Michael Berryman
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My Interview With Michael
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Michael Berryman
As I have mentioned in several of my previous interviews, attending a con (a convention with a theme in which we, the patrons, get a glimpse of stars we know and love) can be such an amazing moment in time!
There’s the anticipation as you wait in line beside people who add to your nervous excitement while waiting for their own turn. Then you have the intense focus of your attention to absorb as much as you can from the other’s interactions with the star you love, ahead of you!
Before you know it, it’s your turn to bask in this soft shine from the star you came to see in daylight! But what will you do with your brief time?
As you approach the table and the euphoria overcomes you, your mind races as you try to figure out what to say or ask that hasn’t already been said or asked before!
You desperately want this star to see you and shine down on you and only you! A moment in time you will always treasure. A story to brag about to your friends and family later.
However, some times we may forget this brilliant star in front of us, as talented as they are, is human too. Have friends and families of their own. And yes, they have had their own trials and tribulations.
I have always been a firm believer that a movie or TV show does not define an actor. Even though we may try to identify with their character in our own lives, is it not what the actor has brought with them that actually attributes to their character?
Personally, I love to spend my precious moments with these stars, trying to get a glimpse of their essence. Not so much the stories they were casted in but what makes them shine so brilliantly as a person?
This next interview I have for you, which is such an honor for me to be given this opportunity, lets you see a glimpse of his essence. And let me tell you, the shine that he bestows on you will never dim or fade! His smile is beautiful and contagious. It’s as if he charges the shine we all have inside us!
Let me introduce you to Mr. Michael Berryman. You will know him from his roles in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Hills Have Eyes, Star Trek, and The X-Files, to name a few.
At the latest NJ Horror Con in AC, I was determined to meet Mr. Berryman! I had the very same nervous anticipation as others around me. My turn came, and as I looked down on his table and saw all these wonderful headshots from the movies and TV shows I grew up with, the one thing that drew my attention the most... was a single hardback book entitled "It’s All Good!".
I knew then exactly how I wanted to spend my precious moments with him! Little did I know, that book would reveal more about him than I could have ever dared hope for!
Let's let him give you a glimpse of his new book, “It’s All Good!”.
Tammy - Thank you, Michael, for giving our readers a chance to know more about you! We have so much to cover! Speaking of cover, let’s talk about the cover of your book "It’s All Good”.
I have to say, it intrigued me right from the beginning! Can you tell us about the cover and why you chose it?
Michael - At first I had plan on doing a head shot but I wasn’t really happy with that idea. I started going through family photos I had inherited and I came across this photo of my sister, my father and myself. Knowing how I wanted to portray my story, seen through the eyes of this small boy, it fit.
Tammy - I think it’s perfect! You can just feel the love it emits. Your father is so handsome, strong, and protective. While your sister and you look so happy and loved. A picture that so many of us may have of our own.
Already we feel ourselves identifying with you, but this time not as a character in a movie or TV show. But as a sweet, innocent child with a full life ahead of them!
I opened your book, and your very first sentence is (and I quote) "As a story has a beginning, so do our lives." I love that! A perfect way to lead in to telling your story!
But before we get into your story, I’m curious: did you write this book yourself?
Michael: Every word! When I had to dance the dance with the literary agent and co-writer it got to a point where it was obvious to me they were going to change the narrative. They were going to change the feel and perspective of the young boy’s life. They wanted a movie star story.
After going back and forth over a year I said no. I am taking full control over it. I wrote every word myself.
Tammy: I am so impressed that you did! Too often, stars have ghostwriters write their books, and though they still may be interesting, having a star write their own book lets us actually see it through their own eyes!
Michael: That is correct. That is exactly the way I describe in the beginning. I invite you into the young boy’s mind. I want you to be comfortable in a theater chair inside his head, experiencing through his eyes, so you get the emotional context, not content - context.
Tammy - And its raw.
Michael - Very raw.
Tammy - Let’s talk about the beginning of your life.
Michael: My father was at ground zero at Hiroshima. The reason he was there, was to see the affects radiation from nuclear weapons would have on people.
