Easy Street (the Hard Way): A Memoir (19 page)

Literature is nothing more than the expansion of storytelling. Storytelling is obviously the impulse to chronicle something you’ve been through in order to give it its due, to have a catharsis. Like, “Holy crap, I’ve been through this experience, and it was a life-or-death experience, and I made it through, so there’s a huge amount to be learned from it. Aside from this adrenaline rush, it had to be the most instructive moment a man can have. And I absolutely need to chronicle that not
only to make note of it for myself but also to assert the fact that I’ve been here, that I have done this and I have had this experience. But perhaps by chronicling it I can share this experience with the people who immediately surround me and then expand the notion of community through a shared experience, forming what is at the root of our collective consciousness.

Tapping into this ancient collective consciousness is what drives me to perfect my passion as a filmmaker. Once I became aware of the fact that everybody’s looking for the reason we’re all here, I understood the purpose of what storytelling, literature, theater, and, thus, film is all about. The reason we’re here is to talk about what we did. And if you talk about what you did in a way in which it resonates with every other person who’s ever been here before or is ever going to be here again, no matter what their race, creed, ethnic background, ability to speak or not speak language, well, then you’ve left a mark. It resonates on such a level that it’s completely universal. That is collective consciousness, and as close as we can all come to that—that’s what we strive for in making movies. And that’s the meaning of life. It’s to know you’re not in this alone, that there are a gazillion of us who have come and gone and who feel the same things you’re feeling, and in knowing this comes solace, peace, a degree of resignation. That no matter what it is I’m going through, I’m not the first one, and I’m not gonna be the last.

Quest for Fire
was released in February 1982. In its first year it grossed $20 million, a lot for the time. It got great reviews and was well received, eventually winning an Oscar for best makeup. While waiting for it to come out, I was pumped and ready for the next major project, but as was to become a pattern I could not begin to imagine, it led to nothing. Even as it was playing in theaters, with all this wonderful noise about it and with many reviewers positively mentioning my performance, I started to get this unsettling feeling. It wasn’t as if there were a dozen new caveman movies waiting to be made—where do I go from here? ’Cuz certainly the phone ain’t ringing off the hook with life-altering offers! Not only would the next few years bring
about more of what I’d been through before, but now there was also an added element: I was creeping closer to the edge of this black hole, just like my brother, a hole in which only one of us was to barely make it out alive.

(CHAPTER 10)

Get a Real Job

Prior to the release of
Quest
the buzz was great. Everyone expected the movie to do well, and 20th Century Fox was reasonably sure they had a hit on their hands, which they did, although a modest one. I believed I had just finished a dramatic touchstone in my career and certainly one that would be a life-changer for me. At long last my enduring dream, a life on “Easy Street,” was moments away from becoming a reality. The film, after all, was for a major studio. It was made by an Academy Award–winning director, with the most distinguished people on the scene, including, as I mentioned, Anthony Burgess, Desmond Morris, and Claude Agostini, the DP (director of photography), who was an award-winning camera man. The insiders were heralding my performance before the public even got a glimpse, and all this was leading up to me acquiring my first Hollywood agent, a development that only furthered my conviction that my time had finally arrived.

Coming back to “normal” life, even if I didn’t have to deal with freezing my ass off anymore, took some adjustment. I didn’t make enough money from the role to dramatically change anything financially. I still needed to pay the rent month by month, keep the phone and electricity on, and take my new bride out to an occasional dinner, or whatever. Fuck, I had hoped something would’ve immediately emanated right then and there from the experience, but it didn’t. There
was part of my ego that made it very difficult for me to square up the fact that I needed to go back to the same day job I had before I had left. Back to selling handbags and jewelry on Eighth Street and MacDougal at Burton’s place. He welcomed me, of course, but to me it was like going back to him with my tail between my legs. It was, “Yeah, I’m a movie actor but I still need a fuckin’ day gig for an hourly wage.” What ensued wasn’t a total downer because, as the months rolled closer to
Quest’s
release, there were more and more positive vibes coming my way, enough to make me believe that, upon premiere, new doors would fling open.

