Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition by Barry Williams;Chris Kreski Read Free Book Online Page A

the
cult classic film Wild In The Streets. It was a psychedelic, rebellious, heavily sixties movie wherein the basic message was
"Never trust anyone over thirty" and the plot revolved around a
plan to poison America's water supply with LSD, drive all the
over-the-hill people insane, and put the country's young people
in charge of the government.
    The film starred Christopher Jones as the organizer and ringleader of the chemical warfare, with Shelley Winters as his mother. My
job was to appear in several scenes playing Mr. Jones as a nasty,
foul-mouthed, incorrigible kid-the stereotypical bad seed. My big
moment in the film involved arguing with Shelley Winters-and
then recoiling in anger and pain as she slaps me across the kisser.

    The scene would mark the only time in my career that I wished
for a stunt double. While I may be the only actor in Hollywood
who hasn't slept with Shelley Winters, I can lay claim to having
had her smack the daylights out of me.
    As we prepared to shoot our scene together, Ms. Winters pulled
me aside and explained that to make the film more realistic, she
wanted to really slap me, not just pretend. It would make for a
more honest reaction, she explained. Not wanting to offend her,
and with my budding adolescent machismo assuring me that I
could easily take her best shot, I agreed. "Besides," I thought,
"How hard can the old lady hit?"
    POW!
    On our first take she hit me so hard that I saw stars, got dizzy,
and nearly went down for the count. Mind you, I may have been
just twelve years old, but I was no wimp. This woman just plain
pounded me. The force of her blows caught me so completely offguard that I forgot my lines, my blocking, and probably my name
for that matter. Mercifully, the director yelled "Cut."
    Nobody had bothered to explain to me that Ms. Winters was an
esteemed alumnus of the Lee Strasberg school of Method acting,
which, can be helpful in portraying honest emotions, and reactions. It can also be taken to extremes. For instance, if a scene calls
for you to drink beer, and you insist on real beer, you may be fine
for the first couple of takes, however, come take 36 you've got a
problem. Ms. Winters was one of the Strasberg school's most
devout disciples ever. Legend has it that during one of her class
acting exercises, she was asked to act out a private moment, and
her contribution was to get up in front of the class, hike up her
dress, and actually take a dump ... on stage. She then got up, pretended to flush, pretended to wash her hands, and left, leaving her
mound of do for someone else to clean up.
    I had not heard of Method acting, and my gut feeling was "I may
be dealing with a crazy woman."
    Anyway, we did take after take of this thing. I took my whacks,
and after each shot it took a little more makeup to cover the red
handprints on my cheek.
    Finally, after we'd shot the thing eight ways to Sunday, I was
convinced that we must be finished. I was wrong. Instead, the
director was so happy with my pained expressions that he wanted
to film one more angle-an extreme close-up. The camera was to
zoom in, catch the slap, then zoom even tighter to focus on the
horror in my eyes. I was told this would be a powerful moment, a
break in my blossoming career, and that it was no time to think
about pain. I figured this was to be the actor's "sacrifice" I had
heard so much about.

    Boy, did I sacrifice! Ms. Winters pounded me with tooth-loosening ferocity, until finally we got it perfect: just the right reaction,
the right look, the right amount of pain, and hurt, and anger. Surely, I was on my way.
    But no. Turns out, long after I'd completed impersonating a
punching bag, the film editor noticed that Chris Jones, playing the
grown-up version of me, had brown eyes. Mine are blue. That led
him to ask the obvious question: "How does a maniacal kid with
blue eyes grow up to be a maniacal adult with brown eyes?" No
one could offer a logical