Getting a few things out of the way up front:
I’m writing this for me because I need to get all the crap in my head about Andrew out there. I was very far away from him and everyone else who knew him when he died. I talked to friends out here who didn’t know him and to my wife who did, but I wasn’t able to go to Vancouver to look for him or to LA to mourn with his other friends once it was over.
Maybe “over” isn’t the best way to put it. For Andrew it’s over and has been for a little more than a month. For the rest of us the end of Andrew’s life is an on-going matter. I’m not in constant grief and I have laughed and been angry, bored and petty since then but there hasn’t been one day when I haven’t thought of him and how wrong it is that he’s not here anymore.
What I’m going to share are some of the reasons why this guy, who too many people know only as a minor eighties sitcom character or a member of the extended phenomena of “Star Trek,” has inspired so much confusion and despair with his loss.
I’m going to have to break it up into separate entries because there’s a lot to tell and I want to get it right as best I can. That takes time, something I don’t have a lot of with two young kids and a third on the way.
If you don’t like long sad stories about dead friends you should skip it.
If you’re looking to know more about Andrew I can tell you a little bit. Others could tell you more and maybe some day they will.
But I’m limited in what I have to share. I didn’t know him long and I didn’t know him as well as many others. I would not consider myself part of his Inner Circle, if there even was such a thing. I consider this my misfortune and, even after all the soul-searching and absolution, a failure on my part. If I’d been closer to him maybe I could have done something to change how it turned out. That’s irrational, since it turned out nobody was close enough to see it in time. But I know I reached out. If he’d wanted my hand it was there.
Re-winding.
As is the case when you’re talking about someone with a measure of fame, I knew of Andrew before he knew me.
I first encountered him when I was in high school and I was reading a book of short stories by Harlan Ellison. This would have been anywhere between 1978 and 1981. Andrew’s name was Josh back then and Ellison credited him with inspiring his great and tragic short story “Jeffty is Five” from his collection “Shatterday.” I’ll quote Ellison below on the subject of where he got the idea:
“My friends Walter and Judy Koenig invited me to a party. I don’t like parties. I do like Walter and Judy. I also like their kids. I went to the party.
“Mostly I sat near the fireplace, friendly but not ebullient. Mostly I talked to Walter and Judy’s son, Josh, who is remarkable beyond the telling. And then I overheard a snatch of conversation. An actor named Jack Danon said or I thought he said something like this “Jeff is five, he’s always five.” No, not really. He didn’t say anything like that at all. What he probably said was, “Jeff is fine, he’s always fine.” Or perhaps it was something completely different.
“But I had been awed and delighted by Josh Koenig, and I instantly thought of just such a child who was arrested in time at the age of five. Jeffty, in no small measure, is Josh: the sweetness of Josh, the intelligence of Josh, the questioning nature of Josh.
“Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered.”
What can I tell you? Andrew/Josh had that effect on people.
So I first “met” Andrew when I was not older than 17 and he was not older than 12.
Flash forward 22 years or so. It’s 2003 and I’m working part-time at Hi-De-Ho Comics in Santa Monica and there’s talk of a Batman flick getting made, re-booting the franchise, and one of the fanboys hijacks me in the parking lot telling me I’ve got to see this thing on his portable video player. ”These are the guys who should be making the movie!” he tells me. ”They understand!” And I watch an impressive live-action short called “Batman: Dead End” in which Batman dukes it out with James Cameron’s Aliens, a Predator and the creepiest, most impossible-looking Joker I’ve ever seen. Played, unknown to me at the time, by an actor named Andrew Koenig, who I would not meet in person for another three years.
Flash forward another three years to August 2006. I’d been doing a sketch show called “Big News” at the IO West in Hollywood for about three and a half years. A lot of people had been in and out of the group by then and we were advised it was time to deepen our bench. We’d had auditions and gotten some good talent added to the roster. But the group’s founder, Michael McCarthy, was moving to Chicago for a radio job and we were scrambling to figure out how to keep the show moving forward. A few of the other actor/writers and I were taking the lead in organizing stuff week to week and somehow I ended up being one of the people who slotted in the new guys for their try-out shows. Our audition dates had passed when, if memory serves, I got an e-mail from Andrew or maybe one of the other Newsies suggesting him for the show.
I had no idea who “Andrew Koenig” was.
I remember a phone call with my castmate and Impressionist-in-Chief Phillip Wilburn in which I asked for some detail about this mystery man and Phillip replied that he had done some stuff with him and he was good. Phillip also said Andrew had played Boner on “Growing Pains.” This meant nothing to me since I truly had never seen the show. In fact the thought of a sitcom actor may have even been a negative in my mind. Then Phillip dropped the other shoe: “And he’s the son of Commander Pavel Chekov from “Star Trek.”"
“Oh well, then he’s definitely in!”, I replied without hesitation. I was being facetious but having any association with “Star Trek” is automatically a big plus with me. I’m easy that way.
In all seriousness though, I was protective of what quality we had managed to give the show at that point and was mentally preparing to deflect Andrew and any of the other new guys who might not pan out. We’d had a couple of real problem children over the years and I didn’t want to screw around with any more of them. As it turned out with Andrew it wasn’t an issue. The guy was good.
I don’t remember for sure the first time I spoke with him. I think it was on the phone, me calling him and inviting him to play with us. Or I might have e-mailed him. Either way, I remember I approached by saying Phillip Wilburn had said he was funny and that was good enough for me. No mention of “Star Trek”, “Growing Pains” or Harlan Ellison was made and Andrew came in and became One Of Us.
I’m pretty sure the first time I saw him in person was during a day rehearsal in the IO West bar. My initial impression was that he was friendly, unassuming, charming and a good-looking guy. I specifically thought that Walter Koenig must have done a rock star thing and married a model so that all his kids would be as good or better looking than he was. Andrew was a guy who had a lot going for him right from the jump.
And that’s how I met Andrew Koenig. In my next entry I’ll talk about working with him and getting to know him. Those are good stories.
Andrew Koenig as The Joker in "Batman: Dead End" 2003
