American on Purpose Read online

  Soon we were living on Sascha’s savings and some money we borrowed from Rick. During this very difficult and tense time, I finally decided to quit smoking, which I found much harder than giving up drinking. When you stop boozing you lose weight and start to feel better but when you stop smoking, at least initially, the opposite happens. I suppose I must have been a little fractious because after I’d evened out a bit, Sascha told me that for three days she had her bags packed and in her car.

  Through a friend of a friend I met another writer from Britain, the prodigiously talented Sacha Gervasi, whose sense of humor reminded me of Peter Cook. He was an ex-drummer like me who had drifted into more literary pursuits and was now pursuing a career in the film business, after winning a scholarship to UCLA’s screenwriting program. It confused a lot of people when he and I became great chums since he had the same name as my girlfriend, although I never once got the two of them mixed up. For purposes of clarity I shall henceforth refer to him as Gervasi, but this must not be taken as a sign of animosity on my part.

  Gervasi and I got to talking one day about my old life back in Glasgow. I told him about my gay roommate Robbie, who he thought sounded hilarious and so interesting that Gervasi proposed we write a movie script around a character just like him. Again, since I had nothing but time, I agreed, on the condition that if we ever made the movie, I’d play Robbie. So I began another time-consuming project that didn’t help me pay the rent.

  We changed Robbie’s name to Crawford Mackenzie, made him a hairdresser instead of a waiter, and spun a story about Crawford coming to Los Angeles to seek fame and fortune. It was a kind of hairdresser sports story, or, as we pitched it, “Rocky in curlers.”

  Fun though it was writing comic screenplays on spec with my friends, I was earning nothing at all, we had spent all of Sascha’s savings on rent and car payments, and the largesse of the generous Rick Siegel was wearing thin—he wasn’t making much himself. I was getting desperate. That’s probably why I agreed to try out for the part of the Hispanic photographer on a sitcom pilot that Warner Brothers Television was making for NBC called Suddenly Susan, with Brooke Shields in the title role.

  Rick delivered the script to my house so I could prepare for the audition, and I read with dismay the dialogue that I was supposed to speak. I tried my Latino accent out on Sascha, who looked like she might burst from the attempt to contain her laughter. I tried again with my buddy John, who happened to be visiting us on one of his many business trips to California. John agreed with Sascha that my accent was indeed woeful.

  “But…” he said, “you should go and audition anyway. What the fuck else do you have to do except sit around here and complain? Plus, you never know what’ll turn up.”

  There’s no arguing with John sometimes. So even though I knew I was destined for major humiliation and embarrassment, I got in the rattly old white Bronco and made the low-speed chase to the audition on the Warner lot.

  I wasn’t mistaken about how it was going to play. The whole thing was inordinately awkward, and I couldn’t believe the producers had even let me read for the part. I have since learned that casting directors will sometimes intentionally include actors who are completely wrong for a role into the audition process to make their other choices seem better. Perverse, but it’s standard practice.

  I ignored the curious stares of the other actors, genuine Latinos all of them, waiting with me outside the room. When my turn came I went through the scene a couple of times with an intern reading Brooke Shields’s lines. The producers watched and listened with awe as I tried hard to seem Hispanic, openly giggling at my Speedy-Gonzales-meets-Braveheart accent. On the second pass I decided to play along, hamming it up and being ridiculously over the top on purpose, which I think relieved everyone’s embarrassment to some degree. Afterwards they thanked me for coming, and on my way out a cheerful-looking, dark-haired man got up from the desk where he had been sitting next to the bemused producers and approached me.

  “I’m Tony Sepulveda. I do casting for Warner Brothers Television.”

  “Well, thanks for seeing me today, Tony,” I said, deciding not to berate him for dragging me into a situation where I clearly didn’t stand a chance. No point in being an asshole about it now that it was over.

  “Do you, by any chance, do an English accent?” he asked.

