Upsetting Day: Corey Haim's Me, Myself, and I

One day in the late '80s, Corey Haim's manager thought, "What if we could make money off the stuff Corey does when he's not working?" At the same time, Corey Haim thought, "What if I'm the most interesting and wise boy in all the land?" And then Corey Haim's publicist said, "It sounds like you guys are about to make a direct-to-market VHS tape. Could we also maybe make it an apology video?" It was a tragic nuclear disaster of unchecked exploitation meeting encouraged self-indulgence. Maybe you've even heard of it:

Like other videos of its time, Me, Myself & I was made exclusively for a hypothetical fan who would be fascinated by any, literally any, information about a celebrity. You got to spend a "typical day" with Corey Haim, which is a lonely and awkward series of camera set ups that don't come close to filling 30 minutes of content. Even if you don't know how Corey Haim's career and life went, this video will take all the joy in your heart and crush it into diarrhea. In fact, let's make a rule right now none of us are allowed to Google Corey Haim. Let's pretend we are a 1989 teen girl who knows Corey from Teen Beat, our mom rented us Me, Myself, & I, and we're reviewing this like a standalone piece of art.

The video is presented by DEEKYVISION, and I already broke my no Googling rule to discover it does not exist. This VHS tape was a crime of such cosmic shame they ceased to ever be. I had plenty of time to do this research because it takes forty seconds for Corey Haim to write his name, and I didn't add a hilarious extra thirty seconds to that time. He genuinely does not seem to remember how to make letters, meaning he came to set unprepared for his role as "Yourself, Writing Your Own Fucking Name."

A video collage of childhood photos leads into behind-the-scenes footage of him getting ready to play hockey. He's not on a team or with a group of friends. The editor carefully demonstrates how every human in this building is a crew member paid by DEEKYV_##error,forbidden## to film a scene of Corey Haim playing hockey by himself. A full film crew is watching a sad boy do nothing because his agent said, "Corey likes skating. Maybe we do a hockey thing? Look, I also represent Gary Coleman and I'm very busy."

After, and again this isn't a funny joke number, two and a half minutes, Corey skates up in a HAIMSTER jersey and delivers the video's first line:

Corey's mom wasn't prepared for this. She thinks for a long time and answers, "You were, uh, fi--" Corey interrupts her to say, "FIVE AND A HALF YEARS OLD I WAS ON THE ICE." So he knew the whole time. Which means after only one sentence we know this both wasn't written AND the main actor isn't going to stay on script. They really did just point a camera at a child actor and tell him, "Say whatever. I'm sure you're fascinating."

Corey also explains his dad knew how to skate, and we're done. That's his thoughts on himself and his relationship with hockey. He adds, "That's about it, I really enjoy it. It's a free sport. You can glide and skate." Oh, and by the way, I promise I won't lie or exaggerate about a single Corey Haim quote. But I can't tell you the rest of this one because it's something about how tight laces can cause athlete's foot which must not be that important since he babbles it while skating away from the microphone.

Dozens of behind-the-scenes shots make it clear this is a closed set and not real footage from a pick-up hockey game. Corey's opponent is obviously a local hockey pro paid to pretend Corey Haim is scoring on him. But he just can't. He just fucking can't.

The guy grabbed Corey's weak shot out of the air and tossed it back at him like it was trash.

"... nice save," said Corey.

The next shot is apparently after the goalie got some notes from the producer to let Corey score, so he theatrically goes for an imaginary shot and leaves the goal wide open. He looks like Jon Lovitz pitching a Saturday Night Live character called "Mr. Sarcastic Goalie." The point is, this is worse than it had to be. They didn't have to leave these shots in! If you specifically hated Corey Haim and snuck into the editing booth to humiliate him, you wouldn't change a single frame of Me, Myself & I.

