Corey Feldman appeared on Larry King Live Wednesday to discuss the passing of Corey Haim. The two points he wanted to address after the jump.
1.) People shouldn’t speculate on the cause of death. “Until the coroner’s report comes out, until we have specific evidence, until we know exactly what the toxicology reports say, nobody knows, and nobody is going to know,” Feldman said. “We all are aware of the fact that Corey Haim has had a long and detailed drug history and battled addiction for many, many years. I know it better than anybody, because I’ve been the guy stuffing charcoal down his throat when he was ODing. I’ve been the guy trying to make him, you know, stand up or say a complete sentence. I’ve been there with him through it many, many times, and it’s happened very badly and very intensely through the years on may occasions. However, most recently, he’s been honestly in the best frame of mind that he’s ever been in, in the past year. I mean, I would say with his mom battling cancer, he’s really showed up, he’s really become a man. He’s been there, he’s been there for her, taking care of her, being responsible.”
He said Haim was known to be showing symptoms that could’ve represented kidney or heart failure from either a bad cocktail of prescription drugs (according to Feldman, Haim had just begun seeing a new treatment specialist) or from his body shutting down after years of abuse. That’s something Haim feared, and confronted with a trip to the doctor on their reality show, The Two Coreys. “I had these palpitations, like panic attacks from the abuse I’ve put my body through,” Haim told EW before the show’s 2007 premiere. “When [Feldman] felt one of them from the beginning to end, he cut the cameras, pulled me aside, ripped my mike off, and said, ‘Dude, I need you just to breathe right now.’ Then he said, ‘Do you want to help other people and maybe show the side effects or after effects of what we did when we were kids, man?’”
2. Though he appreciates the outpouring for Haim now, Hollywood and the media need to think about how they treat child stars while they’re alive. “Where were all these people the last 10 years, the last 15 years of Corey’s life?” Feldman asked. He said Haim was living in a month-to-month rental apartment with his mother, with nothing to his name — not even a car. Feldman said child stars are put on a pedestal, discarded when their deemed no longer marketable, and then made fun of. It’s an issue he also addressed with EW in 2007:
EW: What would you say to people like Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears, who are still learning? What would your lives have been like 15 or 20 years ago if you had to worry about more than Teen Beat digging up dirt?
FELDMAN: Corey and I have been the brunt of many a joke and many a slam, and if we didn’t have rhino skin we wouldn’t be alive today due to all of the terrible things that people have said about us through the years. Teen magazines we’re always pretty even-handed because they didn’t want to slam the people they were promoting. It was more the People magazine, the Star magazine. I think Entertainment Weeklyhas been responsible for a few—
HAIM: Billion. [Both laugh] As far as drugs and stuff, I have no comment.
FELDMAN: People ask us all the time, what would you say to these kids, and what I say is: I think it’s completely natural for kids to make mistakes and learn lessons from those mistakes. But for people to sit there and dissect it and talk s— and parade other people’s problems around, I think that’s the sickness. If anything needs to get fixed in society, it’s people’s consumption of other people’s problems. We’re all made to make mistakes, nobody’s perfect.
HAIM: I’ve been perfect all of my life. [Both laugh]
FELDMAN: Besides Corey Haim.
More Corey Haim:
Remembering Corey Haim
Corey Haim: 13 roles we’ll remember
Q&A with the Coreys
Q&A with ‘License to Drive’ star Corey Haim
“If anything needs to get fixed in society, it’s people’s consumption of other people’s problems.”
Exactly.
Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where we focused on positive news and entertainment and left all this negativity behind?
Where’s the fun in that?
Well it would be nice if people like YOU weren’t around.
Amen!
What’s with the random EW question – with Haim answering? Context?
it was from a 2007 interview… it was introduced in the sentence before the question.
Hooray for Corey Feldman. What an intellegent, thorough, and kind commentary on his friend.
No offense at all, but I always banked on Feldman being ‘the first to go’. I didn’t think he’d get himself together, and I am so happy to be wrong! Good for Corey Feldman, for stepping up to the plate, and being a basically good man!
So Haim couldn’t get another job because why exactly? Or was he entitled to fame and good fortune?
Yeah, why couldn’t he get a “regular” job like the rest of us? Would have helped to pay the bills and buy a car. Maybe Haim should have given up the acting drem and lead a “regular” life.
You really think this guy could have gotten a regular joe type job? There is no way I would have hired him just for the simple fact that he would have been a constant distraction in his place of employment. The paparazzi alone would have caused way too many problems. Then there are the fans wanting to see him at a regular type place. Nah he wouldn’t have lasted 10 minutes at a regular job.
He has many valid points there.
The parents of so-called child stars are the ones responsible for guiding them into a healthy adult life. Too many of them squander their child’s money or live vicariously through them, ultimately screwing them up and unable to cope with common human problems. That’s why so many drug themselves numb and pine for their glory days…long gone.
I’m not at all shocked by Haim’s death. It seemed imminent by his very public behavior especially in the past few years.
We are all the same, actor or not. Everybody needs to be doing a lot worrying about their own lives, and like Feldman said, they need to quit consuming anybodys’ pains that are in their direct view. Oh and all the RETARDED celebrity stalker magazines should’ve been told to take a hike in the 90s. I mean please Entertainment Tonight? More like Entertainment LOSER!!!
Where was everyone when he was living in a car with month to month rent?
Wow. Spoiled rotten “stars”. How about getting a normal job like the rest of the normal world.But i guess they were raised like they were gods.
“discarded when their deemed no longer marketable”
Love you EW, but please try to clean up the editing, and/or learn the difference between their and they’re.
look, this guy was a mess. He messed himself up nobody else did that for him. Feldman needs to stop blaming the media for pressure, joke, and negative media attention. everyone has pressure to deal with in their lives, not child or teen celebrities. how about this advise….grow up and move on with your life. Stop blaming everyone else for you being a drug user.
I’m sure Corey Feldman’s heart is in the right place, but I think he’s wrong. Everyone has to take personal responsibility for themselves. Not all child stars because messed up adults. People like Shirley Temple seem to be ok…and she was arguably one of the biggest child stars of the 20th Century. Mickey Rooney, too. There are countless others who tasted fame as children/teens and grew up to be functional adults…yet they don’t get the media attention of the ones who are more weak minded.
True, but Mickey Rooney had a successful transition into an adult acting career. And Shirley Temple worked in Congress, right? However, I remember hearing that Corey Haim dropped out of school at a very young age, so maybe that had something to do with it.
Mickey Rooney has had like 9 wives or something…that doesn’t exactly scream “okay” to me
I’m impressed with how Corey Feldman handled the interview. I still wish he and Haim had been more successful- they were both great actors. I agree with him about the way we treat child stars.
People making fun of and criticizing former child stars is not going to change. It happens to people who are CURRENTLY stars every day. It not the responsibility of others to give someone a job just because they were once famous. Especially if they have a drug problem. From everything I have ever read and experienced with drug addiction a addicts problems are not going to go away because they are supported by the industry or fans or family (family helps but only so much). Look at Heath Ledger. He was probably told how great he was everyday and could have any acting job, however, in the end it did not matter. While it would be nice to think that if people did something different this would not have happened the truth is the only one who could have changed anything is Corey Haim but now he will not have the chance.
Corey Feldman is a class act. Watch the video if you haven’t. Well reasoned and well said.