Speaker 1: What do you do in life doesn't go according to
Speaker 1: plan that moment you lose the job, or a loved one,
Speaker 1: or even a piece of yourself. I'm Brookshields and this
Speaker 1: is now What a podcast about pivotal moments as told
Speaker 1: by people who lived them. Each week I s to
Speaker 1: Till with a guest to talk about the times they
Speaker 1: were knocked off course and what they did to move forward.
Speaker 1: Some stories are funny, others are cut wrenching, but all
Speaker 1: are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and
Speaker 1: every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice
Speaker 1: answers one question, now, what there's so much talk about
Speaker 1: all the nudity and the sensuality, and how did you
Speaker 1: deal with with that, like emotionally well, I mean at
Speaker 1: first it was it was weird, but then as everybody
Speaker 1: else was doing it, I got into it. I mean
Speaker 1: after that movie, it was hard for me to keep
Speaker 1: my clothes on. I'm sure you made a lot of
Speaker 1: people happy about I can't go to the beach and
Speaker 1: want to put my suit on. It's just not right.
Speaker 1: But there was there was scenes that I was but
Speaker 1: naked with you. If you remember sliding down that slide
Speaker 1: and things like that, and that was that was a
Speaker 1: little awkward, but it was kind of funny for me
Speaker 1: because at this point in time, you know, I just
Speaker 1: did it, but it was more fun to your reaction,
Speaker 1: just like, oh God, Like, why do I have to
Speaker 1: look at that. I've never seen one of those before.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna start now. My guest today is actually
Speaker 1: really one of my oldest friends, Christopher Atkins. Chris and
Speaker 1: I met when we were on the set of Blue Lagoon,
Speaker 1: which is our nineteen eighties film. I was just fourteen
Speaker 1: and he was eighteen, and back then we honestly had
Speaker 1: no idea how much I'm movie was going to change
Speaker 1: our lives. The years that followed were the only thing
Speaker 1: I could think of as pure insanity. But there is
Speaker 1: no one else that I would have rather taken that
Speaker 1: journey with. Chris was and still is a joy to
Speaker 1: work with, and in the four decades that I've known him,
Speaker 1: I've watched him grow from a first time movie star
Speaker 1: to a seasoned actor, a father, writer, an entrepreneur, and
Speaker 1: I'm just so grateful that he wanted to even share
Speaker 1: a moment of his incredible story with us. Taking this
Speaker 1: trip down memory lane with him was was really sweet. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, here is my leading man, Christopher Atkins.
Speaker 1: Do you remember meeting me for the first time? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Kind of absolutely, yeah, kind of years ago. All right,
Speaker 1: Well I've at least makes me feel like I made
Speaker 1: an impression for you, of course. Well, I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: we spent a long time together. I get more questions
Speaker 1: asked about Blue Lagoon than any other movie, any other anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe I get Calvin Klein, but like people
Speaker 1: from all over the world will say Laguna blue, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, did ever make you crazy that people
Speaker 1: did that? You know? It was kind of a blessing
Speaker 1: and a curse, if you if you know what I
Speaker 1: mean as far as the industry goes, because everybody, I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how many pictures I had to do
Speaker 1: with curly hair and wearing that diaper after that movie.
Speaker 1: But um, that's just just just the way it was.
Speaker 1: But no, I listen, you look back on it, and
Speaker 1: people who come into Hollywood want to be actors. Their
Speaker 1: dream is to get that golden ticket. You know that
Speaker 1: that hit And how lucky were we that we had
Speaker 1: something that was so incredibly mess To this day, I
Speaker 1: still I had a guy show up at my my
Speaker 1: back door here just last week. It's still it is creepy,
Speaker 1: but it's still going on. So I mean, in one sense,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, we were very very fortunate to
Speaker 1: be able to say that we were in an hour.
Speaker 1: Supposedly it's a classic film. It's considered a classic film.
