Jason Priestley (13 page)

Sure enough, late that night their tour bus wound its way through the hills to our house, and Christine and I had a late meal with the band. “You guys are great,” I said. “Why don't more people know about you in America? You need to shoot a music video and get some exposure here.” This was the mid-1990s, and MTV was still breaking out hits through music videos.

They told me that they had shot a few but didn't like the results. They had spent a lot of money on what they felt was a substandard product, and they couldn't get on MTV or VH1. Now, I'd had a few drinks. “I'll shoot your next video, and you'll love it,” I boasted. “And I'll walk it into MTV myself!” They had nothing to lose; they took me up on my impromptu offer.

So on my way to Nova Scotia to shoot
Love and Death on Long Island
, I stopped in Toronto and in four or five days I prepped, shot, and edited
The Old Apartment
video for Barenaked Ladies. We had a minuscule budget, about $35,000. Still, it turned out very well. When I had finished acting in my own film, I stopped in New York for one night on my way back home to L.A.

I went into the Viacom offices and showed the video to the creative team at VH1. “This is the music video I directed for my friends, Bare-naked Ladies. They're huge in Canada. I hope you'll want to put it on your channel.”

“This video is great,” they agreed. “We'd love to.” Simple as that! The very first Barenaked Ladies video appeared on TV in America. The video was instrumental in the band breaking through; they finally got some airplay on American radio, and even made an appearance at the Peach Pit After Dark. As for me, I was nominated for a MuchMusic Video Award later that year. The MMVAs are a big deal, Canada's annual video awards show that attracts musicians from all over. All kinds of American music acts attend and perform there each year. My youthful hubris paid off, and I had some new friends in the music biz.

I
t was that time of year again—The annual fancy rubber chicken dinner event. The Golden Globes were much more fun when I was a nominee! This was actually my second nod for Best Performance by an Actor in a TV Series (Drama)—the first had come in 1993. In 1995, my girlfriend, Christine, and I walked the red carpet and headed into the huge ballroom. We found our seats at the big round table and sat down. Christine, who was currently playing med student Harper Tracy on
ER,
immediately fell into conversation with Heather Locklear, who was making a big comeback as Amanda on
Melrose Place
. The room was starting to fill up. I glanced over to my right and there were my old buddies, Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp, standing there chatting. They'd met back in the day on
21 Jump Street
—because
every actor
our age had been on
21 Jump Street
. Forget six degrees of Kevin Bacon! Trust me, every actor in Hollywood around my age passed through
21 Jump Street
at some point . . . or
90210
.

I stood up and walked over. “Guys! What's up!” I was delighted to see them both, as I hadn't talked to either of them for a while. Brad was nominated for his performance in
Legends of the Fall;
Johnny had been nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in the comedy/musical category, for the quirky
Ed Wood
.

“Let's go to the bar and have a drink!” I said, and of course they didn't need much arm-twisting. It was just like old times. We all went outside to have “a drink” and wound up standing together, laughing, chatting, telling jokes, and knocking back quite a few cocktails for the next hour or so. We had a great time laughing about the old days. Who would have thought back at the beginning that all three of us would be at the Golden Globes, much less nominated in the same year?

None of us won our category. Dennis Franz of
NYPD Blue
beat me out that time around. Still, it had been a fantastic evening. The best thing about the Golden Globes is that it's pretty much the one place everyone in the industry shows up, giving actors a chance to catch up with old friends, because there's no Celebrity Café in Hollywood where all the famous people go. A successful actor is all over the world at any given time working on various projects, which makes staying in close touch difficult, particularly back then, before we all started carrying computers in our hands.

M
y buddy KC and I had been racing cars for Toyota for three years during every moment of spare time I could muster. We were doing quite well when Ford contacted me to see if I wanted to start racing Mustangs for them in IMSA (International Motor Sports Association)—an association that is no longer in business. (Now it's called Grand Am.) During my first year I was given a Mustang Cobra R to drive, which the Ford Company had just released. We were one of the fortunate few teams that got the new model right off the line. It was fantastic to be part of a factory effort like that. I loved the excitement and fun. I started running the Grand Sports Division, and it was great.

