Dustin Diamond
Behind the Bell
Dustin Diamond
Behind the Bell
Behind the Scenes of Saved by the Bell with the Guy who was There for Everything
Published by Transit Publishing Inc.
© 2009 Dustin Diamond
The reproduction or transmission of any part of this publication in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, or storage in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher, is an infringement of copyright law. In the case of photocopying or other reprographic production of the material, a licence must be obtained from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright) before proceeding.
ISBN: 978-1-926893-71-6
Editor: Timothy Niedermann
Cover design: François Turgeon
Text design and composition: Nassim Bahloul
Front cover: Wayde Peronto of Babboni Photography;
NBCU Photo Bank/ZUMA/Keystone Press
Inside front cover: NBCU Photo Bank/ZUMA/Keystone Press
Spine: Gary Null/NBCU Photo Bank/ZUMA/Keystone Press
Back cover: NBCU Photo Bank/ZUMA/Keystone Press
Inside back cover: Joseph DelValle/NBCU Photo Bank/ZUMA/Keystone Press
Transit Publishing Inc.
1996 St-Joseph blvd. East
Montreal, Quebec
CANADA
H2H 1E3
Tel: 1-514-273-0123
www.transitpublishing.com
Printed and Bound in Canada
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
PART I: THE BEGINNING
GOOD MORNING, MISS BLISS
MEET THE CAST
St. Peter
The Golden Child
Putting the Kapow! in Kapowski
A.C. Makes the Ladies Scream
The Showgirl
Me, Screeching To the Power
Lisa Turtle and Her Shell
The Principal
Taking it to The Max
PART II: HOW THE MAGIC HAPPENED—A WEEK IN THE LIFE OF SBTB
MONDAY
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
“MUST-SEE” THURSDAY
FRIDAY: SHOWTIME
WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENED
PART III: FAMOUS AS SHIT
THE MALLS OF AMERICA
I’M GOING TO DISNEYLAND … TO GET LAID
SCREECH IS A BORN COUGAR HUNTER
ZACK AND KELLY COZY UP TO THE BOSS
THE SNIPER
MAKING CHICKS “SCREECH!”
FAMOUS PEOPLE I’VE MET, OR WHO’S A DOUCHE IN REAL LIFE AND WHO’S NOT
Gary Coleman
The Stars of The Tonight Show
Emmanuel Lewis
The Hollywood Christmas Parade with Pat Boone
Billy Crystal and Danny DeVito
Shaq
Buddy Hackett
Hanson
Jaleel White
Frank Zappa and MTV’s Kennedy
CAPTAIN DOUCHEBAG AND THE CONSPIRACY LAWSUIT AGAINST NBC
PART IV: THE DENOUEMENT
FLUNKING-THE COLLEGE YEARS
THE NEW CLASS LETS OUT
HOW I MISSED OUT ON THE SCOOBY DOO MOVIE
AFTER THE BELL
ON BEING A CHILD STAR
EPILOGUE
APPENDIX A: THE SAVED BY THE BELL DRINKING GAME
APPENDIX B: TO ALL THE CHICKS I BANGED BEFORE AN OPEN LETTER
APPENDIX C: A FAN’S TOP EPISODES (a very unofficial list)
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Jennifer Misner, who has watched my many transformations both on and off stage. Without you my world would be dark, and with me being the darkest thing in it, it probably wouldn’t work out so well.
Roger Paul—Without you this would never have gotten done. Thank you Roge.
Mark Bridge—You are a dirty rotten bastard . . . thank you so much. Smell my finger.
Loppy—Without you my face would never be down in the noodles.
Mr. Bungle, Frank Zappa, more metal bands than I can possibly list.
Everyone who loves horror, Halloween, and metal.
And all the supporters of this book.
If I missed anyone I’m sorry. It’s late, and I’m tired . . . Scott “The Radman” Radmacher, Evan “Spaz” Hanson, Rob “Timmy” Simpson, Chad “Gggilf Hunter” Hooper, Eric “American” Oates, the Misner family, and many, many more.
