10.01.2005
Under the Y
The last post really took me back. Back in school, hanging out with Mark-Paul and the crew. Good times. The best. So what happens next, you ask. How does a kid in middle America grow up to be Matt Evans - the Hollywood screenwriter/director/actor that the public will soon come to know and love? It's a long story. One staggering success after another, it's been all I could do to keep my feet on the ground during my meteoric rise into the stratosphere of celebrity.But I learned from the best. Case in point: This happened afew years ago, sure I could give you the date and all the details but like Ricky says (that's Rick Moranis),
I'll tell you something, you've never played basketball until you've shot hoops with Ricky Moranis. Energy, vitality, stamina - he'll tear you apart and have enough left to do it all over again. Or so I've heard.
Nobody ever gives a f*** about the details - they want the raw truth. Give it to 'em raw that's what I always say. Raw!
So afew years ago, I arrive in Hollywood for the first time. This was me trying to make it in the world. It's been my dream for as long as I could remember to come to the Big Easy and blow the studio heads away with my explosive ideas! So I have $70 in my pocket, a carrier bag with a couple shirts and another bag with 12 scripts I'd written - each more explosive than the last.
Where to first? Paramount? Fox? Miramax? - I knew they'd be all over me as soon as I walk in the door. If you've never met me you wouldn't know, but I emanate heat. I'm talking about a temperature jump of 5 maybe 10 degrees when I walk into a room. It's a glow - a warmth. Like my personality is a slow-motion explosion. I'm explosive. I knew they'd buy up the twelve scripts, contract me for another dozen and set me up with a sweet apartment and a DeLorean to drive to it in.
As I was standing at the bus station running through all this in my mind I almost overheated! Man, I needed to step back and put things in perspective. I thought of Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder. He thought he was so f***in' hot and you know what? - He was. But he still had to cool off a little before he let everyknow know how hot he was. Otherwise they'd get burned. It was the same with me.
Then it hit me.
It was like a voice from above. And I understood exactly what I had to do. I walked away from the bus station but I didn't go downtown, I went up. I went up to the Hollywood sign on the hill and started walking right over to the Y - the center of Hollywood. This was a Zen moment, I s*** you not. Like everything suddenly made sense.
Go to the center of Hollywood
Now this next bit you might not believe - looking back, I don't even know if I believe it - But believe me, it's the truth!... Sitting there, in front of the Y, mediating like some yoga master or something, is none other than Dick Gere.
Richard E. Gere, star of Pretty Woman and co-star of the Jackal, is right in front of me. Day One of Matt Evans' new life in Hollywood, and here I am in front of the Y with Dick Gere. Without even opening his eyes, he starts talking to me:
He knew my name - how? My mind raced, had he seen my stage adaptation of Kung Fu? Had he seen the episode of Automan I co-wrote? A hundred other things flew threw my head, but I knew this was something else.
Welcome Matthew. You've finally arrived.
I replied,
Don told me I should expect you here.
Don Simpson, Jerry Bruckheimer's collaborator, was still with us somehow. It made perfect sense. So much of himself had been pushed into Bad Boys, into Days of Thunder, into Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop - and those films are still very much alive. Perhaps connected loosely to this world Don had reached out for the one man in Hollywood with the inner peace to hear his call - Dick Gere.
You don't mean...
Yes Matthew. Don Simpson's body may have expired, but he's too important to this world to move on yet.
So we sat and talked. For a night and a day. I learned alot from Dick, and he from me. He was waivering about whether or not to take the role of Billy Flynn in Chicago. I knew it'd be a smash hit so I laid it out straight.
I said.
Dick, I'll lay it out straight
He laughed, a merry Buddhist laugh that warms the heart. I laughed... And maybe, just for a second I thought I heard Don laugh too.
You don't take this role they'll give it to Matthew Broderick or someone like that. You know I'm not lying. Let's give Ferris a day off shall we?
It was special. Not everyone has that kind of welcome to Hollywood - to have a genuine superstar channel a dead hero under the Y of the Hollywood sign - but then, not everyone is Matt Evans.