Coming off my first starring role and now hard at work on my song for the soundtrack, I’m still trying to keep my drug use under control. So, in an epic display of responsibility and maturity, I decide to stick with booze for the night. I emptied a bottle of Stoli into an ice bucket, tossed in some orange juice, and carried that around the party like my own personal Big Gulp; the whole time I’m hollering to people—many of whom I don’t even recognize—about how no matter how much I drink, I can’t seem to get drunk. “I can’t get drunk,” I shout over the music, pointing down at my “cup.” “It’s amazing”—gulp, gulp, gulp—“I can’t get drunk!” I’m drinking, and drinking, and drinking, and not feeling much of anything, or at least that’s how it seemed.
An hour or so in, things are already spinning out of control. Room service is on speed dial—bottles of Dom Perignon, liters of vodka, food trays, and crudité platters are being sent up one right after the other; I have no idea who’s even placing the orders. I look over to my right, just as someone knocks on the door. It’s the cops, but don’t worry, Ricky Schroder will handle this. He’s got the door barely cracked ajar, trying to explain to the officers that there’s been some kind of mistake, we can’t
possibly
be responsible for disturbing the peace. I’m watching all of this with my bucket of alcohol, thinking,
Oh
,
my God, what have I done?
Meanwhile, I wander into one of the bathrooms to find a pile of burnt washcloths and towels—for some reason, someone has started setting the linens on fire—and butter smeared across the mirror. I’m looking at weird butter messages and a pile of smoldering towels, realizing that my impromptu wrap party has turned into some kind of nightmare circus. Over in the master on-suite, I find my cousin Michael and John Preston standing in the shower, fully clothed but soaking wet. In between them, wedged into the bathtub, is the small refrigerator from the minibar.
“Fuck you, man!
I’m
getting the last bottle of vodka!” Michael and John are holding each other by the shirt collars, screaming at each other through the shower stream.
“No, fuck
you
! It’s mine, you asshole.”
“I found it first! Possession is nine-tenths of the law, man.”
I drag them out of the shower, they’re slipping and sliding all over the place, and yell, “What the fuck is
wrong
with you people?”
Michael starts in immediately. “He’s being an asshole and trying to take all the booze”—before turning to face John directly—“That’s not cool, man.”
I give John a shove as he rises from the bed. “You guys, it’s
my
booze. It’s
my
room. Do you have any idea how expensive minibar snacks are? You’ve got the whole refrigerator shoved in the shower!”
Of course by then, the bill for the minibar was going to be the least of my worries. I have vague memories of throwing everyone out at some point. I know I went to sleep by myself.
In the morning, as I made my way through the lobby, everyone in the place was giving me the evil eye. Mark stumbled downstairs, bowing his head in shame. There were three executives from the studio standing around the front desk, ogling a bill that was clearly several pages long. One of them turned to me with a bright-red face and a pinched mouth. He was completely and utterly pissed.
“Well, I hope the party was good.”
“Party? What party?” I said as casually as I could muster. “I mean, we just had a few friends over. Nothing big.”
“Nothing big? Perhaps you can explain how we ended up with a bill for ten thousand dollars?”
I looked sheepishly at Mark and Haim. “Well, uh, that couldn’t possibly be just for my room.”
“It’s for all three rooms. But still, we told you to get a
massage,
not feed the fucking army.”
Within hours, the story broke in the press—every sordid detail about the crazy party the “Two Coreys” threw at the Four Seasons, including some that seemed grossly exaggerated, was splashed across the pages of the tabloids. If they’re to be believed, televisions were tossed out of windows, Haim and Ricky Schroder hosed down a stripper with Champagne, and kids went streaking down the halls of the penthouse, pandemonium into all hours of the night. I have no idea how much of that may have been true—maybe it’s all true. All I know for sure is that I don’t remember much.