Speaker 1: So and I mean, the the nostalgia is so is
Speaker 1: so kind of important and kind of it matters to
Speaker 1: people differently now. You know, when you talk to people
Speaker 1: and they say, oh, that was the first sort of
Speaker 1: coming of age movie I ever saw, or my mom
Speaker 1: didn't let me see it, but then I snuck in,
Speaker 1: or and you know, I always get like people saying
Speaker 1: like I was, I was so in love not with you,
Speaker 1: with him, but that's okay, And then people coming up
Speaker 1: or like they either in love with me or they
Speaker 1: in love with you, and it was kind of crazy,
Speaker 1: but it mattered to people in their lives. It totally mattered.
Speaker 1: I did a I did a TV show in Holland,
Speaker 1: and the producers came up to me when was a man,
Speaker 1: when was a woman? And a a woman came up to
Speaker 1: me and said, I knew I was straight when I
Speaker 1: saw that movie, and the guy came up to me
Speaker 1: and said, I knew I was gay when I saw
Speaker 1: that movie. Equal opportunity were doing it. This is just
Speaker 1: how the world works, you know. So yeah, do you
Speaker 1: remember when we First of all, have you seen the movie?
Speaker 1: Have you seen Blue Lagoon lately? Uh? Yeah, not too
Speaker 1: long ago. People people like to watch it with me.
Speaker 1: Which have you found that where people want you there
Speaker 1: to watch the movie? No? Yea, look at you? Okay, No,
Speaker 1: I can't even get hearing my voice, my little well,
Speaker 1: I like telling the stories about like Richard Evanson where
Speaker 1: they left him on the burning boat and all those
Speaker 1: funny little stories. Because what stand out to you about that? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, it was interesting because Peter Bogart's down
Speaker 1: in North Carolina and I had, yeah, first a d
Speaker 1: and he said, you know, no movie was ever shot
Speaker 1: like that before, and no movie will ever be shot
Speaker 1: like that ever again in Hollywood. So it was really,
Speaker 1: it was really, it was really quite a full on experience,
Speaker 1: life experience. I always say those things and what we
Speaker 1: experienced on that movie. He's right, never again will a
Speaker 1: movie be made like that ever. I mean, they wouldn't,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be allowed no, oh gosh, no, I mean
Speaker 1: animals were hurt in the movie. They were spearing fish
Speaker 1: and all kinds of crazy things. Children are naked running
Speaker 1: down the beach. I mean, it just could do that now,
Speaker 1: but I'm taking an infant and submerging the baby underwater exactly. Gush.
Speaker 1: And there were long hours and there was a lot
Speaker 1: of physical stuff in that movie. I mean climbing those
Speaker 1: coconut trees with that little lap lap on, man, I
Speaker 1: was chafe up to no end of running over the
Speaker 1: coral and stuff. Remember all the bug bites and the
Speaker 1: coral cuts and all the other crazy things, the fevers
Speaker 1: and everything that we had. It was just people don't
Speaker 1: know any of that stuff. It's not easy. No, the
Speaker 1: bugs were crazy, the wild crabs were crazy, the wild
Speaker 1: horses were nuts. And then the infestation of rats that
Speaker 1: was another one. And then the what people don't know
Speaker 1: is that Blue Lagoon was on an island, and uh,
Speaker 1: that was on a coral reef. And so if you
Speaker 1: had any type of a cut of any kind, which
Speaker 1: is all we had because we were barefoot and you know,
Speaker 1: wearing like little strips of clothing where my hair was
Speaker 1: taped down to my my body to cover the boobs,
Speaker 1: which were very minimal anyway, I don't know what I
Speaker 1: was trying to cover. Remember the buppy pads, puppy pads,
Speaker 1: and they would stick these little sticky like flesh colored
Speaker 1: things on my nipple because nipple was evidently where they
Speaker 1: drew the line in this movie, which is ironic anyway.
Speaker 1: But but if any kind of cut you had and
Speaker 1: you went into the water, bits of the coral would
Speaker 1: get into the cut and it would become completely infected
Speaker 1: and ulcerated. Do you remember remember the uh Ray who
Speaker 1: had that big hole in the back of his calf
Speaker 1: for like three months, and we had a doctor there.