About three months before the film came out they started showing it around at special screenings in Hollywood. One guy, a classy, brash agent by the name of Robert Littman watched it and thought this would be my breakout film. Bobby was as colorful a guy as I’ve ever met in this business. He was a British Jew who talked at the top of his voice at all times of the day and night, was a wellspring of stories, and as magnificent a natural raconteur as I had ever met (only topped by my dad and Ralph Arzoomanian). It was about eight o’clock in the evening, and I remember sitting down in my New York apartment to make myself a drink when my phone rings. I hear this guy just yelling and screaming at the top of his voice: “IS THIS RON PERLMAN?!”

“Uh, yes it is. Who’s calling?”

“YOU DON’T KNOW ME, BUT I’M YOUR NEXT AGENT.”

I had to hold the phone a few inches from my ear so as to protect myself from injury. I said, “Congratulations. You couldn’t have picked a nicer guy.”

“MY NAME IS ROBERT LITTMAN, AND I REPRESENT SIX ACTORS.”

And I said, “Oh, I guess business is slow?”

He finally tones down his volume: “No, I have six, I don’t need any more.”

“Who are they, just out of curiosity?”

“Alan Bates, James Coburn, Gene Wilder, Elizabeth Montgomery,” and he names one more icon of the day, I can’t remember who. And
then there’s this awkward pause after he names the fifth one, and he says, “Oh, I forgot, my sixth one died.”

“Sorry to hear that. Who was he?”

“Lee J. Cobb.” And I said, “So you’re calling me because you have an opening?”

“They told me you were funny, but I didn’t expect you to be . . . well, funny. I’m calling because I want you to sign with me. I’m coming to New York right now. Where are you?”

“I’m in my house, in my tighty whities, pouring myself a nice cocktail.”

“Well, I can’t get there that quickly. I’m in Hollywood.”

He flew in the next day, and we went out for dinner at some fancy place with a lot of showbiz people at the other tables. I could see from the moment we entered the joint that the guy knew everybody and everybody knew him. He was definitely seriously connected to all of my heroes and icons, and on a first-name basis. So I took the bit and worked out an arrangement with Pat and Shirley for them to be my New York agents while Littman would represent me in Hollywood. He told me I would need to come out to Hollywood so he could introduce me around so as to start building the myth. Once he was back in LA he’d call and ask when I was coming out so he could work his magic. I wanted to go, but I was reticent because . . . well, I didn’t have any fuckin’ money. I didn’t have the extra cash I needed to pay for the plane ticket or a hotel room.

“Yeah, I’ll be out there,” and I kept putting it off, and putting it off.

Eventually the official press tour for the film happened. We did talk shows; we did the
LA Times
,
New York Times
, CBS
Evening News
; we did Letterman (this was when he had his original show on NBC after Carson). We’re doing all kinds of press, and we’re going from place to place in limousines. That’s the first time I’d ever been in a limousine in my life. When they sent us out to the West Coast for a week or so I met up with Littman, and he brought me to parties hosted or attended by celebrities every night. I was at Jimmy Caan’s house one night, Alan Ladd Jr.’s house the next night. I’m just partying with nothing
but people who keep my mouth agape for the entire seven days I was there. At the time there was an executive chef at a place called Spago, which was kind of like this parking lot they had converted to a restaurant, and it became
the
quintessential Hollywood hangout. I was eating lunch every day there, doing press interviews from there. Orson Welles was coming and going, Kirk Douglas was coming and going, and Jack Lemmon was coming and going. I mean, I suddenly felt as though the Earth had shifted under my feet, and . . . well, I’m for sure not in Kansas anymore, Toto. I was buying into what everyone was telling me: I was surely among this next wave of the new celebrated generation of actors.

That was where my head was at opening night. But as the weeks went by I slowly began to see that all of it was leading to nothing: no calls, no roles, no offers. This crescendo is quickly followed by the blackest hole I’ve ever been in. I began to seriously wonder what was in store for me. Clearly, cause and effect meant nothing. If you do A, B, C, and D in the movie industry, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to lead to E, F, G, and H. Whereas maybe in other industries it would, but this particular business there are other forces at work. In reality, even as I sat in a theater one night a few weeks later and watched the film once again by myself, I came to understand that
Quest
was a one-off. My performance was the creation of a very, very esoteric, specific kind of behavior, completely covered up by makeup and costume, such that the acting never even showed through physically, much less emotionally. It was a very abstract performance. There was no real set of clues left behind. No forensics blurting forth, “This is the guy, and we know exactly who the fuck he is and what the fuck he’s gonna do to set Hollywood on its ass.”

