Makeup to Breakup

by Sloman, Larry

  The script was sent to KISS’s office for KISS to be a part of. Somehow Gene got wind of this and hijacked the script, made himself the producer, and got Barry Levine, one of our longtime photographers, to coproduce it with him.

  It was such a good script that Tim got it green-lighted in two weeks at New Line. But for Tim to work on it, he had to get permission from Gene to be a producer. Gene gave it to him, but Tim wound up making a $50,000 producer’s fee next to Barry’s fee of $500,000. God knows how much Gene made.

  Ace, Paul, and I didn’t even know about the movie until we read about it in the Hollywood Reporter. After we met with Tim and the producers, I was excited. This wasn’t some Hanna-Barbera pablum, this was a real movie with a director, Adam Rifkin, whom I had heard about and admired for his movie Mousehunt. I really wanted to work on it, but then Gene started fucking everything up.

  He had them take out a scene where the kids meet us backstage because, according to him, “Ace and Peter can’t act.” Tim asked Ace and me to come up with some ideas for our own cameos. That idea got axed when Gene put down his big fat producer’s foot. Then he told the other producers and the director that Ace and I were like children and we needed to be kept on a tight leash. But he also lumped Paul in with me and Ace. Word got back to Paul, and he got really pissed that he was being marginalized, too. By then I was used to being put on the same shitlist as Ace.

  New Line started discussing the music for the film with Gene. He threw out any songs that weren’t written by him and Paul. If they used “Beth,” then they couldn’t use the vocal, because then they’d have to pay me. We wanted an original song for the movie, not something from Psycho Circus, so Paul said he wanted to write it.

  As they went into production, the New Line guys were getting harassed by Gene, who was pitching them all these other projects. He was licking every New Line asshole he could find, he was so desperate to break into Hollywood. I remember we’_ord ever d all be in a limo and Gene would say, “Can we have some quiet in the car please? I’m expecting a call from Steven Spielberg.” Of course the call never came. It took years for Gene to get a call from Hollywood. He finally got a reality show. Only it was his reality.

  Tim and the director wanted us to record a new version of “Detroit Rock City” to use in the finale of the film. But Doc and Gene tried to give them the recording of that song from Alive II. They told Gene that it wouldn’t work and, for the last time ever, the four of us got in the studio and recorded a new version of “Detroit Rock City.” I did twenty-one takes in one day. Not bad for an old man, right?

  The movie was completed, and it was testing through the roof. Now it was time for the director and Tim to hear the new song Paul wrote for the end credits. Gene called them into the studio, and they were shocked to see just Paul there. Ace and I never even knew about this new song. Gene sat them down and they were expecting some kick-ass rock anthem to end the movie, and all of a sudden they heard violins and Paul singing, “Wherever you are, I’ll be there for you.” There were no drums, no guitars: It was Paul and a karaoke machine doing a bad imitation of Steven Tyler. The song may have been okay for a remake of Romeo and Juliet, but it wasn’t working here at all. The New Line guys didn’t know what to say. Gene later told them that he hated the song, too, but that he had fucked Paul over so much that he told Paul that the end credits could be his domain. So they had to keep the song.

  Now New Line wanted a music video. They wanted to include all of us in the video, but Paul and Gene nixed that. So now New Line had lost its KISS song and its KISS video. They wound up using Paul’s lame song at the very end of the credits for twenty-five seconds. But the final “fuck you” was that the great new version of “Detroit Rock City” that we had just recorded—that New Line was convinced was going to help sell massive quantities of the soundtrack album—never made it onto the soundtrack. Doc accidentally gave them the master of the remix of “Detroit Rock City” from the Double Platinum album, and that was the version on the soundtrack. I’m still convinced this last trick was a ploy to keep them from paying Ace and me residuals.

  By the time the movie was released, on August 13 of 1999, New Line was fed up with Gene’s lies. He had promised an incredible KISS media blitz that would include a kick-ass single, a kick-ass video, clips from the movie playing at every KISS concert, postcards handed out at every show, all this tie-in promotion. It was all bullshit.