Speaker 1: There was a and he had his little parrot. The
Speaker 1: doctor good doctor smoke smoke pot every day. And we
Speaker 1: were in the wild West, but on the water. Remember
Speaker 1: I got pneumonia and in the birthing scene when I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to be having the baby, I uncontrollably can't breathe
Speaker 1: and I'm coughing. I'd like a coughing fit. Everyone's like,
Speaker 1: what a great acting joy and not breathe. I just
Speaker 1: remember in that scene where Peter was bouncing the rubber
Speaker 1: baby up and down on the umbilical cord and snapped it.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, snapped snapped the rubber bilical cord off
Speaker 1: the babies. You snapped the first ever steadicam. I know.
Speaker 1: I told that story just the other night. As a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, I can't believe that it's so funny. Well,
Speaker 1: you did everything. You really speared the fish, you really
Speaker 1: climbed the trees. And we got there and they instantly
Speaker 1: wanted us to be tanned, right, And remember they set
Speaker 1: up those little thatched areas so that we could get
Speaker 1: tan without tan lines, I know. And you're right next
Speaker 1: to me in it. And that was even stranger because
Speaker 1: you were only fourteen at the time, and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: next to any other one, right, We weren't like looking
Speaker 1: at each other. No, but it No, there was obviously
Speaker 1: a wall. But it was just very strange, wasn't it?
Speaker 1: How they how they had that set up. But I
Speaker 1: was eighteen and and at that point in time, I
Speaker 1: came from Rye, New York. Very conservative, the whole deal.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget. Randall asked me on the plane. Randall's
Speaker 1: the director, just so everybody knows, but he asked me
Speaker 1: on the plane, what do I think about being naked
Speaker 1: because and I, you know, I had no idea. I'd
Speaker 1: never naked in front of people before, you know, so
Speaker 1: I had no idea. I said, well, we'll just find out,
Speaker 1: I guess, and that was yes, and he had. I
Speaker 1: think he was probably scared to death because it was
Speaker 1: so important to him and the movie at that point
Speaker 1: in time, because it was obviously two innocent kids who
Speaker 1: that shouldn't be an issue. I mean, but it was
Speaker 1: never really, we were never eased into it, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like, well, no, go get a tan.
Speaker 1: You have to have a full body tan. So that
Speaker 1: was the first time, even though I was in that
Speaker 1: little cubicle of Fijian hut basically open to the sky,
Speaker 1: that they could get some sun in and uh, and
Speaker 1: he wanted that full on tan. What I remember, too,
Speaker 1: is that they wanted us so desperately to fall in
Speaker 1: love with each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well you were
Speaker 1: also just fourteen. I was eighteen at the time, So
Speaker 1: that's a world of difference. It is a world of
Speaker 1: different You were just growing up. I mean, my gosh.
