Read Maybe We'll Have You Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star Online
Authors: Fred Stoller,Ray Romano
I was thrilled. I was looking forward to giving Vinnie a personal tour of all the places I had only been able to tell him about on the phone. I was anxious to show him the bookstore where I once saw people lining up outside waiting for it to open.
“People lining up outside waiting for a bookstore to open?! Un-
bee-livable. No way man! No way!”
He wanted to see the video store I had gone to many years ago on Christmas Eve. That day, there was a long line ahead of me and because the store would be closed on Christmas, you could get an extra day of videos for free. I rented some movies and also an adult video. Each person ahead of me got a warm “Best Holiday” wish from the owner. But when I came up to the counter, the owner gave me no “Best Holiday” wish. I guess a person renting porn on Christmas Eve did not deserve one.
Vinnie had to see the place. He wanted to see the Chinese owner who denied me the Christmas wish. I was just a little nervous that he’d see the owner, burst out laughing, and get us into trouble.
And he also wanted to go to the pizza place where this kid who worked there asked me to sign their celebrity wall of fame because he had seen my stand-up act years ago on cable. After I signed the wall, the owners made him paint over it because they had no idea who the hell I was.
He wanted and needed to know every detail about every aspect of my life, and I couldn’t wait to show it to him. When I lived in New York City in a little studio apartment, I met my mother once for lunch. At one point she really needed the bathroom. We were right near my place, so I told her she should use the one in my apartment. But she couldn’t bear to see how I lived. She just didn’t want to know. I actually had to lead her up to the bathroom with her eyes closed like she was blind. For Vinnie, nothing about my life was scary or shameful. Every part of my life mattered so intensely to him, sometimes even more than it did to me. I realized it was perhaps quite insane that he wanted to see these things, but I was counting the days until I’d get the chance to show all of them to him.
When he did come, it wasn’t as thrilling as I hoped it would be. He arrived and quickly reverted to his agoraphobic ways. He sulked about how none of his other comic friends would help him or return his calls. And although I was looking forward to having the company, even that turned sour. Vinnie would spend an hour each day hogging my bathroom, blow-drying his hair, for what reason I don’t know because he never left my apartment.
Vinnie was also the world’s fattest vegetarian. His basic diet consisted of candy and pasta. He would smoke cigarettes on the roof, but otherwise he just stayed in and studied his precious baseball card collection. Despite my offer to help him put together a picture and a résumé, he never made a serious effort to get on a set. After months of sleeping on my floor, Vinnie slowly drove me crazy until I finally found him another place to live.
I had told my friend, Steve, about this episode of my life and years later he said, “Let’s make a movie out of this story.” He had some money saved from his TV writing career, but neither of us knew anything about making a movie and were at a loss as to how we should begin.
We first hooked up with these five knuckle-headed young guys whose job it was to raise money, but who ended up taking money. I knew I was in trouble when one of them punched a table and exclaimed, “Pictures! I wanna see pictures!”
He then ran outside into someone’s backyard and kicked some lawn furniture and flower pots as he continued, “This movie will suffer if we don’t have pictures!” That became his thing, punching tables and screaming inane showbiz expressions, most often, “I wanna see pictures!”
"He then ran outside into someone's backyard and kicked some lawn furniture and flower pots as he continued, "This movie will suffer if we don't have pictures!" That became his thing, punching tables and screaming inane showbiz expressions, most often, "I wanna see pictures!"
They'd argue about casting. At one point, they used valuable money that could've gone to the project to fly to Northern California to audition Steve Wozniak for the role of Vinnie. It was surreal that this billionaire inventor was auditioning to be this weird guy no one knew. If the real Vinnie (who sadly died in 2001) had lived, he'd be cracking up about that. When Steve and I argued that Wozniak wasn't right, these wannabe moguls would exclaim, "We're the producers! you back off and let us do what we can do 'cause we're the producers!"
"He's not an actor. You saw that from his audition," I said.
"He has a following!"
"So do Tony Hawk and Curtis Sliwa from the Guardian Angels," I tried reasoning.
