I was still somewhat of a wide-eyed optimist back then; it was just my nature to always hope for the best in people and expect a happy outcome in every situation. Christine was far more of a realist. She had a much more cynical and jaded outlook about work, relationships . . . everything. I needed a dose of that in my life; I found her perspective refreshing.
We were shooting more than thirty shows a year, which was fine with me because I loved my job, but it was a day in, day out grind. I worked all the time. When I wasn’t shooting the show, I was reading scripts, trying to land roles that might showcase another side of me. I wanted desperately to get out of the Brandon Walsh box I was clearly already in.
In the past six months I had appeared on Late Night with David Letterman, been on the cover of Rolling Stone, and hosted SNL. I’d done tons of print interviews. I’d been a presenter at the Golden Globes. I had hired a helicopter to fly through the Swiss Alps! I was no longer living in the real world. I was in Beverly Hills 90210.
St. Helena
Napa Valley
94574
Look, we can’t all be George Clooney. I discovered early on that I felt better with a steady girlfriend in my life, a woman of substance as opposed to arm candy. When I was out on the town dating all kinds of women, I didn’t love it. I felt a little bit at loose ends, a little lost. Most of my friends had no desire to settle down. Not for years and years, anyway, especially at our age. But I felt lucky that I’d made such an important discovery about myself so soon: that being half of a couple was important to me. I partied less and was an all-around better-behaved guy when I had a steady girlfriend, not to mention that I felt happier and more grounded.
Christine was on Beverly Hills 90210 for nearly the entire second season (and would return in her recurring role in later years as well). Shortly after the season wrapped, our relationship turned romantic. We didn’t purposely wait; it just happened that way. Once we hooked up, things moved fast. One Saturday afternoon we were driving around and found ourselves in the Los Feliz Oaks neighborhood. We saw a house with a For Sale sign and got out of the car to take a look. The next-door neighbor happened to come out of her house just then. “They’re having an open house tomorrow,” she told us. “Come back then so you can go inside.”
Christine and I returned the next day, toured the house, loved it, and made an offer that night. It was accepted and that was that. I rented out my condo to the Nelson twins—Matthew and Gunnar, Ricky Nelson’s sons. They’d put out an album that was huge a couple of years before called After the Rain. They were making a new record and touring. Christine packed up her little house, and we moved in together as soon as escrow closed.
No doubt years of having no family nearby and being completely on my own made me eager to establish a solid home base. Christine and I moved in with high hopes and lots of plans. We started with some serious remodeling. We put in a new kitchen and added a movie theater in the basement where I watched football on weekends, on the rare Sundays I was at home. Always an enthusiastic amateur cook, I began stockpiling cookbooks and trying new dishes. We both loved to entertain; we started a tradition of throwing a formal Christmas party every year, where men were asked to wear tuxedos and women, formal gowns. It was our miniversion of the Spelling Christmas party . . . very mini! Meanwhile, the gossip rags credited Christine with getting me to tone down my boozing ways with her firm grip on me. Supposedly, I liked her tough love. This was just more silliness.
Christine introduced me to the wonderful world of wine. When I was growing up, my parents drank wine at home, but I never had any idea what good wine could be until I met her and started going to wine tastings. We liked to take road trips to Napa Valley to all the various vineyards and attend private tastings and wine launches. Because I was on a hit TV show, the wineries treated me in a way not many other twenty-three-year-olds hanging around tasting rooms would be received. Right from the start I was lucky to be given an incredible education of the winemaking process by the top experts in the field.
There were some phenomenal wines coming out of California in the early 1990s, and I was given an insider’s perspective. This was certainly one time my fame came in very handy; it allowed me access to people and places I would never have been introduced to otherwise. I met all kinds of brilliant vintners and was given a fantastic behind-the-scenes view. Wine became my passion . . . even obsession. Collecting wine. Tasting wine. Throwing tasting parties where I could introduce my other wine-loving friends to wines they didn’t know. Our new house had a large wine cellar, and I got busy filling it up.
I had recently seen a photo of a French bulldog on the cover of Architectural Digest magazine that really captured my attention. Then, one day, Christine and I happened to be at the Beverly Center, a shopping mall in Los Angeles, where there was a pet store. It was 1993, and pet stores were still around. The horror of puppy mills and the like that supply pet stores hadn’t yet become public knowledge. There in a cage sat a tiny champagne French bulldog looking miserable. While the other puppies played, he just sat there, staring straight ahead. We knew nothing about French bulldogs, but it didn’t take long for us to decide we needed to save that little guy.
I was lucky; my little Swifty was free of health problems. At only twenty-five pounds, he was portable and traveled the world with me. Super mellow, whatever we did was okay with him. He was the perfect set dog—he somehow sensed when the cameras were rolling. He never barked when he shouldn’t—when he heard the word “Rolling,” he would sit quietly. When he heard “Cut,” he would wander around looking for friends, and he found many of them. He was quite popular with cast and crew alike. A very affable little guy.