Speaker 1: Although I was dating Cindy at the time, and Cindy
Speaker 1: was fifteen when I was dating her, It also struck
Speaker 1: me though, too, because I remember thinking, Hey, let's just
Speaker 1: get to know each other first, rather than trying to
Speaker 1: make us fall in love with each other and force
Speaker 1: the situation. And I did not react well to being
Speaker 1: forced into feeling anything. I wanted to sort of be left,
Speaker 1: left a little bit left to my own. But I
Speaker 1: also was you know, I don't think I hadn't even
Speaker 1: kissed anybody really by that age, you know, which was
Speaker 1: pro probably great for the film because that's what it
Speaker 1: was all about, and that you have to admit. The
Speaker 1: chemistry between us was just amazing. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of great, great moments that went on there and and
Speaker 1: I and I think it was a lot of that
Speaker 1: innocence that really came off in the film that made
Speaker 1: it work even more. M You didn't know that you
Speaker 1: wanted to be an actor, did you. I mean we
Speaker 1: were not when we met. You were like, I want
Speaker 1: to go into sports medicine. You wanted to be a
Speaker 1: baseball player. Then what how did that happen? Well, you
Speaker 1: taught me everything on the island. I had no idea
Speaker 1: what even a camera looked like. I didn't know what
Speaker 1: was going on. And yeah, I wanted to go into
Speaker 1: sports medicine. I had all those knee operations, so I
Speaker 1: got taken out of baseball. But I did find out
Speaker 1: years later through my son that hitting coach who's not
Speaker 1: a hitting coach to the Dodgers, I found out through
Speaker 1: him that the Phillies were going to draft me, which
Speaker 1: was I said to my son, Look, I told you,
Speaker 1: I knew what I was talking about, and that was
Speaker 1: kind of a good moment. But life had different, different
Speaker 1: changes opportunities. Well, we we call I call the show
Speaker 1: now What, because I think throughout our lives we have
Speaker 1: multiple now what moments where we really are faced with
Speaker 1: something and you said something, just to go back a
Speaker 1: little bit, you wanted to be a baseball player, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you have to have these surgeries, and
Speaker 1: does that end your baseball career? Yes, it did. I
Speaker 1: mean after all those surgeries, I got a lot of
Speaker 1: They really the sports medical doctors and Massachusetts really put
Speaker 1: me together. Well. But I was going to go into
Speaker 1: sports medicine and going to go to Dennis In University
Speaker 1: in Ohio and looking forward to all of that to
Speaker 1: suddenly being on an island for four and a half
Speaker 1: months shooting that movie and completely changing my entire life.
Speaker 1: Were there any other now what moments that were prior
Speaker 1: to that? So I always think of things like free
Speaker 1: blue lagoon, post blue lagoon, it's like and peace blue lagoon. Um, well,
Speaker 1: mom remarried, so that was and now what with a stepfather,
Speaker 1: And that turned out to be the greatest gift of
Speaker 1: our lives was my stepfather. I don't know if you remember.
Speaker 1: We went out on his boat and did all that
Speaker 1: shoot on that That was fun back then, but he
Speaker 1: turned out to be just a really special man in
Speaker 1: our lives. So we were really really lucky and blessed
Speaker 1: to have him or other I mean, he really instilled
Speaker 1: family and all. As a matter of fact, my my
Speaker 1: real father actually said to me one day, he said,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I could have done as good
Speaker 1: a job, and that was that was big for him
Speaker 1: to say. Yeah, So, I mean that was a now
Speaker 1: what moment. Getting married was a now what moment because
Speaker 1: the dress was getting tighter as she was walking down
Speaker 1: the aisle. So there that was a huge now what
Speaker 1: moment at twenty four years old and whacked down in
Speaker 1: my head at that point in time in my life.
Speaker 1: So yeah, oh yeah, did you auditioned for the movie, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm never auditioned for a movie in my life. And
Speaker 1: I just got this call to go in and an audition,
Speaker 1: and I did, and then they called me back, and
Speaker 1: they called me back, and they called me back, and
Speaker 1: this was over the wintertime, and then I didn't hear
Speaker 1: from from like for like two months. I was just
Speaker 1: excited to say that, oh, when that movie comes out.
Speaker 1: I auditioned for that movie. I remember reading those lines,
Speaker 1: you know, that kind of thing. I thought that was
Speaker 1: gonna be kind of fun. Never in a million years
Speaker 1: I ever thought I was going to get the picture.
Speaker 1: And then of course it's not just getting a movie,
Speaker 1: it's you got to run around naked. Did you ever
Speaker 1: feel Yeah, very much so, as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I said no. Well, when I went in two months later,
Speaker 1: he called me up and he said, look, we haven't
Speaker 1: found the person yet. We want to see you again.
Speaker 1: And I said, aren't you supposed to be filming this movie.
