A Star is Born (16 page)

In the end, we’ll never really know if he changed any hearts of hard-core bullies, but I do know that he elevated the subject in everyone’s eyes and made everyone aware of the need for their involvement. The one takeaway was that bullying wasn’t the act of one person against another, but involved every single person in the school, in the community, whatever that community might be.

At the end of the allotted time, the audience gave Bill a standing ovation. Even though the school was so close to Hollywood, it appeared that Bill was the first person to ever visit and give any sort of presentation, so in a number of ways this day was a first. I had willingly consented to having the photos of me immediately after my assault used in his presentation, and of course, Bill included the photos of himself and his mother following one of his father’s tirades.

The photos had not lost any of their impact over the intervening years. If anything, they still punched me in the gut with the same intensity, with the same ferocity, as they had the first time I saw them, several years earlier. The new material that he had added dealt with more than just physical violence, but also weapons violence, suicide, and the idea that there was hope and that it gets better. Bill worked the room like an evangelist at a revival. He captured everyone’s attention quickly by his fame, but he kept their attention by his talk.

After the audience had left, Bill stayed and took questions from the press corps and posed for what seemed like a million photos. I still didn’t know why so many different photographers all had to take exactly the same shot so many, many times. But they didn’t ask me, so I just sat by and watched.

Bill gave the press corps an hour, and I think it was time very well spent. He had the fame, and with the help of the press coverage, word of his message could only spread. He hoped for more invitations like the one today. Bill, Moira, and I had lunch with the principal, a couple of staff and faculty he invited, as well as the president of the student council. Their conversation was intense and productive.

We came away from that day with several new allies that I thought we could use in future efforts. Even though no one had asked me to do so, I took careful notes of who we interacted with, what their names were, what their roles were, what their contact information was, and any other relevant fact I could identify. I noted particular points people made or stories they told. I saw myself as able to help out by compiling a database of contacts we could use, a network that we could start to weave.

If this was really to be a subject we pursued, then I wanted to be sure that we thought ahead and collected the information we needed from the very beginning. It also gave Bill and me a project that we could work on together, something I had missed since our high school days. Our lives had taken different paths over our time in California, and it felt good to once again be on the same side in an issue.

Bill was wired and flying high on the drive back home that afternoon. He and Moira talked in the backseat while I drove, even though I absolutely detested driving in Los Angeles rush-hour traffic. It was my contribution to the day. Bill wanted Moira to book another dozen such events immediately. He wanted to do at least one a day for the next few weeks, and two a day would be even better.

Idaho

O
VER
the weeks that followed, Bill was a very busy man. When he wasn’t out to one school or another addressing high school crowds, he was reviewing scripts with Derrick and Moira. On top of that, every single newspaper, news anchor, reporter, and reporter-wannabe wanted to interview Bill. And he did his very best to accommodate every one of them. For weeks it seemed like our home had a revolving door for every single reporter in the western world.

I found the whole thing tedious. Well, except for the afternoon Bill was interviewed by Anderson Cooper—there was nothing tedious about that afternoon. I really had thought that the man would be taller, but I still wouldn’t have objected to running my fingers through his hair. Oh, well, it really didn’t matter, but it was a nice way to spend an afternoon. And we both thought that the interview went well.

As seemed to happen all too often, time for just the two of us was the first thing sacrificed when there were conflicting demands. After the Oscars, Moira had recommended that we both go away somewhere for a couple of weeks to just be together and let her and her staff work their magic. Well, obviously, that didn’t happen. Quite the opposite happened, in that Bill now had a new “career” as young adult motivational speaker. Not that he set out to have that career any more than he set out to be an actor. In both cases, he had simply fallen into those things because of his natural abilities.

I went along with him to all of the high school presentations. Since all of his presentations were funded by him out of his own pocket, we limited ourselves to schools primarily in Southern California so that we could drive. At least that gave us some time together while we were in the car, either going to or coming back from a presentation. In each case he tried to take the time to talk with individuals. In one case he actually stayed and shook hands with every single student in the school that wanted to do so, as well as pose for the inevitable series of photos people seemed to always request. He never once complained.

After a few weeks of doing the presentations, Bill reached the conclusion that he needed to wade deeper into the fray. He wanted to get out of California and try a different setting, a rural setting in a more conservative area. I said that all he needed to do was to go south to Orange County, but he scowled at me and told me that I knew what he meant.

Yes, I knew what he meant. And I didn’t like the thought of what he meant. He meant that we should go to someplace in eastern Washington, or Idaho, or Montana, or Wyoming, or any of a number of places. All of them were places where I felt we would be less welcomed. He felt that those were the places that needed his message more than anywhere else. He reminded me—damn him—that we had grown up in a very rural area, and asked me to recall some of what we had experienced. When he was so damned logical, it was impossible to argue with him.

It turned out that Moira had been right. I know. Shocker. She had said that we needed to go away for about a couple of weeks and let her people filter through the offers that would come in. Bill was frustrated that, after that time, there still wasn’t much for him to do on that front. So, guess what? That’s right. He booked us into a rural Idaho school district.

Since this was all coming out of our pocket, we booked the cheapest flights we could find that would allow us to arrive in the morning and fly out by the late afternoon. It would make a long day for us, but it would at least save us the cost of a hotel for a night.

