Not long ago I ran into Kiefer Sutherland at a restaurant in Los Angeles. I hadn’t seen him in ten, maybe twelve years.
Kiefer and I were never close, despite having worked on two films together, back-to-back. In fact, when I was filming the sequel to The Lost Boys with his younger half brother Angus, I remember thinking that I felt closer in a matter of weeks to Angus than I’d ever felt to Kiefer, despite having worked together for nearly six months. Kiefer is—or at least was—a pretty introverted guy. Still, I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around in his seat at the bar.
“Corey! Wow, man, how are you?”
We exchanged pleasantries, gave each other a hug, until talk eventually turned to our work together on the set of The Lost Boys.
“You had it rough, man. You went through a lot. I don’t know if I ever told you this story, but I feel like I should…”
He proceeded to tell me about a night long ago, several weeks into filming in Santa Cruz. He had returned to the hotel from set, was sitting in his car in the parking lot polishing off a beer, when he saw me sitting on the exterior stairwell, my head in my hands, crying. He knew—he said—it must have something to do with my mother, who was once again acting as my on-set guardian. Everyone knew about the problems I was having with my mother.
Just a few days before the evening in question, I’d come back to the hotel to find she wasn’t in her room. Several members of the crew, however, warned me that she was in the hotel bar, that I might want to help her back upstairs. I reluctantly made my way to the bar and found her, draped all over some greasy-looking guy, cocaine caked around the inside of her nostrils. She could barely stand up; I was mortified. I spent many, many nights after that sitting outside on the stairs, too embarrassed even to look at her.
“We all knew what a mess she was,” Kiefer went on. “There were so many times I wanted to go down there, to shake some sense into her.” Instead, he spent the evening with Jason Patric and Dianne Wiest, sharing a bottle of wine and surfing channels on the television. But every half hour or so, he’d pull back the curtains and peer out the window, checking on me, checking to see if I was still there.
* * *
Mark Marshall, Steven Spielberg’s assistant and my chaperone on the Goonies trip to the Jacksons Victory Tour at Dodger Stadium, was just finishing up work on The Color Purple. He was driving from North Carolina, and he told me he’d be making a pit stop in Santa Cruz on his way back to L.A. We were only a few weeks into filming on The Lost Boys, but it was welcome news—Mark had always been a calming influence, especially in the early stages of my friendship with Michael Jackson, when I spent an inordinate amount of time wondering when, if ever, Michael would return to the Goonies set. Mark was able, somehow, to keep me grounded, to keep me sane.
We had just transitioned to night shoots, working every day from 5:00 P.M. into the wee hours of the morning. When you’re on a schedule like that, it’s imperative to stay on it, even if you have a scheduled day off. You’ve got to stay awake all night and sleep during the day if you have any hope of making the transition back to work.
Mark didn’t arrive in Santa Cruz until sometime after 2:00 A.M., the night before my day off. He was, not surprisingly, exhausted from the drive, and immediately went to sleep. I lay there for a while, my blankets pulled tight to my chin, but I was restless. I went back outside and resumed my regular place on the stairwell, resting my head in my hands.
Before long, a young Asian woman in a cowboy hat came and took a seat by my side. I recognized her at once; her name was Julie, she was an extra on set, and spent a lot of time hanging out at the hotel. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was hooking up with someone in the cast. It’s not unusual for extras to spend a lot of time hanging around the stars.
“I can give you something to make you feel better,” she said, curling her lithe body against mine. “You don’t have to be so tired, and so sad, all the time.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have these … treats. I could give you some to help you stay awake.”
“What kind of treats?”
“The same kind your mom uses.”
I may have recognized Julie; I had not realized she was spending time with my mother. “What’s that?” I asked.
“Cocaine. I have some. At my place. You wanna come over?”