Speaker 1: By this time, though, I had had a tan from
Speaker 1: being down at the yacht club, so having this tan
Speaker 1: really made a difference for him. And I also was
Speaker 1: a scuba diver because uh, and he liked that a
Speaker 1: lot also because I were obviously underwater a lot. So um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Two months later he called me up and Julie Warner
Speaker 1: remember Julie. Julie was the one audition when he wanted
Speaker 1: me to bring a blonde curly wig in. I said yeah,
Speaker 1: and I said, I said, excuse me, He said, yeah,
Speaker 1: can you bring a blonde curly wig? I said, I
Speaker 1: was just gonna say I got a lot of them,
Speaker 1: not a problem. So Mom actually had something and I
Speaker 1: brought this thing in. They curled it up and had
Speaker 1: me audition again. And then the next thing I know
Speaker 1: is it was like two or three days later they
Speaker 1: called me up and said I had the part, and
Speaker 1: I said no. Back then it was a four million
Speaker 1: dollar picture or something. I don't want two million dollars
Speaker 1: in my head. I don't know what I'm doing. And
Speaker 1: then and I said, and I'm late for a softball
Speaker 1: game at Ford. I had to take the train. But
Speaker 1: then then they convince you, or yeah, they convinced me.
Speaker 1: And I had a long talk with Mom about it
Speaker 1: because which big well. She she said to me said, Chris, look,
Speaker 1: you know, if you don't ever have to do it again,
Speaker 1: if you don't want to and I was supposed to
Speaker 1: be back in time to go to college. So I, uh,
Speaker 1: that wasn't going to be a problem. But unfortunately we
Speaker 1: weren't um or fortunately one or the other. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: So when I talked to mom about it, and I
Speaker 1: talked to the casting directors about it, and they said, look,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have cast you if they didn't think you
Speaker 1: could do it. So I said, all right, well, I
Speaker 1: love how important our moms were in in this period
Speaker 1: of time. UM, and your mom had no reservations about
Speaker 1: the storyline, right, you know, she didn't. And it was
Speaker 1: funny because at the premiere she said, well I hadn't
Speaker 1: seen that in a long time. She read the script.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't even know if she did, or,
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, I have no idea. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, that's a good question. I should ask her
Speaker 1: what did you get me into? But you know, my
Speaker 1: mom built she as you know, like my mom was
Speaker 1: for years, I mean, built such a strong cocoon around
Speaker 1: me and such a such a layer of um protection.
Speaker 1: And yet she was also she you know, asked you
Speaker 1: to come and live in ourbury. Yes, what do you
Speaker 1: remember about that? Because she's quoted as saying something like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted them to get to know each other,
Speaker 1: so the best way would be for us to live
Speaker 1: in the same you know house, a little hut. And
Speaker 1: it shocked me that she ended up suggesting that she
Speaker 1: wanted me to come because she basically wanted you out
Speaker 1: of horses and into boys type of thing, and you
Speaker 1: were really into your horses back then, and and for
Speaker 1: the movie's sake, she wanted us to be closer together
Speaker 1: and and be near each other and be able to
Speaker 1: have that whether it's the brother and sister or whether
Speaker 1: it's the love story or whatever that was going on.
Speaker 1: I'm sure she would have liked or was pushing for
Speaker 1: more of the boyfriend girlfriend relationship. Okay, but at the
Speaker 1: same time, you were fourteen. I mean, that's that's even
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm stuck between a rock and hard place
Speaker 1: here about that you're gonna We never talked about this.
Speaker 1: That's a crazy position to put you in. The only
Speaker 1: thing I knew was that, uh, you were the closest
Speaker 1: person to my age at the time. I mean, like
Speaker 1: I said, I was, I was eighteen and I basically
Speaker 1: just turned eighteen when we went out there. So um.
Speaker 1: And like I had also said, I had missed so
Speaker 1: much school because of the knee surgeries. I went to
Speaker 1: three different high schools. I missed a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: myself of having a girlfriend through the high school period.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the very very end when I was
Speaker 1: modeling it forward where that Cindy and that that lasted
Speaker 1: for a while. But so it was a whole new
Speaker 1: coming of age experience for me also on the island.
