Still Just a Geek, page 19
“Quoting Lord of the Rings,” he sneered. “You’re such a geek!”
“It’s Just a Geek,” I said.
I haven’t heard from him since.*
12
All Good Things . . .
While I was working on Nemesis, I knew in the back of my mind there was a good chance my scene would not make the final print of the film. It didn’t add to the story at all, and I was the last person to join the cast. Because of those two factors, I wasn’t too surprised when I started hearing the rumors I’d been cut from the film and replaced with Ashley Judd, who was playing Robin “Mrs. Wesley Crusher” Lefler. The rumor about Ashley Judd turned out to be false and I understand that the credibility of the Internet as a source of honest and true information may never be restored.* However, the rumor about my scene hitting the cutting-room floor turned out to be true.
14 AUGUST 2002
SPARE US THE CUTTER
The call came while I was out, so I didn’t get the message until days later.
“Hi,” the young-sounding secretary said on my machine. “I have Rick Berman calling for Wil. Please return when you get the message.”
I knew.
I knew before she was even done with the message, but I tried to fool myself for a few minutes anyway.
I looked at the clock: 8:00 P.M. They’d most likely be out, so I’d have to call tomorrow.
I told Anne that I had a message to call Rick’s office and she knew right away also.
We’d thought about it for months, ever since I’d heard the rumors online. Of course, I tend to not put a whole lot of stock in what I read online . . . if I did I’d be overwhelmed with the sheer amount of hot teen bitches who want to get naked for me right now and I’d be rolling in Nigerian money.*
But it made sense and I couldn’t fight what I knew in my heart to be true.
I returned the call late the next day from my car on my way home from work. I was driving along a narrow, tree-lined street in Pasadena that I sometimes take when the traffic is heavy on the freeway.
Children played on bikes and jumped rope in the growing shadows of the July afternoon. The street was stained a beautiful orange by the setting sun.
“This is Wil Wheaton returning,” I told her.
She tells me to hold on and then he’s on the phone. “Hi, kiddo. How are you?”
“I’m doing fine. You know I turn 30 on Monday?”*
There is a pause.
“I can’t believe we’re all getting so old,” he says.
“I know. I e-mailed Tommy [his son] a while ago and he’s in college now. If that made me feel old, I can’t imagine what my turning 30 is doing to the rest of you guys.”
We chuckle. This is probably just small talk, so it’s not as severe when he tells me, but it feels good regardless. Familiar, familial.
“Listen, Wil. I have bad news.”
Although I’ve suspected it for months and I have really known it since I heard the message the night before, my stomach tightens, my arms grow cold.
“We’ve had to cut your scene from the movie.”
He pauses for breath and that moment is frozen, while I assess my feelings. I almost laugh out loud at what I discover: I feel puzzled.
I feel puzzled, because the emotions I expected—the sadness, the anger, the indignation—aren’t there.
I realize that he’s waiting for me. “Why’d you have to cut it?”
This doesn’t make sense. I should be furious. I should be depressed. I should be hurt.
But I don’t feel bad, at all.
“Well, it doesn’t have anything to do with you,” he begins.
I laugh silently. It never does. When I don’t get a part, or a callback, or get cut from a movie, it never has anything to do with me. Like a sophomore romance. “It’s not you. It’s me. I’ve met Jimmy Kimmel’s cousin and things just happened.”* There is an unexpected sincerity to what he tells me: the movie is long. The first cut was almost three hours. The scene didn’t contribute to the main story in any way, so it was the first one to go.
He tells me that they’ve cut 48 minutes from the movie.
I tell him that they’ve cut an entire episode out. We laugh. There is another silence. He’s waiting for me to respond.
I drive past some kids playing in an inflatable pool in their front yard. On the other side of the street, neighbors talk across a chain-link fence. An older man sits on his porch reading a paper.
“Well Rick,” I begin, “I completely understand. I’ve thought about this on and off for months and I knew that if the movie was long, this scene and maybe even this entire sequence, would have to go. It’s just not germane to the spine of the story.”
He tells me that they had to consider cutting the entire beginning of the movie. He tells me that he has to call one of the other actors who has suffered rather large cuts as well.
I stop at a four-way stop sign and let a woman and her little daughter cross the street on their way into a park filled with families, playing baseball and soccer in the waning light.
I look at them. The mother’s hand carefully holding her daughter’s. I realize why I’m not upset and I tell him.
“Well, Rick, it’s like this: I love Star Trek and, ultimately, I want what’s best for Star Trek and the Trekkies. If the movie is too long, you’ve got to cut it and this scene is the first place I’d start if I were you.
“The great thing is, I got to spend two wonderful days being on Star Trek again, working with the people I love, wearing the uniform that I missed and I got to reconnect with you, the cast, and the fans. Nobody can take that away from me.
“And, it really means a lot to me that you called me yourself. I can’t tell you how great that makes me feel.”
It’s true. He didn’t need to call me himself. Most producers wouldn’t.*
“I’m so glad that you took the time to call me and that I didn’t have to learn about this at the screening, or by reading it on the Internet.”
