“Get it in writing!” I insisted. I’d completely let go of the show by that point, consigning it to the garbage can of oh-well-I-tried along with North Hollywood. For weeks after Dave called, I felt certain ABC was going to cancel the show again at the last minute.
Though I was wary, when the cast got back together, the excitement returned. We started taping episode after episode, having a great time. It felt like we were creating something undeniable, and it was all rooted in the truth of my life. In one episode, the mother of the family kept her son at home and wouldn’t let him go to a concert. To guilt him into obeying her, she even pretended she had saved his life by donating a kidney. Pulling from a more recent incident, I had the father stuff his pockets with free food from the hospital.
Each week before the show aired, I called everyone I knew and told them to watch it. Afterward, a check rolled in. I was back in business.
63
* * *
KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES
This new routine lasted six weeks, until another phone call came. Since I’d moved to Hollywood, it seemed like every call had the potential to make or break me. This one went exactly like this:
Dave: ABC is canceling the show.
Me: Okay. Thanks for letting me know.
I didn’t feel shock, anger, or disappointment. But this reaction was different from a shoulder shrug. With a shoulder shrug, you let the information in and process it. Maybe it even feels bad for a moment. Then you shrug your shoulders and realize that life goes on and you’ll be just fine. With this okay, I didn’t let the information in and process it. Something was changing in me, but I didn’t know what it was yet.
It would have been better if ABC had just never picked up The Big House, because when a TV show doesn’t get picked up, it’s not a failure—you just got unlucky. When a TV show gets canceled, everyone knows that you had a chance and you failed, and the ratings were probably terrible.
Meanwhile, I’d spent nearly all the money I’d earned—most recently on watches, jewelry, bottle service at clubs, and meals at expensive restaurants—in an attempt to keep up with the Joneses. I wished I could find this Jones family and ask how they managed to stay ahead of everyone without ever having to worry about money. That would be a good TV show.
No, fuck TV. It was all about the movies now. Soul Plane was coming out in a few months, so maybe its success would overshadow the failure of The Big House.
Meanwhile, Scary Movie 3 was released, and though it didn’t even come close to making me a star, it did give me enough buzz to get a few more bookings from colleges and comedy clubs. One day I was at the airport, waiting for my flight to a college show, when someone I didn’t know clapped me on the back: “Nashawn Wade!”
“Excuse me?”
“Soul Plane! Wassup, man? I saw that shit.”
The movie wasn’t due in theaters for months, but somehow this guy knew my character’s name. “Do you work in the industry or something?”
“Naw, man, I got the bootleg!”
“The bootleg?” We hadn’t even finished postproduction yet. It wasn’t possible for a bootleg to come out that early—was it?
A few days later, I was back in L.A., hanging out with Rodney Perry, Harry, and a comedian we’d befriended named Joey Wells. While we were playing Madden, Joey got a call from his teenage son. He put the phone on speaker.
“Say that again, son.”
“They watching Kevin’s movie right now.”
“How’s that possible?” Joey asked.
“Somebody got a bootleg. Everybody in class is watching it.”
Soul Plane, it turned out, was about to make movie history—as a landmark case of a bootleg coming out so early and spreading so quickly that by the time the actual film was released, it already seemed old. One of the people with those bootlegs was my father, who’d made copies for half the family.
While I was sitting in the theater at the premiere, someone actually came up to me and asked me to sign the bootleg DVD. It was no surprise when the movie came and went without even making its budget back. It was a flop. I was a flop.
Here’s what happens when a movie you play the lead in bombs at the box office and a sitcom you star in gets canceled midseason: You become poison.
No one in Hollywood wants you in any of their productions, because they feel that anything with you in it is going to be toxic.
Up to this point, my whole career had been a climb—sometimes fast and sometimes slow, but always uphill. Now that it was plummeting, I didn’t know what the next step was supposed to be. I hadn’t considered that failure was a possibility.
Instead of shrugging, my shoulders began to sag.
“What happens now?” I kept asking Dave. “What do we do?”
“Pilot season is right around the corner. We’ll go out and book you something.”
“So I’m just supposed to wait?”
“Don’t worry about it. Everything will be okay.”
I couldn’t tell anymore if Dave was my manager or my therapist. Every day, I called him, trying to get something going. But no one in the industry wanted to meet with me. All those casting agents and producers who I thought I’d been charming left and right suddenly had no interest. Everyone in the business had moved on to the next New Face from that year’s Just for Laughs. I was an Old Face now. In Hollywood, just like in relationships, it’s easier to get a first chance than a second chance.
64
* * *
YES, I REFER TO MYSELF IN THE THIRD PERSON AGAIN. BUT THAT’S ONLY BECAUSE IT FEELS LIKE I’VE LIVED THREE LIVES.
They say that bad news comes in threes.
I don’t know who said that, but they got their math wrong. I think it’s that you’re in either an upward or a downward phase of your life. And if you’re going down, bad news comes more than three times. It’s just that after three, you stop keeping count because it’s so familiar. It’s like counting how many socks you own.
My third sock came from the worst possible person: the one handling my money.
Business Manager: I just got off the phone with the IRS. They need you to pay your back taxes.
Me: Taxes? Don’t they take those out of my checks?
Business Manager: Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. It depends on whether you’re being paid as an employee or an independent contractor.
Me: Huh?
Business Manager: I’ll just cut right to it: You only have $30,000 in your account.
Me: So pay my taxes with some of that.
Business Manager: Kevin, you owe almost $400,000.
Me: Wait, what?
The last time I’d done a Wait, what?—which is much bigger than a regular What?—was probably when my dad told me he was leaving my mom.
Business Manager: I’m going to be frank with you, Kevin. You overspend. You haven’t ever saved enough to pay your taxes. I’ve been able to work out an installment agreement with the IRS for you in the past, but you made so much last year, the IRS won’t do an agreement for you again.
Me: What happens now?
Business Manager: I’m gonna have to wipe out your accounts to make your payments so they don’t seize your assets.
Me: Wait, wipe out what? That’s gonna leave me with nothing. How am I gonna make my rent?