I’m not going to lie to you. My Corey was always Corey Feldman. Haim was arguably cuter and Canadian to boot, but nobody did a mullet like Edgar Frog. And besides, I’ve always been a sucker for overbites. That’s just who I am.
So why am I so cut up over the sudden death of Corey Haim? Of course, it’s partially historical. The package deal the teen magazines were selling—which is to say, the Two Coreys, circa 1988—was just the kind of thing for which I—not quite a tween, circa 1988—was most definitely in the market. There was a time in my life when I could have acted out, line for line and in perfect pitch, any scene from The Lost Boys, Dream a Little Dream, or License to Drive upon request.
Maybe none of the Corey movies is a masterpiece (although at least one is a classic), but the fact of the matter is that whatever the Two Coreys had going was just as organic as it was creative PR or cynical marketing or anything else. Haim and Feldman had an authentic, palpable, and charming chemistry. You don’t have to be a thespian to make a great teen movie—you just have to be fun to watch, and both Coreys were, especially when they were together. Each had his own schtick, and said schticks were complementary. You can’t manufacture that sort of thing.
Like all great things, though, it had to come to an end. As the 80s turned into the 90s, the chants of “Lucas! Lucas!” faded and both Haim and Feldman drifted out of the limelight. There’s a long stretch of my life in which Corey Haim didn’t figure hardly at all, except in ritual pre-Halloween rewatches of The Lost Boys. During that time, there was some straight-to-video stuff, that Sega game, rumours about pretty intense drug use. Occasionally, you’d hear stories from friends in the city about how they’d gotten loaded with him a few weeks back.
Then, in 2007, when I was finally old enough to be nostalgic about being a kid (good timing, A&E), The Two Coreys premiered. I can’t say much about the series, because for me it was utterly unwatchable. Haim’s baby blues, so open and dancing and cheeky in my fond recollection, were swimming with poorly concealed panic and desperation. He was trying to make good on his potential, but just couldn’t seem to get out of his own way. In 2008, the need for validation was so intense that Haim took out an ad in Variety to ask his old industry for new work. I still can’t believe the people around him let him do that.
But even that’s a long time ago. Two years later, word is that Haim was clean and sober, taking care of his ailing mother, and working toward a directorial debut in a few months. If Hollywood loves anything, it’s a full-fledged Mickey Rourke-esque comeback. Who’s to say Corey Haim wasn’t finally due his? I know I would have paid to see it. And I’m awfully sad that I won’t get to.
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