So, I did. I hopped in her car, we drove to her house, and she spread out a little mound of cocaine, using a credit card to separate it into neat little lines on the coffee table. I snorted a line, sucked the excess off my finger, and felt wiped clean, like an eraser on a chalkboard. All of the things I had been depressed about were just gone. I wasn’t sad anymore. In fact, I felt pretty fucking great.
“Come on!” She jumped up from her spot on the floor, next to the sofa. “I’m gonna teach you how to drive!”
We climbed back in her Volkswagen, a little white stick-shift convertible, and went careening over the hills of Santa Cruz—probably not the easiest place to learn how to operate a manual transmission, to say nothing of the added hindrance brought on by the coke. I kept slipping the gear, rolling the car backward, up and down the hills. But it didn’t matter; I was watching the sun rise over the mountains, feeling the wind on my face, thinking we could drive anywhere, out of Santa Cruz, any place we wanted to go—until sometime around 7:00 A.M., when I suddenly remembered about Mark. Mark, who was going to wake up soon and find that I wasn’t there.
“How long does this stuff last?” I asked her.
“Couple hours.”
“So, it’ll wear off this afternoon?”
“Eh, I don’t know. You should be okay for a while. ’Til tonight.”
“Well, then,” I said, “you had better give me some more.”
Mark was just waking up by the time I got back to the hotel, and I was wired, totally ready to go explore. We went to the beach, walked along the boardwalk, played video games, sat out in the sun, and had a grand old time, right up until my 5:00 P.M. set call.
What I didn’t realize at the time is that when cocaine wears off, it wears off hard. And it wore off the moment I stepped foot on the set. I could feel it all coming down on me—the hours and hours without sleep, the vicious hangover that comes with having used hard drugs. What have I done? I thought, the panic already setting in. Why am I doing this to myself?
We were shooting a scene in the comic-book store. There were actually three of these sets altogether—an actual comic-book store located in downtown Santa Cruz, where we shot a lot of interiors; the storefront of a record store situated on the boardwalk, which was set decorated to look as though it housed comics; and a third interior set, which was eventually constructed on a Warner Brothers soundstage back in L.A., where we worked on pickups and coverage. I was supposed to be delivering my big speech about being a fighter for “truth, justice, and the American way,” but I could not have been more ill prepared. I could barely keep my eyes open.
Of course, Joel came to set that day full of energy. I could see his mouth moving, but I could not, for the life of me, understand a word he was saying. Every few seconds, he’d be yelling at me for some new reason, because every few seconds, I was totally fucking it up. I’d say the wrong thing, or go to the wrong place, miss my mark or step on someone’s line. I could not do anything right. And then I made the egregious error of asking my director for a break. Just ten minutes so I could “lie down.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Joel asked, his contempt for me at that moment only barely contained.
“Nothing,” I muttered, rubbing my eyes.
“What do you mean nothing? You’re obviously out of it.… Are you on drugs?”
“What? No. I just didn’t sleep. My friend Mark is visiting and we spent the day together. I didn’t think I would be this tired.”
Joel was incensed. “You’re out running around all day and night partying? This is a job, Corey. You’re here to do a fucking job. Do you understand that?”
I nodded. �
��I didn’t want to let my friend down.”
“You’re letting the whole fucking studio down! Do you have any idea how much money you’re costing us? Because you’re not prepared? Where the fuck is your responsible party?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? Who’s here with you?”
“My mom.”
“Well where the hell is she?”
I was exhausted, I was sick of hearing—even thinking—about my mother. So I let it fly. “I don’t know, Joel. I saw her last night, she was totally fucked up. I was really depressed, so I went out. And I made a mistake. I fucked up. So, I don’t know, Joel. I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”
“You know what?” Joel said, coming at me now, wagging a finger in my face. “I don’t need this fucking attitude. Get the fuck off my set. I don’t want to see your face anymore. I’m done.”
For the second time in my life, I was fired.
* * *
I went back to my trailer and called my agent. She told me to sit tight. And the next day, thankfully, Joel called me into his office.
