by Wil Wheaton
“Well, at least let me come sit on a shelf in your house! This box is cold and dark and since you took out the Ren and Stimpy plush toys in December, there isn’t even anyone to talk to!”
I think of the years he and I spent together. I think back to our falling out and I can’t believe that someone I was so close to has become such a stranger.
I know what I must do.
“You’re right, Wesley. You can’t stay in this box any longer. It’s just not right. I’m going to find you a new home. Someplace where you will have lots of other action figures to talk to and maybe even a collectible plate or two.”
“You mean . . . you’re going to put me on eBay?”
“Yep.”
“No! You suck, Wheaton!”
“Shut up, Wesley.”
When I started to write that entry, I thought, "Hey, why make a boring announcement when you can turn it into a story?” I also thought that Wesley would be sweet and polite, and would talk about how excited he was to have a new home—but I couldn’t do it. It was too much fun to make him profane, and to reclaim the line, “Shut up, Wesley.”
I checked the auction frequently over the next few days, and when I blogged about the auction’s progress, I saw a chance to have another conversation. Cadet Crusher had to get some more things off his tiny plastic chest.
24 MAY 2002
Turnabout Intruder
It’s late at night and the rest of my house is asleep. The only sound other than my typing is that soft comforting hum of the fan in my computer. The room is dark, except for the light falling off of my monitor.
He’s sitting on my desk, just outside the monitor’s soft glow, staring at me.
“Hey, Wesley, I’ve got some good news.”
“You’ve had a change of heart and you’re going to put me in a Jello mold with Counselor Troi and Princess Leah?”
“No. First of all, Princess Leah isn’t even the right scale for you—”
“Who said anything about scale? I’m articulated!”
“Do you want to hear the good news, or not?”
He sighs the perturbed yet insecure sigh of an 18-year-old. He strains his little plastic body against the twisty-tie that is holding him to his cardboard backing.
“Yes.”
“You’re way more popular that I thought. People have bid nearly 300 dollars for you on eBay! You’re a hit, Crusher! They love you!”
He stops straining and looks at me, incredulous.
“What?”
“Yeah! Take a look.”
I pick him up and turn him to face the monitor.
“Hey, slow down, jackass. You’re going to give me motion sickness.”
I wonder if this is the correct doll. I wonder if I’ve picked up the Evil Wesley Crusher, instead. I spin him around again and look for the tell-tale goatee, but it’s not there. I guess he’s just cranky.
“Dude! Take it easy!”
“Sorry.”
I slowly turn him back around and point him at the monitor. I click the URL and show him the bidding, which has climbed to nearly 300 dollars.
“See? Isn’t that cool? All this time we thought people hated us, but they like us, Wesley! They really like us!”
He is silent for a moment and when he finally speaks, his voice is thick with emotion.
“Yeah. That’s . . . well . . . that’s really cool,” he says and I swear I can feel the cardboard shudder a little bit in my hands.
“Hey, Wheaton,”
“Yeah?”
“Can you just put me down on the desk for a while? I’ve . . . uh . . . I think I have something in my eye.”
“Are you crying, Wesley?”
“Shut up, Wheaton.”
When I told Wesley, “All this time we thought people hated us, but they like us . . .” I could have said, “All this time, I hated you. I hated you so much, I started to hate myself. But it was time wasted. I’ve learned to like you, and the part of me that you represent.” When he cried, the tears rolled off my face.
I had started out this auction as a means to an end: I just wanted to keep the water turned on in my house. I didn’t know that it would become this enormous confrontation with one of my greatest personal demons, but when I wrote the final installment in the trilogy, I put Wesley in his place . . . and he put me in mine.
28 MAY 2002
The Big Goodbye
The time has come.
I’ve been putting it off over the weekend, attending my best friend’s wedding, going geocaching with my stepson.
But it is time. Money has changed hands and I have an obligation to fulfill.
I pick him up from my desk and avoid eye contact as I carry him into the dining room.
I gingerly put him down on my dining room table and he looks like a patient about to undergo some sort of surgery. Strangely, I feel more like Doctor Giggles than Doctor Green.
He looks up at me and says, “Hey, Wheaton. What do you say you let me out of this box and take me for a spin in your Land Speeder?”
“Can’t do it, Wesley. First, you’re the wrong scale and second, you don’t belong to me anymore.”
He doesn’t reply. He knows that I’m right.
I uncap a gold paint pen and get ready. The familiar burn of acetone and paint hits me in the face and a series of convention memories blurs through my mind, in hyper-real Hunter S. Thompson-o-vision: I sign a plate, a photo, a poster, field a question that I don’t know the answer to, politely decline the offer of a hug from a sweaty woman in a “Spock Lives!” T-shirt. The memories race past and I watch them with a certain amount of detachment, a spectator to my own life.
Although the places and people changed, there was little difference from one hotel convention hall to the next: The same questions, the same jokes, the same inescapable smell . . . the memories engulf me with a frightening and surprising lucidity. I think that I’ve allowed these events to drift into the distance of memory, but they come back, immediate and insistent, as if no time has passed.
He looks at me, daring me to give voice to these thoughts.