* * *
I had been
concerned about the marketing campaign for
Dream a Little Dream
from the start. Giant wall-size posters had been pasted up in malls across America and kids everywhere were eating it up. The problem is that
Dream a Little Dream,
at least as I had envisioned it, was supposed to be a more mature, thinking-man’s piece. That’s part of the reason we reached out to more mature, well-established stars—acclaimed actors like Jason Robards, Piper Laurie, and Harry Dean Stanton. We were trying to attract an older, post-adolescent audience, but the marketing team had put together a poster that looked like a tear sheet from a teen magazine. Together, Haim, Meredith Salenger, and I look like characters in a John Hughes film, and the result is total confusion—expecting a typical “Two Coreys” caper, teens are walking out of theaters all over the country, wondering exactly what the hell this is.
Dream a Little Dream
opens at number five and plummets. Within three weeks, it’s yanked from the theaters. I’ve never been part of a flop before, and it stings, but I take it as further proof that the “Two Coreys” are due for a break.
To add insult to injury, Haim has chosen this same month—March 1989—to make an appearance on
The Arsenio Hall Show
and to announce publicly that he’s got a craving for crack. Why he’s decided to do this I have no idea—none of this is really public knowledge and nobody’s been arrested yet, but Haim has taken the reins and thrown his carefully calibrated public image directly down the toilet.
At the same time, I’ve gotten a phone call that we’ve missed the cutoff for inclusion in the
Dream a Little Dream
soundtrack album, too (we’d already missed the deadline for inclusion in the film itself), even though I’ve been out promoting “Something in Your Eyes” for months. The studio promises to release the track as a single, but eventually discussion on that subject ends completely and I’m too deep into a drug haze to really care. (It wasn’t until sometime in 2009 or 2010 that I discovered “Something in Your Eyes”
was
released on vinyl—my assistant at the time, Jake, came across the record on a Canadian eBay page and brought it home to show me because I was convinced he was making things up. I have no idea if the record was ever released in the United States. Regardless, I never saw a dime and have no way of tracking down how many copies were ultimately sold.)
To top everything off, Drew and I—once hot and heavy and totally in sync—are unraveling after only a few months of dating. I’m angry because she had discussed some intimate details of our relationship with her agents. It’s a perfect storm of bad press and personal problems. Signs are everywhere that the carefully placed pieces of my life are about to break apart. Still, I ignore them, because I know I’ve got the Academy Awards coming up.
In an attempt to spice up what many fear has became a staid, stoic affair, this year’s Oscars will do away with a number of traditions: there’ll be no official host, but there will be a dearth of live musical performances, including an elaborate thirteen-minute number featuring eighteen young actors—the “stars of tomorrow”—called “I Wanna Be an Oscar Winner.” It’ll be written by the great composer Marvin Hamlisch and directed by choreographer Kenny Ortega, who’s riding the wave of
Dirty Dancing
success and will go on to do extensive work with Michael Jackson (he directed three of his world tours, This Is It, HIStory, and Dangerous). I’m excited to work with the greats, and to sing and dance on one of the world’s biggest stages.
Drew is getting ready at a hotel not far from the Shrine Auditorium. Despite the fighting, we’re committed to staying together through awards season. (Only days earlier, we had presented one to our matchmaker of sorts, Steven Spielberg, at the Directors Guild.) It’s my job to meet the limo and pick her up at the hotel. We’re only a little ways down the road, but with the miles-long caravan of limos (this is, after all, years before towncars became the preferred mode of chauffeured transportation), it will take over an hour to drive roughly five hundred feet. Finally, after what feels like a year, I take her hand and help her climb out of the car.
I’ve been to award shows before, the MTV Awards, the American Music Awards, but I’ve never seen anything like this. The red carpet stretches the length of two city blocks—it feels
miles
long—and is flanked by a wall of photographers, journalists, reporters, and members of both the domestic and foreign press. There are flashbulbs and publicists and microphones and cameras and fans and screaming and shouts of “Drew!” “Corey!” “Drew!” “Corey!” It’s exciting and intimidating and Drew and I are holding on to each other for dear life.
Suddenly, amid all the chaos, I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around to face a tall, skinny, gaunt-looking guy with a shock of blond hair covering half his face. It’s River Phoenix. I haven’t seen him in years.