  “I think I just did,” I said. “Although I was trying to sound Mexican.”

  He smiled and told me that although I was clearly not right for the role of the Hispanic photographer, they were currently casting for The Drew Carey Show, going into its second season, and needed someone to play Drew’s snooty English boss. It was only for three episodes but was I interested?

  I said I was.

  There was a quick meeting with the show’s producer and co-creator, Bruce Helford—a Tolkienesque character who was small and dark and busy, like some kind of super-intelligent alien hamster from a world more advanced than our own.

  The meeting was a formality—the character wouldn’t be on the air long enough to need an enormous amount of attention—and when Bruce also asked if I could do an English accent, I said, “Sí, señor,” in my best Latino. I was in.

  And that is how I ended up playing an Englishman on American television not for three episodes but for eight years. My debut episode went pretty well, the cast and crew were relaxed and friendly, and after a week the producers asked Rick if I wanted to become a full-time cast member. I think he almost cried, either because he was overwhelmed with happiness for me or because he realized that I would now be able to pay back all the money I owed him.

  The Drew Carey Show changed my life. Not only did it allow me to pay Rick back, but I started reducing my debts from the U.K. I was seven years sober before I managed to get clear everything I owed—over 250 grand, plus interest. It was one hell of a bar tab. On hiatus after my first season on Drew, I got a part in a groovy comedic vampire movie called The Revenant. (It went straight to video under the name Modern Vampires.) I had the time of my life, camping it up with corn-syrup blood and busty actresses playing victims.

  Although Mark Crowdy had not yet managed to raise the money for Saving Grace, he had come frustratingly close a number of times. For a while it looked like the movie might well get made, especially when the Oscar nominee Brenda Blethyn expressed a desire to play the lead. However, another screenplay I had cowritten, with Gervasi, about the hairdressing version of Robbie, which we had called Je m’appelle Crawford! had fared a lot better. It sparked a bidding war, and the winner, Warner Brothers Films, agreed to let me play the lead. We shot it in and around L.A. after my second season of Drew and in the end it was released as The Big Tease because Warner felt Americans wouldn’t go to see a movie with French words in the title. I’m not kidding.

  One day we shot a scene in which my character checks into a seedy motel on Sunset Boulevard. This involved hiring local cops to stop traffic whenever cameras were rolling, and while waiting for the director to call “action,” I heard one of the cops over the radio say, “Okay, we’ve shut down Sunset, you guys can go ahead and shoot.”

  It struck me as astonishing that I had been in America a little over two years and I had already managed to close Sunset Boulevard, even if it was only for a few minutes. I was very pleased with myself.

  I was making enough money for Sascha and me to move out of our rented cottage and buy an old Spanish house in the Hollywood Hills. We even rescued a couple of dogs from outside a coffee shop, and although the dogs were free, the vet bills would have scared Trump.

  For me, it was domestic bliss, but Sascha was uncomfortable about our living together without being married. I wasn’t sure if that was a good idea, but I liked her a lot. I was also a little bit scared of her, and I really hate confrontation, so I agreed to tie the knot.

  The wedding was a massive affair in a big downtown L.A. hotel where Sascha’s Jewish New York family partied hard with the Scottish hordes till the wee hours of the morning. Drew and my o
ther castmates were there, along with the show’s producers. It was a raucous affair—the two cultures meshing together on the dance floor in a riot of yarmulkes and kilts. A fine time was had by all, but a word of caution for anyone thinking of making a similar match: the Jewish tradition of dancing the hora with the bride and groom hoisted high on chairs is liable to clash, spectacularly, with the Scottish tradition of wearing kilts with no underwear, so be prepared for fainting relatives.