For my fans you keep me going.
For my non-fans—you just don’t know me yet.
For the man in my basement who is probably more than terrified right—soon.
P.S. Oh yes, and I want to give it up for B.I.G. Give it up for B.I.G.
INTRODUCTION
Hollywood likes to present itself through a glass darkly, with grace, poise, style, smoke, and mirrors. No question, there are still pockets of true dignity and elegance in Hollywood—authentic, creative people, comfortable in their skins and honest in their dealings. But that shit is rare, my friends. Honesty is the Pink Panther diamond of Los Angeles, so precious, it’s practically a myth. And at the center of this mythology are those droll Hollywood tales of artistic whimsy, told with wit and charm at black-tie cocktail parties. Sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s all horseshit.
I’m going to make an assumption, and it’s this: the majority of people reading this book will not be current or former child stars of hit television shows. They will be regular folks who grew up in relatively normal childhood environments. They will most likely have attended local elementary and high schools, spent quality time with fellow classmates and neighborhood friends, eaten meals at designated time in their homes, were disciplined by their parents, and, at some point during the week, sat down and watched kids like me and the gang at Bayside High on the flickering boxes in their living rooms. They may have watched those pixilated versions of kids very much their own age, representating archetypes they were all too familiar with in their everyday lives (even if they didn’t know what the fuck an archetype was), and perhaps entertained thoughts such as, Wow, how lucky are those kids? They’ve got things so much better than I do.
Yes and no. Yes, we probably made more money at ten years old than you did. We met lots of interesting people, were recognized and adored for a window in time, and went on adventures that would not have been possible if we hadn’t been serendipitously plucked from relative obscurity one day in 1988 after several rounds of intense auditions. But on the other hand, no, our lives were not better than anyone else’s in the sense that we were far from the perfect teens we portrayed in Saved by the Bell. In fact, truth be told, we were all pretty fucked up.
Celebrities are people, too. We’re flawed like everybody else. We’re just on television or up on a movie screen, pulling down more cash (when we’re working). But as the warrior-poet Notorious B.I.G. once said, “Mo’ money means mo’ problems.” The reality (in this age of reality-everything) is that working on film and TV sets is very cool—even more cool when you see the finished product edited together, complete with special effects, etc.—but underneath it all, it’s just a job. None of the highly paid, glamorized, and glorified stars illuminated up on that wall of your local theater or in your little box at home is any different from you as a human being. If you work as a plumber or cop or software tech or at the phone company (like my mom did) or as any of the other millions of people that actually make the world go ’round do each day, you’re no different (and in some ways, you’re better) than your favorite stars, who have been placed up on false pedestals to be admired and emulated by the masses.
I think a problem with us human beings is that we want our gossip, dirt, and scandal in great detail. But sometimes the details are
n’t the best part of the story. What I mean is, details alone don’t allow you see the whole picture. The questions are: Where does this information fit on a timeline? Why is it relevant? And what were the consequences of people’s actions as they unfolded? For example, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen went from sweet, innocent, loveable all-American teen to SBTB’s set whore and Hollywood’s pass-around girl. I wasn’t a mouse in her pocket for each and every lay (thank God), but I can relate what I did see and put those reminiscences in their proper context.
A lot of the people I discuss in this book will not want to be depicted in the light I cast them in. Too bad. The things I write about are the things I’ve seen, the things I’ve heard from reliable sources, and the things I’ve come to know since starting work as an actor in Hollywood at the age of eight. People are going to deny that these stories are true, but I lived through them with my eyes wide open, and now I’m sharing them with you, fair reader. The stories actors and actresses do want told are the ones where they were honored with an award for their craft or chatted at a party with Tom Selleck and Jack Nicholson. Nobody cares about that shit. Not really. I believe that, at our core, what people crave most is to learn everything we can about others’ human frailty, because it helps make sense of our own.