He tells me again how sorry he is. He asks about my family and if I’m working on anything. I tell him they’re great, that Ryan’s turning 13 and that I’ve been enjoying steady work as a writer since January.*
We’re back to small talk again, bookending the news. I ask him how the movie looks.
He tells me that they’re very happy with it. He thinks it’s going to be very successful.
I feel happy and proud.
I’ve heard stories from people that everyone had lots of trouble with the director. I ask him if that’s true.
He tells me that it was tough, because the director had his own vision. There were struggles, but ultimately they collaborated to make a great film.
I come to a stoplight, a bit out of place in this quiet residential neighborhood. A young married couple walks their golden retriever across the crosswalk.
We say our goodbyes and he admonishes me to call him if I’m ever on the lot. He tells me that he’ll never forgive me if I don’t stop into his office when I’m there.
I tell him that I will and that I’ll see him at the screening. He wishes me well and we hang up the phone.
The light turns green and I sit there for a moment, reflecting on the conversation. I think back to something I wrote in April while in a pit of despair: “I wonder if The Lesson is that, in order to succeed, I need to rely upon myself, trust myself, love myself and not put my happiness and sadness into the hands of others.”
I meant everything that I said to him. It really doesn’t matter to me if I’m actually in the movie or not and not in a bitter way at all.*
I could focus on the disappointment, I suppose. I could feel sad.
Getting cut out of the movie certainly fits a pattern that’s emerged in the past two years or so.
But I choose not to. I choose instead to focus on the positives, the things I can control. I did have two wonderful days with people I love and it was like I’d never left. I did get to reconnect with the fans and the franchise. Rick Berman, a person with whom I’ve not always had the best relationship, called me himself to tell me the news and I felt like it weighed heavily on him to deliver it. Nobody can take that away from me and I’m not going to feel badly, at all.
Because I have a secret.
I have realized what’s important in my life since April and they are at the end of my drive.
The dog-walking couple smile and wave to me. The light changes.
Somewhere in Brooklyn, Wesley Crusher falls silent forever.
Okay, maybe I laid it on a little thick in the last line there, but I thought it was a nice dramatic finish, you know? I had shipped the Cadet Crusher action figure to Brooklyn, and Wesley was silent. Nemesis is the final TNG movie, my scene didn’t even make one of the several collector’s editions they released on DVD, and the only way to see me is if you freeze-frame the wide screen version. I’m cut out of the full-screen edition.* Wesley Crusher will only live on in reruns. I will never get to bring him to life again, and that makes me a little sad. I’d like to try on his spacesuit and his oversized brain one last time and see how they fit now.
After I posted that entry, the comments and e-mails poured in. There were so many, it took me several days to catch up. Slashdot carried the story on the front page, and there were several hundred comments within hours, mostly from people who failed to get the point and attacked me for talking on my phone while driving.* Fark linked to the story, along with several sci-fi news sites. I even did an interview with the BBC’s Radio 5 Live.*
I was very moved by the support I received from the Trekkies and others, but the fact was, whether I actually made it into the final cut of the movie couldn’t change the wonderful two days I’d spent with old friends. It wasn’t going to affect my career in any real way, since it was just two lines, and I didn’t take it personally. I didn’t feel snubbed in any way, and I had a great conversation with Rick Berman. This would only be a bad thing if I allowed it to be a bad thing.
It was a major test for me: Would I allow myself to wallow in indignant self-pity? Would I take this as yet another rejection by the Powers That Be? No. I would not. There were too many things in my life to be happy about, and being at peace with Star Trek was one of them.
With all my conflicted feelings about Star Trek and Wesley Crusher resolved, I spent the next few weeks in a state of grace, and I was able to share a very difficult decision I’d recently made with my website readers.
Back in mid-May, I was asked to participate in an infomercial, selling 3D glasses for computer games. It was a Rubicon in my career. Would I cross it?*
I discussed it at length with my wife, manager, and some trusted friends. Everyone agreed the decision was mine, and I agonized over it for a long time. I was committed to supporting my family in any way I could, but I was certain this was a one-way bridge that I’d be crossing. If I accepted the offer, I’d also be accepting the end of my chances at ever being on the A-list again.*
27 AUGUST 2002
REFLECTIONS—ARTIFICIAL SWEETENER
Sometimes we know in our bones what we really need to do, but we’re afraid to do it.*
Taking a chance, and stepping beyond the safety of the world we’ve always known is the only way to grow, though, and without risk there is no reward.
Thoughts like this have weighed heavily on me for the last year or so, as I look around and reassess my life.
This past year has involved more self-discovery and more change than any so far in my life. It’s been tumultuous, scary, exhilarating, depressing, thrilling, joyful. I’ve realized recently that I have changed dramatically since I started this website. When it began just over a year ago, I was very adrift, terrified that the Internet would tear me apart.
Well, it did and it turns out that was a great thing. The Internet kicked my ass and it forced me to find strength within myself and not to derive my sense of self-worth from the opinions of others.*
This website has introduced me to amazing people, weird people, scary people. This website and many people who read it have also helped me figure out what is important to me in my life, what makes me happy.