In short, I had been on the highest waves of expectation that a man could possibly be on that my life was going to change completely, patently, and for all time because I was a part of this amazing achievement, because, as I was being told, of my personal contribution to the film’s success. “Your life is gonna fucking change, dude. You’re about to become a movie star, son. You’re gonna be rich, you’re gonna be
famous.” Full stop! This is what I was told—actual fucking words that came out of people’s fucking lips, not mine. And then . . .

When I left the theater that night it was as if I had become possessed by some dark force, almost like a del Torian demon spirit had suddenly taken over my mind. Everything began to seem pointless. Opal tried to cushion the blow by telling me something else would come, but this depression was so personal and so profound that I was immune to consolation, and to this day neither Opal nor, indeed, any living person knows how far I fell and to what degree. What I am about to describe has never been told. And it all happened while fucking
Quest for Fire
was still in the fucking theaters.

What I’m telling you is that for a kid who came from the background that I came from, who had nothing, who never had any reason to really imagine that he would ever be able to depart dramatically from the die that was originally cast on the whole Perlman thing—to have this in front of me, dangling this carrot, it was seductive. It played tricks with my mind, and I began to buy into the belief that I’m going to wake up and my life is going to be different. I was going to be living in a fucking penthouse and fielding phone calls from agents, producers—hell, studio heads. I was going to be choosing what fucking movie I was gonna be doing next. I was gonna be deciding whether I want to work with the Bette Davises of the day. More importantly, I was going to be able to finally do something significant with my acting—to create and contribute whatever I could to our culture. I was gonna make a difference, a mark. There was all kinds of fucking weird shit rollin’ around in my noggin. The fact of the matter is, nothing happened. I mean, Nothing, with a capital
Nuth
. The silence was profound. And deafening. And devastating!

I guess this darkness or demon was always there. I’m pretty sure it can’t be too much of a coincidence that I lost my brother to the very thing I almost lost myself to. So maybe there was some sort of a chemical thing that went through both him and me, something we shared in common, despite what my dad believed. But what I had, I later came to understand, was clinical depression, whereas what my brother had
was manic depression. Yet both are and can be killers. For me, it was a result of this nothing, or really the perception I had of it as being nothing. Whatever . . . it spiraled swiftly and was all-encompassing. I couldn’t stop thinking, “How could I have been that wrong? How could I have allowed myself to be that completely bullshitted?” I was bullshitting myself; I was bullshitted by the universe at large. I bought into a whole lot of shit that a whole lot of fucking people who didn’t give a shit about me were saying. It triggered this emotional descent, which, I guess, for somebody who has a sort of chemical proclivity, like the one I described, led to something that became overwhelming. And it became something that, no matter how hard I tried to grab onto it with both hands, I couldn’t get a grasp. What made it even stranger was that it came at this moment that should have been the very opposite. If I’ve learned anything on this journey I’m on, it’s that I’m in an art form ensconced in a business that is at once neither or both. But one thing is for sure: it is not for the faint of heart.

If you’ve never been through clinical depression before, it’s just gonna sound rather academic, anemic even, like, “Come on, Perlman, you just made a fuckin’ movie. It can’t be that bad. You’re overdramatizing all of this. Get yourself together and stop with the bullshit.” And that’s the way most of the world treats something that is as disturbing as this mental illness, simply because most of the world is reminded about how ill-equipped we are to deal with somebody who is in that much trouble. Depression goes through stages, but if left unchecked and not treated, this elevator ride will eventually go all the way to the bottom floor. And finally you find yourself bereft of choices, unable to figure out a way up or out, and pretty soon one overarching impulse begins winning the battle for your mind: “Kill yourself.” And once you get over the shock of those words in your head, the horror of it, it begins to start sounding appealing, even possessing a strange resolve, logic. In fact, it’s the
only
thing you have left that is logical. It becomes the only road to relief. As if just the planning of it provides the first solace you’ve felt that you can remember. And you become comfortable with it. You begin to plan it and contemplate the details of how best
to do it, as if you were planning travel arrangements for a vacation. You just have to get out. O-U-T. You see the white space behind the letter
O
? You just want to crawl through that O and be out of this inescapable hurt that is this thing they call clinical depression. “How am I going to do this?” becomes the only tape playing. And if you are really, really, really depressed and you’re really there, you’re gonna find a way. I found a way. I had a way. And I did it.