Ironically he found that out, in a bittersweet manner, by having a premature son with multiple birth defects. He soon realized my skull was fused, I would go blind and soon die.
My first grade class room was having my skull reconstructed so I could survive.
Tammy: Ok, so you discussed the medical issues you had as a child in the very first chapter. You lay it all out for us to see. Heart wrenching! Not only as a person who is trying to wrap our minds around all that you went through but also as a parent.
And I think even more so because your parents were so hands on with your treatments. Your father there for you as a nurosurgeon, during your surgery! Your mother there as a nurse caring for you not only as a patient but as her own child!
Most parents come in after their child is all cleaned up and taken care of but they were there with you for all of the stages of these amazing medical procedures that allowed you to be with us today. I can’t even imagine their pain of seeing you going through all that you did!
I mean just look at this little boy on the cover, how could they not? That beautiful care free smile. It just makes me want to scoop him up, protect him and give him the most I can and they did! Its obvious through your smile from then and now.
Michael: My mother had the emotional burden of giving birth to a premature child. My father, the idea during surgery, is my child going to live? They were wondering I’m sure, one how to proceed? Two, I know they were trying to deal with not just grief but responsibility.
Responsibility went beyond the family realm. Its axis painted a picture of a war. A horrible terrible war. My father brought home pictures of vaporized shadows that used to be humans. This touched him deeply, we had many conversations about that.
Tammy: And yet, the outlook you had as a child, through your eyes, is so uplifting, innocent and inspiring! My heart ached for you, but your tone was just as you titled the book, "It’s all good!”
I have to know, was there any time you were angry to why this happened to you?
Michael: I was never angry about my situation. I never felt that I was cheated. I never felt like I was being punished. I never felt resentment. Because I knew that there were people who also had syndromes that were challenging.
I mention Billy in the book. Billy had polio. I mention how I was angry not that he had polio but I was angry at the people who were ignorant, disrespectful, and mean. At a very, very early age I was repulsed at insitivity on purpose.
Things happen and you have to ask yourself are they doing this out of ignorance and what they have been taught or are they doing this out of spite and to cause harm?
Those ethics came with me at a very early age from my mother, my father, my nana Sophie and my Aunt Peggy. Compassion and walk a mile in their shoes became a precept and a theme for me.
Tammy: I admire that about you. Because you are able to be reasonable, forgiving and understanding to one’s actions. Your up-bringing is so commendable! For you to have the ability to question people’s motives before you assume …it’s just so admirable! I love that about you!
You proceed to tell us about your school life. We all know how hard childhood can be, even without adding medical hardships to it. But your school life was unlike the public school life I had grown up in.
Giving some of us even more glimpses of a life style we may not have known about. Unusual rewards, in forms of graphic cards for such a tender age, to physical punishments.
Did this school life, that was chosen for you, seem normal to you as a child since you had nothing to compare it to? Or did you sense or have an intuitiveness that it may be different from what other school environments were like?
Michael: I describe how I witnessed in the classroom and the nuns, striking children with wooden pointers. Graphic Holy cards in grammar school. I started seeing a sense of hypocrisy.
Tammy: I’m beginning to think you were advanced in intuitiveness as a child too, because it seems you were quick to sense things that were wrong.
This next subject was hard for me to read and, I’m sure, even harder for you to reveal. And yet you did. I am so proud of you for doing so, and I admire you for revealing something so personal to help and protect our children.
You call it "betrayal". And yet, I don’t think there is one word that exists that can encompass all that you endured. The fear, the unknown, being trapped by an upbringing of being respectful and yet knowing the situation was wrong.
Then to reveal the incident in hopes of trying to understand all those feelings only to be punished. And yet, you were forgiving and tried to understand the reason.
What would be your advice to parents when a child reveals to them such a traumatic event?
Michael: Honesty. Protection. Not retaliation. But take the person to the pulpit, so to speak. Its like watching someone being attacked and everyone is gawking and no one is intervening.
Those are the type of scenarios that I could never not engage in. I try to assist, to save others. That would be more important to me than trying to save myself.
I knew my lot in life would be forever different and I didn’t know how to protect or save myself I just knew that the humanity that is in all of us. Some of the things I learned in Catholicism stuck with me as bright gems of truth. But the Dogma is the evil entity.