My relationship with Christine was my first full-fledged adult relationship. She and I lived together, renovated a house together, owned dogs together, traveled the world together: Ireland, Hawaii—you name it, we went there. She was a busy actress in her own right, plus a wonderful girlfriend. Intelligent, articulate, opinionated, very well spoken, and fun—Christine was captivating. We shared our lives for the next five years.
Perris
92571
We were shooting thirty-two episodes of 90210 a year, which was an extraordinary number, and our hiatus was very short. Three or four months a year off is standard; eight weeks was the absolute minimum we were allowed by contract—and believe me, that’s what we got. Eight weeks to the day. I felt this incredible pressure to find a movie to do in my hiatus between seasons two and three. Where that pressure was coming from, or if I was imagining it, I don’t know. But my choices were severely limited by my specific time frame. Still, my agent, Nick, and I worked around it.
I was going to New York to do some publicity for the show, and Nick gave me three scripts to read on the five-hour flight. “All three would work, time-wise, with your hiatus, so read them all and give me a call when you get there,” he told me as he handed me the stack. I read all three on the plane, and the one I liked the best was called Calendar Girl. The story was set in the ’60s, and I would be playing the lead, a high school kid named Roy Darpinian who was obsessed with Marilyn Monroe. I liked that it was a buddy picture, about three friends from a small town going on a wild cross-country road trip/ adventure. How could I not love a story about some brash teenage guys driving a huge old car to Hollywood in search of their dreams?
I also liked that the movie was a period piece set in the much simpler year of 1962. The underlying theme to the somewhat silly caper was young guys taking one last, final adventure before their real lives as men began—with all the growing up and compromising and losing their ideals that would entail. Their journey was set in the final golden days of the country’s innocence and hopefulness, just before it would become roiled by the loss of the president and involvement in Vietnam. Or perhaps I was reading way too much lofty hidden meaning into a movie script!
When I got back to L.A., I met with Penny Marshall, the producer, and John Whitesell, her director. The three of us discussed the
character of Roy and whether or not I was I right for the part. Penny had really come into her own after a successful acting career. She had received tremendous critical acclaim for the Robin Williams picture Awakenings. She was a very smart woman, and I also liked her personally. I felt that I would be in good hands with her.
John was in somewhat of a similar position as me; he was a successful television director looking to branch out into movies, just as I was with my acting career. There was a very clear division back then between television and movie projects, with movies being considered by far the more prestigious medium for both actors and directors. These days people jump back and forth . . . in fact, the pendulum has swung to where movie actors are actively seeking TV roles!
The rest of the cast was great: Jerry O’Connell from Stand by Me played my main sidekick, along with Joey Pantoliano and a number of other good, solid actors who were on board. The whole project seemed promising; the film seemed like the right match for me. The character of Roy was a boxer in the movie, and the big climactic scene was when Roy actually steps into the ring and fights his father, played by Steve Railsback. Steve did awesome work on that movie; I could not have been more impressed, and the two of us became very close.
However, I had to be in the proper shape to play a boxer. For the first time in my career, I needed a personal trainer. I worked with a guy named Eddie Wilde, who was phenomenal. He was huge, a European bodybuilding champ, and I have to say he supervised a remarkable transformation of my physique in a short amount of time. It was painful; I guess it had to be to be so fast and effective. That man could train! The character of Roy had to be a very ripped little guy, like a real boxer, and Eddie managed to give me a convincing boxer’s body.
My training consisted entirely of work with weights. No cardio or anything else . . . just weight training. Eddie and I met every day, six days a week, and I trained with him for about three months. My diet was incredibly restrictive. It was all protein: egg whites and fish, but only certain kinds of fish . . . tuna and shark, mainly. No fat. No carbs except a piece of dry toast each day. Lots of vegetables. No salt, no oil, no butter, no alcohol . . .
If you’ve ever wondered how actors manage to transform their bodies the way they do, it’s because they go on diets like that and follow them to the letter. They do their workout every day, giving 110 percent effort, and follow their trainer’s direction exactly. Actors can do it, in short, because they’re getting paid to do it and it’s their job. Part of being an actor is dedication to your craft, and your craft might include physical transformation to inhabit a character. It’s that simple . . . not easy, but simple.
We shot the film in Perris (just outside Los Angeles) and in Los Angeles, California, and wrapped it up in six weeks. Jerry, Gabriel Olds, and I got along fine as the three friends, and I felt that we played off one another quite convincingly. If this was shooting a major motion picture, I was all for it. There was absolutely nothing about the process that I didn’t like.
Of course, once the movie wrapped, I had to jump right back into season three of 90210 with barely a breather. For the rest of the year, however, I knew in the back of my mind I had a movie coming. It premiered the following March in a blaze of Columbia Studios publicity. I flew to New York to do a press junket, donated the shoes I wore in the film to Planet Hollywood, the cool place at the time, and did a ton of press. Then the reviews started rolling in. They were not kind. Brutal, in fact. Again . . . just like 90210.
When the film opened, the returns were not great, and the movie quickly vanished. It was disappointing at the time, of course, but I certainly did not realize the repercussions this one project would have on the rest of my career. Calendar Girl did not perform, and I had no idea that in “the industry” it had been my one big chance. In the eyes of the major Hollywood studios, this was my chance to show whether or not I had what it took to be a movie star, and I had failed the test. Utterly.
