The former MTV VJ peaked in the aughts.
Now, hes being lauded by the Hollywood elite.
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Itll be a good time; you canget tickets here.
Come to the desert.Past the rock gardens and the suntanned retirees.
Past the looming peaks of the San Bernardinos and the windmills that shine like sci-fi sentinels.
Past the hippie chicken farms, the ammo shops, the CBD emporiums.
Past the point where the pavement stops and the road turns to sand.
Here, you will find the man who made My Dick.
He partied with Paris Hilton when she was the most famous person in America and Charlie Sheen whenhewas.
As you might guess, this was not the worlds most sustainable career path.
Things slowed down for a good ten years.
Looking back on this period, he thinks of a lesson a meditation instructor once taught him.
When you get a pie in the face, enjoy it.
Dont play the victim.
Smile, he says, miming pedagogically.
Thats a good pie.
Not to get all Tears of a Clown on you, but he has tasted a lot of pies.
Having lived in cities his entire life, he felt exhausted by humanity.
Im not trying to be a recluse, he says.
I just feel things too much.
He bought the property in February 2020.
It was supposed to be just a weekend getaway, but, well, you know what happened.
It wasnt just the pandemic that sent Rex into the desert.
The truth is he was tired.
Of calling his agent, wondering if there was anything out there.
Of clawing for any opportunity.
Of sitting around hung-over, doing the math on how long he could get by until the next paycheck.
He had hit a rough patch, but hed had a good run, reinvented himself several times over.
Still, Los Angeles can embalm you.
Instead, he would move to the middle of nowhere and see what came next.
On the advice of a buddy, he buried 30 days worth of food and bought a gun.
He had only two goals each day: Stay warm and eat.
There was something pure about it.
Like, this is my commute, he says on the drive up, gesturing to the prehistoric landscape.
Hes dressed in the local style in a weathered white T-shirt and fancy Crocs.
Any time I go to L.A., I start feeling my shoulders tense up.
When Im up here, I immediately whoosh.This place heals you.
Every single night, youre in a different Salvador Dali painting.
Then one day, the phone rang.
Its only when you surrender that things happen.
Rex is not just his looks,but his story wont make sense without talking about them.
Young Simon had a vulpine stare, piercing green eyes, and abs for days.
And he has aged well.
He doesnt have the baby face anymore, but the wrinkles have seasoned him.
It was a crazy time, he says.
He was attending community college and working at a potato-sack factory.
I went to a rave in San Francisco, and I met this beautiful girl.
I was enamored with her beauty because where I lived there werent a lot of models.
Talking to Rex is a bit like riding a conversational roller coaster.
He dropped everything and moved in with her.
Modeling wasnt happening for the girlfriend, but all of a sudden, it was happening for him.
I would drive her to castings.
Im sitting with her son on my lap, and the casting director comes out saying, Whos he?
Shes like, Oh, hes not a model.
Theyre like, He has a good look for this job we need.
The next thing you know, I was on a flight to Milan.
I got her dream, and we didnt last.
Was he a good model?
Thats what I didnt like about it you just stand there.
You have no soul.
I said to them, I have no music experience, no journalism experience, no television-hosting experience.
They said, Perfect, you got the job.
Next thing you know, Im on live TV with a mic in my hand.
Rex was not a natural interviewer; he spent much of the workday stoned.
But being a handsome fuckup was in no way a professional hindrance at MTV.
I immediately wanted to protect his goofy ass, fellow VJ Kennedy wrote in her memoir.
Simon was a baby, but a beautiful baby with a great heart and a huge penis.
(More on that later.)
Our female viewers love him, an exec toldNewsweekat the time.
If you were watching MTV in the mid-90s, there was a good chance Rex was your first crush.
Gus Van Sant liked what he saw too.
Im reading with Matt Damon.
I start reading the lines robotically, and he says, Simon, I have to stop you.
This is one of the worst auditions Ive ever seen.
Still, Van Sant spotted a seed of talent and sent him to acting class.
He was not low energy, nor was his presence neutral.
He was irreverent, anarchic but always sweet.
Rex recalls this period as the best years of his life.
Then, in 1997, MTV fired Rex and two other VJs.
The online grid gave him a holding deal.
They were throwing money around, he says.
They would give me six figures tonotaudition for NBC.