KC raced with me for the first half of that year with Ford. This was a whole different kind of racing—endurance racing. I had my eye on racing in such premier events as the twenty-four hours of LeMans, and starting to race in the Grand Sports Division was the first step toward those big goals. The races were three hours long. One driver goes for an hour and a half and then the other driver runs for an hour and a half, with one pit stop in the middle of the race to change drivers, change tires, fuel the car, and so on. Unfortunately, we weren't doing well. I got called into a meeting with the executives at Ford one day. “Jason, we want to partner you with a stronger driver because we need you to be running up front.” It was up to me to let my partner go.

This was a terrible moment for me. KC was—and is to this day—a dear friend. We had started this journey together and had had so many good times the past four years. Not to mention that he was a very good driver. However, Ford was paying the bills, so I had no choice. Needless to say, the breakup of our partnership put a strain on our friendship, a relationship I valued a great deal. It took some of the shine off my excitement. This part wasn't fun—at all. Much to his credit, our relationship survived and he is now godfather to both my kids.

My new partner was a guy named Andy Pilgrim, an absolutely phenomenal driver, one of the best in North America. Andy and I hit it off immediately and were quickly successful. Andy was an incredibly fast driver, but, more important, he was a great teacher. He was smart and a good communicator and knew everything there was to know about cars. He taught me so much about how to become a better driver and how to race faster. He and I remained a solid team over the next three years.

Being constantly under the glare of the spotlight was no longer fun. Every cast member of the show needed a place to go and hide, and racing was my hideaway. Well, one of mine. Driving around one weekend, I found a very cheap house in Montecito that was a foreclosure. I snapped it up dirt cheap from a bank in Texas. Those kinds of deals just don't happen now, but it was possible back in the mid-1990s.

I paid next to nothing for that house, for good reason. It was a wreck. I convinced the brother of a friend of mine, a very talented guy named Tom Lawler, to come out from Boston and live in the house as he redid it, room by room. He was a master tile- and woodworker and whenever I wasn't racing or working, I would drive up on weekends to help him out.

Together we gutted that house. I hired a separate company to redo the kitchen, but Tom and I did everything else ourselves. I have always loved manual labor, even as a housepainter back in Vancouver. For me to go work on my own house was very cool, a real labor of love. I seemed to wind up with all the demo work, while Tom was an artist. We also installed gorgeous redwood wainscoting, and when the renovation was over, I had created a beautiful, peaceful weekend retreat, which was just what I needed. Christine and I spent as much time as we could there, given my insane schedule. I was racing whenever I could, so when I was in town, it was the perfect escape for me to just drive up to Montecito.

I was at work all the time, like a hamster on a wheel. When I wasn't on set, I scouted acting and directing projects to do during hiatus. I made all kinds of PR appearances and commitments for the show. On the weekends, I either jumped on a plane and headed to the racetrack or drove down to the new house for the weekend.

By this time Christine and I had five dogs! I'm sure it was illegal in Los Angeles County, but we did it anyway. The dogs loved the house in Montecito, which was set on a full acre. In addition to Swifty, who was very happy in this pack, we had a wolf hybrid, a little red pit bull named Friday, a pug named Dempsey, and a Boston terrier named Bobby Orr. Guess who named him?

By this time, it was impossible for me to be anonymous in public. The possibility of becoming so famous had truly never entered my mind. The fame I achieved was a strange by-product of the work I enjoyed. There had simply been no way to prepare for the constant public attention. The kind of attention we were all receiving would drive anybody crazy.

Racing and fixing up my house: these two respites kept me sane. Driving required intense focus. Manual labor allowed my mind to wander and daydream a bit. The mental states were polar opposites, but they both gave my mind a much-needed break from work and from my increasing fame.