  New Line arranged for a huge premiere in Westwood and we played a show in the street outside the theater. We were supposed to get paid to play, but of course we never did. A few days later, KISS received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That really meant a lot to me. When it was my turn to speak, I dedicated the award to my mom. That day I looked out into the audience and saw Tim, our producer, standing out in the audience with the fans. Gene and Barry Levine were posing with the star and carrying on backstage, but they made Tim, the man who brought the film to New Line, stand out on the street behind a barricade. He didn’t exist for them anymore: They had used him and discarded him. I pulled him out of the crowd and brought him backstage. That’s when I found out that it was Tim, not Gene, who got us the star in the first place. One more lie.

  The movie came out to scathing reviews. But the reviews didn’t really a nice chunk of change,ord ever mention the movie—they were all focused on how this was another attempt by Gene to milk the KISS fans out of whatever money they had that they hadn’t already spent on KISS condoms or KISS coffins. The negativity was a backlash against Gene’s continual attempts to cash in on the band’s success in lame ways.

  Tim took the failure of the film hard. After a few months of licking his wounds he decided to visit Gene, maybe to get some closure. He went to Gene’s house and Gene was sitting on his throne. He actually has a throne that he sits on in the middle of a room that’s packed with memorabilia and is a shrine to himself.

  Tim told Gene how sad the whole experience had been for him.

  “You know, Gene, I’ve got to tell you that it’s very upsetting to me, as a friend and as a KISS fan, when I read these interviews and you’re just trashing Peter and you’re trashing Ace. Sometimes as brothers you fight, but when you go out into the world you should still be a family. It’s really tough when the critics are criticizing this movie and criticizing you, for you to just lash back by shit-talking Ace and shit-talking Peter, but also shit-talking KISS. I can’t stand it when you say that KISS isn’t a rock band, they’re a rock brand. It’s wrong.”

  Gene looked at Tim, who had poured out his heart, with amusement.

  “Sullivan, you know what your problem is? You believe in all this,” Gene said with glee.

  But Tim was right. We dyed our hair, we gave our blood, we struggled and cooked for each other in seedy hotels because we were a band, not a brand. It’s shocking and horrifying that Gene has forgotten that.

  Right before the last few dates of the Psycho Circus Tour, Paul convened a meeting in his room before a show. The tour had been a disaster and was bleeding money.

  “Things aren’t going well on the tour,” he said. “We don’t want to, but we’re going to have to pull the plug on the upcoming legs of the tour. But we have an idea. We’re going to do a farewell tour, one more time around for everyone to see us. We probably won’t make much, we may even lose money, but we think we should do it for the fans. Then we can leave the right way.”

  Who the fuck was he kidding? Gigi picked up on it right away. “They’re full of shit. They’re going to make a small fortune,” she told me.

  Of course, Ace and I had to sign new contracts, and we wound up getting less money than we had on the previous tours. I had been previously represented by the same lawyer who also represented both George Sewitt and Ace. I fired him because I became convinced that he never really had my best interests at heart.

  My new lawyer was a young kid from Jersey, and he turned out to be a fucking idiot. Their lawyer, Bill Randolph, just ate him up and spit him out. My guy was in
over his head, and I paid the price. It’s on my mind every day of my life.

  On February 14, 2000, we announced a farewell tour that would begin in March and run for two years. VH1 was sponsoring the tour, and they covered it almost every day. So it seemed to Gigi and me that this tour would be mammoth and make a fortune—for Gene and Paul, of course. By then I was so tired of fighting them over money I figured getting a nice salary would be enough. I’d retire and never have to see them again. But once we got out on the tour and I saw the packed houses every night, I got pissed. Ace and I were earning peanuts compared to them. Doc was,” Ace said. “rved him making more money off the tour than Ace and I were. Every time they’d talk to me, they’d belittle me or correct me. That’s what wives do, not band members. We were supposed to be brothers. I felt that deep down something was wrong.

