If you grew up with the movies of Corey Feldman and Corey Haim, chances are you freaked out with excitement and delight when you heard about the new reality show, The Two Coreys. Oh, maybe you disguised your excitement with a little well-timed eye rolling, or perhaps a loud disgusted groan, but you know that deep down you were dying to see it. My own excitement increased exponentially when I saw that the press packet included “Access to Interviews”. After picking my jaw up off my desk, I urged our Webmistress to sign us up. So she did. And the possibility of me speaking to the Coreys was cast into the universe. It was a long shot, sure, but could I really pass it up? Heck no! Just the night before I’d thought of something I wanted to ask Corey Feldman – what if I could actually do it?!
It would have been unprofessional of me not to prepare at least a little, so I started doing some research. I mean, here I’d said I wanted an interview – I couldn’t exactly be all surprised if it came through, could I? I didn’t want to ask questions that had been asked a million times before, and I didn’t want to be stuck in the 80’s. I quickly found several lively and articulate interviews with Corey Feldman covering his family life, child stardom, music, vegetarianism, etc. I’ve kind of had my eye on him, so no surprises there, but what about Haim? Where the hell are all the interviews with him? And who is that freak sitting next to Feldman at that Lost Boys signing? Oh holy crap, that IS Corey Haim! By then I was starting to get scared, and seeing a clip of Haim chewing out Feldman’s wife on The Two Coreys didn’t help. He just seems so unwieldy. What if the interview came through and they stuck me with him? What if he suddenly flipped out and said something mean to me? And what could I possibly ask him? My mind was crawling with questions for Feldman, but from Haim, all I want to know is “Dude, what happened to you?”
Weirdly, it was always Corey Feldman that I was afraid to tangle with, despite the fact that he’s in five of my all time favorite movies – Gremlins, The Goonies, Stand By Me, The Lost Boys, and The Burbs. I always imagined him as a real life combination of Mouth, Teddy DuChamp, and The Frog Brothers, and Wil Wheaton’s description of him in Just a Geek pretty much confirmed my suspicions. On the other hand, Corey Haim was always the thoughtful mouth-breather, sort of the shy sensitive type in movies like Silver Bullet and Lucas. If you’d asked me at age thirteen which of the two I would want to marry/talk to/get stuck with on a desert island I would have answered immediately: Corey Haim. If you asked me today, I would answer just as immediately: Corey Feldman. My, how times have changed.
Or have they? Obviously the interview never happened, but watching The Two Coreys is horribly fascinating. Just as I once played sick so I could stay home from school and watch Dream a Little Dream, I find myself wanting more, more, and more of the Coreys. Sure it’s lame that it’s a scripted reality show (isn’t that an oxymoron?), but they’re like little zoo animals. Everything they do is endlessly interesting: “Look! They’re talking! They’re eating! They’re fighting with each other!” And in one particularly smarmy scene, Haim gets the number of a beautiful girl in a signing line. Ewww! As easily wooed as I am by celebrities, even I’m a little skeeved out by that one. So I ask you, who’s your favorite Corey? Which one would you give your number to? Has that answer changed since 1987?
