Dustin Diamond

by Timothy Niedermann

  At some point someone in fact suggested that the kids on SBTB weren’t making enough money. The parents started to compare notes on the issue and decided to raise a stink to St. Peter as a united front. They agreed that they would force an audience with Engel and demand that we be treated better and paid more. They reasoned that, in the face of their unity and determination, St. Peter would have no choice but to fold. He would never fire the entire cast, right? That would be insane, right? But we never found out because on the day all the parents were supposed to convene to march upstairs together and carry out their bloodless coup, only my dad and Mario’s mom showed up.

  Tiffani cried as we wrapped the final episode of SBTB, but they were actress tears. Tiffani was remarkable for her ability to cry on demand, which, as a performer, is huge because it makes every take believable. Only in real life does it get somewhat confusing. At the time, Tiffani was dating Brian Austin Green (remember his groundbreaking portrayal of an early’90s, 8-Mile, Beverly Hills-ghetto gangsta?), and she knew she was already in with Aaron Spelling. As a side note, Brian Austin Green was in the original pilot of Good Morning, Miss Bliss, as well as Jaleel White (later of Steve Urkel infamy) and Jonathan Brandis. Tiffani-Amber had met Brian Austin at one of our celebrity events. In SBTB, Tori Spelling played Violet Anne Bickerstaff, Screech’s girlfriend. Tori’s dad, Aaron Spelling, would drop by the set to chat with St. Peter. I overheard him say, “Y’know, Peter, you’ve got a really good thing going here. I wish I’d thought of it. Who would’ve thought that teenage kids and their exploits would be the hot new market?” Next thing I knew … New, from Aaron Spelling, in prime time, teenage kids and their exploits in Beverly Hills …

  Tori was nice, but this was before she had her “work” done. Have you ever seen a girl who had negative boobs? Breasts that actually grew inward? That was Tori, holed up in the east wing of her dad’s hundred-room mansion with ingrown boobs. Tori was Hollywoodized before she ever left the womb. Her brother Randy lived up the lifestyle of a millionaire’s kid, too. He zipped around in his new Ferrari, spending gobs of cash. Look at me! I mean, I can’t blame them. I would’ve probably acted the same way coming from so much money. And the Spellings were always nice people to me. When Aaron died, the sadness of his passing was compounded by the surprise of Tori’s stunning and mysterious disinheriting—which you can read her book to learn the truth or fiction about. But that was definitely the talk around town. At the time, many assumed it was Aaron’s final act of wisdom: not rewarding all the years of partying and general irresponsibility. When you’re born like they were—with a set of limited-edition, collectible platinum spoons in your mouth—and you’re not careful, you run the risk of pissing it all away.

  While she was on SBTB, Tori was trying to hook up with Mark-Paul, and I was playing half-assed matchmaker. I would talk to Tori on the phone at night, letting her phone at night, letting her depose me for any morsel of information about the Golden Child while she asked, “Did you talk to him today? Did he ask about me?” Mark-Paul wasn’t interested in chicks with negative boobs.

  Come to think of it, another weird thing about Mark-Paul was that he was always extremely reserved when it came to sharing his exploits chasing ass. A more mild way of characterizing it might be to say he didn’t kiss and tell. I don’t know if he was just an early incarnation of Niles Crane or what, but he never talked about the girls he was banging. And he was never on the prowl at events like Mario—and later I—was. I mean, the whole excitement of going to these things was new town, new ladies. The road events were subsidized trips to Assylvania. All-you-can-bang buffets. I was busy seeing how many girls I could squeeze into my hotel bathtub while Mark-Paul was relaxing in his alone, shaving his legs. Seriously, for a while he shaved his legs. He said it was because he liked to jog. Reduced his wind drag.

  But the point I was trying to make about Tiffani’s fake crying at the season wrap party was that she already knew she had a role waiting for her on 90210. And when she started over there, her first order of business was to dump Brian Austin Green before the ink was dry on her contract. (I wonder if she actress-cried for him, too?)

