Behind the Bell (Book Review)

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Flack
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Behind the Bell (Book Review)

Post by Flack »

Warning: this review is NSFW and contains adult material. You've been warned.

Title: Behind the Bell (2009)
Author: Dustin "Screech" Diamond

Dustin Diamond, the child actor who played occasionally loveably but mostly annoying character Screech on television's Saved by the Bell, fell on hard times in the early 2000s. In 2001, he left California and moved to Wisconsin. In 2003, he filed bankruptcy. In 2006, he started selling t-shirts in an attempt to keep from losing his house. Later that year, he released a sex tape. Finally, in 2009, he wrote and published Behind the Bell a scandalous tell-all book exposing the show's secrets and so much more.

So. Much. More.

Diamond sets the stage by introducing his castmates. He dubs Mark-Paul Gosselaar (who played the show's star, Zack Morris) as "the Golden Child," and is quick to point out that "Mark-Paul bleached his hair. It was a big secret, but I saw the evidence!" He complains that the entire cast walked around with their heads up Zack's ass. "If he liked a band, everybody would go buy the CD the next day." Dustin ponders why Zack is considered to be the star of the show when Screech got more fan mail on a weekly basis. Mark-Paul gets off easy as Diamond switches to Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, who he says was taking turns sleeping with Mark-Paul and Mario "A.C. Slater" Lopez. Diamond calls her a slut and a bitch and tells a story about how, during a remote shoot, all the good food was replaced with health food by food services due to "Tiffani's fat ass." Diamond refers to costar Elizabeth Berkley, who played Jessie Spano, as Tiffani's sloppy seconds, content to lock herself in whichever costar's dressing room Tiffani wasn't in.

After establishing the fact that all of his costars were terrible people, all of whom were terrible to him, Diamond sets the record straight about his sex life. I hope you're looking forward to reading about Screech's sex life, because it fills the next 100+ pages of the book. After Diamond was tricked into taking a Polaroid of his junk and having it passed around the set, Diamond claims people began referring to him as a tripod... you know. Diamond talks about how, like a rock star, he would point out extras to the show's producers to give backstage tours (of his dick) to. Diamond claims to have had sex with more than 2,000 women while working on the show, and later claims to have had sex "tens of thousands of times," a lot of which happened on the set. Diamond claims to have had set on pretty much every flat surface on the set. His other favorite spot to pick up chicks is Disneyland, and he includes a detailed list of all the best places to walk away with "stankfinger" (his word, not mine). Diamond even dishes on an affair he had with a high level NBC executive roughly 15 years his senior when he had just got his driver's license.

All wasn't rosy in Diamond's life. We get a few stories where people took advantage of him. He also explains a child actor law where 15% of a child actor's income goes into a separate account that they can't access until they turn 18, and by the time he turned 18, the other 85% of his income had already been spent by his parents. The fourth iteration of the show (Saved by the Bell: The New Class) wrapped up filming in 2000 and Diamond filed bankruptcy in 2003 so I'm guessing the 15% wasn't that much.

Oh, Screech also smoked a lot of weed, but not as much coke as some of the other actors. And also, Mark-Paul did steroids for a while. And everybody drank all the time.

As Diamond wraps up the book he wants everyone to know that Tiffani Amber Thiessen was only faking her tears when she was crying at the final wrap party. It's those kind of comments that make it tough to feel sympathetic for Diamond. After his childhood acting career ended and staring financial ruin in the face, Diamond took the opportunity to call out essentially every single person he had worked with and air every bit of dirty laundry he could come up with.

In 2020, the Saved by the Bell Boot launched with 10 episodes. All the kids from the original series except Diamond returned, and publicly Diamond questioned why he wasn't invited back. I hope the book sales were worth it.

Note: Dustin Diamond passed away from cancer in 2021.
"I failed a savings throw and now I am back."

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Re: Behind the Bell (Book Review)

Post by pinback »

It all came to a screeching halt.
I don't have to say anything. I'm a doctor, too.

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Flack
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Re: Behind the Bell (Book Review)

Post by Flack »

While Diamond's castmates were (rightfully so) pretty upset over how they were portrayed in the book, what really sealed the deal was when Lifetime bought the rights to the book and turned it into 2014's The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story. It's one thing to have a disgruntled former castmate write a book and say "this guy was a jerk" and "that girl was a slut," but it takes it to a whole different level when you're flipping channels and catch a lifetime "documentary" that portrays you in the same way.

Diamond did try some damage control. He went on Dr. Oz and did an interview with Oprah where he claimed "he had been taken advantage of" and then made the claim we've heard multiple times, that he didn't actually write the book -- a ghostwriter did, and that guy was the one who wrote all those mean things about his castmates by taking snippets of interviews Diamond had done and misconstruing the facts! I read a lot of dirt-dishing memoirs and every time someone gets mad about something that was in the book, the blame always shifts to the ghostwriter! Diamond went as far as to say it wasn't him in the sex tape of himself that he released. I did some (ahem) "research" and... it's possible it's not him. He's in it, but you never see his face or body during any actual sex scenes, so... maybe? Diamond's whole legacy seems to revolve around blaming everybody else for his troubles. The writers didn't like him. His castmates didn't like him. Other people got treated better than he did. People took advantage of him. People spent his money. Someone else wrote his book. Someone else starred in his sex tape. It's just on and on and one, one after another. In one of his last interviews, he said he thought he got cancer from staying in cheap hotels with asbestos.
"I failed a savings throw and now I am back."

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Ice Cream Jonsey
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Re: Behind the Bell (Book Review)

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

What a goddamn baby. He banged 20,000 gals or whatever the ghost writer claimed and still cried like a bitch about it.
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Re: Behind the Bell (Book Review)

Post by Casual Observer »

Maybe getting extreme amounts of pussy causes throat cancer, so i dodged that bullet. Actually Michael Douglas got throat cancer from the same thing so maybe it checks out. I bet screech went down so much he got HPV like Douglas.

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Re: Behind the Bell (Book Review)

Post by Tdarcos »

I wish to apologize for all the bad things posted here under my name over the years, it wasn't my fault, it was the result of the ghostwriter I hired, Paul Robinson. He wrote all the bad stuff. I did write all the good things.

Sincerely,
Tansin A. Darcos
Evil cannot create anything new
They can only corrupt and ruin
What good forces have invented or made.
- J.R.R. Tolkien

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Re: Behind the Bell (Book Review)

Post by Paul Robinson »

Tdarcos wrote: Sun Jun 06, 2021 1:47 pm I wish to apologize for all the bad things posted here under my name over the years, it wasn't my fault, it was the result of the ghostwriter I hired, Paul Robinson. He wrote all the bad stuff. I did write all the good things.

Sincerely,
Tansin A. Darcos
Okay, I'll confess. He is corret. Mr. Tansin A. Darcos never wrote any of these things. I did it.
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