by Jon Cryer
New American Library
Published by the Penguin Group
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Copyright © The Niven Company, Ltd., 2015
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REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Cryer, Jon, 1965–
So that happened/Jon Cryer.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-698-18074-1
1. Cryer, Jon, 1965– 2. Actors—United States—Biography. I. Title.
PN2287.C6855A3 2015
791.4502'8092—dc23 2014046319
[B]
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences and the words are the author’s alone.
Version_2
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
A Note on the Use of Profanity
Prologue
Chapter 1: A Child Slave for Zestabs
Chapter 2: Things Were Wonderful Before You Came
Chapter 3: The Fish-in-a-Barrel Situation
Chapter 4: The Fat Man Sits in Row H
Chapter 5: No Knob on the Gearshift
Chapter 6: For Some Reason, a Trench Coat
Chapter 7: Jon? Jon!
Chapter 8: This Is Just How We Are!
Chapter 9: And Another. And Another.
Chapter 10: But Now I Have to Shoot It
Chapter 11: My Breakfast Club Fist Moment
Chapter 12: People Actually Booed
Chapter 13: Fuck 1987
Chapter 14: So We Did Something Strenuous
Chapter 15: Don’t Make Me Gary Sandy
Chapter 16: The Art Garfunkel Role
Chapter 17: And This Is Tuesday, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha
Chapter 18: Oh, Yeah, Charlie Sheen
Chapter 19: That Time the Very Worst Thing Happened
Chapter 20: Corn? When Did I Have Corn?
Chapter 21: P-Choo . . . P-Choo! P-Choo!
Chapter 22: Not Really an Answer to the Winter Part
Chapter 23: The Mechanics of Jokedom Department
Chapter 24: We Who Labor in the Shadow of Giants
Chapter 25: Episodes of Two and a Half Men
Chapter 26: The Tsunami Is More Important
Chapter 27: React to the Good Part
Coda
Appendix
Acknowledgments
Photographs
To my beautiful children,
Charlie and Daisy
(Please don’t read the part
about the prostitute.)
“Sweetheart, you’ll find
mediocre people do exceptional things all the time.”
—OK Go, “What to Do”
A Note on the Use of Profanity
When I started this book I truly believed that I did not curse very much. That I added a dash of salty language to a slab of comedic irony only when it was urgently necessary. For flavor. But the process of writing it has brought me to the realization that what I tend to offer up is actually a sodium-packed canned ham of expletives of dubious necessity. For that I’m desperately sorry. I’ve endeavored to reduce their use wherever possible, but I’m afraid many remain. If you purchased this book hoping it’d be appropriate to read for your “Family Showbiz Bio Reading Night,” I suggest you take this moment to reconsider.
Prologue
“Goddammit.”
“Cut, cut, cut!”
The director yanks off his headphones and wearily barks, “I’m pretty sure doves don’t shit sideways! Am I right? Anybody?!”
The special-effects guy (Allen, I think) is at a loss for words. Really, how does one respond to that question? The cast, dressed in tasteless formal wear for a mideighties suburban American wedding, break character and start to mill about restlessly.
There is a moment of tense silence while some of us consider a reply to the director’s odd dove query. But fortunately, our fearless leader breaks the tension by answering himself. “That’s what I thought.”
We are shooting outside a wedding chapel in Phoenix, Arizona, during the summer of 1983, and it’s incredibly, unbearably, fucktastically hot. My white polyester tux is sodden with sweat and adhering to every contour of my body. The reason Bob, our director, is asking about the physics of bird ejecta is because in this particular shot, the animal wranglers were supposed to release some doves, and when those doves flew over the wedding party, they were supposed to shit on us as we exited the chapel. Sadly, the actual doves, ignorant of their cue, indifferent to the wishes of the director, as well as unconcerned about their chance at screen stardom, did not cooperate and empty their bowels upon us.
So the special effects guy (ninety-five percent sure it’s Allen), ever resourceful, had jury-rigged an elaborate backup system of pressurized containers to squirt fake dove poo on the wedding party from either side of the camera. But no matter how he tried, said poo would rain onto the partiers with a noticeably wide arc. This made Bob unhappy. Apparently he felt any discerning moviegoer would immediately notice the crap’s flight path, and their sense of cinematic verisimilitude would be forever compromised. Bob was turning out to be the Stanley Kubrick of turd-trajectory perfectionists.
Not that Bob is being an asshole about it. He seems irritated, yet kind of amused. The Bob in question is actually a Robert: Robert Altman, the acclaimed director of MASH, Nashville, and McCabe & Mrs. Miller. So if any director has earned the right to be an asshole about doves shitting on people, it’d be him.