Hey, I’m putting myself out there on the block, too. Lord knows I’ve done some stupid shit (some of it on camera). But I also view myself—and I hope you will too—as an outsider, looking in on a popular clique I was never really a welcomed part of, reporting all I saw in stark black and white.
I moved to Wisconsin several years ago to get the fuck out of L.A. I loved the work, and the perks were fantastic, but I never cared about the fame. You don’t make real friends in L.A., you make transactional friends, friends of necessity. In L.A., you meet a lot of middlemen (and middle women). In many ways, Los Angeles is not unlike the idealized version of Peter Engel’s Bayside High, set in Palisades, California—except everyone in L.A. really was the actual star quarterback or captain of the cheerleading team at their real-life high schools with dreams of even greater stardom. So, each day from every metropolis and one-traffic-light Podunk in America a lot of hopeful, fresh-faced kids arrive in L.A., only to leave weeks, months, or years later, bitter and regretful as part of “The Used.” But like moths to the fame flame, they keep coming.
Fuck fame. Allow me to tear down your allusions. My motivation in writing this book is to yank back the curtain and show you the wizard. I want some girl in an office building in Tacoma, Washington, to realize that she has more class than Tiffani-Amber Thiessen; that a dude slicing pastrami in a deli in Brooklyn has a better temperament than Mario Lopez; that, on balance, they’d all rather be Tom, Dick, and Harry than Zack, Kelly, Slater, Jess, Lisa, and Screech.
For my part, I’ve reached a point where I’d rather just be surrounded by good people. I’m a passionate student of the quirky and the obscure in all formats. I’ve always searched for influences that could help me grow and always tried to get to the real truth beneath. As you’ll see, that’s a search I’ve been on my whole life.
PART I:
THE BEGINNING
GOOD MORNING, MISS BLISS
I killed the Smurfs. What I mean is, I starred in the show that pretty much killed Saturday morning cartoons. In 1988, when Saved by the Bell settled into its regular 11:00 AM time slot every Saturday on NBC, it was the first live-action sitcom for kids—an instant hit, spawning a long succession of imitators—which meant that we had essentially killed all my favorite cartoons. And I had a lot of favorite cartoons because I was just a kid myself. When I landed the role of Screech in Good Morning, Miss Bliss, the NBC pilot that would become SBTB, I was eleven years old playing an eighth grader. NBC and Disney were in early talks of possibly merging. That, of course, didn’t work out. Disney’s Michael Eisner eventually walked away from the deal in 1994. But NBC’s chief of programming at the time, Brandon Tartikoff, liked the characters created by the show’s executive producer, Peter Engel (by the way, Tartikoff was a huge Screech fan), and he felt the show shouldn’t get lost in the shuffle just because the two companies never did reach a meeting of the minds. Disney had acquired Good Morning, Miss Bliss when NBC had passed on it, but when Disney cancelled the show after only one season, NBC reacquired the rights. NBC then to Good Morning, Miss Bliss; re-cast it, keeping Zack, Lisa, Screech, and Belding bringing in Kelly, Slater, and Jessie. The show was then renamed Saved By The Bell.
I auditioned six times for Good Morning, Miss Bliss, finally getting the part of Screech. After I was chosen I met a bunch of executives at NBC, including the vice president of children’s programming, Linda Mancuso. Linda had always been there through all the callbacks, just another suit in the room, but I finally noticed her (I mean, noticed her-noticed her) at our first table reading. That first day was a whirlwind. Really exciting. “Dustin, here’s your parking space at NBC (er, I mean my parents’ parking space),” “Here’s your dressing room …” There were all these fantastic hit shows going on all around me like Cheers and The Tonight Show. I’d bump into Doc Severinson walking down the hall. I got to work with Jeff Melman, who directed Night Court and later, Frasier, and who ended up directing SBTB at one point. It was a very cool time.
