to work,” he said. “I’m so glad you stopped by. I’ll come over and visit you . . . are you on 16?”

  “Shortly,” Patrick said. “We’re on 29 until tomorrow, then location.”

  Scott shook my hand. “It was nice to meet you.”

  “You too.”

  “Have a good night, you guys,” Brad said, as they walked into the stage. “I have Scott, and we’re walking . . .”

  I turned to
Patrick. “That was very cool, man.”

  Patrick just nodded.

  We arrived back at the dressing rooms. My trailer was farther away than his, so I said, “I guess this is goodbye.”

  “Not goodbye,” he said. “Farewell.”

  We embraced. “Have a wonderful shoot. If I’m on the lot, I’ll be sure to stop by.”

  “Please do.” He walked into his trailer.

  An assistant director walked over to me. “Michael Westmore is in the makeup trailer, if you’d like to have him take your sideburns off.”

  “Okay,” I said, “Thank you.”

  Jonathan and LeVar were in the trailer, having their makeup removed, when I walked in. I took a seat in the chair between them and waited.

  “You back with us tomorrow, W?” Jonathan said.

  I shook my head. “Nope. This is it.”

  “You were only here for two days?” LeVar said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “It feels like it should be longer,” Jonathan said. “Much longer.”

  The prodigal son had come home.

  Months later, I heard that Jonathan had directed a movie that my stepkids really wanted to see, called Clockstoppers. I had no problem calling his office and asking for some passes to see the film.

  21 FEBRUARY 2002

  Still Cool

  Okay. It’s 1988 and a little show called Star Trek: The Next Generation is in its second season. It’s struggling a little bit, experiencing the typical sophomore slump of any new series and a writer’s strike is not helping very much.

  We are all working late one night, probably shooting blue screen on the bridge, so we all wrap at the same time (a rarity). I excitedly walk to the parking garage with Jonathan Frakes, who I am already looking up to.

  We’re walking back to our cars and we’re talking about something, I can’t quite remember what, but I really feel like Jonathan is treating me as an equal. He’s not treating me like I’m a kid. It really makes me feel good and I say to him, “You know, Jonathan, I can tell, just from talking to you, that when you were younger? You used to be cool.”

  He laughs and I think to myself that I’ve cemented my position with him as cool contemporary, rather than lame-ass kid.

  Then he says, “What do you mean, used to be?!”

  I realized what I’d said, and how it didn’t match up with what was in my head, which was, "Gee, man. You are so cool now, as an adult, I think that you were a really cool guy who I would have liked to have hung out with when you were my age.”

  He knew what I meant, I could tell, and he really tortured me about that for years. Every time I see him nowadays, he turns to a person nearby and he says, “You know, Wheaton here told me that I used to be cool.” We laugh about it and I make the appropriate apologies and explanations, while Jonathan makes faces and gestures indicating that I am full of shit.

  Now, when I was working on Trek, I always wanted to be:

  As good an actor as Patrick

  As funny as Brent

  As cool as Jonathan

  I’m still working on those things, but Jonathan just recently showed me how cool he still is.

  Jonathan directed this new movie, called Clockstoppers. It’s a movie geared toward kids, but it seems smart enough for their parents to sit through it without dreaming up ways of eviscerating the writer responsible for robbing them of 90 minutes of their weekend, which sets it well apart from most “family” films.

  Ryan and Nolan have been talking about how they can’t wait to see this movie and I mentioned to them last week that I was friends with the director and I had heard that it was going to be really cool and I was pretty sure that I could get us into a screening.

  I called up Jonathan’s office and asked if I could get some tickets to a screening, so I could take the kids and be a hero to them. Jonathan’s assistant said that it would be no problem and I’d hear from someone at Nickelodeon about the screening.

  The next day, the phone rings and it’s totally Jonathan himself, calling me back, telling me how happy he is that I want to take my stepkids to see his movie and that he’s really happy to get me into the screening on Saturday.

  See, the thing is, Jonathan is what we in Hollywood call A Big Deal™ and usually people who become A Big Deal ™ don’t usually talk to people who aren’t also A Big Deal ™.

  But Jonathan is not only A Big Deal™, he’s also A Really Great Guy™ and he didn’t need to call me back, personally. Actually, I really didn’t expect him to.

  But he did and that proves that he is now and always has been, cool. Despite my fumbled proclamations as a 16-year-old dorkus.