I was still in my early twenties, starring in one of the most popular shows on TV. I would not have believed that my one and only shot at movie stardom had come and gone. It was probably a good thing for my morale that it took years to realize that such a major career crossroads had come and gone in the blink of an eye without my having even realized it.
To this day, I think I made the right choice as, fortunately, the other two scripts I turned down were never made. It’s not like I turned down the lead in A River Runs Through It for Calendar Girl. As disappointed as everyone associated with the film was by the box office performance of Calendar Girl, it does seem, many years later, that it struck a chord with at least a couple of filmgoers. I know this because I still have people tweeting me about that movie, and quoting lines from it, so I know somebody saw it! “I just want to lay on top of you and see where it goes from there,” anyone?
Piccadilly Circus
London
W1J 7BX
Fans develop a very intimate relationship with the characters in their favorite TV shows. Perhaps it is because the time spent together occurs in your home, with our images beamed directly into your room. Whatever the reason, 90210 fans across the world felt they had a real relationship with me . . . or nice guy Brandon Walsh, anyway. That’s the only way I can account for the insane level of fame I achieved playing Brandon. My sister, Justine, was living in London as the show really heated up, and Eddie Michaels and I were planning a trip to the United Kingdom to do press. 90210 was wildly popular there, as it had been pretty much from the start.
My sister was worried. “It’s going to be nuts here for you, JP. The British fans are psychotic. I’m seriously concerned for your safety.” We went back and forth a bit, and then she had an idea. “You’ve got to do something. Just give Ayrton twenty pounds a day to act as security,” she advised. Ayrton was my sister’s Brazilian boyfriend. He was a big, ripped guy—perfect for the job.
All was well during our visit—Ayrton stuck close, and there were no incidents. Until one afternoon the four of us were wandering through Piccadilly Circus and ran smack into a girls’ soccer team. They appeared to be fourteen or so, a very dangerous age. I cringed as they spotted me and began squealing. I knew an attack was imminent. They pointed at me and started running as a pack directly toward us. There were probably twenty-five of them, all wearing matching uniforms. In their blue zip-up jackets, they looked like an army of Smurfs coming at us.
Panicked, I looked over at Ayrton, who was watching the girls approach with wide eyes. He looked back at me and said, “I’d run if I was you, dude.” Some security. So that’s exactly what we did. We took off and the pack of soccer girls chased us all the way through Piccadilly Circus, screeching the whole way. A couple of quick rights and lefts and into an alleyway, and we lost them. It’s not that I was in mortal danger—nothing of the kind—but for some reason, since watching A Hard Day’s Night when I was a kid, I just always thought it wise that when screaming teenage girls are chasing you, you run.
Magic Mountain
Valencia
91355
Since the first episode of the show I had been bugging Aaron to give me a shot to direct. It was something I was very interested in exploring, and I knew that this show might be my best chance. I also understood that learning television, and the television business from Aaron Spelling, was an opportunity that I needed to maximize.
So much of the entertainment business is having the ability to recognize opportunities and capitalize on them. You have to be able to keep building on your successes. And I have found, you have to do these things for yourself, regardless of how many people you employ to help you. You always have to stay on top of your career, your finances, everything. Always keep your eye on the prize. Every time in my life that I let my focus waver, it has led to disaster.
Toward the end of the third season of the show, Aaron gave me my shot at directing. When I think back on it, I have to wonder exactly what Aaron was thinking, handing the reins of his hit show, his baby, to a twenty-four-year-old
punkass actor kid. It happened to be a very complicated episode titled “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.” We shot on location at Magic Mountain. I had hundreds of extras, cameras mounted on roller coasters, and car chases . . . plus, I had Burt Reynolds in my episode. It was awesome!
Burt was the man. At the time he was starring in Evening Shade and had been a big star forever. When he strolled up to me in his cowboy boots and leather-sleeved jacket to say hello, I was thrilled!
“Mr. Reynolds. This is the very first television episode I’m directing and I can’t tell you what an honor it is to have you here. Thank you so much. It’s so great to have you.”
“Yeah . . . I’ve done some directing here and there myself,” he drawled. “Let me give you some advice.”
I was all ears. “What’s that?”
“You do a first take, right? And it looks okay?”
“Right,” I said, not sure where this was going.
“Wanna do another take? Just tighten up a little bit. That way, you’ll have something to play with in the editing room.”
“All right, Burt. Thanks!” What Burt was telling me was how he would like to be shot. And that is exactly how I shot him. But in a way, he was absolutely right, and it’s a piece of advice I carry with me to this day. The more pieces of coverage you have in the editing room, the better. Burt was a smart guy, a real professional. Later on, his good buddy Dom DeLuise would show up on 90210 as well.
Seven shooting days later, my first episode was complete. I’ve got to hand it to the crew and rest of the cast . . . every one of them was totally supportive, professional. Ultimately, they wanted me to succeed and for my episode to do well, so they helped me out, and it all came together very well.
Jason Priestley Page 8