Speaker 1: So yeah, of course I was very attracted to you
Speaker 1: because you were so smart, you were so kind and nice,
Speaker 1: and then at the same time you would also tell
Speaker 1: me you would you would say it like it is,
Speaker 1: which is great, you know, I mean, okay, explain that
Speaker 1: a little bit, because well, I I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes I wonder if it was your mom's influence or
Speaker 1: something that was going on every once in a while.
Speaker 1: But yeah, were a little We had a little cat
Speaker 1: fights now and it were stupid ship. But you know,
Speaker 1: I enjoyed the times that we did collect shells on
Speaker 1: the beach and you would tell me your your Tatum
Speaker 1: O'Neil store and and black velvet or whatever. I remember
Speaker 1: you were telling me something about wanting a part so bad,
Speaker 1: and all of these things. I had no idea what
Speaker 1: I was doing, what I was going through in this
Speaker 1: movie and all of this kind of stuff, And and
Speaker 1: you made it, honestly made it so easy for me
Speaker 1: and so nice in the way that we we did
Speaker 1: get to work together in a in a very short
Speaker 1: amount of time. You've had massive, massive experiences back to back, right,
Speaker 1: so that happens you're all of a sudden your world
Speaker 1: shifts practically overnight. Yeah, how do you handle that? You know?
Speaker 1: I I don't think anybody can handle it. Well. I
Speaker 1: mean it literally, like you said, it was just overwhelming. Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean I just was sent all over the world.
Speaker 1: I was doing uh, parties and interviews and all kinds
Speaker 1: of stuff everywhere, And there wasn't a place I could
Speaker 1: go that people didn't stop. You and I were on
Speaker 1: every single solitary talk show that there possibly was. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean it was absolutely insane. So as much as
Speaker 1: I think that I wanted to be me and keep myself,
Speaker 1: the surroundings of it all were just impossible to not
Speaker 1: be overwhelming to anybody that was around us. I mean
Speaker 1: anywhere I went to shopping or or just to hang
Speaker 1: out with my friends. I was constantly stopped and you
Speaker 1: guys used to yell at me all the time because
Speaker 1: I'd signed everybody's freaking autograph and were like, Chris, just right,
Speaker 1: love and let's go meet you on the sidebo I
Speaker 1: hope you made a good purchase. Good luck with your family, Chris.
Speaker 1: Can we get out of here please? Um. But now
Speaker 1: then there were some there were some setbacks and some
Speaker 1: difficult things that really also threw you for a loop.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about sobriety that there you had a manager?
Speaker 1: I believe that too, did not treat you well. And yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had, Yeah, I had a lot. Yeah, the whole
Speaker 1: Hollywood thing actually hit me right between the eyes and
Speaker 1: I ended up having a business manager steal every single time,
Speaker 1: me and Tom Hanks and Donna Mills and all kinds
Speaker 1: of people. And so they left me with one kid
Speaker 1: one on the way and like two dollars and the
Speaker 1: bank had to call us in. I'll never forget. And
Speaker 1: I think that was part of the downfall to my
Speaker 1: marriage at that time too, because it was just so
Speaker 1: devastating that everything was gone. So yeah, so that was
Speaker 1: really tough. Went through bankruptcy, did all of that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was awful. It was really really awful. How did
Speaker 1: you what did you do? Like? What did you what
Speaker 1: did you turn to? How did you get through it?
Speaker 1: It just uh, well, And then, like I said, then
Speaker 1: I was twenty four years old, I had a son,
Speaker 1: I had one on the way, and I was partying
Speaker 1: up a storm, um trying to cope and deal with
Speaker 1: it at that point in time. And then, uh, and
Speaker 1: I'll get into this because I know it's always something
Speaker 1: that comes up and it's kind of important and that
Speaker 1: and especially I know in your life. And what I
Speaker 1: wasn't rye for Christmas and went out and drank up
Speaker 1: a storm, came back and had another fight and the
Speaker 1: whole thing. And the next morning my parents called me
Speaker 1: down and said, we want you to leave. You're disrupting
Speaker 1: the household. And it's we don't want you, we w
Speaker 1: don't we don't want you here right now. And that
Speaker 1: just was the straw that broke the camel's back. Everything
Speaker 1: that could possibly have gone wrong in my life went
Speaker 1: wrong except for the having my my son, and uh,
Speaker 1: and I just broke down. And so I went to
Speaker 1: a rehab and I was in a rehab for twenty
Speaker 1: eight days in Harrison, New York, and I think I
Speaker 1: was the only person to this day, I'm still sober.