  Elizabeth cried at the end of SBTB, but hers seemed like genuine tears. In the graduation episode, the tears you see on screen pouring from Elizabeth’s eyes were very real—she couldn’t stop bawling on set. She was extremely emotional because she knew she was leaving and would never be back. They were tears of sadness mixed with fear and concern. I’m convinced she wasn’t so sure she was making the right decision. Showgirls had already tanked at the box office. I mean, not just tanked—it’s still an industry-and pop-culture punchline for all-around shittyness. She knew there were probably no career prospects for her beyond SBTB, outside the minor, odd role as a slutty temptress. Turns out she was correct.

  The reason everyone was so convinced the show was finally finished once and for all was because we had already filmed the graduation episode. But then the network decided to order another half-season. The resulting incongruity in the episodes of the final season of the original SBTB was what resulted in the Tori paradox. The Tori paradox is a term credited to Chuck Klosterman from his essay “Being Zack Morris” in Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto (Scribner, 2004). It describes the bizarre format in the final season of SBTB of alternating episodes between those starring Tiffani and Elizabeth and those starring Leanna Creel, whose character was a leather-clad rogue named Tori Scott who rolls into Bayside on her motorcycle. She began as a foil to Zack but, of course, soon became his main love interest. The paradox was that viewers were supposed to believe that, in the episodes where Tori roamed the halls, Kelly and Jessie were simultaneously in some other class somewhere else in the building. But then, after firmly establishing Tori’s character in the series, she was nowhere to be found in the graduation episode, because it had already been taped long before the final half-season began. It was a lazy solution on the part of the network and the producers to the quandary created by Tiffani and Elizabeth’s decisions to leave the show early, but, on the other hand, viewers never seemed to get very worked up about it.

  During that graduation episode, there was a song that accompanied the emotional finale as the gang at Bayside hugged their goodbyes. Tears flowed (real and Tiffani’s) on set and at the wrap party, but, like I said, I knew we’d be back. We had a lot of alleged wrap parties. Everybody said, “How can you not be sad, Dustin?” The answer was that I knew we were coming back, because we always came back, no matter what people told us.

  THE NEW CLASS LETS OUT

  SBTB: The New Class was initially an attempt at a carbon copy of the original SBTB, just putting new faces on those timeless character archetypes that previously worked so successfully: handsome/mischievous male lead, cheerleader, feminist, jock, socialite, and geek. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Well, that was the theory, anyway. A young actor named Isaac Lidsky was cast as the Screech clone, a character named Barton “Weasel” Wyzell. They even tried to match the physical features of the new character to mine. It was very strange, but of course nothing new. When Tiffani and Elizabeth bailed at the end of SBTB (before Tiffani materialized again on The College Years), the producers said to themselves, “Hm, we just lost Jessie, who has curly hair and is a feminist, and Kelly, who has dark hair and is Zack’s primary love interest … Just spitballing here, but how about a new character named Tori who has dark, curly hair, is a tomboy (i.e., feminist) with a motorcycle and instantly becomes Zack’s love interest? Genius!”

  It was like some cheeseball, Island of Dr. Moreau creation. Leanna Creel was one of triplets. She and her identical sisters, Joy and Monica, starred in the NBC/Disney show Parent Trap Three. Leanna was awesome—beautiful, fun, and friendly. She wasn’t around long enough for the lure of Hollywood to really taint her. She grew up near Fullerton, California (close to where I grew up), and she knew Todd McFarlane, the comic book artist who created Spawn. Knowing I was a huge comic-book fan, Leanna, sweetheart that she was,
went out of her way to score me a couple of autographed copies of Spawn, issue no. 1. I still have them today.

  After SBTB, Leanna went on to create a couple of successful production companies (one was purchased by Lionsgate) and brought about ten successful indie films to completion. She also wrote and directed the critically acclaimed short film Offside, about the Germans and Allies in World War I playing a friendly soccer game against each other in No Man’s Land on Christmas Day. I think these days she’s a filmmaker and photographer.