The movie is O.C. and Stiggs, and it is intended to be Bob’s subversive take on American suburban torpor dressed up as an accessible youth comedy. The story is about how the two titular teenagers abuse, accost, and generally annoy an atrociously clueless nouveau riche family, the Schwabs. I play Randall Schwab Jr., idiot scion of the brood, while Jane Curtin of Saturday Night Live fame and Paul Dooley from Breaking Away play my parents. Also in the film are Dennis Hopper, Cynthia Nixon, and Ray Walston.
This is my first day of shooting on my very first movie role.
In a fucking Robert Altman movie.
I am quite literally vibrating with excitement, anticipation, and abject terror.
The scene we are shooting is Randall’s sister Lenore’s wedding. Pretty much the entire cast is in it. So on my first day I get to work with both a director I revere, as well as performers I’ve admired for ages. I’m in the big leagues. I’m getting my chance to find out how the actors who’ve made it ply their trade. To discover exactly how one of the all-time great directors makes his genius manifest. It’s going to be amazing. If only they can figure out how to get this bird-shit thing t
o work.
The crux of the scene, as Bob imagines it, is that the Schwab family emerges from the chapel, followed by the auspicious release of a flock of doves, signifying to all that our clan is the gauchest of the gauche in terms of egregious displays of suburban American wealth, at which point—big joke!—the doves would poop on us. Take that, richies!
But as I said, this guano business is easier said than done. So after Bob’s minor outburst, he emerges from his trailer, where he’s been watching us on video monitors, with a certain if-you-want-something-done-right-you-have-to-do-it-yourself determination. He confers with his special-effects guy (it’s possible it’s Steve), who runs off and hurriedly gathers a large yellow mixing bowl and several ingredients easily found in a refrigerator or pantry. He throws the assortment into the bowl and mixes fiercely. Meanwhile Bob motions to one of the grips, who grabs a ladder and rushes in. The special-effects guy (thanks, IMDb, definitely Allen) hands Bob the bowl and Bob sighs.
With filmic reality on the line, it is now evident that someone will have to go vertical and rain this new faux poo from a proper angle over the assembled wedding guests. And that that someone will be none other than five-time Academy Award–nominated director Robert Altman himself.
Imagine, if you will, this master American filmmaker—the man behind The Player, Short Cuts, and Gosford Park—climbing a rickety aluminum ladder, perching his shall we say portly frame on the top while a crew member nervously holds the ladder in place, and, as his actors step out from flung-open chapel doors, hurling down on us healthy dollops of very realistic-looking ersatz bird feces (see the Appendix for the recipe) with steady, consistent authority.
As cameras roll, Bob lobs bogus excreta with the artistry of Jackson Pollock. Or perhaps Georges Seurat is a more appropriate comparison: Like Seurat’s pointillist masterpieces, not a blob is out of place. But I start to notice a curious phenomenon. I haven’t been hit and, for lack of a better description, I’m feeling left out. My gut tells me the audience will really enjoy seeing my character get nailed. So I begin jockeying into position to put myself in the line of poop fire, much the same way an outfielder adjusts to get under a fly ball. I look around and realize that all of the actors I was looking forward to working with, the ones I truly respected, are doing it too! There’s Jane Curtin gliding sideways to snag a faceful of avian dookie, Paul Dooley expertly catching some on the shoulder, and future Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon animatedly yakking with a background performer as she stealthily positions herself to receive an admirably viscous splotch in her hair.
Looking around at this surreal scene, I could not help but marvel at the caliber of performer hoping to get shat on by Bob Altman. I thought, Welcome to showbiz, Jon.
And as it turned out, this wouldn’t even be the weirdest day of my career.
Not even close.
Chapter 1
A Child Slave for Zestabs
I don’t remember the first time I was on television.
If that sounds a little strange, it should. I grew up during a time when an appearance on TV was a fairly exotic, noteworthy occurrence. I also don’t remember even wanting to be an actor then, which should have made it all the more bizarre.
For your perusal, I submit this:
This is me circa 1969. Clearly I was looking down the barrel of a future already limited by my glaring failure to master the arcane arts of the common hairbrush. As you can see, I had no earthly reason to expect a career in the entertainment industry.
Yet I was blessed. Blessed with moxie, stick-to-itiveness, spunk, an off-kilter grin, lousy posture, an anxious nature, discolored teeth, zero muscle tone, asthma, an assortment of vocal tics, low self-esteem, a muffin top (before they even called it that), and dandruff. As well as the two things that made up for almost all of it: an appreciation for the surreal, and a near-delusional ignorance of my own limitations.
All I needed was fate to throw some happy accidents, odd occurrences, and utter fiascoes my way, and I’d be off and running.
The first of them is the one I can’t even really remember.
You can decide if it means anything in the larger scheme of things. I’ve had to rely on my mother for a lot of the details, since she was there for it.
Actually, I like starting with a story involving my mother, because she’s an amazing woman. This was the late 1960s in my hometown of New York City, when my parents—Gretchen and David Cryer—were still together. The estimable Gretchen Cryer was, in fact, a double threat—actress and playwright. A triple threat soon after, if you count having to raise two kids, a daughter and a son, after my parents divorced.