  A few months later, Jonathan called me in for an episode of The Twilight Zone that he was directing. I was excited to be called in, but the whole experience was made even more meaningful because Jonathan called me at home himself, to tell me that he was having his casting people phone my agent. He really was Still Cool™.

  14 MARCH 2002

  Submitted for your consideration, one actor

  Night before last, I got home very late from work.

  When I checked my messages, there was one from Jonathan Frakes, who said that he was casting a show and there was “a wonderful acting opportunity for Wil Wheaton in it.”

  I can’t tell you how excited I was. To have one of my friends call me, at home, to tell me that they’re casting something and they wanted to put me in it . . . well, it was awesome.

  Now, my excitement is tempered, because the last time I was promised a role in a movie by a friend, I got a whole bunch of nothing, but there’s something about Jonathan. He wouldn’t call me if he didn’t really think I could handle this role.

  So yesterday, at 12:30 p.m., I get a call that they want to see me at 2 p.m. for Jonathan’s project: The Twilight Zone!

  That’s right, they’re doing it again! I love The Twilight Zone the most. When I was a kid it scared the shit out of me, but in a good way. The first thing I ever wrote was an adaptation of one of the scariest episodes, when I was like 11.

  So I get the call at 12:30, the scenes for the audition arrive via fax at 12:45, and I have 30 minutes to prepare 16 pages.

  Somehow, I manage to get a handle on this character, a task made much easier by the high quality of the writing. It’s specific and clear, so I get an understanding of who this guy is immediately and I’m able to add my own shading and color to him really quickly.

  When you look at a script, it usually tells you what the writer wants, what he’s going for. All the actors coming in should know that, and should be able to meet the demands of the material. In my experience, sitting on both sides of the table during auditions, the thing that makes the difference among all the actors who come in to read is that shading and color; that little extra understanding, or that ability to recall something from your real life is what’s going to make a difference and get you the role.

  Of course, 30 minutes is not exactly the best amount of time to create this complex character, but what’s great for me about not having all the extra time is I am forced to trust my instincts, which are almost always right on, but usually end up getting over-analyzed. I can be a little too smart for my own good.

  So I am thinking of all this stuff, all the various colors I can add to this character, and the experiences I’ve had in my own life that I can draw upon, while I’m driving over to the audition, which is in the middle of downtown LA, at a place called “LA Center Studios.” I’ve never been there before, but the place is really cool and creepy at the same time. It feels like the set of a ’70s post-apocalypse movie. The floors are all marble and linoleum, the walls are all wood with these strange metal accents and the whole place is only about 20% occupied, so it really feels like, well, The Twilight Zone.

  I get there, park my car in the mostly abandoned garage and try to find the office where I’m reading. That post-apocalypse feeling is reinforced when I walk up three flights of turned-off escalators, which are lit by fluorescent light
s and covered with dust. I mean, I really did expect to come around a corner and see Charlton Heston screaming, “Soylent Green is people! It’s people!”

  I finally got to the room where I was supposed to do my reading and I saw Jonathan, who gave me a huge smile and a warm bear hug, and told me how happy he was to see me. He always has this twinkle in his eye, you know? It says, “I can’t believe I’m doing this! I’m totally getting away with it! Woo! This is so much fun!”

  The casting director tells me that they only want me to read the first and last scenes, which is great because I can spend my 15 minutes waiting just focusing on those scenes, while they set up the room for auditions.

  So that’s what I do: I work on those two scenes and go in. Jonathan thanks me for coming and introduces me to the other producers. He says, “Wil and I know each other, you know.”

  “Yeah, I knew him back when he was cool,” I say.

  “See? He tells the same story,” he says to one of the producers.

  “Well, your story checks out,” the producer says to me.

  “That’s a relief. I thought that the five-year photographic record wouldn’t be enough,” I reply.

  We all laugh, and he tells me to begin when I’m ready.

  Now, here’s something that I love about being an actor: I was just joking around, and now I get to totally switch gears and play a guy who starts out honest and earnest, yet becomes corrupted by power. The two scenes show the beginning and ending of that transformation. I love that I can go from joking around to becoming this character in a matter of seconds.

  I do the first scene and I can see Jonathan out of the corner of my eye, and I can tell that he’s really into what I’m doing. It fills me with confidence, and I totally relax into this character. He tells me that it was a great job, and asks me to read the second scene. He gives me some direction and tells me a bit about this character; stuff I already have figured out, but it really makes me feel confident, knowing that what they want is what I’ve already prepared.