  I was still playing Screech in SBTB: The College Years when SBTB: The New Class began production, so there was a brief gap in time when I was still part of the original SBTB and hadn’t yet transitioned all the way with Den into the new format. When I started with The New Class, that’s when all the weird scripts started getting handed down to Den and me—scripts with all sorts of blatant homosexual innuendo between Mr. Belding and Screech. It was clear that the writers were either getting bored or had a bone to pick and were taking it out on us. Den was the first to vocalize his objections to whoever would listen. Stage directions started to be inserted into scripts that said things like, “Screech and Mr. Belding embrace and stare into each other’s eyes.” Weird shit like that. Look, I don’t care anything about people’s sexual preference. As far as I’m concerned, people can hit any hole they choose. But in the context of the long-standing relationships and backstories that had been established over years of creating the characters in SBTB, the shit they were handing us was totally inappropriate, and they knew it.

  Maybe it all was to get back at Den, who seemed to always be up in the writers’ room lecturing them on how he wanted Mr. Belding to be written. Maybe Den had told each of the writers that he was from their individual hometowns, and they’d finally compared notes with each other, deciding he was full of shit. Den was telling them how to do their jobs, and they were like, “Okay buddy, we’re the writers; you’re the actor. We’ll write the lines, you memorize them, and everybody will be happy.” I think Den just got on their nerves after a while, and they started taking it out on us in the scenes we had together. They’d write action like, “Screech gets scared and wraps his arms around Belding for safety.” It was a comedy show with a number of slapstick, cartoonish set pieces, so that wasn’t so bad. But then when scenes weren’t coming off as the writers envisioned, they started getting more graphic.

  Eventually, Den went to the director, Miguel Higuera. Miguel had been with the show since Good Morning, Miss Bliss, working as assistant director under Don Barnhart before Don moved on, and staying with the entire run of 260 episodes. Den said, “I’m tired of this shit, Miguel. I’m not doing it. Screech and Belding are not fucking hugging each other.” I thought it was bullshit, too, but Den was clearly fed up, because he never spoke like that to anybody. Eventually, Den and I just started working around it in the walk-throughs, and if the writers questioned why we weren’t following directions, we just said that it was inappropriate, and we weren’t fucking doing it. I mean, despite all the backstage intrigue, wasn’t SBTB supposed to be a morning television show for kids?

  Later, Ron Solomon and Brett Dewey’s partnership ended after Ron went on to other projects. Brett stayed with SBTB, sitting up in the seats of the darkened studio during rehearsals, uncorking that high-pitched, Revenge of the Nerds laugh of his whenever we performed one of the overtly gay gags he’d written into the script. You always knew which writers had written which jokes by who laughed the loudest. Den started mumbling, “It’s fucking Brett. He’s the one who thinks this shit’s so funny.”

  Again, that’s Hollywood. Brett had been one of my buddies since the beginning of the show, letting me hang with him, supplying me with comic books while regaling me with ribald tales of St. Peter’s hard drug use and sexcapades in a former life. Just another lesson that nobody in that town is ever really your friend.

  But Den could be pushy with people. I remember him marching upstairs on many a crusade barking, “I need to speak to Peter!” As the years went on, that shit got old, and I think it reached a point with St. Peter where he started giving Den the shaft. One day we were called down to have merchandising shots taken of the entire cast together for the SBTB board game. We were all in full makeup and wardrobe. After a few shots, the photographer asked Den to step out.

  “Why?” asked Den. “What possible use could you have for photos without the full cast?”

  “Well, let’s try a few with just the kids.”

  We all knew what was happening. I thought it was downright shitty and cold-hearted. Dennis had put his time in just like the rest of us and deserved to share the recognition. I announced that I wasn’t going to do the photo shoot if Den wasn’t included in the pictures. It caused this big ruckus. Everybody started scurrying around, making phone calls. St. Peter came storming down onto the stage, “What’s going on?!”

