Easy Street (The Hard Way) A Memoir

by Ron Perlman

  I thought for what must have seemed like an hour to poor Pat, beads of sweat forming on his brow, and said, “Jeez, sorry, Pat, but I don’t think I can!” Pat hurried away, mumbling to himself, like I just gave him a terminal diagnosis. We finished with the scene. And the one after that. And three years later, when we finally got canceled, Pat was the only original crew member who was still on the show. I guess he figured it out. I have no idea how, ’cuz the Beast, even to my surprise, spoke so quietly, even I couldn’t hear the sound of my own voice.

  Finally, the pilot was finished. We packed up our gear, went home, and waited around for a few months. In May of that year CBS, as well as all the networks, went to New York for the Upfronts, where they announce their slate of shows that will appear in the fall. I have no idea why, I have no idea how, but Beauty and the Beast made the cut. We were, indeed, on the fall schedule. All because a guy named Erwin More ignored me when I ordered him not to send me the script.

  (CHAPTER 14)

  Beauty in the Beast

  It was huge. Beauty and the Beast was gonna be on CBS, 8 p.m., Friday nights—prime time, baby. And being one of the title characters for the first time, I was in a position that, if I go, so goes the show. Because prior to that, I never thought of myself as anything other than a character actor, somebody who provided a bit of color in the overall piece, but carrying the show was never in my pay grade—that is, until Beauty and the Beast. So it was a real sea change. It was a tremendous transition and affirmation in so many ways. I had to pinch myself to see if it was all real. Prime time network television—highly coveted. How long the gig would last, nobody knew, but what I did know was that this was different from anything that had ever happened to me before. I was thirty-seven years old. And after twenty years of being on stage, finally, not only would I be seen by all of America, but I would also get paid for the privilege!

  Our debut brought with it surprisingly good notices. Critics were taken by the show’s exotic nature and originality. It was not comparable to anything that had ever existed on television before. Not only did the critics single us out; we also got a lot of love from the artistic community at large and, more importantly, from the viewers themselves. We were never in the top ten; it wasn’t getting that kind of love because we were never that kind of a mainstream show. But there was a seriously devoted fan base, which exists to this day. Too esoteric to be a top-ten show, we always managed to dwell respectably in the twenties or thirties. And as more episodes aired, more phenomenal notices from all the right kinds of publications started to come in: the New York Times wrote love letters to it, as did Newsweek and Time. All the things you would hope to get, we were getting. So when the show got that order for the back nine episodes, it wasn’t as much of a surprise as everything else had been.

  TV works like this: After the pilot is picked up, the network only commits cautiously, and if it’s getting sufficient ratings, they give you what’s called the back nine, so thirteen becomes twenty-two, which is a full season. When they green-lit our back nine, we had probably already aired five or six episodes. Because you’re so far ahead when you’re in production than the airing, you’re always five or six episodes ahead, so they make the decision to give us enough lead time to write the last few shows. The first weeks of airing is a very dramatic time period, because the reviews come out, the ratings come out, and you start to see whether people are maybe going to start getting big press, maybe a couple of mentions for awards. You have the Golden Globes coming out in January, the show airs in September. The Golden Globe chatter starts around November, December. If you start getting mentions of things like that, you know the deck starts getting stacked one way or the other: you’re either looking like a hit or a goat.

  Who would’ve thought a show about a woman who works for the district attorney’s office in New York City, who gets mistakenly beaten and left for dead and is mysteriously carried off to some bizarre lair underneath the city and nursed back to health by a creature whose very existence is an impossibility, would work? It was just way too exotic for television, but the chemistry between the two forbidden lovers, beautifully rendered by Ron Koslow and his magnificent staff of writers, really drove it. A writing staff, I might add, that included George R. R. Martin (Game of Thrones), Howard Gordon, and Alex Gansa (24, Homeland). There was an array of elements regarding the success of the show that were really foreign to me. For although I had experienced short-lived momentary visits into and out of the limelight, this was on a scale I was totally unfamiliar with. This was mainstream success, and when it came, what struck me most dramatically was how unprepared for it I was, how it was something I would never have allowed to enter into my consciousness, so I would have remained completely unentertained. What this strange wonder stirring inside of me was is something I will discuss, but one thing is for sure: success felt way different from failure, but it was also way more complicated to navigate, especially when one is hardwired to always stay a part of the pack.

  When one, as a graduate of the school of aiming low, is educated to always be waiting for the other shoe to drop, it’s not surprising when he starts questioning the degree to which all this newfound success is truly earned or how much is just a mistake, how much is just dumb luck—they got the wrong guy, and this will come crashing to an ugly end. Beauty and the Beast was probably the quintessential example of that because I was given a character who represented my very own mission statement concerning my incredible longing and yearning to heal a very open wound that I secretly lived with. So to win the opportunity to play a character who was a distillation of all that discomfort, who would almost allow for an exorcism of it, who would provide my very own catharsis to take place in front of 20 million people, this all seemed way too good to be true.