The knuckleheads did, however, introduce us to a great and resourceful line producer who pulled all the elements together for us. Before we knew it, sets were built and trucks full of equipment were being unloaded by hard-working crew guys wearing bandanas and tattoos. We shot the whole thing in nineteen days.
With Fred and Vinnie, I finally got first billing, not that that was ever a craving eating me alive my whole career . . . And working on the set, I tried my best to imitate those stars, the humble ones, the thoughtful ones, who over the course of twenty years of guest appearances made me feel welcome and important. Basically I thanked people a lot, and made sure they knew what great food there was at the craft service table. I was very supportive and nice during the auditions and even pushed for many parts to be cast without the actor having to come in and read if I felt it wasn't necessary. And for nineteen extraordinary days, my cast and crew and I shared quite a happy home.
After post-production, we entered and were accepted into a bunch of film festivals: Slamdance, Newport Beach, Austin, and Just For Laughs in both Chicago and Montreal, to name a few. I even won a best actor award at the Mammoth Film Festival. At the Austin Film Festival we won the audience award in the Comedy Vanguard category. Eventually, we landed with a small distributor who made our little movie available on video on demand.
During our festival run, I was surprised to find out we had even been asked to screen as part of a mental health program. The program director was sure it would fit in splendidly with their documentaries about mental disorders. That gave me pause. I was always a little dumbfounded when someone would describe Fred and Vinnie as a film about two pathetic people because basically I was playing myself. It made me think about how I presented myself to the outside world. Sure, I was on the fringes of show business, but I didn’t have a suffocating job with a ball-breaking boss. I wasn’t in debt. I’d go days without even having to set my alarm clock, let alone be trapped in rush hour traffic ten times a week. True, my apartment wasn’t one you’d see on Cribs or Celebrity Homes, but my rent was always paid on time with the showbiz jobs I had. Okay, my character was compiling a list of all the restaurants he didn’t feel self-conscious eating alone at, and he couldn’t wait for his agoraphobic friend to see where he bought videos tapes to validate his life. Okay, maybe some of those things might have been autobiographical . . . but the reactions to the film made me realize that I was actually, if not “happy” with my life, at least content with how it all had turned out. I wasn’t pathetic at all. I liked my life. I had a career and I had friends. So many of the people I had started with in New York and L.A. had since been either forced out of the business or given up to do other things. But I had beaten the odds.
HOME
Last year, I was visiting my parents at their retirement community in Florida. This time it actually hadn’t been all that hellacious. My parents were thrilled when, at a Chinese restaurant, a fourteen-year-old kid approached me and asked for my autograph. He was a fan of Raymond, which was now very big in syndication. My mother kept repeating how mind “bottling” it was that he asked for my autograph.
After that, my mother introduced me to some of her neighbors as her “son that’s been on TV.” I was a bit shocked when she told me why she introduced me that way. I heard her say words I had never heard her say before: she was proud of me. I felt after so many years I was begrudgingly tolerated by her. I never thought I was enough. I thought I was her weirdo son who walks the streets aimlessly like a mental patient during the day. All my work never seemed to add up to the big payoff.
But maybe I was wrong. Maybe I saw myself that way in the past. She actually said she was proud of me and I really felt it. She may have in fact have said those words before. If she had, I never could discern them through all her other comments I had interpreted as negative and all-encompassing.
Yes, she was proud of what I had achieved, but still kept asking me if any other work for me was coming up. Nothing was, but I guess she figured that her persistent badgering would somehow force an upcoming week of employment. But something had changed. I was more patient. I answered all of her same questions over and over and over.
I had devised a strategy for my visit after my last one ended with me being chided. I had thought I was being patient. I didn’t blow up at her or tell her to stop bugging me about how much money I’m making or why I’m not further along. But I suppose sitting there grimacing in pain, answering her questions with as few syllables as possible, came off like I was a prisoner of war with nothing but the thought of liberation keeping me alive.
I realized we were all aging and there might not be too many of these trips left. I decided I wasn’t going to again break out in a stress rash, pleading for Valium after my search of their medicine cabinet came up empty. I wasn’t going to be miserable. I was hoping that by being as upbeat as I could and by acting in no way that could be minutely misconstrued as resentful, I wouldn’t be making them miserable either.