So, with hardly any advance notice, one morning we got up early, got ourselves ready, and drove to LAX to catch a 7:00 a.m. flight to Boise, Idaho. We flew coach, which meant that there were a lot of people who recognized Bill and that he was surrounded by adoring fans for several hours. He loved it. Me, not so much.

It was two hours flying time between LAX and Boise on the nonstop flight, which got us into Boise in midmorning. From there we rented a car and drove for a good hour plus. Several times I thought we had somehow missed our destination, but each time the GPS system in the rental car told us that we were headed in the proper direction.

To get to the school, we had to drive through the town. Clearly, the town had seen better days. In many ways, it was just like the little town where we had grown up. Bill had let me in on a part of his mental strategy for these events: simply think about the people we had known while growing up and look for those characteristics in the strangers. Since we knew how people had behaved in our town, Bill thought that he could generally apply those models to the strangers and usually come pretty close to predicting how strangers would behave and respond. I was dubious. He was the Energizer Bunny who seemed to have an incredible understanding of human nature.

We arrived at our destination in time to join the school leadership for lunch. I could tell right away that this was a less open audience than most we had encountered on our previous outings. Bill sensed the same thing, but whereas I was worried, he seemed energized and empowered by the new challenge, the new opportunity. Sometimes the man simply baffled me. I should more correctly say that Bill was welcomed with open arms, his message with less open arms. It seemed to me that a number of people we met were eager to talk about, to learn more about, how to combat bullying. It was the gay stuff that gave them trouble. They didn’t want to focus on that. Bill assured them that, while he was openly gay, his talks to students were of a very general nature. They seemed reassured. I can’t say that I was.

At the appointed hour, the auditorium of the school started to fill with students and faculty. Not all of them cared about what he was talking about—they just wanted to see an honest-to-God celebrity direct from Hollywood. It was probably fair to say that Bill was the first Hollywood star who had been to this town. We were, after all, in the middle of nowhere.

The principal called everyone to order and gave a brief overview of their guest speaker. He didn’t say anything about the topic Bill was planning to discuss, simply noting that he was pleased to be able to introduce Mr. William Cromwell.

Everyone applauded and started looking around for Bill, but no one knew where he was. Suddenly, Bill’s voice came through the sound system; as usual, he was hooked in via wireless. People in the back found Bill first when he started walking down the main aisle, talking as he walked. He shook a few hands, smiled a few hundred times, and generally worked his magic with the audience. Although Bill and I were only a few years older than these students, it felt like I was far older, given how much we had been through in the last few years.

“Some of you may have heard of me,” Bill said, only to hear massive cheers from the audience—clearly some people had heard of him. “I’m a basic guy from the middle of nowhere in upstate New York who moved to Los Angeles to go to college at UCLA.” He proceeded to give a brief synopsis of how he had done studio tours, met bunches and bunches of actors and actresses, directors and producers, and people whose jobs he couldn’t even define. He then showed a clip from his first movie with Derrick. He talked a moment longer and then showed another clip from their second movie, which brought more cheers.

“And now, if you guys are willing, I’d like to show you a sneak peak of one scene from the movie I’ve just finished filming. No one anywhere has seen any of this. You are
the
first people to see this. But I’ve got to tell you that it’s rough. There has been no editing yet. Editors are the people that make disjointed scenes from multiple cameras come together as smooth, beautiful movies that we all enjoy.”

Bill gave a brief description of the context, a bit of the storyline, a word or two about the characters, especially his and the role that Derrick was playing opposite him. When he thought he had said enough, he said, “Let’s watch.” The clip showed. Bill was right—no one had seen this. Even I hadn’t seen this. He was also correct in that it was rough. But what he hadn’t said was that it was incredibly good. Even raw, unedited, and only from one angle, it was damned good.

As much as I wanted to at various times, there was simply no arguing the fact that, on camera, Derrick and Bill had a special energy. They played off each other naturally, energetically, profoundly. I didn’t have words to express the way the two of them worked on camera. At times they were opposites. At other times they almost seemed to blend into one character. I had never seen a pair like them before. The audience agreed. When the clip finished, Bill, who had been walking amongst the audience while the clip played, asked, “So, what do you think? I can’t tell. I can’t watch myself on screen without seeing every flaw, every scar, every fault.”

He talked a bit with them and then said, “Did any of you see the Oscars a few weeks ago?”

There was some cheering.

“I was there. But I never expected to win anything. I’m just this kid from upstate New York who fell into a situation. There were some
big
stars up for the same category I was in. I never, never, never in a million years would have guessed that they would pick me! I was shocked when they announced my name.

“I was so convinced that I didn’t have a chance of winning, that I hadn’t even prepared a speech. Now, if you’ve watched those things before, then you know that it’s almost a requirement that people who win have got to stand up there and thank a bunch of people that no one knows and no one cares about. They’ve got to thank their wife or husband, their costars, their producer, their director, the woman who brought lunch on Tuesdays, the guy who groomed their poodle two years ago, their Aunt Mirelda’s daughter’s second cousin. You know what I mean?” The cheering told him that they did. Damn! The man could find common ground and relate to any audience.