Full Text COPYRIGHT Benjamin Franklin Literary and Medical Society 1991
"Oh, hi, Daddy!" Fred Savage's little black cellular phone is hooking
up father and son from Hollywood to Chicago. "Guess where we are?" We are
at
Jerry's Famous Deli in Encino-a sort of hangout for the Hollywood hip-studying
Fred as he tries to maneuver around a gargantuan sandwich his mom nudged
him to order. He's dressed in typical teenage boy attire, acid-washed jeans,
pink striped cotton shirt-untucked-and sports-battered tennies. "No, it's
O.K. We finished the interview. We're just sitting around here schmoozing."
Translate schmoozing into kid lexicon-"fun"-and you have Fred Savage's
key vocabulary word. As the star of ABC's hit series "The Wonder Years,"
he can
determine his own fun, and it appears no one could tempt him with anything
other than pure pleasure. "Fun is the one and only reason I do all this,"
he announces, which is not a line often heard from adults in glitter city.
As the center of the immensely successful show, 14-year-old Fred likely
has more spotlight fame and makes more money than a large percentage of
television's working adult actors. All this, however, is nothing I'd ever
think about."
"The show is a lot of hard work [he spends a five-day, 48-hour week on the set], but I have so much fun doing it," he says. "That's the whole reason I got into acting." (Just for a lark, he went to a hot-dog commercial when he was five, was turned down for the part, has not studied acting since, and here you are.)
He claims most of his business decisions revolve around the three-letter word. "When I'm asked to do something, I have to think, Well, will it be fun?' Because if it's fun, I'll do it. If not, I probably won't. I make most of my decisions on the basis of fun.
"And when it stops being fun, then I guess that's when to stop, because I'm not doing this to support a family, or 'cause I have to. My dad supports us. So I just do it 'cause I have a good time."
As Kevin Arnold on the series of 60s nostalgia, Fred's whole persona
is drenched in lovableness. He stares at the camera with that adorable
face, as the character's voice-over adult alter-ego narrates the kaleidoscopic
change in perspective we all experience from age 12 to age 33. And it's
hard not to
fall in love, with both Kevin and Fred, just a little bit.
"The Wonder Years"-the series-has already entered Americana, earning its place as a significant date on the yuppie calendar. There is likely not a baby boomer around who has not seen at least one episode and had his gut take a tumble. This, after all, didn't just happen to us, it happened to us, and the show's writers have Xeroxed the times perfectly, down to even the Arnolds' orange living room couch.
Still, it is the rare TV series that, in a single episode, can conjure up an entire era, like flashcards. Everything is there. All the adolescent angst of acne breakouts, broken hearts, nerd worries, grades, and tests, amidst the backdrop of Vietnam, assassinations, Woodstock, napalm, and "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In." It was, without question, our childhood. Natch.
The ratings were an instant chart topper, and critics nearly fell all over themselves praising the show. "A treasure," wrote the Wall Street Journal. "A rare T.V. phenomenon," USA Today said. The Washington Post's TV critic, Tom Shales-a hard nut to crack-called it "first-class time travel." Even People gave it an A+.
Fred has his own opinions about why "The Wonder Years" is so popular. "I think it appeals to all sorts of different people because it appeals to the adults for the nostalgia and the looking back. All the time people come up to me and they say, Oh, this episode when this and this happened, that was exactly what happened to me.'
"But it also appeals to the kids because no matter if it's in the 1960s or the 1990s or the year 2000, the kids will be going through the same experiences." He describes a scene in which Kevin spends much of the show hunched over the telephone collecting the nerve to call a girl for a date while scenes of the first moon landing flickered on a TV screen.
"You see, Kevin doesn't really know much about what's going on," Fred explains. "He's just worried about his own thing, not what everyone else is worried about. His problems are the most important thing in his life, and he really doesn't see the big picture too well. I guess all children will be like that."
Fame for a child brings its own pluses and minuses, and Fred is quite clear on the sweet and sour sides of being in the public eye. "The best part," he says enthusiastically, "is that you get a lot of people coming up to you. I like that. Some people don't always like that, but I love it when someone comes up to ask for an autograph or to say that they love the show. I love that because it means people appreciate what you're doing and you make them happy every Wednesday night. And that's what I love doing, making people happy.
"But probably the worst part is being away from my dad. Cause
he lives in Chicago-he has a business there, so he comes out every weekend.
And that's
definitely the worst part of it. Cause I really miss him."
Filming runs August through midApril, so Fred; his mom; sister, Kala, 11, who is on "Santa Barbara"; and brother, Ben, 9, on "Dear John," all live in a house in Tarzana. Dad (Lew) Savage works in the commercial real-estate business in Chicago-where the family home is stationed out in the suburbs-and he commutes westward every weekend. His son misses him terribly; Fred says he talks to his dad three or four times a day until the weekend rolls around.
Fred, however, worries a little that all this family stuff might sound a bit corny. "You know, I'm not some goody-good kid. I get in fights with my brother and sister all the time and mouth off to my parents. And I get sent to my room and whatever, 'cause if I'm bad I get punished. It's most effective when Mom threatens to take away my CD player or take away my baseball cards. That always works. I get in trouble just like any other kid."
Fred assures us he's just a normal kid. He cracks up when reporters ask him this question. "They always want to know if I'm a real [normal] kid. I mean, what are they talking about?" he asks incredulously.
Fred the normal kid collects baseball cards; talks marathons on the phone ("My mom can vouch for that, but I can't even compete with my sister"); has an 8:30 bedtime (early set-call); gets nervous on talk shows; loves to read the classics (his favorite poet is Edgar Allan Poe); plays Nintendo video games ("I'd love to be in the 60s and see all the hippies and protesters, but I'd miss video games"); and watches "Twin Peaks" and is confused ("All my friends are talking about it, so I'd just sit there twirling my thumbs if I didn't watch it").
