Dave seemed surprised that I was shoulder-shrugging it. “Boy,” he said, “I don’t know how you take this shit the way you do, but I wish everybody had whatever you call this emotion. Just keep doing you, and I’m telling you, Kev, you’re gonna be all right.”
SNL was and remains a massive launching pad for comedians. And that door was now closed. It was the second time my dream of becoming a star was dashed—though it wouldn’t be the last. But Dave was right: The shoulder-shrugging kept it from leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.
Besides, I understood their decision. I would have rejected me too. Even Avery Johnson wouldn’t have recognized himself. To this day, I still can’t impersonate celebrities.
56
* * *
OH MY GOD, I’M FUCKING RICH
When I returned from Montreal, Dave Becky used my success there as a way to set up meetings with directors, casting agents, production companies, and television networks. Most of the entertainment industry is in Los Angeles, a city full of dreamers hoping for just one of those meetings, so booking appointments with some people was still a challenge.
However, Paper Soldiers saved me again. Between my set at Just for Laughs and a reel from the film, Dave was able to get me in the doors of the biggest executives at the biggest networks.
“They’re talking to you because they’re already interested,” Dave advised as we flew to Los Angeles together. “You already blew them away on stage and on your tapes, so just be yourself.”
But I want to be more than myself, I thought as I sat there. These gatekeepers had probably met with thousands of hopeful kids with stars in their eyes and then forgotten about them as soon as they left the room. So I prepared by essentially putting a set together that they’d remember. I planned answers to the questions they were going to ask—about my background, my goals, my ideas—and thought of good questions to ask in return. I thought about being funny, likeable, vibrant, charming, interesting, positive, exciting—you name it, and I wanted to be it in those rooms. Most importantly, I knew that what I said mattered a lot less than how I said it. It was a job for the fun guy.
In office after office, I poured on the personality. Every executive in every room was Ms. Davis, and I was in a battle to charm them into letting me do what I wanted. These weren’t meetings. They were seductions.
By the time I landed back in New York, Dave had already gotten calls from the people I’d met with: Many of them were interested in working with me. My childhood had trained me well for this moment.
“So what do we do now?” I asked Dave.
“We wait for them to make an offer.”
“Can we take more than one offer?” It was like Christmas for my career.
“What we want to do is start a bidding war. Let them know there’s competition, and they’ll have to show how serious they are.”
“How do they show they’re serious?”
“With money.”
So this was how people afforded those big homes and nice cars in Los Angeles. It wasn’t from multiple sets at comedy clubs. It was from Hollywood bidding wars.
I was ready to make another twenty-five thousand dollars, maybe even fifty thousand. I started thinking about all the things I could buy with that money.
A few weeks later, Dave called with the news.
Dave: Hey, man, it’s confirmed: NBC is gonna give you two hundred and seventy-five thousand for a holding deal.
Me: Oh my God, I’m fucking rich! Wait, what’s a holding deal?
Dave: That means they have the exclusive right to use you in their programming for a year. You can’t work with any other network.
Me: So there’s no pilot? I don’t have to do nothing for the money?
Dave: No.
Me: Oh my God, I’m fucking rich!
I probably could have used a good warning next. I was twenty-two, and I had no idea about money or how it worked. I just knew that in a year, I’d gone from making $175 a deal to more than a quarter of a million dollars. It was more money than I could imagine.
Life’s amazing, I thought. The way to break into film is to have an acting reel, but you can’t put together a good acting reel if you’re not in any films. It’s a catch-22, and somehow I had gotten around it, thanks to Damon Dash. It was almost as if God was looking out for me, saying, “All right, man, I’m gonna have you do this random, low-budget street movie. You may not know why now, but trust me, later it’s gonna get your foot in the door.”
A lot of my philosophy is that life is about making the right choices in the dark. Many people ask me what to do if they have doubts about their career or how talented they are or what their passion is. My answer: When it comes to the future, it’s impossible to have any certainty. I may appear to be certain, because I’ve learned to have confidence in my abilities and faith in my will to succeed. But what I don’t know—and what no human being knows—is how we will fulfill our destiny as individuals and what that destiny will be.
If you wait for certainty, you will spend your whole life standing still. And if you grow discouraged and give up when things get rough, you’ll miss out on your best possible destiny. So the secret is to be excited about what is in your power to control, be accepting of what’s not in your power to control, and then move with certainty into an uncertain future.
This of course leaves open the question of what direction you should move in. The answer: Pay attention, dummy. Life is pulling you there automatically. You don’t have to know. You don’t have to understand. You just have to trust. There is a flow to life, and all you have to do is make the decision to follow that current—even if it seems to be carrying you away from everyone around you.
That’s why I made my next decision quickly and without a second thought, even though it was the biggest decision I’d ever made. I decided to move to the place where the current was pushing me: Hollywood.
I told Torrei that if she wanted to move with me, I’d get everything set up so we could live together. Though we’d had such rough times in Philadelphia, I couldn’t imagine not being with her. She was my rock—although at times, a very loud rock. And every now and then, that rock hit you in the head. But we still loved each other in our crazy way. A relationship is strengthened not by experiencing good times together but by surviving the bad times.
And there were plenty of those coming.
Life Lessons
FROM OPPORTUNITIES
* * *
The only way to prepare for what you want is to believe that what you want is coming tomorrow . . . or maybe the day after that. If not, then it will come pretty soon. If it hasn’t come by that point, then you should change your want before you waste any more time. Shit, I’m talking to YOU, Tanya.
With the cast of The Big House
? American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.
57
* * *
REMEMBER HOW I SAID I WAS RICH IN THE LAST CHAPTER—WELL, NOW I WASN’T
A quarter of a million dollars is a lot of money—until you spend it all.