I realize that we are very interwoven, whether we like it or not and as I open my mouth to speak, something I’d never thought of before comes into my mind: I can exist without him, but he could not, would not, does not exist without me.
Suddenly, I feel free.
I lift the pen up and touch it to the plastic and write what I’ve been asked to write:
Vincent -
I am sick of following rules and regulations!
-Wil Wheaton
It’s done.
I sit back and regard him. He’s obscured by my writing, which casts a latticework of shadows across his face and body. The symbolism of this moment is not lost on me.
“You know, that was a cool line,” he says. “Remember how cool it was to stand up to Picard?”
“Yeah. It was fun being you back then,” I tell him. “I watched Code of Honor last night though. Jesus, you were a dork, man.”
“That wasn’t me, dude. That was Wesley Crusher, the doctor’s son. I’m Cadet Crusher, the bad-ass. Wesley was a dork. Cadet Crusher was cool. Need I remind you who waxed Robin Lefler’s ass?”
“Why do you have to talk that way? People have a certain image of you, you know.”
“Hey, they can kiss my shiny plastic ass. I have never been responsible for the things I say. I can only say what someone tells me to say. As a matter of fact, I’m not even talking now. You’re putting all these words in my mouth.”
“So my Tyler Durden is a five-inch action figure? That’s just perfect. At least you can’t force me into some sort of Project Mayhem.”
“Oh, I can’t?”
I can’t tell through the gold paint pen, but I think he’s sizing me up.
“You’re such a pussy, Wheaton. We were cool when we wore this spacesuit and you know it. Fucking own that, boyo. If anyone has a problem with that, they can kiss my ass, your ass, their own ass, and then they can
fuck all the way off, 12 different ways.”
I’m a bit shocked to hear this come out of us.
“Uh, Wesley, you really can’t talk like that.”
“I just told you, it’s not me. It’s you, cock-knocker. Now put me in the box and find some other cool thing to auction. I think I saw a plate in the closet.”
“Why didn’t we ever talk like this before? I never realized that you were cool. Really. I mean, I hated you, man.”
“Yeah, you and every other insecure teenage boy. Listen and listen good, because I’m not saying this again.
“You have always cared too fucking much what other people thought of us. Go read your stupid website and listen to your own advice. You’ll be much happier. Now put me in the box and let’s get this over with.”
I look at him and a touch of sadness passes over me.
“Wesley, I have always been and I always will be—”
“Jesus H. Christ! I can’t believe you were going to quote Star Trek. I am so embarrassed for you right now. Just close the fucking box and send me on my way.”
I do it. I put him in the box, drop in some packing stuff and a few stickers.
We drive to the post office in silence.
I walk to the mailbox and open it.
I think about saying goodbye, but I know that Wesley won’t be talking to me anymore.
I place the box on the edge and lift it up. The box falls into darkness.
I am Wil’s freedom.
There’s this great scene in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers where we find out that as The One Ring slowly drove him mad, Smeagol created Gollum to help him survive. Once Smeagol has Frodo to look after him, he doesn’t need Gollum any longer.
“Leave now, and never come back!” Smeagol tells Gollum, who hisses, spits, and fights like crazy to remain in control, until Smeagol ultimately finds the strength to drive him away.
That scene struck very close to home for me. My One Ring was Fame and Celebrity, and my Gollum was Prove To Everyone That Quitting Star Trek Wasn’t A Mistake. When I wrote The Wesley Dialogues, I did prove to everyone that quitting Star Trek wasn’t a mistake . . . but not in the way I expected. All the years I spent feeling trapped, like that action figure, in a little plastic box, unable to speak for myself or do anything I wanted to do, came to an end. I wasn’t trying to achieve escape velocity from 15 years of frustration, angst, and regret—but that’s exactly what happened.
“Leave now, and never come back!” I told Prove To Everyone as I wrote The Big Goodbye. “I don’t need you any more.”
"Quoting Lord of the Rings,” he sneered. “You’re such a geek!”
“It’s Just a Geek,” I said.
I haven’t heard from him since.
Chapter 12. All Good Things . . .
WHILE I WAS WORKING on Nemesis, I knew in the back of my mind that there was a good chance my scene would not make the final print of the film. It didn’t add to the story at all, and I was the last person to be added to the cast. Because of those two factors, I wasn’t too surprised when I started hearing the rumors that I’d been cut from the film and replaced with Ashley Judd, who was playing Robin “Mrs. Wesley Crusher” Lefler. The rumor about Ashley Judd turned out to be false and I understand that the credibility of the Internet as a source of honest and true information may never be restored. However, the rumor about my scene hitting the cutting room floor turned out to be true.
14 AUGUST 2002
Spare Us The Cutter
The call came while I was out, so I didn’t get the message until days later.
“Hi,” the young-sounding secretary said on my machine. “I have Rick Berman calling for Wil. Please return when you get the message.”
I knew.
I knew before she was even done with the message, but I tried to fool myself for a few minutes anyway.
I looked at the clock: 8 p.m. They’d most likely be out, so I’d have to call tomorrow.
I told Anne that I had a message to call Rick’s office and she knew right away also.