  36

  America the Beautiful

  Actors on prime-time sitcoms make good money. And so, I was not only paying large and regular sums to my astonished creditors in the U.K., but taking care of my finances as never before. I invested in a few things here, bought a few things there, and was on my way to getting on my feet. Like millions before me, I came to America seeking my fortune, and—lo and behold—I seemed to find it. This had less to do with my own business acumen and more with the sage counsel of my friend, CPA, and business manager David Leventhal, whom I met through Rick. I have always worked hard, and I like money, and have been able to earn a little, but taking care of it has always been beyond me. Left to my own devices, I’ll spend it all on candy and airplane rides.

  Luckily I have David. He is an observant Jew whose business decisions and transactions have to align with his conservative religious beliefs. That’s just the kind of financial wizard I need—one who respects money as a useful tool and believes it should be cared for and attended to prudently but never worshiped.

  I believe the correct quote, often mangled, is: “Love of money is the root of all evil.”

  I’m not evil enough to love money, but I am naughty enough to fuck around with it, spank it, pull its hair a little bit. David stops me from doing so, from throwing it all away, although he encourages me to spend it when called for.

  One of our adorable rescue dogs, Nala, had gotten some kind of horrible intestinal infection, and I was picking weird-looking creepy little white maggots from her ass with a pair of tweezers when I received a call from David. He was in a chipper mood.

  “How you doing?”

  He had that musical lilt in his voice that means he’s excited about giving out good news. I described to him the grisly (for me) and humiliating (for Nala) nature of the task I was performing.

  “Oh, that’s perfect!” he said. “Just as it should be.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, a little annoyed at his manic glee. It really was a disgusting job.

  “Well,” he told me, “I’ve been looking at some numbers, and if we put aside the mortgage that you owe on your house you could technically be called a millionaire.”

  “Fuck my old boots!” I blurted, then instantly regretted it.

  I am always uncomfortable when I cuss around David, although he never lets on he hears me. He was right, though. There is no better time to hear news like this than when you’re cleaning parasites from your dog’s bum.

  David went on to remind me in his usual way that the best way to enjoy good fortune is to share it, and between us we came up with the idea of bringing my parents over for an all-expenses-paid vacation. They could see the house and meet the folks at the Carey show and see L.A. and get a better look around California. Though they’d been here for the wedding, along with the rest of my family, I had been too preoccupied then to spend much time with them. Also, it was getting toward the end of the year, and the winters in Scotland can be very grim. It would do them good to escape all that sleet and dampness for a while. My mother was in remission and still pretty weak from her bout with cancer; and her arthritis was severe and she had difficulty walking, so most of the time she used a wheelchair, hating every minute of it. My father, however, enjoyed pushing her around—he said it was the first time since they were married that he had any kind of control over her.

  When I met them at the airport they were exhausted from the grueling flight from Glasgow, which requires changing planes at the awful, noisy labyrinthine Heathrow Airport in London. They soon perked up when they got into my car, cooing in wonder over the SUV that recently replaced my trusty, old, white Bronco, and the fact that their son had a swimming pool in his backyard simply astonished them. My father swam in that pool for an hour every day during his visit, more than anyone else has ever used it, with the possible exception of my son, Milo, and his buddies, who won’t leave the water until threatened with dire recriminations.

  I had some time off work, so Sascha and I drove them up to San Francisco. We did all the tourist nonsense, Fisherman’s Wharf and Alcatraz and Chinatown. My mother was tickled and I think kind of proud when my father got hit on by an attractive middle-aged Asian lady who hadn’t noticed he was with his family. He was certainly very pleased about it.

  Netta announced that she had always had a particular ambition—news not only to me but to my father, who had known her a lot longer—and that was to be driven across the Golden Gate Bridge, waving a silk scarf out the car window. Even though neither of us had ever heard her mention this burning desire before, we dutifully fulfilled it by getting her a scarf and driving her across the bridge. It was a peculiarly poetic impulse coming from my normally stoic mother that she never could explain other than to say it was “romantic.”

