It was January 24^th, 1991.  I was filming a guest star role opposite my childhood idol, Dick Van Dyke in an episode of Jake and the Fatman.  The show was to become a spinoff with Mr. Van Dyke in the lead role as a doctor and myself and others as medical students.  There were some hushed discussions going on at lunch amongst the excited actors about how this was “it.”  This was the opportunity every actor dreamed of.  No, not the chance to work opposite Dick Van Dyke . . . the chance to gravy train our way into a working role that could take us to stardom.  I played “Student #1” and the scene went as follows:

Stone (Van Dyke’s character):  While you’re waiting for Dr. Matousek to begin your biology class, I thought I’d give you the opportunity to talk to a real, live patient who’s preparing for an ultrasound.  (to Mrs. Clark)  How do you feel, Mrs. Clark?

Mrs. Clark:  (somewhat crabby) I just drank a quart and a half of water.  I feel like I’m going to burst.

Stone:  (to class) What can we learn from this, class?

The students look at each other.  ONE of them raises his hand.

Student #1:  Old people are crabby?

Mrs. Clark:  (angry)  Crabby?  Who’s crabby.  And who are you calling old?

Stone:  You can see that the patient, quite rightly, objects to being treated like a stereotype . . . (followed by some moral lesson on understanding your patients.)

It was the kind of smart aleck remark that was good for a chuckle at best.  But in my mind, it was going to change the world, a chance in front of a national TV audience to show my stuff.  Up until this point I had done a bunch of national commercials including a Miller Genuine Draft Super Bowl commercial, but this was the segue into episodic television that I needed.

There were 3 large panavision cameras filming the scene (close up, mid range and wide) in a room with about 50 people comprised of cast and crew.  Dick was filmed first delivering his lines like an old pro.  Our witty back and forth felt natural without a trace of nerves for either of us.  Then the director yelled, “OK, lets turn the cameras.”  All of a sudden, the 3 giant behemoths turned their macro lenses at me.  This was it.  This was MY big moment.  Seemingly before I could catch my breath, the director yelled, “ACTION.”  The room went silent.  All eyes were on me.  Dick says, “What can we learn from this class?”  OLD PEOPLE ARE CRABBY!!!!!

It came out like a civil war cannon, loud and lacking any subtlety whatsoever.  The room went silent again . . . as if someone had died.  The director quietly kneeled down beside me.  “OK, Jeff let’s do it just like in the audition, very relaxed, almost throwing the line away.”  We did it one more time, but I had no more chance of “casually throwing the line away” than Joe Liebermann would of voting his conscience.  I blurted the line out again taking it down from maybe a 10 to a 9.9.

The director kind of looked down, weighing his disappointment with the workload still to get in before nightfall, and yelled, “OK, next scene.”  I was dismissed got in my car and drove away going, “What just happened???”

It would take me years to realize the significance of that event . . . or even laugh at it.  Call it the destructive power of the ego, call it my watershed moment, but it was really my introduction to adulthood.  This is where dreams met reality.  What I would come to learn was that all those years of childhood neglect and abandonment had created a monster that said, “Someday I’ll get it all back from the validation I get on T.V. and Film.”  But life doesn’t work that way as whatever you missed in childhood stays there.  Then comes adulthood with a new set of rules and a new set of opportunities.  I’m forever grateful to the debacle with Dick Van Dyke though for a number of reasons all relating to the new world order.

First, the event redefined the spiritual path for me.  I gave up the “save the world” version and realized there was a whole inner world that needed saving.  There was an awful lot of pain inside that needed to come out and be accepted.  Then there was the unpleasant reality of my avoidance of that pain and the compulsive addictive behavior it produced.

Maybe best of all was the discovery that I often think I know what I want.  I make plans and create elaborate schemes to make something become a reality only to find out it was something that took me further away from myself. Asking for the knowledge of God’s will and the power to carry that out, didn’t sound like such a bad idea after all.

The show aired but the spinoff never happened.  My scene ended up on the cutting room floor.  Still, the lesson I learned that day was priceless.  Some people never get a day of reckoning that abruptly shoots them into some kind of authentic spiritual journey.  The naïve faith from before would now transform to a search for the inner life and a relationship with the spirit I had never known.