  Ace and I coped in different ways with the second-class treatment we were getting. A joint and a couple of beers after the show was the extent of my drug use. I wish I could say the same for Ace. He was a nightmare. Some nights it was a feat for him to even stand up on the stage. Each girlfriend he’d have on tour was worse than the last in terms of enabling him. One of the girls was into designer heroin, so that was fun: Ace falling into the jet, then falling out of the jet when we landed. I truly feel that if it wasn’t for Gigi, Ace would be dead now. She would literally feed him and wipe his mouth—food was falling out of it, he was so fucked up. If she saw Ace about to nod out, she’d divert his face from the mashed potatoes. She’d get him a pillow so it looked like he was taking a nap and not nodding out. I’m thrilled to death that Ace is sober now, but he was just a mess on the farewell tour.

  Onstage, Paul was up to his old tricks. He would constantly signal me to slow down the tempo and it looked like it was my fault, that I couldn’t play in time. But Paul had to have been popping painkillers before the shows, because by then he had chronic debilitating hip, knee, back, and ankle problems. Of course, nobody knew that, and I certainly wasn’t going to say anything about it in an interview. Gigi would get all frustrated when I wouldn’t defend myself, but I had too much integrity to trash Paul then.

  Shortly after this, I received probably the most devastating blow I’d ever suffered in my professional life. It started when Gigi was talking to Ace’s girlfriend Betsy. Somehow money came up, and Gigi said that I was making forty thousand a show.

  “No, fifty,” Betsy corrected her.

  “No, forty,” Gigi stood her ground.

  “No, fifty, it’s in the contract,” Betsy said, and gave her a piece of paper. Gigi ran to a copy machine and, heart racing, copied the document. The whole time they were talking, Ace was in the bathroom. Then Betsy went into the bathroom and the two of them were taking forever to get out. When Ace finally came out, Gigi confronted him.

  “Are you making fifty thousand a show?” she asked him point-blank.

  Ace wouldn’t answer her.

  A week later, Gigi had gone home and I was alone on the road. I got a call from Mac, one of Ace’s bodyguards.

  “Hey, Peter, Ace wants to talk to you.”

  “Well, why can’t Ace call me?” I said.

  “He’s a little fucked up. He wants you to come up to his room, he’s really upset and he wants to talk,” Mac said.

  I dropped whatever I was doing and went up to the room. Ace was sitting in the middle of the bed with a beer bottle in his hand. He looked smashed. My guess was alcohol and pills.

  Mac saw me in and then left us alone in the room.

  “Cat, I gotta tell you something,” Ace said. “Ihowever long w

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I was standing on third, sipping on a beer. The softball arced in and the batter swung and hit a grounder in the hole.

  “Go, go!” our third-base coach said.

  I threw the bottle down and took off toward the plate. The fielder scooped up the ball and threw home. I was safe by inches.

  “You’re out!” the umpire shouted.

  “What the fuck are you talking about? I was safe by a mile!” I screamed back.

  “You are out,” he said, and turned his back on me.

  I went ballistic, even though I was playing for Quinn’s and not the New York Yankees. I picked up the bat that was near the batter’s box and hit the umpire in the back. He went down,” Ace said. “ out of ” admitted. like a shot. Then I hit him in the chest. When their catcher tried to intervene, I hit him and he went down. The other players tried to stop me, but I was swinging the bat like crazy, keeping them at bay. They were all scared shitless of me.

  “Cut! Cut!” the director yelled. “What happened to the rest of you? You were supposed to gang up on him.”

  “He looked like he was really going to hit us with the bat,” one of them said.

  “He’s not going to actually hit you and crack your skull. He’s an actor, just like you. I want you guys to attack him. Peter, are you going to kill them?”

  “Yup,” I smiled.

  “All right, let’s do another take,” the director said.

  It was early in the morning and we were shooting the scene that introduces my character, Marty Montgomery, on Oz, one of the hottest shows on TV in the summer of 2001. I had been out of KISS for a few months when I told Gigi that maybe it was time for me to try to get some acting jobs. I had always wanted to act in a real role, not some Hanna-Barbera superhero crap.

  “I know Tom Fontana,” Gigi volunteered. “Do you want me to call him and we’ll have dinner and see if we can get you on Oz?”