Every moment of "content" is surrounded by three extra angles of the same thing in black and white. They really show how Hollywood magic brings things to life. What they did was film Corey Haim and the crew with cameras! And thank God, because this documentary-style filmmaking led to moments of real vulnerability like this:

They slip in a very short interview with three fangirls who are there to watch the Haimster. They give no reason to believe they're actors, but if they're real Corey fans, it's weird they know about this shoot, right? Were there fliers posted to "come watch Lost Boys star, Corey Haim, remember how to play hockey" and the only people to show up were these three girls and his mom? What I'm saying is I hope these fans are paid actresses, because if it's the other thing I think I'm going to cry.

The Haimster clumsily skates, surrounded by strangers paid to be there while his voiceover equates hockey to acting. "When I play hockey, the rink is my stage," he says over a shot of him unsurely sliding a puck into an unguarded goal. It is a perfect comedy beat. A savage burn by the video editor still trying to destroy Corey Haim.

They cut to Corey getting makeup applied at his other passion: baseball. To really show how a movie star plays baseball, this goes on for a long time. Real athletes need a fourth, maybe fifth layer of foundation before they embrace the grind. A woman picks out a wardrobe for him, and there's an Asian man taking pictures of him. I think we're meant to believe this is a paparazzo hoping to sell pictures of Corey Haim's batting practice? Corey gives the man a treat: both his signature poses. The "Hh. Yeah," and the "Guh?"

Corey goes through what would be a very ordinary little league practice if he was on a baseball team and not alone with several adults touching up his eyeliner and taking pictures. To his credit, Corey Haim seems like a mid-level high school athlete, but this is nothing. You get the sense he's trying to show off, but to whom? If you were a walrus seeing baseball for the first time you'd say, "Okay, sure, I can do that." It's one production crew trying to make it look like a lonely boy is playing in a real baseball game while another production crew destroys this fantasy with shots of an empty field and cameramen. It's also worth mentioning how weird and self-conscious Corey is acting. Like, try to imagine you're seventeen years old and told to do something as ordinary as baseball, but be so fucking cool about it. He's fielding easy grounders for a director screaming, "Cooler, make it cooler! Sexier!" He was doomed from the start.

Plus, Corey Haim's greatest enemy, the editor of Me, Myself & I, strikes again when Corey is bragging about the rush he feels when he connects with a base-clearing home run and I swear to Christ it cuts to this shot of him cranking one that almost rolls to third base. This sad little dribble into a triple play:

With that monstrous, mean-spirited finale to the baseball segment, it jump cuts to tennis. The synthesizer background music now has samples of Corey Haim going, "YEAH, BOOOYY!" He delivers the line like... how do I put this? Corey Haim says "YEAH, BOOOYYY" exactly like a prison gang surrounding a wounded Flavor Flav. It's a half-hearted, cruel impersonation. And look, I'm not an expert on this, but if you're scratching audio samples and beats together, adding "YEAH, BOOOYY" to your hip hop song is like adding, "May the force be with you, Darth Vader" to your sci-fi movie. We all know what that's from, and it's not yours. What are you doing?

While "yeah, boooyyy" is chopped into 70 different lengths over the sound of Bossa Nova Tempo 2, we get more of Corey Haim's high level thoughts on very common activities:

I swear to God, the editor took this line about crushing the ball with his aggressive playstyle and cut it together with Corey softly dinking balls back to the tennis pro who is doing every goddamn thing he can to set Corey up for overhead smashes. If Corey hit one at any point during this tennis shoot, it was not included. Another perfect comedy bit by the meanest post-production crew in the history of DEEKYVISION.

I haven't really left out any material. We're seven and a half minutes into this video and learned that Corey has heard of hockey, baseball, and tennis and has twoish things to say about each of them. We watch him gently rallying to someone off-camera, and again, what a nightmare it must have been to be Corey Haim and be told, "We're going to lob you a few easy balls. Hit them back, but Corey, listen. Corey, I need you to be just rad as shit."

And once again, the guy they hired to make Corey look good at sports couldn't resist clowning him. Here's why you don't camp at the net all day, asshole!