This trip my mother wouldn’t be able to accuse me of just shortly answering her questions about my life and career. I would actually initiate conversation. I’d talk about my life and all that I enjoyed. In the past I had just brushed off questions about what I did during the day like I was ashamed of myself. But I had no shame. I excitedly described every detail. I explained how yes, I don’t really work at one steady place, but how exciting it is that at any supermarket or mall, there’s always the possibility I could bump into someone I have worked with on one of my many TV visits. I could encounter a prop master, fellow actor, grip, or any number of crew members I have worked with and that makes me feel not so alone.
I explained what these various showbiz crew people I sometimes bump into do. They were actually excited to hear what goes into the making of a TV show and some of my stories about the sets I’ve worked on. I told them how exciting it is to be sort of like a detective, always going on any lead I can. I admitted some days I don’t know what the hell to do with myself, but it all works out eventually. Just talking about it, not shunning it, made us all less shameful about myself.
I explained why I felt it’s hard to meet that special woman and how I don’t wish to just settle. I didn’t lie and make up my usual fake girlfriend to avoid their, and possibly my own, pity. And there was no pity. I felt the most accepted when my mother said, “Not everyone’s meant to be married.”
My strategy worked. It wasn’t like a movie where we broke down crying as we hugged and exclaimed how we loved each other. We didn’t have to. Just the fact that my visit wasn’t that tortuous was one of my most surprising successes ever. I was actually anxious to return again to see if my exciting new achievement in tolerance wasn’t just a fluke. I was looking forward to calling more than I usually did to keep them posted about further developments of any kind. It was a good trip, but of course, I still was so happy to be coming home to L.A.
I looked out the airplane window and thought about my apartment. I couldn’t wait to see my cats and see what mail had piled up. I couldn’t wait to return to The Grove. Just several years earlier, there was a big vacant lot near my apartment. Before The Grove, I used to have to walk a mile to the Beverly Center Mall just to eat at the food court, look through the bookstore, and feel I was interacting. The Grove is not so much a mall, but more like a movie set of a fake town where I consider myself the self-anointed mayor. There is a trolley that passes through the two-block village and the operator waves to me when he passes by. There are not only stores, but little kiosks outside the shops. The man who runs the Sunglass Hut shakes my hand when he sees me and wants to take a photo of me wearing a pair of his sunglasses. I have a VIP card that entitles me to free desserts at the restaurants. I’m the one that the struggling actors who work at the retail stores know as the guy that’s been on TV. They ask me for advice. Some have even offered to quit their jobs to be my assistant. I explain that I can’t afford an assistant and there wouldn’t be much for them to do than perhaps meander about with me. Their view of me is flattering and as surreal to me as when I auditioned for the “Fred Stoller” part and didn’t get it.
As the plane touched down, I started to feel the same excitement I had when I first landed at Los Angeles airport in 1988. Back then, I was relocating to a new world of possibilities. I thought anything could happen. I wasn’t thinking about all the politics and the immeasurable odds. The plane came to a stop and I stepped out, feeling excited, not thinking about all my past heartache and assorted defeats. Maybe this feeling wouldn’t last. But, for now, I was home. And everything was all ahead for me.
T
o David Handleman, a smart guy who liked the idea when we met for generously spending a lot of time giving me his very useful take.
To Steve Skrovan who also helped a lot, not to mention he was there for so much of this little journey.
To Joel Warshawer, another friend, and big part of the story who still roots for me to get work so he can hear what free food I get.
To Patrick Downing and Justin Roiland. Thanks for lighting the fire in me to keep pushing this.
To the ones who have “had me back” on their shows: Phil Rosenthal, Tom Palmer, Steve Peterman, Gary Dontzig, Mike Saltzman, Dan Yaccarino, Fran Drescher, Ray Romano, Tom Snyder, Loren Bouchard, Jonathan Katz, Norman Steinberg, Todd J. Greenwald, Meredith Layne, Dorothea Gillim.
Thanks to George Calfa. If it weren’t for your tech support, most of these words written a long time ago wouldn’t be saved.
Thanks to Cari Lynn for her help, and introducing me to my wonderful agent, Jill Marr.