We’re exchanging pleasantries when I notice he’s holding hands with his girlfriend, a grown-up Martha Plimpton. It’s completely surreal—four kids that started out in the business together, standing together ten years later on the red carpet at the Academy Awards. Not only that, but River’s up for an Oscar. He’s been nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his work in the Sidney Lumet film
Running on Empty
. But he doesn’t look good. In fact, he looks loaded. But I brush it off. I’m not going to let anything cloud the day.
People have often asked if I was nervous, knowing that I’d be performing live in front of something like fifty million people. But it’s not the fifty million people I’m worried about, it’s the few thousand gathered together in this one room. From my place on the elevated stage, I’m staring down at Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Billy Crystal. Every giant star and entertainment industry bigwig is staring back, and I know that any one of them could make or break the rest of my career. All I’m thinking, as the opening chords of our dance number ring out, is
Don’t mess this up, don’t mess this up, for the love of God, don’t mess this up.
The performance seems to be going okay—the audience laughs and applauds in all the right places—and it’s over in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately, the 1989 ceremony has been categorized as one of the worst broadcasts in the history of the Academy Awards. It started out with a famously bizarre performance by Rob Lowe in some sort of dystopian Snow White number, and it just goes downhill from there. As for the “Oscar Winners of the Future,” the Academy might have been a tad off the mark—none of us have won an Oscar (at least not yet), although Blair Underwood, Patrick Dempsey, and Joely Fischer have been nominated for Golden Globes, and Chad Lowe has an Emmy.
Drew and I make the after-party rounds, stay out late, and attend the Governor’s Ball. It’s been fun, but we both know that it’s over. By the end of the night, our short-lived relationship has flamed out.
CHAPTER 17
Present-day Los Angeles is a whole-foodies’ mecca—it’s brimming with health food stores, farm-to-table restaurants, vegan groceries, and cutting-edge raw cuisine. But Los Angeles circa 1989 doesn’t have much to offer a die-hard vegetarian in the way of restaurant fare. There are only a few shops that cater to veggie-lovers, and I’m at one of my favorites, a place called Veggie Cuisine on Ventura. As I approach the counter, I spot a stunning, achingly beautiful girl with a mop of curly brown hair. She is mesmerizing. I am floored by her, in fact. As I take my place in line, she turns to her right—she seems perplexed by the menu—and casually asks me what I’m having. Eventually, she asks my name, too.
“I’m Corey Feldman.”
“And what do you do?” she says. There’s not a trace of name recognition.
“Uh, I’m an actor.”
“What kind of an actor?”
I can’t believe she doesn’t know who I am. I don’t know if she’s really never heard of me, or if she’s playing some kind of high-stakes cat-and-mouse game, but I’m used to screaming tweens ripping at my hair and clothes, literally throwing themselves at me. This, therefore, is refreshing.
“I’m in … you know, movies and stuff.”
“Oh, yeah? Like what?”
Suddenly, I’m being forced to recite my entire résumé, which makes me feel like a heel. I manage to get her phone number, but she’s aloof. As I watch her walk out into the Southern California sun, the owner of Veggie Cuisine leans over from behind the counter. “Don’t even waste your time,” he says. “You should see her
last
boyfriend.”
I raise my eyebrows in anticipation.
“He’s an Adonis.”
“Huh.” I shrug. “What’s her name?”
* * *
I call Vanessa
Marcil repeatedly, but she remains coy. She gives me the I-just-want-to-be-friends routine. Still, I’m persistent. And when my agent calls to tell me about an offer to go to Australia, I hatch a plan.
The ’Burbs
is opening in Australia in June, just a week after
The Fox and the Hound
is due to be rereleased in theaters. I’m going over to do press for both, but I’ve also been invited to perform a series of concerts promoting my new single. Some insanely popular Australian dance troupe will be the opening act, and the whole production is sold to me as a massive tour; supposedly, we’ll be playing thirty thousand- and forty thousand-seat stadiums. The trips seems like a great way to advance my music career, not to mention—since it’ll be an all-expenses-paid, first-class trip—an excellent way to impress a pretty girl. I somehow convince Vanessa to go with me, but only after promising to get her her own hotel room, and not to “expect anything.” It’s the first time in my life I lied to someone I loved.