Speaker 1: So it's almost thirty thirty six years. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: just think this is important because you never know, you know,
Speaker 1: I did it because I wanted to be a dad
Speaker 1: more than I wanted to be a drunk. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just came down to that. As you know, I
Speaker 1: always wanted to be a dad, and it just for
Speaker 1: some reason I was lucky enough to grasp onto the program.
Speaker 1: I mean, to this day, I still go to meetings
Speaker 1: three times a week and do all that. Um. But
Speaker 1: the point was was really interesting, as I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: When I was thirty years sober, we had a big
Speaker 1: Christmas party here in Fairfield at my sister's house, and
Speaker 1: the whole family, my kids and everybody were there. And
Speaker 1: my son calls me into the dining room and the
Speaker 1: whole family is in there, and I just thought we
Speaker 1: were going to have dessert. And he gets up in
Speaker 1: front of the whole family and makes a speech about
Speaker 1: how proud he was of me for having thirty years
Speaker 1: of sobriety and what it meant to him and his
Speaker 1: sister all of those years to have a dad. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, Now that was one of your moments that
Speaker 1: you never I never realized that that they recognized that
Speaker 1: I just was a dad. But I wasn't up and
Speaker 1: down emotionally. I was. I was just a dad through
Speaker 1: that whole thing, which I when I look back on,
Speaker 1: I was very grateful for and you and hadn't like
Speaker 1: nobody had done an intervention before, like your parents just
Speaker 1: that wasn't even an intervention. Did they just say they
Speaker 1: just don't want you in the house or was it
Speaker 1: because it wasn't a formal intervention. No, they just my
Speaker 1: mom basically did what what you're supposed to do is
Speaker 1: release you would love I mean she but we're such
Speaker 1: a tight family as you if you remember that, you know,
Speaker 1: I've got great parents and great brothers and sister and
Speaker 1: the whole thing. So that's what really hurt more than anything,
Speaker 1: was that I was just this bad person. And it
Speaker 1: really wasn't a bad person. You were just you were
Speaker 1: an addict and it got the better of you. I mean,
Speaker 1: thank god, did you have Did you lean on those
Speaker 1: people and all those people in your life? Is it
Speaker 1: just your family who you were able to really lean
Speaker 1: on during that time, well, my family was phenomenal. Because
Speaker 1: I was still going through a whole lot of the
Speaker 1: other crap with the business manager and everything else. I
Speaker 1: had a lot of weight on my shoulders and I
Speaker 1: just had to learn to just have faith. I mean,
Speaker 1: it really comes down to faith, you know, believing that
Speaker 1: that there's just more. And what that more is is
Speaker 1: if I if I hunt for it, it will never come.
Speaker 1: But if I let it happen, it comes abundantly. And
Speaker 1: that's just one of the things that I had to
Speaker 1: learn and to stay in the moment. And and yeah,
Speaker 1: I like I said, I'm very big on the program.