We’d thought about it for months, ever since I’d heard the rumors online. Of course, I tend to not put a whole lot of stock in what I read online . . . if I did I’d be overwhelmed with the sheer amount of hot teen bitches who want to get naked for me right now and I’d be rolling in Nigerian money.
But it made sense and I couldn’t fight what I knew in my heart to be true.
I returned the call late the next day from my car on my way home from work. I was driving along a narrow tree-lined street in Pasadena that I sometimes take when the traffic is heavy on the freeway.
Children played on bikes and jumped rope in the growing shadows of the July afternoon. The street was stained a beautiful orange by the setting sun.
“This is Wil Wheaton returning,” I told her.
She tells me to hold on and then he’s on the phone.
“Hi kiddo. How are you?”
“I’m doing fine. You know I turn 30 on Monday?”
There is a pause.
“I can’t believe we’re all getting so old,” he says.
“I know. I e-mailed Tommy [his son] awhile ago and he’s in college now. If that made me feel old, I can’t imagine what my turning 30 is doing to the rest of you guys.”
We chuckle. This is probably just small talk, so it’s not as severe when he tells me, but it feels good regardless. Familiar, familial.
“Listen, Wil. I have bad news.”
Although I’ve suspected it for months and I have really known it since I heard the message the night before, my stomach tightens, my arms grow cold.
“We’ve had to cut your scene from the movie.”
He pauses for breath and that moment is frozen, while I assess my feelings.
I almost laugh out loud at what I discover: I feel puzzled.
I feel puzzled, because the emotions I expected, the sadness, the anger, the indignation . . . aren’t there.
I realize that he’s waiting for me.
“Why’d you have to cut it?”
This doesn’t make sense. I should be furious. I should be depressed. I should be hurt.
But I don’t feel bad, at all.
“Well, it doesn’t have anything to do with you,” he begins.
I laugh silently. It never does. When I don’t get a part, or a callback, or get cut from a movie, it never has anything to do with me. Like a sophomore romance. “It’s not you. It’s me. I’ve met Jimmy Kimmel’s cousin and things just happened.”
There is an unexpected sincerity to what he tells me: the movie is long. The first cut was almost three hours. The scene didn’t contribute to the main story in any way, so it was the first one to go.
He tells me that they’ve cut 48 minutes from the movie.
I tell him that they’ve cut an entire episode out. We laugh.
There is another silence. He’s waiting for me to respond.
I drive past some kids playing in an inflatable pool in their front yard. On the other side of the street, neighbors talk across a chain link fence. An older man sits on his porch reading a paper.
“Well Rick,” I begin, “I completely understand. I’ve thought about this on and off for months and I knew that if the movie was long, this scene and maybe even this entire sequence, would have to go. It’s just not germane to the spine of the story.”
He tells me that they had to consider cutting the entire beginning of the movie. He tells me that he has to call one of the other actors who has suffered rather large cuts as well.
I stop at a four-way stop sign and let a woman and her little daughter cross the street on their way into a park filled with families, playing baseball and soccer in the waning light.
I look at them. The mother’s hand carefully holding her daughter’s.
I realize why I’m not upset and I tell him.
“Well, Rick, it’s like this: I love Star Trek and, ultimately, I want what’s best for Star Trek and the Trekkies. If the movie is too long,
you’ve got to cut it and this scene is the first place I’d start if I were you.
“The great thing is, I got to spend two wonderful days being on Star Trek again, working with the people I love, wearing the uniform that I missed and I got to reconnect with you, the cast, and the fans. Nobody can take that away from me.
“And, it really means a lot to me that you called me yourself. I can’t tell you how great that makes me feel.”
It’s true. He didn’t need to call me himself. Most producers wouldn’t.
“I’m so glad that you took the time to call me and that I didn’t have to learn about this at the screening, or by reading it on the Internet.”
He tells me again how sorry he is. He asks about my family and if I’m working on anything. I tell him they’re great, that Ryan’s turning 13 and that I’ve been enjoying steady work as a writer since January.
We’re back to small talk again, bookending the news.
I ask him how the movie looks.
He tells me that they’re very happy with it. He thinks it’s going to be very successful.
I’m feel happy and proud.
I’ve heard stories from people that everyone had lots of trouble with the director. I ask him if that’s true.
He tells me that it was tough, because the director had his own vision. There were struggles, but ultimately they collaborated to make a great film.
I come to a stoplight, a bit out of place in this quiet residential neighborhood. A young married couple walks their golden retriever across the crosswalk.
We say our good-byes and he admonishes me to call him if I’m ever on the lot. He tells me that he’ll never forgive me if I don’t stop into his office when I’m there.
I tell him that I will and that I’ll see him at the screening.
He wishes me well and we hang up the phone.
The light turns green and I sit there for a moment, reflecting on the conversation.
I think back to something I wrote in April while in a pit of despair: “I wonder if The Lesson is that, in order to succeed, I need to rely upon myself, trust myself, love myself and not put my happiness and sadness into the hands of others.”
I meant everything that I said to him. It really doesn’t matter to me if I’m actually in the movie or not and not in a bitter way at all.