  I said, “This is bullshit. I’m not gonna do this shoot if the idea is to cut out Dennis. This isn’t right. You’re shitting on him.”

  To my surprise, St. Peter directed his ire at Dennis. “What did you say to Dustin?”

  But it was already a done deal. Den saw the futility of fighting the powers that be that day and finally acquiesced. He told the photographer to go ahead and finish his photo shoot. Den went out of his way to assure us he was fine with the decision. Of course, he wasn’t. Afterward, he came to me and said, “Dustin, I really appreciate what you did here this afternoon. You stood by me when no one else would.”

  One day on the set of The New Class, we got a visit from Kareem Abdul Jabbar. I wasn’t a huge basketball fan, so my first reaction was, “Wow, you trained with Bruce Lee. Game of Death. That big foot mark on Bruce Lee’s chest, that’s yours!” One of the kids on the show, Anthony Harrell, who played Eric Little, casually mentioned that Kareem’s “birth name” was Lew Alcindor. Kareem spun around, leaned down, grabbed poor little Anthony by the shoulder with one of his gargantuan folding lawn chair hands and said, “The name is Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Get it right!” In the long shadow of this skyscraper of a man, it was all Anthony could do not to soil himself. “My God,” I thought, “Kareem Abdul Jabbar is gonna eat Anthony Harrell.” It was definitely a shit-your-pants moment.

  Apparently the kid who played the Zack reincarnation in the first season of The New Class was an outspoken, radical neoconservative. That kind of ideology goes over like a bad entrée at a bar mitzvah in Hollywood. Once his views were fully fleshed out for all on set, he was promptly replaced. He was long gone by the time I arrived for the second season.

  Richard Lee Jackson was cast as Ryan Parker (the second Zack reincarnation) in season two to replace their barking little pundit. After I transitioned over to that set from The College Years, Richard and I went bungee jumping together about forty miles north of L.A. in Angeles National Forest. We took along Ryan’s sister and Ann, the Perfect Girl I was dating at the time. The jump was from the Bridge to Nowhere, which was a two¬hour hike in and spanned a river between two steep canyon walls. The drop shot you out over a huge rock and was, like, twenty stories in the air and, let me tell you, it felt that high. The whole time, I just kept thinking about how St. Peter would shit his britches if he knew two of his stars were so flagrantly breaking their dangerous-activities clause in their contracts.

  At the second-season wrap party for The New Class, all the new kids in the cast were crying and hugging each other goodbye, just like everyone had done so many years earlier for the original SBTB. Again, I knew better. I stood back, drinking a beer, knowing we were coming back for at least two more seasons. The reason the producers brought Screech back was to liven up the show and help push the episode total into syndication. Again I was asked, “Dustin, why aren’t you sad?” I just had to shake my head. They had no concept of how many SBTB wrap parties I had been to—or would continue to go to. I finished my beer and said, “Well, see you in four months.”

  When SBTB: The New Class was cancelled in 2000, and it was clear the long
run of SBTB, in all its formats, was over, Den and I looked at each other and said, “Finally!” Everybody else, especially the kids, were crying and upset all over again, but we were laughing. I knew that this wrap party was the real deal. SBTB had officially come to an end. After attending so many wrap parties where everyone was convinced we weren’t coming back and then we did, it was sort of a relief to know, in my heart, after ten seasons and 260 episodes, that my long run playing Screech had finally reached its end.

  Truth is, when I knew it was over, I was sad. It was the end of an era, and I knew I would never get those moments back. For me, SBTB was more than just a TV show—it was my youth. I played Screech from the time I was eleven to the time I turned twenty one. From my first kiss to my first (legal) beer. I lost my virginity while I was on SBTB, bought my first car, got my first bank account, graduated from high school—you name it. St. Peter always touted SBTB as a show of firsts: first kiss, first date, first dance, first love, first fight, first breakup. I always mocked that until I was older and it all had a chance to sink in. For me, you see, SBTB really was all that and so much more. As much as I never wanted to play Screech for the rest of my life, I do miss it.

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