  Then there are all the other things that change. You go from being a guy who never had two dimes to rub together to, all of a sudden, having to think about who’s gonna advise you on how to deal with that rather robust steady income that suddenly appears. Now you can afford a nice car, can maybe even wanna start thinking about buying a house. You ask around about who’s the right lawyer, start thinking about getting a publicist, about a whole lot of shit you never thought about before. So I jumped in rather small: I bought my first car. I see this gray Jaguar XJ6 for sale on the side of the road and say, “Fuck it, I’ll buy it.” Now, don’t get me wrong—it wasn’t a new Jaguar. I still had that Depression-era sort of mindset my folks passed down to me. No, this baby was two years old and had twenty-five thousand miles on it. But it was like, holy shit, I never met anyone personally who drove a Jaguar. That shit was for other fuckin’ guys.

  During the first season, even though I hadn’t been nominated, the Hollywood foreign critics asked me to be a presenter at the Golden Globes. That was kinda like the first time the world would get to see the guy behind the Beast makeup, what he really looked like as his mild-mannered self. So when my time came, they plucked me out of the audience, escorted me backstage, threw some makeup on me, and, while they were instructing me on how to enter the stage and read off the teleprompter, I felt a tugging on my jacket. I turned around, and it was Sammy Davis Jr., who went out of his way to introduce himself and tell me how he was a big fan of the show. Eventually this turned into an amazing friendship that I’ll get into detail later. That meeting, though—like, the man himself—was too good to be true. Whoa . . . this new gig of mine was getting me more and incredible fringe benefits. Sammy fucking Davis! Just before I walked out onto the Golden Globe stage I looked heavenward, and there was my old man smiling ear to ear.

  This whole deal made for a serious fuckin’ high ’cuz, although I always hoped to one day get a chair at the big table, I never had any real plan of seeing it through. But here I was, feelin’ like I was in this very select club that not a lotta guys get to join. And even though I finally got a coupla bucks, people wanna give me shit for free. They wanna know what I think and have me at their restaurant or club. And on top of all of it a
ll, I’m plying my craft on the regular, playing a character I was so honored to play that I’da done it for free. Well, maybe not that last part, but you know what I mean.

  And then, holy shit, we got picked up for a second season, and boom, I got nominated for a Golden fucking Globe. And the night comes and, boom, boom, I fucking won. And I got nominated for a People’s Choice Award, and, goddammit, I won. And I got nominated for my second Viewers for Quality Television Best Actor award, and I won. And I got nominated for an Emmy, and . . . well, I didn’t win. But hey, things are just flying at me. And little by little, fantasy is beginning to overtake reality. But let’s back up a minute, ’cuz, well, it’s worth it, goddammit!

  The Golden Globe Awards are hosted by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, now in its seventy-first year, and it remains a well-attended celebrity ceremony each January. It’s a huge Hollywood event and the first of the trifecta of the three most major and respected showbiz awards. And unlike the Oscars and the Emmys, the Globes award excellence in both movies and television. So in a way it’s larger in scope than the others. Either way, they all have one thing in common: hype. ’Cuz the nomination for these statues and, even more, the winning of these statues represent big bucks for the entire food chain. Publicists get busier, agents and managers start positioning their clients for bigger pieces of the pie, and lawyers are sharpening their fangs in anticipation of greater leverage. And then there’s Dior, Hugo Boss, Armani, Van Cleef and Arpels, and so on and so forth. And the networks are lookin’ at big event–type ratings and the prestige that comes with airing these shows. This stuff is way more than just a big party. Although, don’t get me wrong—it’s that too. And all three safeguard their nominee selections with fanfare and secrecy, as if they were guarding the code to launch a nuclear missile attack. There’s buzz of who might be nominated, with bookies making odds and critics offering their likelihood of shoo-ins.

  For the decades before, when I watched the program from my tenement apartment couch, I always wondered how the inner workings of such ceremonies operated: How did nominees feel when the camera panned on their face as their names were read? What was whispered in the ear of the presenter when the winner was called to the stage? From the moment I was nominated I was certain my chances of winning lay somewhere between none and most assuredly none. And sure enough, when Opal and I were ushered to our seats, it was clear that the guys planning the event were in total agreement. ’Cuz the only thing behind us was a wall. And just behind that wall were the restrooms. It brought me back to the nosebleed bleacher seats my old man and I used to get at Yankee Stadium. But hey, I ain’t complainin’—at least I made it into the program. Most people, when they watch these awards programs, want to know whether the nominees prepare speeches or do they feel it might be a jinx if they do so. I was on the fence about that, but many actors are superstitious and have certain rituals, as I’ll get into in a later chapter. As for myself, I wrote down nothing.

  It was only while in the shower getting ready to attend did I think to make a mental list of all the people I would need to thank in the unlikely event I was chosen. ’Cuz, like Sonny said, probably not a good idea to come out with just my dick in my hands. I didn’t want to leave out any names because, as I believed and said as much when I was amazingly called to the podium, this type of recognition and spotlight shines on a person only when a whole bunch of people around him or her do stellar work. In this most collective of endeavors it takes a village to shine. But once again, I get ahead of myself.

