hollywood

Feldman never had a chance. In the poignant early chapters of Coreyography, Feldman paints a heartbreakingly vivid portrayal of an irrevocably broken, sad family that neglected the emotional needs of its children but was always ferociously present when a paycheck was being dispensed.

Feldman’s dad is a perpetually stoned, physically abusive small-time musician whose career peaked when he played in a lesser, latter-day incarnation of Strawberry Alarm Clock who reeked of marijuana at all times and who only became interested in his son when being the man in his life became an unexpectedly lucrative position. Feldman’s mother is even less functional. She’s a disconcertingly sexy former waitress ata Playboy Club who somehow managed to be completely emotionally absent from her son’s life while remaining a terrifying and abusive stage mother.

The author conjures up a lost late 1970s and early 1980s world of wood paneling and Star Wars action figures being played with by lonely children forced to grow up too fast while their parents remain children, getting high and screwing in the backseat of cars and trying to realize their show-business dreams through their children because they never came close to making it, and will never forgive themselves or their successfully miserable child for succeeding where they failed.

I think the book resonated with me on an additional level because it felt like Feldman was growing up in the suburbia of Steven Spielberg and Joe Dante of the 1980s, with all of its loneliness, and sadness, and wonder and horror. Of course, in a very real way, Feldman was living in that world in the sense that he actually acted in beloved Dante/Spielberg movies from the era like Gremlins, The Goonies and The Burbs as well as Stand By Me. Feldman was acting out the biggest fantasies of kids like me on movie screens and in fan magazines but behind closed doors Corey Haim and Corey Feldman led lives of decadent torment. They lived out our dreams in public but their lives were waking nightmares in private.