The Chad Michael Murray Diaries: A Phoenix Awakens
American actor and renowned 00s heartthrob, Chad Michael Murray, finds himself deep in a professional rut. His last two films have resulted in heavy net losses for the production companies and his star is waning. Hard.
While on location in the Irish countryside filming scenes for the Hallmark Channel true story series, Angels In The Car Park, Murray is embroiled in a much publicised disagreement with episode director Marlon E. Klein. Informed by an anonymous onlooker, tabloid newspapers carried news of the contretemps, quoting Murray as requesting ‘a wax bath, STAT’ for his co-star, Amalie Haversham, before going on to describe the experience of recording an intimate scene between the pair as being akin to ‘kissing one of the fucking Muppets’. Subsequent to the high-profile outburst, Murray is relieved of his lead role depicting Seamus O’Murphy, father to the seventeen children who claimed to have seen 10 celestial angels play a 90-minute game of five-a-side football in Timahoe church car park in 1984.
This (imagined) diary series documents Murray’s attempts at emotional and professional resurrection, one perfectly chosen indie track at a time.
Death Cab For Cutie’s The Sound of Settling provides just enough punch needed to lift me off the couch of my hotel suite, whip my bag over my shoulder and pop down 15 flights of stairs (if your hair bounced with this much body when you ran down stairs you’d wouldn’t take the lift either). I’m exhausted and sweating like Brando in Dunkin’ Donuts by the time I reach street level, but still manage to throw in one of those boyish fragrance-ad jumps down the final steps onto the sidewalk. As I land, I tease a corner-of-the-mouth grin to life and squint up and down the street so hard that I actually give myself a pretty bad migraine.
Clouds continue to gather overhead both, like, literally and metaphorically, with the realisation that Irish people still resemble muddied peasants in a medieval C movie, and dress like they rolled in extra strength glue before rubbing themselves up against the contents of an Oxfam store. Mercifully, a bus full of these chudbuckets drives past serving my reflection straight back to me with interest. I’m taking the op to tweak a microstrand of my fringe just over my left eye when I note that the bus is going to Dublin, the so-called capital city of this damp diaper of a country. It goes without saying that I’d expect a blacked out Tesla Model X to whisk this dangerously dimpled ass anywhere further than to the shitter, but CMM’s finances have seen healthier days, so I hop on, pretending I’m dumb and mute to the driver to skip the fair (my former agent said taking the lead in the Little Jordy No Words movie would ‘sound the death knell of my career’. Who’s laughing now, retard).
Now, listen, I’m sure you’ve seen people in movies or on TV sitting on busses and looking all maudlin and shit out the window, with the roadside sort of passing across their face, mirrored through the prism of the glass. You wouldn’t know this because you’re most likely too ugly to be paid to appear on a screen, but in the business we call that shot a ‘sad bus window scene’ and let’s just say that along with an episode-ender-jaw-clench-and-squint, it’s pretty much my fucking calling card. And maybe you’re enough of a cum-gargling chode to think it’s a simple piece of acting. Basic. Nothing special. Well with all due respect or whatever, fuck you, bro: these are the moments where heartthrobs are crafted from the stinking ether.
When I actually get down to it, though, it’s weird, because even though Big Sur by The Thrills is playing when I’m walking down the bus aisle, I can’t help actually feeling a little bit, well, I dunno, genuinely sad? I suppose it’s because if I, like, reflect or whatever, maybe I sort of deserved to be kicked off the Angels shoot? Without really thinking, I follow the emotion, and maybe I feel a little bad for saying things that made Amalie probably definitely be bulimic again, even if it’s like totally her journey and Milk by Kings of Leon will push her through the worst of it.
Honestly, though, the weird thing is that when I swing my gently distressed military green shoulder bag onto the baggage shelf and lower myself down into my seat, I’m thinking less about the degree of moisture I’ll need in my eyes before I lean my chiseled cheekbone against the window and more about all this negative shit that I’m in a way definitely responsible for. I’m actually thinking so deeply about it that I find myself actually, I think, crying. By now Legendary by Lou Barlow is playing, the bus is pulling out of this architectural diarrhoea fart of a town and I begin wondering if, maybe, where I am in my life, and who I am isn’t as totally rad as I had always imagined and been told hundreds of thousands of times by legions of very beautiful women, gay men and dangerously powerful entertainment executives.
And just before I have what I suppose you would call a breakthrough I guess, the corner of my eye catches this piece of paper on the floor between my low-rise white Chuck Taylor All Star Core Converse. Before I can bend down to pick it up a woman’s voice from the seat behind me goes, ‘God, I’m really sorry, would you mind passing that back to me? Dropped my ticket!’ Hand reaches down, hand clasps ticket, CMM turns slowly around and BOOM-FUCKING-SHAKALAKA-BOOM-BANG-BIDDLY-BOOM: go fuck yourself profound introspection, eat a stinky dick personal growth: there’s a babe on the bus! Repeat: babe ON. THE. BUS. The opening guitar of Paint The Silence by South cuts in, I’m giving burning eyes of passion on roids to a thunderbabe and with that Chad Michael Murray is back in the goddam game.
At least, I think I am…?