He gets an allowance ("I was getting $8, and a lot of my friends were getting $10 or $11 a week, so the crew razzed my mom into giving me $9. So I thank the crew for my 9"). At 14, he doesn't yet date ("I have lots of friends who are girls, but, you know, I can't drive yet").
He also likes rap music. This produces a light-flavored tussle with his mom about the group Public Enemy.
"You don't have anything by Public Enemy," Joanne counters her son.
"Yes, I do."
"No, they're the ones with the racial slurs. . .
"No, Mom. Public Enemy aren't the bad ones, Mom. The bad ones are NWA."
"No. No."
"Yes. Yes."
"Oh, Fred!"
"Mo-o-o-o-om," he moans in that plaintive cry of the harassed teenager. Definitely he is a normal kid.
Mom Joanne (whom the "Wonder" crew all refer to as Mom) and Fred make
a good team. Obviously close, the two seem to have similar temperaments-very
easygoing-and as Joanne looks over his career and protects him, he
is allowed to dig in and experience all this fantasy stuff up close and
personal.
In the past few years he's done such "cool" things as co-hosting the
People's Choice Awards, serving as grand marshal at a Mardi Gras parade
in New Orleans, appearing on the "Tonight" show twice, being invited by
Barbara Bush to attend the Inauguration, appearing at Comic Relief III,
and having a
fun chat with Arsenio on "The Arsenio Hall Show."
I ask if he wants to be an actor. "When I grow up? I don't really know. I have a little time, a lot of time to think about it, I guess." He has been in five feature films, The Boy Who Could Fly, The Princess Bride, Vice Versa, Little Monsters, and The Wizard. And a TV movie, When You Remember Me, in which Fred's character suffers from muscular dystrophy, aired last fall.
"I'd like to direct someday, I think," he says after some thought. "Sort of like Ron Howard. He was a child actor, like me, and then he became this good adult actor on "Happy Days," and then he's become this wonderful, great director: Parenthood and Cocoon. So he could be a great role model for me."
Speaking of role models. When Fred recently hosted "Saturday Night Live,"
he played the niece of the show's classic character Church Lady. It was
a role
that had to be modeled so perfectly, a role seemingly so tough, it
might have intimidated even the cast regulars. "Yeah, it was a little hard,"
he admits, "because if I didn't do it perfectly the whole joke would have
been ruined." He came just short of a standing ovation, but he did pull
down one of the season's highest rated shows for SNL-bowling over the much-ballyhooed
Andrew Dice Clay's controversial show.
Fred hasn't eaten much lunch, so I tell him if he eats his potato salad, he gets one free wish. What would it be? "Good question," he says, stumped temporarily. "I'd probably wish to be with my dad all the time, for him to live with us. I know that's selfish, and not like a cure for cancer or AIDS. But I would love to be with my dad all the time."
He is doing his sit-down Billy Crystal comedy routine now, imitating George Bush on Tuesday nights. "Barbara, Barbara, The Wonder Years' is on! Get Millie and let's all watch The Wonder Years' together!" He does an imitation of Steven Spielberg watching the show, though no one at lunch knows quite what Steven Spielberg would sound like. "I just get such a big kick out of thinking who might be watching the show," Fred says.
This is all heady stuff for a 14-year-old boy. But it fits him nicely. Whether it's because his parents reared him well, or because he's just the kind of polite person who will thank you twice in two minutes for buying him lunch, the 'big star' stuff doesn't seem to puff his head in the least.
I mention that I saw him once at the Hollywood Women's Press Club's
Golden Apple Christmas party, where he won a Golden Apple as New Male Star
of '89. Someone brought Fred over to the table to meet Glenn Ford,
"And you know what I said to him when I left?" Fred exclaims. "I said,
Have a nice day!' I
could feel so stupid even thinking about it. That's like a bumper sticker,
or a pin with a yellow smiley face, or like those people that pass out
coloring books at the airport. I mean, who says, Have a nice day'?
I felt so stupid all day. I mean, it's like, uuuuuch."
His mom says Fred's so friendly he could sit in a room of 20 people and in 30 minutes he'd be friends with all of them. "I've never met anyone I haven't liked in all this," he agrees. "I mean, I really haven't. Anyone from someone on the crew, someone I've worked with, someone coming up to me to ask for an autograph, a reporter, someone taking my picture.
"I've always heard that people in Hollywood are obnoxious, but I've never seen anything that holds that rumor to be true. So as far as I'm concerned, that's just a rumor."
Joanne has brought a color photograph as a possible cover picture for the magazine. But she had subbed as a pinch-hit makeup artist and dabbed too much concealer under her son's eyes for the photo. "What!" Fred panics when he hears which photo is being used. He is horrified. "You will hate this picture," he assures me. The picture, of course, is adorable.
After a group of grandmotherly-type ladies have cooed over Fred, telling
him, among other things, he's so precious, cute, a darling favorite, one
lady nabs him on the way out of the restaurant. After she leaves, Fred
dashes up to his mom and me. "Mom, do you know what that lady said? She
said
she has two daughters, but if she had a son, she'd want him to be just
like me. Wasn't that nice!"
"She obviously doesn't have to live with you," his mother teases.
"It must be nice to wake up every morning and have people say all these nice things to you all day long," I suggest. He gives me that look he has perfected on "The Wonder Years," the Kevin Arnold mute look of wide-eyed wonderment, and smiles.
Fred doesn't answer, but Kevin Arnold might have said in the vernacular
of "The Wonder Years" real generation, "Fun? Are you kidding? Psychedelic!
Far-out!"