  I thought Oz was the coolest show on the planet. Where else could you see beatings, stabbings, and guys with their schlongs hanging down to the floor walking around? What single woman or gay guy would miss that show?

  I had heard about Fontana. He had done St. Elsewhere and Homicide, and I thought those shows were so far ahead of their time. Before anyone else, Tom raised important issues like AIDS when nobody else would touch it. He was a real rebel, a tough Italian kid. I was dying to meet him.

  It turned out that Tom owned a bar in SoHo. So Gigi and I drove into the city and met him there. He was sitting there drinking a bourbon, wearing a leather jacket, turtleneck, and jeans. To me, this was like meeting Spielberg: I put Tom right up there with those guys.

  We exchanged pleasantries and sat down at the table.

  “So what do you want to do, Peter?” he asked.

  “I would love to get on Oz,” I said.

  “Well, we’re working on next season’s scripts right now,” he said. “Tell me a little bit about yourself.”

  I gave him a quick bio: Brooklyn kid, Italian-German-Irish family, got in with a gang, made zip guns, rumbled. I told him about all the heartaches and bullshit with KISS. He was taking it all in, not saying anything.

  “When we used in get in fights back in the neighborhood, I used to be real good with a bat. I could do a job on someone with that. Matter of fact, I got one in the back of my car, just in case,” I said.

  “If we do work together, I want to go to acting school immediately. I know I can’t just walk on the set and read my lines. This is an intense show and if I get a part, I know it’s going to be an intense character, not some rock-star shit. So I’ll need some acting lessons. It’s not gonna be like getting onstage and singing ‘I Want to Rock and Roll All Nite.,” Ace said. “ged ever ’ ”

  Tom looked impressed with my attitude.

  A few weeks later, I got a call from Tom. He had a part for me on the premiere of the new season playing a two-bit criminal named Marty Montgomery, who’s in Oz serving eight years for two counts of assault in the first degree stemming from that bat-swinging incident during the ball game.

  I started taking acting lessons with a man named John Eyd at Actors Training Institute in New Jersey. John had studied with Meisner and Strasberg and Stella Adler. His studio was over a pet shop, so I was skeptical about him at first, but Gigi had taken some lessons with him and she thought he was a genius.

  He was maj
orly into method acting, which was perfect for me because you can forget your lines and make it up as you go.

  “Fuck the words,” John would say. He was more concerned with the feeling, the emotion, the reality of the performance. But if you made up your lines, they better be great.

  Gigi dropped me off the first time I went. After she left, John sat me down. He was a big guy, six foot three, two-hundred-some-odd pounds. He was Syrian with a big Arab nose and the most intense eyes you’ll ever see.

  John asked me if I had acted before, and I told him about KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park.

  “Action is not acting,” John said. “Anyone could fight with a monster. Acting is using words and gestures to convince the audience that you are who you say you are. You have to be authentic.”

  “I’m going to get up and walk over to the other side of the room. I want you to look at me and realize that I’m someone you really admire and you can’t believe it’s me. You’re freaking out. That’s an easy thing, right?” he said.

  So he went over to the corner and I was sitting there making all sorts of expressions and he was looking at me and saying nothing. I felt like I was making a jerk out of myself.

  “Are you done?” he finally said.

  “Yeah.”

  “That was absolutely terrible. You’ve got to learn not to act. I don’t want you acting. I want you to be.”

  I started seeing him twice a week. Our relationship immediately blossomed and I wound up taking lessons with him for two years and we’re close friends to this day. He had some unique teaching methods. He didn’t like the way I read scripts, so he had me reading every sign I saw as I drove. And it worked. I was getting better. After about a month, John thought that I was a natural. Which was just as well, because Tom had sent over the script and I was supposed to shoot my scenes in a few weeks.

  My character was a quick-tempered lowlife wise guy who would do anything for a buck. We began by shooting my action scene out on the ball field. Tom wasn’t there for that, but he did show up for my first scene in Oz. I was sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch when Dean Winters came up to me. His character had just killed a man, and he wanted me to rat out another guy who was innocent. He was going to slip me some money to help him.