It wasn’t until I entered Linda’s office that I suddenly realized what she did: She was in charge of putting all my favorite NBC kids’ programs on TV! Overall, the shows I was in love with at that age were programs like Bugs Bunny, He-Man, GI Joe, ThunderCats, Transformers, Gobots, and yes, The Smurfs. I was astonished to learn that Linda had access to tapes of all these shows, even though not all of them aired on NBC. Remember, this was long before DVDs were available; getting personal copies of television shows was unheard of. I quickly made a habit of going up to Linda’s office all the time to feed my fascination because I simply couldn’t believe the stuff she could pull down from her shelves. She handed me tapes of The Yogi Bear Special or Captain N: The Game Master, a brand-new TV show that I got to preview before the rest of the world. I had the inside scoop. Linda hooked me up with all the latest swag.
Once I got to know Linda, I realized she was so nice, so friendly, and so different from all the other network executives. Even though I was only eleven, I knew she was an important person, and we bonded over my viewing these shows that the success of SBTB would eventually drive off the airwaves. She had a soft, womanly approach to every challenge. I knew instantly that I could talk with her and trust her. She was like a big sister. Well, not exactly like a big sister. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I was born in San Jose, California, about 370 miles north of Los Angeles. People tend to associate the entire state of California with the entertainment industry. but the area I hailed from was mostly like the Midwest. L.A. is its own universe with a personality (and smog-ridden weather system) all its own. These days I live in Wisconsin, and I consider the Midwest, the East Coast (where my family originated), and L.A. as three totally different vibes. In the Midwest, if someone doesn’t like you, they won’t speak ill of you, but they won’t deal with you either. Midwesterners will be cordial and polite, but you’re basically persona non grata to them. In New York, if someone has a problem with you, they will tell you right to your face. The culture in New York is too fast-paced to get bogged down in any horseshit. If there’s an issue, you need to get it out in the open, mix it up, and move on. In L.A., if someone doesn’t like you, they will kill you with kindness. They’ll tell you they absolutely love you until you’re out of earshot, then they’ll start plotting your destruction. No one has the balls to tell the truth to anyone’s face in Hollywood.
My family didn’t come from old money or have much new money, either. My parents were a hard-working, middle-class couple that drove a Pinto (the no-air-conditioning, flickering-dome-light, non-exploding model). After it rained, we’d find mushrooms growing under the floor mats in the back of that car. Mom worked the graveyard shift as a computer operator for Pacific Bell, and dad taught digital e
lectronics for one of the early Silicon Valley computer-processing firms. As the saying goes, “We weren’t very L.A.” As a result, I felt like we were kind of looked down upon by some of the other families of the SBTB cast. I don’t think they’d ever admit it, but the vibe from my fellow cast members was pretty uppity and exclusionary, looking down their noses at my hand-me-down jacket or discount store clothes. I mean, I didn’t dress as bad as Screech, but I didn’t dress as well as Zack Morris or Lisa Turtle either. After all, Lark Voorhies, who played Lisa, came from a doctor’s family, Elizabeth Berkley from a lawyer’s. Most of my co-stars came from super well- to-do families.
My mom transferred her job, and my dad gave up his job teaching digital electronics so they could help me reach my goal of becoming an actor. I say acting was my goal and never my dream for a reason. I was just a kid who had no clue where my acting adventures would lead me. I started acting at age eight and early in my career appeared in between sixty and seventy commercials for products from Burger King to Post Alpha Bits and Fruity Pebbles cereals. The Burger King spot was for the “We Do It Like You Do It” campaign, which was based around the idea that they made flame-broiled goodness just like you grilled at home. In the ad, my TV dad can’t figure out how to assemble his barbeque grill, so in exasperation he takes all his kids to Burger King. I take a bite of my burger, smile at the camera and say, “I knew he could do it.”
I also made several guest star appearances on popular TV shows like It’s a Living and The Wonder Years. On the The Wonder Years, I played what could be considered my first role as a nerdy character, even though that part was really more of an awkward adolescent, not necessarily a full-blown geek. I bounced around to different gigs and got to know all the Hollywood kids my age who were living the same lifestyle. Some went on to get their own shows or to appear on SBTB. It was just the way it was. We were kids, but we were also busy, hard working, professional actors.
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