Coming to the big screen in 1981: “Leif Garrett as a young foosball player who wants to earn the big dollars that will be used to play soccer in Europe by winning the foosball world championships.”
What could go wrong?
One thing I know for certain now, and that I had a hunch about back in the early 1980s, is that teen idols seem to have a life span of no more than five years. And that’s the best case. Teen idols, by design, are not meant to last, simply because kids grow up and tastes change. It’s a very in-the-moment kind of thing. They fit the zeitgeist. They reflect the tastes, styles, and desires of the moment. But there is certainly no job security in being a teen idol. I knew that I needed to evolve creatively or I would probably lose my mind along with everything else. I also understood, however, that even if I was thinking this, it would make no difference if I wasn’t surrounded by others who believed in that same principle. If I didn’t have a like-minded team, the equivalent of what guidance counselors were advising for millions of kids my own age at the same time in college, it would be very hard for me to map out any sort of future.
When I learned that I would be starring in a film called Long Shot, I knew right away that I shouldn’t go wasting any money on a new Oscar-night tuxedo.
It was a movie about, if you can believe it, foosball. I know. Not air hockey. Or Space Invaders. Fucking foosball. That was my next big move. It was a total embarrassment. I had been in the movie Skateboard, which, say what you want, was much more in tune with a national trend—skateboarding. But a movie about foosball. I still can’t believe it.
I was starting to get spooked. My life was changing. The glamour, the mystique, and all of the exotic worlds I had been at the center of were either disappearing or moving on. I couldn’t even tell the difference. All I knew was, I was increasingly not part of them anymore. The whole culture of teen idols had started to change. With MTV getting started and boy bands like New Edition entering the market, it was a new world. The whole concept of teen idols was changing. Now they could come in groups and sell four or five times what one me or one Shaun Cassidy or one Andy Gibb might be able to sell. Things were changing so fast, and there was no plan for me. When most kids my age were graduating from college, I was graduating from being a teen idol. There was no diploma; there were no companies coming to recruit me. It was a sickening feeling that life as I knew it was about to change—and not in a great way. I still had Nicollette, but even that was starting to feel threatened. Her career was beginning to take off at the same time it felt like mine was going into a free fall. That was a strange feeling. My fans were graduating to the next phase of their lives, but I wasn’t. It was a strange feeling. What was I trained to do? And all of the pain and problems I had were still sitting there. I still didn’t have a father; I still had management that I felt was sucking me dry. At least I had Nicollette. Maybe she would be the one who would give me strength to figure out what was next. There wasn’t anybody else. Even a lot of my so-called friends seemed to be moving on once my star started fading. Little things I took for granted, like calls to play racquetball, all of a sudden weren’t there. The invitations to parties became less frequent. Sure, my name still carried some sort of weight, but there certainly weren’t going to be any more armored vehicles to deliver me from point A to point B.
I was drinking more and smoking more and doing whatever I could to numb the pain.
There was one more album with the Scottis, My Movie of You, which didn’t do much of anything. I hit the PR circuit one last time to do a bunch of TV shows in Europe and some other countries, but the audiences were different. And I was getting older; I had my hair cut a little bit shorter. I was starting to look more like an adult, and this wasn’t the material that was going to help me transition to the next level. This was more of the faceless, toothless, forgettable pop that I now had been making for years. This was going to do nothing but ensure the death of my recording career.
The record barely made the charts anywhere around the world. The single “Runaway Rita” reached only number eighty-four on the US charts. “Uptown Girl” did absolutely nothing. My five-year contract with the Scottis was almost up. The charade was, mercifully, almost over.