I guess the feeling has been building for a long time and I knew it was there, but I wasn’t willing to acknowledge it. It was—is—scary. It’s a major change in my life, but I can’t ignore it and to ignore it is to ignore myself and cheat myself out of what I think my real potential is.
Back in the middle of May, I was asked to do this commercial. Well, not just a commercial, more of an infomercial, really. My first reaction was, “No way. infomercials are death to an actor’s career.”*
But then I thought about the last few years of my life as an actor. The daily frustrations. Losing jobs for stupid, capricious, unfair reasons.
I looked back and saw that it really started when my friend Roger promised me a role in Rules of Attraction, then yanked it away from me without so much as a phone call or e-mail or anything.* Then there was the roller coaster of Win Ben Stein’s Money and missing family vacations so I could stay home and go on auditions that all ended up being a huge waste of my time.
Throughout this time, this painful, frustrating Trial, I began to write more and more. It’s all here on WWdN. I can see my writing style change, as I find my voice and figure out what I want to say, and how I want to say it.
The e-mails changed, too. People stopped asking me to do interviews for them about Star Trek and started asking me if I’d contribute to their magazines, or weblogs, or books.
When this phone call came for the infomercial, I took a long walk and assessed my life.
The bottom line was: they were offering to pay me enough to support my family for the rest of this year. I wouldn’t have to worry about bills anymore. I wouldn’t have to view each audition as This One Big Chance That I Can’t Screw Up.
Accepting it would mean some security for me and my family. It was also a really cool computer-oriented product (which I’ll get to later, don’t worry). It’s not like I would be hawking The Ab-Master 5000 or Miracle Stain Transmogrifier X!*
It would also mean, to me at least, the end of any chance I had of ever being a really major actor again. That elusive chance to do a film as good as, or better than, Stand by Me, or a TV series as widely watched as TNG would finally fall away.
I thought of all these things, walking Ferris through my neighborhood. It was a long walk.
I thought of Donald Crowhurst.*
I thought about why actors—and by actors I mean working, struggling actors like myself, not Big Time Celebrities like I was 15 years ago*—suffer the indignities of auditions and the whims of Hollywood.
I remembered something I said to a group of drama students just before their graduation, paraphrasing Patrick Stewart: “If you want to be a professional actor, you have to love the acting, the performing, the thrill of creating a character and giving it life. You have to love all of that more than you hate how unfair the industry is, more than the constant rejection—and it is constant—hurts. You must have a passion within you that makes it worthwhile to struggle for years while pretty boys and pretty girls take your parts away from you again and again and again.”*
I listened to my words, echoing off the linoleum floor of that high school auditorium and realized that those words, spoken long ago, were as much for me as they were for them.
I listened to my words and I realized: I don’t have that passion anymore. It simply isn’t there.
I am no longer willing to miss a family vacation, or a birthday, or a recital, for an audition.
I am no longer willing to humiliate myself for some casting director who refuses to accept the fact that I’m pretty good with comedy.
I am no longer willing to ignore what I’m best at and what I love the most, because I’ve spent the bulk of my life trying to succeed at something else.
I walked back to my house, picked up the phone and accepted the offer. It was tumultuous, scary, exhilarating, depressing, thrilling, joyful.
I would spend the next three weeks wondering if I’d made the right decision. I would question and doubt it over and over again.
Was it the right decision? I don’t know.*
Things have certainly changed for me, though. I have only had three auditions in the last three months. A year ago that would have killed me, but I’m really not bothered by it now.*
I’ve made my family my top priority and decided to focus on what I love: downloading porn.*
Just kidding.
I’ve decided to focus on what I really love, what is fulfilling, maybe even what I am meant to do, in the great cosmic sense: I am writing.
I write every day, and I see the faint outlines of something really cool. I occasionally catch glimpses of an ability, unrefined, long-ignored, coming to life.
Sometimes we know in our bones what we really need to do, but we’re afraid to do it.
Taking a chance and stepping beyond the safety of the world we’ve always known is the only way to grow, though and without risk there is no reward.
Risk was always one of my favorite games.*
It seems like such an easy choice, now, but as I stood at that crossroads, one road uncertain and the other clear, the Voice of Self-Doubt wasn’t about to stay silent. It screamed at me, “You will prove right everyone who called you a washed-up, has-been loser!”*
Just a few months earlier, I would have listened to him and dismissed the offer immediately, but now I said, “I’ve made a commitment to let the pursuit of fame go. I’ve grown up, and I’m doing what’s best for my family.”
I was certain that doing this infomercial was the final nail in the coffin of my once-promising career. I mean, who goes from infomercial guy back to respectable career? I said respectable, so you can put your Steve Garvey away, buddy.* If they’d asked me to hawk The Ultimate Ab Machine 6000,* or Even More Mega SeXXXy Girls Going Wild!! or The Super Amazing Hair Restoring Formula Number 29X That Doesn’t Even Look Like Spray Paint!, I would have declined without a second thought. But the X3D system that I was asked to sell was actually very cool. It really worked the way they claimed it would, so selling it wouldn’t compromise my integrity in any way.*