  Before that day arrived, there was about a month of being an official nominee, which instantly bestows upon you an entirely new set of credentials. When I returned to the set of Beast the next day, of course, everyone was aware of my nomination. I always had to show up four hours earlier than most of the crew to get my makeup applied, but I soon sensed that a lot of things had changed, literally overnight.

  For someone who had not only been overly concerned with what people thought of me but in fact felt downright measured by it, this was one of those moments that went a long, long way. This was the very first time I got real acknowledgment and encouragement not only from a major portion of the country but also, and even more intoxicating, my peers in the industry. There was a validation that gives way to many other things, but if one is not supercareful and does not fundamentally recognize that this winning/losing thing is pure fantasy, signifying absolutely nothing of real consequence, one could be walking into the trap of all traps. Was my opinion suddenly more weighty than before, or did I just think it was? Of this, though, I am certain: people were clearly acting differently toward me. Oh, not all of them, but enough so as to make one raise one’s eyebrows. Because the people who truly wish you well are not as great in number as you might have assumed. Someone’s good fortune might simply be a reminder of what others haven’t yet achieved, that they were far more comfortable in the relationship when obscurity was a shared virtue.

  However, I straightaway gained a new bunch of “friends,” all of whom wanted to grab onto the coattails of someone on the rise. Even though at the time I thought it was cool, those friendships turned out to be fleeting, and very few remained for long. Now don’t get me wrong, the nomination brought with it a new confidence that perhaps bordered on a self-assurance, which may have been taken as something more deleterious, maybe even a perception of arrogance, and that’s maybe why I lost friends. I doubt it, though. I hadn’t really changed. I had always held the character of Vincent in high regard, possessing an intensity as to how he should be played, but I always strove to leave that on the field and not carry it around with me.

  In any event, it’s such a strange experience to be in that moment in time when others suddenly start treating you as if you’re a “somebody.” Reporters suddenly wanted to know who I thought would win an election, for example, or who was my favorite painter or songwriter. It’s easy to get swept into this weird vortex that very well might be over the minute the show gets canceled. Anyway, lemme finally get to the point regarding my night at the Globes.

  In the front rows all of the biggest movie stars, directors, and powerful money men and their perfectly manicured wives or dates are placed. The staffs of such stars negotiate with the Award planners with threats of not attending if they’re not given the seating placement they deem they deserve. Nevertheless, the seating arrangements each year are actually a game of musical chairs of popularity, although it really boils down to a person’s earning potential or how much money they already made or have.

  If there would’ve been a camera on my face when my name was called as the winner, it would’ve been a profile displaying one of pure and authentic shock. When my name was announced, I was so far in the back of the ballroom that, even though I nearly sprinted to the stage, the applause had ended two minutes before I got to the podium. The woman who opened the envelope and gave the award was Valeria Golino, who played Tom Cruise’s girlfriend in Rain Man. It looked like I was giving her a kiss, but I actually leaned in close and asked her to show me the envelope with my name on it because I seriously, even then, thought they’d make a mistake.

  Immediately after making a brief speech, the winner is led from the stage, and someone guides them to a pressroom to have this mini-news conference. Flashbulbs are going off from all angles like a fireworks display, and, for me, still in shock, I had to look my best and come up with intelligent responses to reporters who were throwing the really tough questions at me, stuff like, “How do you feel, Ron?” And “Who are you wearing?”—ya know, real existential stuff! Then the winner eventually goes back to their table with the statue.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off it, sitting there in all its beauty among napkins and lipstick-rimmed wineglasses. After the show and the Governor’s Ball, winners, losers, and most of the attendees go out partying somewhere. My manager wanted me, as a winner, to do a hopscotch of stops to different iconic after-parties. All the time I was carrying this heavy Golden Globe Award, with its marble pedes
tal and the gold world on top. The thing weighed eight and a half pounds.

  I remember being asked, at one restaurant, by the hat-check girl, “Excuse me, sir, would you like to check that in?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I said. “It took me two decades to get this. I ain’t letting nobody hold it.” She shook her head and laughed as if to say, “You can put a kid from the Heights in a tuxedo, but he’s still a hick.” The actual trophy is eventually returned to the Globe’s committee so they can engrave your name on it, a tradition that is shared with the Oscars and the Emmys. You hope they get your address right.

  I falsely believed that with me on magazine covers and everything like this, it was a sure bet that this was what life would continue to look like. I was pretty sure that the money was for sure gonna keep rollin’ in, so I started thinking about how I better start being smart with it, maybe hire one of them financial advisers. Ya know, ’cuz they care so much. This is something I never had to have a concern about, nor did anyone in the Perlman family for that matter, in all the generations leading up to mine. And then I started going around looking for a house. Because it seemed like a sure bet at the time that we were gonna be around for a while. But then, at the end of the second year, Linda got pregnant and told the producers she wanted be written out of the show by the end of that season. I don’t know exactly what happened behind the scenes, but the discussions culminated with them giving Linda her way. They said, “Okay, we don’t wanna keep anybody if they don’t wanna be here. You want off of the show bad enough, you got it.”