Free Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis

impressed with my confidence that he cast me in two vignettes as this badass kid who tells dirty jokes in a classroom.
    Right off the bat, I got hired to do an after-school special and a public-network children’s show. Of course, I was cast as the bad kid in both shows. But it was work. And it was piling up. I started an account at my dad’s bank, and soon I opened that bankbook up and saw a couple of grand in there, a shocking amount of money for me.
    I was getting spoiled, cast for every part auditioned for. One afternoon I was at John’s house when Blackie called to tell me that I had just been cast as Sylvester Stallone’s son in F.I.S.T., his next movie after Rocky . I was so excited I ran out of the house, whooping and singing the theme song to Rocky with my arms up in the air. I was convinced that I would be the Next Big Thing because I was co-starring with Sly Stallone, even though I had only one scene with him at the dinner table.
    When I got to the set, I went to Stallone’s trailer and knocked on the door, figuring we should bond before we shot our big scene.
    “Who’s that?” said a gruff voice from the trailer.
    “It’s Cole. I’m playing your son in the scene we’re about to do,” I answered.
    He cautiously opened the door. “ Why are you here?” he said.
    “I’m playing your son, so I thought that we should get some hang time in so I could develop—”
    Stallone interrupted me. “No, I don’t think so,” he said and looked around for a PA. “Somebody come and get this kid. Get him out of here,” he screamed.
    We did the scene, and when I delivered my big line, “Can you pass the milk?,” the camera wasn’t exactly in tight for a close-up. It turned out to be a don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it role, but still, it was another credit.
    Having been in F.I.S.T. helped when I went to Paramount to audition for a film called American Hot Wax, which was the story of Buddy Holly and the DJ Alan Freed. It was a big movie, and I was auditioning for a key role in the film, the president of Buddy Holly’s fan club. After cattle calls and innumerable callbacks and even a screen test, it narrowed down to two candidates—me and the hottest child actor around, Moosie Drier. I was confident that I’d get the role because Blackie had gone all out to help me prepare for the role, learning all of Buddy Holly’s songs and buying the big horn-rimmed glasses. So when Toni called me to tell me that I hadn’t gotten the part, I was shattered.
    That night Connie took me to a friend’s house, and we went on a total drug binge—snorting coke, smoking pot, sipping booze, and chatting about how I was going to get them next time and end up being the biggest movie star this town ever saw and yadda, yadda, yadda, an endless stream of nonsensical cocaine gabbing between the boy who had just lost the role of a lifetime, the lady who wanted to help him out but really was kind of lost herself, and the guy who just wanted to get in the lady’s pants. It went on until the wee hours of the morning, when the coke finally ran out, at which point the reality ran in, and it was not so nice. The chemical depression of the drugs wearing off, combined with the reality of the loss, made for a brutalizing twenty-four hours for me.
    Despite my other early success, I wasn’t the most disciplined or diligent of acting students. I dug it and I participated in it and I learned from it, but I wasn’t committed to putting all of my energy into that world. Having fun with my friends and running around town and skateboarding were still high on my list. Getting high was high on my list.
    I had already discovered the pleasures of cocaine before that night Connie tried to cheer me up. When I was thirteen, Alan Bashara had come over to our house on Palm in the middle of the day and told my dad that he had some incredible cocaine. Back in the ’70s, cocaine was very strong and very pure; it wasn’t so chemical-heavy as it is these days.