They cut to a shot of him hanging on a girl for some fan photos. We're meant to believe this is the kind of thing that happens to movie stars at tennis practice, but the illusion is once again shattered when a makeup artist comes over to touch him up. And they are being photographed by the same guy stalking him in the baseball scene. So either this is the one LA paparazzo following him around and betting his livelihood on only Corey Haim photos, or this is all fake. And, like, I think it'd be okay to fake this sort of thing? Corey Haim has definitely met a fan and taken a picture with them, so this would represent a real experience in his life. What's weird is they're going through so much trouble to SHOW US how they set this up. Me, Myself & I is working much harder to make fun of Corey than it is to say anything about anything.

This is like a magician who tells you how they do the trick, only the trick is a kid trying to look cool while he plays sports with himself. Little moments are left in to humiliate Corey like a shot of him looking at the fake paparazzo and asking, "are the cameras ALWAYS here?" Wait, does he not know they hired him? Or does he know, but not know we know? It's sad both ways! And speaking of sad, Corey's hobbies are so uninteresting and his thoughts on them so brief that any dumb thing he says or sudden movement he makes goes in the movie. A clip where he can't remember the tennis pro's name? Decker maybe? Keep it in. A shot of him getting some footwork closeups? That's fucking gold:

You now know everything Corey Haim knows about tennis. Let's go for a drive. But first, the crew isn't sure how to rig a camera on a car, so there's some footage of them figuring that out. Here are about 70% of Corey's thoughts on driving:

Not all of this is his fault! He's a child! The closest he's ever come to wisdom was when he got a second opinion about Corey Feldman's heroin dealer. They should have never pointed a microphone at him and said, "Share your thoughts on driving with your idea of a teen girl completely in love with you."

This segment goes on for a few minutes. Corey Haim silently driving through the Hollywood hills. The main point seems to be letting us know the person of driving age living in Los Angeles who starred in a movie called License to Drive, operates his own car sometimes. Not in a cool way or anything. They don't pull into an abandoned mall for parking lot cookies. It's simply him, alone on the road, not quite staying in the lines.

So far, Corey has played three sports and gone for a drive. The only unusual thing about his life seems to be the people who decided to film it and his total lack of companionship. I'm not lying when I say this goes on for two minutes of silence after he explains to the viewer how they are filming him in a car, and what a car is. No 17-year-old is smart, but the filmmakers would like us to believe there has never existed one with less to say than this.

They cut back to him in his home. They leave in the audio of the director saying, "Okay, go ahead." And still scriptless, Corey lets loose with another panicked description of the things happening to him. Okay, go ahead:

Oh, it turns out "Decker" was "Shane." And this wasn't filmed in order since Corey is referencing a dip in his pool he hasn't taken yet. But he's right about how they're "gonna be sitting on the couch and talking a bunch, uhh," which brings me to what I think is the meanest thing the editor did to him:

In this shot we approach Corey who seems to be expecting us. He says only two words and fumbles them both. "Sup? ... Hello." Then nothing. That's it. And if that was all it was, it would be a tragedy. It shouldn't be possible to screw up the basics of human functions by this much and still be alive. There should be specialized nerd slugs who devour you if you've failed at cool so grotesquely. But it's worse, because they open this shot with a shot of them setting it up. From the black and white camera, we get to see Corey Haim selecting the perfect alluring pose to use when pretending to meet a sexy home intruder before fucking it all up. It is embarrassment on a scale that would make a nerd slug puke.

With no point to any of this other than sadistic humiliation, it cuts away to Corey floating in a pool. He drifts through the frame, relaxed on an inflatable toy. Hey, girls! They finally captured the stated intent of the video! A cute boy living his movie star lifestyle! They, of course, immediately undermine this by pulling out to reveal how they got the shot. A group of strangers watched as a bored grip shoved Corey across the water. All happiness is an illusion, teen girls. Fame is noisy loneliness. Corey Haim fans, we are each alone, lying to ourselves so we can better learn how to lie to others...

... our despair is an iceber-- oh shit, I'm only halfway done with this video. This would be a graceless and depressing place to end an article, which makes it the perfect time to tell you Part I of Me, Myself & I is done! Next week we'll finish up with Corey's thoughts on... oh no. Oh no, we're not going to like it. See you then!

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