There and Back Again by Sean Astin with Joe Layden Read Free Book Online

just someone who wanted to do fun things—appropriate enough, since Encino Man was supposed to be a funny movie. (Postscript: A couple years later, Les directed a remake of Miracle on 34th Street , which has the distinction of being the only movie in Disney history where they offered a refund if you didn’t like the movie at all, and people actually took them up on it. More recently, I called Les and practically begged him for a job when I found out he was remaking a movie called Flying Tigers . I said, “Les, this is a serious project, and I’d like to be a part of it.” He wasn’t exactly receptive. In fact, while he was reasonably polite in brushing me off, his tone conveyed the following message: You shit on me your whole career, and now you want me to help you just because I’ve found something smart to do? Fuck you! I had it coming.)
    I surmised that it would be easy to work for Les, but it was going to be challenging to live with Pauly Shore, who entered the room on that first day and promptly announced to everyone, “I know comedy!” Just in case we doubted him. Pauly had some serious clout at that time, and would for the next three or four years, and he didn’t mind flexing his muscle. I don’t blame him for that, and I don’t mean to come down too hard on him. He had earned the right to wield a bit of power and deserved some of the success he had, even if his taste in comedy was sort of lowbrow and appealed to the lowest common denominator. Although Pauly is a bit of a dog and loves the idea that he’s slept his way through a lot of people’s daughters on a lot of college campuses, there is an undeniable sweetness to him, a genuine humanity and pathos that I connected with while we were working together.
    But he absolutely hated me. He thought I was just an idiot, perhaps because he sensed that I was not only envious of his success, but dumbfounded by it. Slacker persona notwithstanding, Pauly was a total professional. He worked with a personal trainer to keep himself in good physical shape. He ate right and made sure that he looked good on camera. Most important of all, of course, Pauly was a pretty smart guy who knew his audience and delivered precisely what that audience wanted and expected from him. But I was not part of that audience, and while I kept working hard to find something to appreciate about him, it was a struggle for me. Only in retrospect did I come to understand what he brought to the table. I regret now that I was too young and immature to appreciate the value that he brought to the project; his message was so antithetical to what I was trying to do with my own life that I just couldn’t see it—or didn’t want to. I was trying to be a “serious” person. I was (and still am) interested in news, literature, global geopolitics, and those sorts of things, and it didn’t occur to me that you could have those interests and still be viewed as a formidable man and artist if you worked in movies like Encino Man alongside an actor like Pauly Shore.
    I was torn about the project. I had read the script, but maybe not thoroughly enough to understand what the movie was supposed to be. If the director had pulled me aside and said, “Let me tell you what we’re trying to do here,” I might have liked it better. With so many talented people attached, there had to be something I was missing. Instead, I felt like I was struggling along, trying to figure it out on my own, making the transition from “drug addict/serious actor” mode, into “front man on a mainstream, high-concept Disney comedy” mode. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. I was taking myself way too seriously for my own good. I looked at it as a means to an end and nothing more. Rather than feeling excited about the opportunity or proud of the work I was doing, I felt like nothing so much as a sellout. This was going to be the