(Inexplicably allowed to lurk is Simon Rex, the current comedy killer, sniffed the ChicagoTribune.)
The early aughts are not a hallowed time in American memory, but they were Rexs time.
The rest of the time, he partied hard.
Through the L.A. club circuit, he became buds with Paris Hilton.
Shed come out to the club on roller skates.
Shed roll up to guys and be like, Youre so hot.
(Tabloid canon says they were dating, but Rex maintains they were just friends who held hands sometimes.
Photographic evidence indicates they were maybe more.)
Soon he started rapping with a flow inspired by his teenage idol Too $hort.
At first, it was just for fun.
Rex would burn CD-Rs of their tracks and hand them out to A-listers like Leonardo DiCaprio at clubs.
There wouldve been a lot more footage of me being a total wasted asshole.
He is reluctant to talk too openly about those days when a recorder is running.
One, he doesnt want to throw anyone under the bus.
And two, he doesnt want to sound like hes bragging.
But he tells me two stories.
The first came when he was feeling himself so much he went out and bought a Porsche.
Theres no way Im going to not sound like a dick saying this, he begins.
Then, miracle of miracles, he wound up going home with the Playmate of the Year.
Talk about an ego boost, right?
The next morning, the bed looked like a murder scene.
All the orange had stained her sheets.
She woke me up, going, What the fuck?
I had to sheepishly put my clothes on while her sheets were ruined.
I went from being the man to crawling out of there like a loser.
Eventually, the Dirt Nastypersona became a poisoned chalice.
The character was supposed to be satirical, Simons party-boy lifestyle turned up to 11.
Touring played havoc with his relationships.
I wouldnt want that.
Back in Hollywood, his window was closing.
His agents would call him about an audition only to find he was on the road in Cincinnati.
Then those phone calls stopped.
They were like, Sorry, bro.
Memories are short in Hollywood, says Zucker.
The studio considered him no longer a name.
He subsisted on indie movies, shitty comedies, web series.
Since turning 40, he had been in an existential tailspin.
He was a grown man with gray hair whose longest relationship had been with his business manager.
He quit smoking weed and found he had all these emotions he had no idea how to deal with.
He enjoyed his freedom, but he was learning the downside of a life with few attachments.
Should he have gotten married and had kids?
Pursued a real career?
His days of getting pleasure from partying were long behind him.
One thing was clear: Rapping to teenagers about doing drugs wasnt cute anymore.
Theres something sad about the old rock star trying to be young and sexy, he says.
You cant age gracefully into that, at least not as Dirt Nasty.
He wanted to give it up, but the gigs were his main source of income.
(He had gotten into Vine as a lark, but he never made any money from that.)
What else could he do?
His own mind was exhausting him, always running a million miles a minute.
He tried everything to get it to slow down.
You know how many times Ive gone to, like, yoga, meditation workshops, self-help books?
None of them really worked.
Certain people are just wired the way they are, he says.
Both elements are in his blood.
His father, Paul Cutright, is a breath-work coach.
He has been doing it for 40 years, since the days of alternative psychiatrist Stanislav Grof.
Thats what happens, Rex says.
A safer source of wisdom, he says, is bumper stickers.
STAY IN THE MOMENT.
RUN TO THOSE WHO SEEK THE TRUTH, AND RUN FROM THOSE WHO CLAIM TO HAVE FOUND IT.
Its corny New Age shit, but theres a lot of truth to them.
He said, Were in the moment between the caterpillar and the butterfly.
On the other side of this, theres an awakening.
But right now, everyones in the uncomfortable sludgy phase.
(Talk about a fucking avatar of purity, the filmmaker Kel ONeill once told me.)
Baker broke out with 2015sTangerine,a Christmas picaresque shot entirely on the iPhone 5S.
It appeared on many critics year-end lists and earned an Oscar nomination for Willem Dafoe.
The characters a sleazeball, constantly spouting off about the comeback hes sure he deserves.
Hes not a million miles from guys Rex knew in L.A., the land of narcissistic sociopaths.
Or, for that matter, Dirt Nasty himself.
Ive been around enough ridiculous, macho … Its not like Im playing a professor at Harvard Law.
I could speak this language.
Rex has put a lot of effort over the years into not being an asshole like Mikey.