“I understand that you’re going through a lot at the moment. But I have a film to finish. I’m going to do my job, just like you’re going to do your job, okay?
I had never felt so relieved in my entire life.
“Now,” he continued, “you should have some kind of responsible party here, and your mom’s not cutting it. Is there someone who can come in and take over?”
I suggested my father, with the caveat that I hadn’t seen him much, and he did agree to take over—but he wasn’t in a position to drop everything and head straightaway to Santa Cruz. If we could find a fill-in, someone to act as my guardian for the remainder of the on-location shoot, then I could move in with my dad upon our return to L.A. He would take me to set while we wrapped up production at the Warner Brothers lot.
“Okay, who else is available?” Joel asked. “Who can we fly up here right away?”
We put our heads together. The best person—the only person—we could come up with was my old friend Marty Weiss.
* * *
“I need a girl. I need a girl right now. Can you call a girl for me? There’s got to be somebody you know.”
Haim was in one of his moods again. When he got fixated on an idea—any idea—there was no stopping him, no postponing him, no putting him off until later. He was going to drill you and drill you and drill you until he got what he wanted. It didn’t matter if he was looking to smoke a joint, or score some crack, or find some girls—if he wanted a hamburger—once he fixated on something, it became all consuming. If that fixation proved to be an inconvenience to you, even if it pissed you off, well, he didn’t seem to notice.
Despite our budding friendship, Haim and I didn’t actually spend all that much time together during the filming of The Lost Boys, at least not until shooting resumed in L.A. Though the cast naturally broke down into cliques based on our respective ages—the younger kids, me, Haim, and Jamison; and the older actors, Kiefer, Jami Gertz, Brooke McCarter, Billy Wirth, and Alex Winter—Haim was able to move between the groups, probably because he was playing the younger brother of Jason Patric. Some of the older cast members had turned one of the hotel rooms into a sort of makeshift vampire lair, pushing the beds together and blacking out the windows with aluminum foil. I don’t know if this was some attempt at going method, but I didn’t like the vibe in there. I spent most of my time alone.
“Corey, we’re in Santa Cruz. I don’t know anyone here.”
“What about that girl your mom hangs out with? The Asian girl?”
“I guess you can call her…?”
“Can you call her for me?”
I set down the picture of my girlfriend, Katie, and sighed. “I really don’t know her that well.”
“Come on, man. I just need somebody to take care of me.”
And then suddenly I remembered a story, something Jason Presson had told me about Marty, a month or so before I left town. Jason had spent the night at Marty’s house; Marty was living, at the time, with his parents and his brothers and sister. At same point during the overnight, Marty had admitted to Jason that he was gay.
I’m not sure what made me think of that, or what made me say what I said next. It just sort of slipped out—it wasn’t something I thought about, it wasn’t something I meant to be in any way taken seriously. It was just a flip comment, a weak attempt at a joke.
“Marty’s gay,” I said. “Why don’t you ask him?”
Haim looked over at Marty, sitting sheepishly in a chair in the corner. “Is that true, man? Are you gay?”
Marty was clearly flustered by this; he sat up a little, wiped his palms on his pants. “Well, uh, I mean … I don’t know about gay. I don’t really like to talk about it. I mean, I like boys as much as I like girls, but I don’t know if you’d call that gay.…”
“Well, if you’re gay,” Corey said, not missing a beat, “then why don’t you take care of me?”
They walked single file into the adjoining room—the room that had originally been intended for my mother. I heard sounds, banging, thumping. I felt my stomach flip-flop. I felt sick.
CHAPTER 13
“Your butt is mine.”
“Hello?” I gripped the phone receiver tighter against my ear.
“Corey, it’s Michael. Your butt is mine.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Gonna make it right.”
“What?”
“Do you like those words? They’re the lyrics to my new song. It’s called ‘Bad.’”
Michael and I hadn’t spoken in a few months, but his timing proved to be somewhat prophetic. Once filming on The Lost Boys resumed in L.A., bad is what I was gonna be.
