Remembering... Corey Haim

I think the life of Corey Haim - which ended around 2:15 AM on this day in 2010 at the age of 38 - best represents the place where the disparate threads of celebrity discourse most commonly present here at the Pop Culture Institute weave themselves from nebulous concepts into something very nearly concrete*... Which is not to say that if he'd stayed in Canada, avoided the pitfalls of youthful fame, or even remained out of show business altogether that Haim would not have met the precise demise he did today. It's just that, you know, I'm pretty sure he'd have had a kajillion times better chance at surviving his life without everyone around him consistently feeding his every self-destructive whim is all. In my opinion.

Haim's first feature film role was in 1984's Firstborn, which starred Sarah Jessica Parker and Robert Downey Jr, which he followed with minor roles in Secret Admirer and Murphy's Romance (both 1985) and the lead in a feature film version of Stephen King's novella Silver Bullet, opposite Gary Busey, in the same year. His breakthrough, though, was probably in the 1986 film Lucas, with Kerri Green, Charlie Sheen, and Winona Ryder; the role with which he will always be best associated (especially given his tragic demise) is Joel Schumacher's 1987 film The Lost Boys.

Now, I realize that hindsight is 20/20, but given the number of red flags Haim worked with in just the first half decade of his career - before turning 16 even! - would have been enough to send me screaming for a job application form at 7-11. Fame, as we have learned, is probably the most intoxicating drug of all; for someone with the propensity for addiction it all became more than he could bear...

*If you can find a way to say this without sounding so pompous, help me out...
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