Hes a horrible person who will do whatever it takes to get to the top, he says.
Id like to think Im not.
Unless Im completely delusional.
The same month, a vape company offered him $20,000 to do an ad campaign.
He turned them both down.
Baker is about the same age as Rex and had been tracking his career since the 90s.
He loved following the kooky comedy skits Rex did on Vine.
They proved he was a survivor.
I was like, Lets stop pretending this guys not talented, Baker says.
Rex drove straight to Galveston.
In Hollywood physics, a star is born through a precise combination of actor, role, and moment.
ThinkBradley Cooper inThe Hangoveror Channing Tatum inMagic Mike.Rex is not wrong to thinkRed Rocketcould be that vehicle for him.
In the films most painful scene, he reveals his true self in a fumbling, inarticulate monologue.
The horrible awkwardness of it, the way it sinks into your stomach, then keeps going?
Mikeys vulnerability is Rexs, too.
I dont know if I could have gone to those depths before I got slapped down, he says.
Its pure slapstick, and it brings down the house every time.
Only when you stop laughing do you realize thats how Mikey treats people, too.
It happened when he was still a teenager, living with the girl with the scar.
So at the urging of his girlfriend, he did two video sessions for gay-porn impresario Brad Posey.
Solo stuff, just masturbation.
This was the early 90s.
Sometimes Rex will say it was 30 years ago and any ill feelings have been worn away by time.
Other times, he admits he doesnt love the way his brush with porn has continued to define him.
Girlfriends sometimes used it against him in fights.
It was the thing most tabloids led with.
He just made two tapes, then moved on with his life.
How many of your orgasms doyouremember?
Hed had a girlfriend early in quarantine, but they broke up shortly after he finished the movie.
Im not kidding, man.
I was losing it, he says.
Within the insular world of European film festivals, the Cannes premiere ofRed Rocketwas a coronation.
Rex walked the red staircase in a navy Armani tux, looking tall and tanned.
He seemed as if he belonged there.
That night, theRed Rocketteam had dinner together to celebrate.
Rex ducked out before dessert.
The sudden rush of stimuli was too much for him to take.
He went back to his room and lay in his bed alone.
He arrived in leopard-print swim trunks, still damp from a decompressing dip in the sea.
Even the most hardened psyche would have trouble standing up to a roomful of clapping Frenchmen in tuxedos.
The applause and the love, that was one of the highlights of my life, he said.
Rex was crossing the threshold separating one version of the industry from another.
In one, you frolic with bikini babes; in the other, you attend galas and tributes.
There is a certain privilege in prestige.
A24s stable of stars includes Robert Pattinson, an old Harrodian, and Riley Keough, Elviss granddaughter.
Rex never went back to college, and much of his education has come as an adult.
Hes got the autodidact thing of wanting to read every book and listen to every podcast.
At Deauville,Red Rocketwon both the Jury Prize and the Critics Award.
The next day, Rex was at a glitzy dinner in Paris.
Im a shiny object they can say they met, he says.
Im still not one of them, but theyre accepting me into their world.
Over here, theres a fire pit; up there is a spot for hammocks.
For relaxation, theres an outdoor tub; for entertaining, a dining table carved from Tahoe cedar.
A guesthouse is under construction near the driveway.
Now Im trying to remain humble.
I know this is fleeting.
But its impossible not to think, at least a little bit, about the road ahead.
(An A24 movie primarily pays in cachet.)
When we get to the house, he tells me another story about money.
Before the pandemic, he was traveling around Southeast Asia, paying his way by making Cameos.
But I felt like the luckiest guy in the world.
People could call him washed up.
Hell, he was saying it himself for ten years.
But somewhere deep inside, he knew an opportunity was around the corner.
He could just tell it wasnt over for him.
Is that a contradiction?
We sit on Rexs porch and talk about fate.
I tell him I think its all about the facts you choose to build your own narrative.
I ask him what will happen if the dream doesnt come true.
What if the movie flops, the Oscar buzz dissipates, and his comeback lasts all of one film?
Thats fine, he says.
Because look where I am now.
He made a good movie.
Even if it fizzles, maybe it will become a cult classic one day.
The house is paid off, his bills are low.
Its not the end of the world, he says.
Id probably get a second mattress and swap it out.
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