Speaker 1: I still go three times a week, so I through
Speaker 1: everything at that. I listen, I've been a c O
Speaker 1: A and alan on and all of that for on
Speaker 1: and off for decades. Um. My mother never was able
Speaker 1: to succeed in the program. I tried. I tried to
Speaker 1: get her to go with me. I tried to get
Speaker 1: her to go with me over it didn't. She's you know,
Speaker 1: and I'll never forget this, and and I hope it
Speaker 1: doesn't hurt you at all, but I'll never forget. When
Speaker 1: I said to her, I said, look, I'm sober. I'm going,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, let's go together, we can do
Speaker 1: this and all this, and she just flat out said no,
Speaker 1: because she will get recognized and somebody will write about
Speaker 1: it and all of this sort of stuff. And I'll
Speaker 1: never forget when I went into the rehab and this
Speaker 1: is this nurse man, Pat, old bad Pat Man. She
Speaker 1: came in there and I had a giant's hat on
Speaker 1: and some magazines when I went into rehab and old
Speaker 1: Pat comes in there, boy, and she took that hat
Speaker 1: off and she goes, you ain't in here for that,
Speaker 1: and I went, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's my hat. And
Speaker 1: she took the magazine's you ain't in here for this either,
Speaker 1: and I went, what are you kidding? And this woman
Speaker 1: pulled those humility pegs out of me, you know, and
Speaker 1: and and I too was worried about and this is
Speaker 1: before him. I'm I was worried about, Well, the press
Speaker 1: is gonna get it or they're gonna it's gonna get out.
Speaker 1: And I was definitely worried about how people would perceive
Speaker 1: me as this drunk or this this terrible gutter kind
Speaker 1: of person. At all they ruined is like all that
Speaker 1: negativity in my head, and I'll never forget. One of
Speaker 1: my biggest moments was they took us to outside meetings
Speaker 1: from the rehab. We went to this church and I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: not ry, I'm gonna see somebody I know and all
Speaker 1: those negative thoughts are gonna think all these terrible things
Speaker 1: of me and all this. Sure enough, I go in
Speaker 1: there and here's this guy that was my baseball coach
Speaker 1: and everything. And he sees me and he goes, hey, Chris,
Speaker 1: how are you doing. I go, oh, God, enough, hey Bill,
Speaker 1: I'm just going. I suddenly stopped and I looked and
Speaker 1: I go, what are you doing here? He goes, I'm
Speaker 1: a drunk and old bill boy. He was sixty years so,
Speaker 1: and he passed away just about a month ago. And
Speaker 1: here in Stratford he was. We would go to meetings
Speaker 1: every Tuesday night and have dinner and hang out. And
Speaker 1: actually we're working on a project that I got to
Speaker 1: keep going, which is the Bill Wilson Story, but a
Speaker 1: feature film of the Bill Wilson Story. I wasn't going
Speaker 1: to say the name. I wasn't gonna say. You know,
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to say congratulations on that, and bore
Speaker 1: and even more importantly when your babies say anything like that,
Speaker 1: Yes it is. It is why you exist. It is
Speaker 1: every possible thing, and it's from start to finish. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that I've been loved so much
Speaker 1: about you is that it doesn't matter if we're like
Speaker 1: signing autographs at a convention or doing a reality show,
Speaker 1: or doing a writing a book or writing a screenplay
Speaker 1: or writing about what you said once in an interview,
Speaker 1: is that if you can look back and have had
Speaker 1: many different experiences and been present in all of them,
Speaker 1: then that's a life that has been lived. If you
Speaker 1: were to look back, what do you think Chris Atkins is?
Speaker 1: Through linness, through line, uh, love and fun. That's perfect simple.
Speaker 1: I'm a very simple guy. And like you said, I
Speaker 1: always said he with the most stories wins because if
Speaker 1: you've got stories, you've had adventure. If you've had adventure,
Speaker 1: you've lived the life that was Christopher Atkins. And I
Speaker 1: don't know. If you're feeling nostalgic, go and give our
Speaker 1: classic movie Blue Lagoon. Give it a watch. If you
Speaker 1: like this podcast, please head over to Apple Podcasts to
Speaker 1: rate and review. Now what with Berk Shields? It actually
Speaker 1: really helps other people find us, so please do it.
Speaker 1: That's it for us today, talk to you next week now.
Speaker 1: What is produced by the wonderful Julia Weaver with help
Speaker 1: from Darby Masters. Our executive producer is Christina Everett. The
Speaker 1: show is mixed by Bahid Fraser and Christian Bowman. A
Speaker 1: special thanks to nicky Etre and Will Pearson. If you
Speaker 1: liked this episode, please subscribe to the show on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your shows.