* * *
As planned, I moved into my dad’s apartment so he could take over as my official guardian. It was a one-bedroom in Hollywood, on the third floor of a seedy building on Cahuenga, and minimally furnished—there were a table and two chairs in what passed for a breakfast nook, plus a desk and a chair and a foldout couch in the little living room. This is where I slept. I was working on what would become my fifth hit film in a row (Stand by Me would open within weeks and become the sleeper hit of the summer); Haim and I were hanging out more, and “the two Coreys” was quickly becoming a “thing” in Hollywood; people everywhere assumed I was rolling in money, when really I was living in a rat-infested hole straight out of Midnight Cowboy and sleeping on the sofa.
One thing I can say for my father: he sniffed out Marty Weiss right away, told me I was no longer allowed to see him. “There’s something not right about him. I don’t want him around.”
When, at my father’s insistence, I severed contact with him, Marty went on to form a business partnership with my mother. Together, they created a talent agency for kids.
Meanwhile, my father had formed an agency, too. New Talent Enterprises, an acting workshop/management company, was located directly across the street from our apartment in a rundown three-bedroom house-turned-office building. My dad would place ads in the paper, and people would pay a couple hundred dollars to listen to him lecture about how he had built my sister’s and my careers. (The All-New Mickey Mouse Club may have been a high point for Mindy, but she did continue to work throughout her teens and early twenties; she had a bit part in Say Anything, the Cameron Crowe–directed cult-classic starring John Cusack. She eventually left the business in order to lead a “normal” life.)
A few weeks after I moved in, my father took me with him to a friend’s home in Marina Del Ray.
“Son?” he said, extending a freshly rolled joint, “do you want to smoke?”
I had admitted to my father that I was smoking weed shortly after his trip to Shasta to visit me on the set of Stand by Me. This wasn’t exactly something I was afraid to reveal; my father was clearly a stoner, he’d never really attempted to keep his smoking a secret. In fact, when I told him I’d trie
d it, he actually seemed sort of impressed.
“Sure,” I said, taking the joint from his hand.
My father was something like a used-car salesman in those days, or a slick game-show host. His hair was always perfectly coifed, brushed and parted and reeking of Vitalis, his plaid shirts always unbuttoned to mid-chest, revealing the glint of a gold chain, his pants always a bit too tight. Every time we walked outside together, he would tilt his head to the sky, forever at work on his tan.
He looked over at me then, through a haze of pot smoke, as if he had never been more proud. “You know, I’ve dreamed of this moment, when you and I would finally be able to share a joint. This is an exciting day.”
I had to admit, I thought it was pretty great, too. Living with my dad was nothing like living with my mother. He was more like a friend than a father, and I was able to do more or less what I wanted. I could have friends over—my cousin Michael and Jason Presson became regulars at the apartment—and Katie and I were free to do as we pleased. She visited me on the set of The Lost Boys, I took her to the studio to meet Michael Jackson. It was my first real relationship, and I was hopelessly in love. After three months, we slept together. To me, it was tender, and romantic, and precious—even if I did lose my virginity on a pullout couch in a rundown apartment I shared with my dad.
Mere days after consummating our relationship, however, Katie informed me that she was moving to Mexico to live with her dad. Other than a role in The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, which premiered in 1987, she wasn’t getting much work. Later, she would become a well-known star of Latin telenovelas, but I was shattered that she was gone. Anytime something good came along in my life, it seemed to be quickly snatched away.
* * *
I was back to working on the Warner Brothers lot.
The final scenes of The Lost Boys would be filmed on closed soundstages rather than on location, and—just like on The Goonies—we were shooting on more than one soundstage at a time. Though Joel was flamboyant and funny and fun, when he got angry, he got livid. By the time we returned to L.A., he was getting angry a lot. The demands and the pressure were mounting, and most of the cast was fairly stressed out.
Coreyography: A Memoir Page 14