N
early every time one of the cast members appears on a talk show, and they show photos of us from the early days, everyone pokes fun at the high-waisted “mom” jeans, the popular style we all wore back then. That look certainly didn't age well!

Pepe Jeans London approached my agent, Nick, with an offer for me to represent Pepe Jeans. The company was founded by a young designer who originally customized jeans out of his stall in London's famous Portobello Road market. He and his brothers soon expanded into several stores, and then a warehouse, eventually becoming London's most popular designer denim brand. In the '90s, the company made a big international push to conquer America and the world.

It seemed like a regular straightforward business deal—an ad campaign for jeans—but once Bruce Weber came on board, it became a very artistic project. The week that I shot with Bruce in New York was an unforgettable experience. Bruce was a master, an incredible artist. This was far more than a photo shoot—we spent an entire day in a Tribeca loft, another day in a Brooklyn park, yet another in a downtown neighborhood taking photographs and filming for a commercial.

I'd taken part in many photo shoots by this point in my career, but this man worked on an entirely new creative level. To be his subject was a privilege, and the results, mostly due to his artistry, were amazing. Images of me were on billboards all over the world. The commercials, containing snippets of such people as Allen Ginsberg, reading his own poetry, were incredibly high end and artistic for a denim campaign. I felt lucky to be a part of it.

As part of my deal, I made a number of appearances around the world, promoting Pepe Jeans. There were screaming girls at malls around the country when I showed up at department stores, but these appearances were very well managed and controlled, and I enjoyed them.

It was now full-on
90210
hysteria. Jennie and I made a brief appearance at the Detroit Auto Show, where we stood onstage at the Joe Lewis Arena to present a check from Chrysler Motor Corporation to a charity. All we did was carry one of those oversized checks out and hand it over to an official; we didn't even speak. Fifteen thousand people in the arena went completely nuts. The screams and applause were deafening. Every kid there went wild at the sight of us! Jennie and I were stunned by the huge wall of sound coming toward us.

That kind of cacophonous roar was electric. It was almost a physical force hitting us; I had never felt anything like it in my life. At that moment I understood what it must be like to be a rock star. I also understood why so many rock stars become addicted to drugs—they want to re-create the high of that feeling
all the time,
because it was amazing. It was the coolest. There were several events like this in my life during that period and, in hindsight, I wish I had enjoyed them more.

Unfortunately for me, I was cursed with the awareness that often the candle that burns the brightest only burns half as long. I never wanted to be someone who burned so hot that I would quickly flame out and turn to ash. I didn't want to be superfamous and all over the place for five years, and then disappear. I was in this job for the long haul. I wanted to lay the groundwork for a successful career as a working actor for decades to come. This kind of heat and intensity could only burn out, and all I could do was hope and pray that I would still be there, intact, when it did.

T
he fifth season of the show marked the arrival of Tiffani Amber Thiessen. Tiffani brought a breath of fresh air to
90210
. She played Valerie Malone, a childhood friend of the Walsh twins, who was forced by family troubles to move into their home. Valerie was a great character: troubled, duplicitous, in and out of fights with the girls and romances with the guys. We hit it off right away and became great friends from the start. The chaos, drama, and negativity that had taken over the set magically vanished. Tiffani brought an entirely new attitude to work, one we hadn't witnessed for a while. Tiffani wanted to be there. She was helpful and professional and came up with creative solutions to any issues that arose. She was friendly with everyone. I could not have been happier with the positive energy she brought to the show, and I hoped she would stay for a long, long time.

The fifth season was chugging along without incident. Shannen's departure didn't hurt our ratings one bit. In fact, they kept getting stronger. We were all in a good place with the show, and the days, weeks, and months seemed to just disappear. But we were all coming to the end of our original contracts, and talk of renegotiations was on the horizon. Was everyone staying? What kind of raises could we ask for? There were a lot of questions, and a lot of uncertainty. Then two things happened that changed the course of the show completely.