  We went to a groovy café called Spaghetti Western in the Haight district for brunch with some of Sascha’s longhaired super-hip music-biz friends who lived in the neighborhood. They made a terrific fuss over my parents, which made them even hipper. As we waited outside the busy restaurant for a table with my mother parked on the sidewalk in her wheelchair, she struck up a conversation with a large Rastafarian gentleman originally from Jamaica who was enjoying a herbal cigarette. He and Netta hit it off, yakking away to each other about God knows what. My mother could have easily hosted a talk show, actually. She had questions for everybody.

  As they chatted, fumes from the Rasta’s joint kept wafting into my mother’s face. She’d just wave them away, apparently to little effect because I’d never seen my mother put away more food at one sitting than she did at that brunch. Also, she was very giggly and kept talking about how much she loved California, until she went very quiet; that afternoon we drove back to L.A. and she slept most of the way.

  Sascha had to get some work done so I took my folks on another road trip, this time to the Grand Canyon. On the way we stopped at an exclusive spa near Palm Springs where they got massages for the first time in their lives. As the sensual rubbing of emollient oils into the skin was not something routinely experienced by Scottish Protestants of my parents’ generation, they both seemed a little uncomfortable and guilty afterward.

  This was my first visit to the Grand Canyon too, and, like everyone else, I found myself speechless at the scale and majesty of the place. It was cold, so my mother stayed in the car but my dad and I got out to stare at the view.

  As we watched the low winter sun reflecting on the rock below, changing its colors, I remembered the time he and I had stood in much the same mood of wonder, gazing from the crown of Liberty across New York Harbor all those years ago.

  “I told you I was going to come to America,” I said.

  He smiled.

  “Aye, son, so ye did.” He ruffled my hair like I was eight years old.

  Then we drove to Las Vegas, and they loved it. My mother clucked at the moral turpitude of people who would put good money into slot machines, before putting some in herself. She won fifty bucks, which she quickly stuffed in her purse, sure it was about to be grabbed by the mafia. Because my manager, Rick, was friendly with a comedian named Max Alexander who at the time was the opening act for Tom Jones, Max got us tickets to see them both. Netta loved Tom Jones, and I have to admit it, that old Welsh ham puts on one hell of a show.

  Afterward, Max arranged for us to go backstage and meet Tom. I thought my mother would faint—we didn’t know about this until it happened, Max kept it a surprise for us—and she appeared for all the world like an overexcited bobby-soxer. Tom was very nice and chatted with
them both about his visits to Scotland before he took off. To get up to something sexy, no doubt.

  I escorted my parents back to the big suite I’d booked for them at the top of the MGM Grand, and as I left them to enjoy their luxurious surroundings so I could go and collapse in my own room, they seemed tanned and relaxed and very much at ease with the gaudy opulence all around them.

  In fact, they looked and acted as if they were a couple of old movie stars. Like he was Frank Sinatra and she was Elizabeth Taylor.

  37

  Success and Failure

  On the third hiatus from Drew in 1999, thanks to the Herculean fund-raising efforts of Mark Crowdy, we shot Saving Grace in Cornwall. I played the pothead gardener alongside the remarkable Brenda Blethyn, who makes any film good just by being in it.

  It would seem to the outside world that I was on something of a roll; newly married with a couple of films in production and steady work as a cast member on a prime-time network sitcom, but I couldn’t be happy.

  If you have made it this far you will no doubt have surmised that I am something of a malcontent, although perhaps “ungrateful wretch” is more precise. Sometimes the word “driven” is used to describe me, but I think that’s inaccurate, too. I rarely allow myself to be driven anywhere. I am a restless alcoholic/workaholic control freak.

  The producers of The Drew Carey Show were kind and respectful. I loved my castmates, particularly Kathy Kinney, who played Drew’s multicolored nemesis, Mimi. She and I became—and we remain—close friends, but the work itself was intensely frustrating for me. It was Drew’s show, all I had to do was run onto the set from time to time and say something naughty or outrageous in my bad English accent. It bored my ass off and I hated it.

  Hated the work, loved the money.