Tom Arnold: The Mayor of Simpleton

As Arnold and I are talking, we can hear his fiancée chatting as she makes dinner. Several personal assistants fly about the house doing their employer's bidding. And then there are the telephones--which Arnold had ordered turned off in our sector of the house--that keep ringing. He bolts up, picks up a receiver and bellows, loud enough to reach the third level of the house through sheer lung power, "Todd, there's a phone ringing that we can hear down here and it pisses the writer off. He's going to leave if you don't fix it. I want it shut off. Thank you."

He sits down, huffing, not without amusement at his own exertion of boss-man potency, not without delight in having laid the blame on me. "Sometimes I feel like every day I have to explain the simplest things. Like, the maid doesn't wind the clock and it stops. My God, how many times do I have to tell her to wind the one fucking clock that needs winding in the house? I saw this guy on '60 Minutes' who had this head injury and every second was new to him, so he'd go, 'Hi, how are you?' then, a second later, say, 'Hi, how are you?' The world was new to him every second. That's how I think my staff is sometimes."

All the while Arnold talks, his knees jangle, feet fidget, hands gesticulate as if his body were controlled by the strings of a psycho puppeteer. He notices me noticing and explains, "I was born hyperactive. I was on Ritalin when I was a kid. I have attention deficit hyperactive disorder. It's really hard reading scripts because words start moving around. I feel my heart start pounding real fast. With scripts, I start ad-libbing or else I read very slow, I'm getting better at focusing on things because I'm calmer than I used to be. But, physically, I'm always going to have twitches. I've had five years' sobriety since this past December. When I was 30 I'd been sober for about six months and a doctor prescribed Ritalin again. I thought one day as I was taking Ritalin, 'Hell, man, if I can take Ritalin, I can do coke.' But nothing like that works."

How does he view himself deep down? He thinks about this one, then says, "I don't know if it's because I'm insane or not, but sometimes I'm driving in my car, daydreaming, and I hear some¬thing on the radio and try to put my life to the song, usually something that's pretty rocking. My theme song should be 'The Mayor of Simpleton' by XTC, which I've listened to about 1,000 times. It kind of explains who I am. I have aspirations to be mayor, and yet, what am I the mayor of"? Although I do consider myself to be smart, I realize how stupid I am every day. I hear words I've never heard before being used by everybody. I don't have the time to look them up because I'm working, then I forget them and they come up again. Out here, people know things about traveling, favorite places, cigars. A guy gave me a cigar that I know was expensive, saying, 'Here, this is a so-and-so cigar,' and I didn't know what to say because I don't know what that means. I thought, "Should I take up cigar smoking? Do I have lime to learn to smoke cigars'?' And you've got to learn, because cigars are expensive. Arnold has this thing once a month and invites me down all the time and I've smoked maybe four cigars with him, I don't have time to learn that. I want to learn how to play golf, which is something I'd rather choose than cigars, probably."

Arnold excuses himself for a bathroom break, and when he returns, I tell him how I've heard that he staunchly advocates urinating in public. Does he care to recall his most soul-satisfying experience, whizzing alfresco? "Well, of course, it's always satisfy¬ing," he reminds, "but there was an episode outside of a movie studio that was called Orion, It was after an afternoon screening of She-Devil. Roseanne was very unhappy with the movie. And I had to, you know... and, well, let's say everything worked out just right."

He stops short of filling in the specifics, such as whether, as I have heard, he let fly on the steel-belted radials of the car owned by a certain executive. He will allow that the experience proved "very, very satisfying," but adds, trying to sound serious, "These days, of course, it doesn't seem as amusing."

These days, of course, he's cleaned up his act, involving himself with vastly different-sounding marriage material. "I'm really looking forward to getting married," he says. "Basically, my goal is to have Julie [Champnella] worship me the way Kathie Lee worships Frank Gifford. Julie idolizes Kathie Lee and I say, 'Just watch the way she is about Frank,' because she just goes on and on about him. The perfect marriage is: you respect each other, you're absolutely best friends, you're totally honest with each other and you still have the hots for each other. I need to know that somebody feels that way about me because there's only one person in the world you have sex with, if it's the perfect situation, and that's your wife.'"

Is show business tough on relationships? "People come up to you and say, 'I like you,' 'Maybe I can give you a massage,' 'Maybe we can get together and talk sometime, I'm available.' I've had people say a lot of different things. A good device to protect yourself is being loud and funny, because then you kind of take the sexuality out of everything. I've gotten hit on a couple of times and was always shocked and honored, frankly. And I always hate to let people down, maybe because of my past, when I got turned down so many times in my life. I'm like, 'I just can't hurt this person this way.' What you don't ever want to say to your wife is, 'Hey, listen, I know I can get laid because people like me. You don't like me.' Say anything but that."

Since Arnold seems so happy with his fiancée, I can't resist the impulse to ask him whether, in less happy times, he ever, say, phoned an adult line? Or maybe just Dionne Warwick's Psychic Friends for advice on love matters? "I've never called any of the hot lines," he claims, "and I would be scared to do it by myself. The porn line thing just doesn't seem to work in my mind, the idea of just thinking about somebody, talking dirty to somebody without actually seeing them. I may want to get those new phones that transmit pictures on them, though. But the psychic thing? I'm afraid they'll know who I am by recognizing my voice. Sometimes I call the operator for information and she knows who I am. I ordered Playboy magazine by phone and had to give my name and credit card information, and I could hear the woman who took my order telling everybody in the place. Then she said, 'Do you want your free copy of this video called 'Sex Something-Or-Other?' So I thought, 'Well, do I say "no"?' But by that time I felt, I'm not going to let appearances affect my viewing pleasure, so I said, 'OK, yeah.' I haven't seen it yet, though, because your goal on something like that is to get the love of your life to watch it with you. So far, it doesn't seem to be something she's interested in."

And when Arnold and Julie raise little offspring, are there particular traits of his that he hopes they won't inherit? "I hope they're not alcoholics," Arnold says, straight off. "Julie has a little bit of that in her family and I have that in everybody. I hope they're not hyperactive, although it's helped me a lot in the way my mind works. I hope they're not fat. And, it's not like I'm Madonna or some superstar, but my kids are going to have to deal with, like, 'You're Tom Arnold's son.' I've seen that can be tough on celebrities kids. But I'm as famous as I want to be."

We've both got to bolt, Arnold has a business meeting with one of his next prospective directors, I've got to get home to check out again those Tom and what's-her-name bio movies. "You know, I'm in this business to be successful," he says in conclusion, "and, if I could continue to do work like I'm doing for a while, that's great. But no matter what happens from here on in, I've succeeded."

_____________________________________

Stephen Rebello interviewed Val Kilmer for the June Movieline.

Pages: 1 2 3