At any rate, playing moms in television spots certainly helped pay the bills, and one day she landed a commercial for a multivitamin called Zestabs, an over-the-counter brand aimed at families that would now be called “vintage.” Although not the way wine is so judiciously labeled. In other words, if you find a dusty bottle of Zestabs in your grandmother’s medicine cabinet, do not decant it and serve with lamb chops. Sell it on eBay to some hipster who wants it for his apothecary table.
Anyway, Zestabs not only wanted Mom for their commercial; they wanted her for the whole campaign, too, so this was a real score back then. TV! Print ads! Store displays! The bottle label, too! Mom would be the new face of vitamins. And maybe also . . .
She was asked, “Do you have any kids?”
“I sure do,” she said. “Two. A girl and a boy.”
“Great,” said Zestabs. (I don’t have a person for this part of the conversation, just a faceless brand, but hey, corporations are people, too, apparently.) “We need two kids. They don’t have to say or do anything. You’ll just stand there and say the copy, with your arms around each of them.”
Mom came home to our apartment on the Upper West Side, brimming with enthusiasm about the offer. First she probably had to get my sister, Robin, then six years old, to stop beating the crap out of her younger brother (I was four at the time). I picture my mother excitedly throwing open the front door to reveal my sister in a prepunch tableau, eyes wide, holding me up by my collar, fist clenched and arm cocked. But once she pried me out of my sister’s freakishly-strong-for-a-first-grader grip and the proper admonitions were taken care of, she laid the news on us.
“Kids, we have this wonderful chance to be in a commercial together! Want to do it?”
At the same time I said, “Yes!” Robin began screaming and crying and bolted for corners of the apartment unknown, which necessitated a peacekeeping mission on Mom’s part to reassure her that children aren’t taken from home against their will and forced to hawk products, as though Madison Avenue had its own version of the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
But me? Make me a child-labor slave for Zestabs! Give me a new sister, too, while you’re at it! (I got one, in fact, a nice blond girl they hired for the commercial, named Jennifer.)
My first salaried job, people. And really, what did I even know of the business then? I knew my parents had something to do with performing. I’d hang out backstage sometimes during the original run of the Broadway musical 1776, which both Mom and Dad were in, and marvel at the fact that adults were deeply involved in the act of playing and pretend. Women wore big hoop skirts, bizarre undergarments, and tall wigs; men wore tons of makeup and fancy old-timey suits; they sang and spoke loudly, then walked offstage and briefly turned into normal people again, drinking Cokes and swearing and bumping into one another before scurrying back onstage to pretend again. It was like being on another planet, one that seemed way more fun than this one.
I don’t know if at the age of four I could have put all that together as part of what being in a commercial was, but my saying yes so insistently meant the desire to perform was in me somewhere.
I was so excited about the commercial, in fact, that the morning of the shoot, as a special gift for everyone, I showed up with giant red blotches
all over my face and skin. Yes, my four-year-old body—overwhelmed by the mixture of nervousness, anticipation, and enthusiasm coursing through it—turned me into a Dr. Seuss creature. Had we been shooting a commercial for a skin-rejuvenating soap, I’d have made an incredible “before” picture.
But this was a vitamin commercial in the 1960s, and all I was supposed to do was look happy and say nothing next to my mother—plenty of training in the bag there—and yet somehow already this neat little opportunity had taken an unforeseen left turn.
Luckily everyone was, according to Mom, very accommodating and understanding, and after a sufficient period of calmness the blotches subsided. We shot the commercial, everything went smoothly, the ad aired, and children everywhere got their recommended daily doses of vitaminy goodness because I looked clean, cheerful, healthy, and not in any way like this vitamin gave you shingles. With my paycheck, Mom started a bank account for me instead of blowing it all on hats, which was smart, I thought. Plus, when we’d go to the drugstore, I could go to the vitamin aisle and see a display-stand version of myself and Mother and some random blond girl staring back at me, which even then I thought was a little peculiar. I’m sure Robin kicked the cardboard me every chance she got.
And yet I wouldn’t call my Zestabs experience the Bug. You know, the “acting bug” you always read about in interviews, which equates the desire to play characters with, of all things, a presumably incurable disease. That particular infection happened years later, when I was persuaded to go to a summer camp for the performing arts. But the Zestabs commercial certainly let me know that even when something sounds smooth and fun and exciting, you’d better be ready for splotches.
Zestabs, meanwhile, with their sights now directly on the young, went on to make chocolate-flavored vitamins and to use Mighty Mouse in its ads and labeling, eventually inspiring the Flintstones brand of chewable vitamins, before fading as a relic of cartoon-inspired marketing of over-the-counter drugs to children. Zestabs retired to Arizona, married a discontinued breakfast cereal, and lived out its days on a ranch.