Tammy: ‘The dogma is the evil entity’. You know, honestly (and I am showing my naivety here) I knew of the word dogma. Saw the movie Dogma, but when I read it in your book I really didn’t know or understand what that word truly meant.
So, I looked it up. I’m not lying and I’m not ashamed. I really wanted to know what it meant. And I’m glad I did because when you said that sentence to me, just now, you said it with such conviction. So much power and feeling went into that sentence from you!
Dogma’s definition is (for ones who may think they know but aren’t sure): a principal or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly (not able to be denied or disputed) true. Then, I instantly knew what you meant.
I can’t thank you enough for sharing. The innocence of childhood should be protected, at all costs and knowledge gives us the power to do so. Your resilience amazes me.
Not only were there major medical challenges for you to overcome.
There was an ideology that encompassed you and your family. A horrific war you grew up knowing about while most of us growing up, were sheltered from until much later in life for a brief moment in a history class!
Then to be thrown into theology, where you miraculously to this day can still find bright gems of truth from. All of this and you still have half a book left to go!
Without revealing too much more I wanted to talk about your adventures at the beach. The incredible things you experienced in the ocean. Your ability to see beauty in the nature around us.
Unfortunately, too many of us get caught up today with the economy, stress of mortgages, bills and ‘stuff’. And yet, I think we forget the age-old saying ‘the best things in life are free’.
Do you have some ideas on how people can see the beauty that you do?
Michael: Yes. You should be child like. Not childish. And child like to me is a description of almost a virgin mind experiencing something majestic for the first time. It has an affect on you.
The effect has an affect. By that I mean an appreciation of why does it make you feel the way you do. If it does not make you feel, its not a why but a question of how do you embrace this experience? You embrace the experience if the experience is not contrived.
And that is how nature is, nature is not contrived. We are part of nature. That being said its like a touch stone that we should always remember that we are a part of.
Spirit, body, mind and the physical body. They all work together but anytime I had doubts about behavior so to speak I would always reflect on nature and how they do things.
For instance, if there is a pack of animals and one of them is born different they don’t send them off to die. They are still part of the pack. There is no physical perfection in this life.
Tammy: I’m sorry, I have to say I feel child like around you right now! I find you so very interesting! And your intellect, honestly, is challenging to me but refreshing. And I mean that in the highest complimentary form.
I truly feel I could be a sponge right now soaking this all up! I know that was a bit random and I apologize. However, I want our readers to realize these are your words you are speaking to me right now.
It didn’t take a staff of writers and several re-writes. I had the honor of having you speak to me here for thirty-six minutes and every minute was powerful, intelligent and raw and that is exactly how your book reads!
There are so many more things I would love to go over with you that is in the book but I’m a firm believer in not revealing spoilers. Even though we did reference items in your book, I believe it will merely wet our audience’s appetite to want to find out more about this precious little boy’s life.
Thank you so much for giving me a front row seat, it will be something I will always cherish!
I’m sure our readers are anxious to know where they can purchase this amazing book and get their own front row seats. Mind giving us the details?
Michael: It is on Amazon. Currently being processed into Barnes & Nobles and I hope to have an audio version of it out soon.
Thank you so much, Michael, for letting me do this interview. I know I am gushing but you truly are such an amazing, caring, talented and intelligent man! I know, your family were and are, so very proud of you - as all of us are!
I have read the book "It’s All Good" by Michael Berryman, and as I said at the beginning, I had no idea there was a book out there that satisfied my thirst to know more about this star I grew up with at the movies and on TV.
I was pleasantly surprised to be able to read it, knowing it was his own words, and to see his life through his eyes as he grew into the icon we all know and love.
I encourage all of you to pick it up, but know this: it will be hard to put down! It will tug at your heartstrings but inspire you in the same breath.
It gives you a new perspective on your own issues, and in the end, you realize, "It Is All Good!”
There’s the anticipation as you wait in line beside people who add to your nervous excitement while waiting for their own turn. Then you have the intense focus of your attention to absorb as much as you can from the other’s interactions with the star you love, ahead of you!
Before you know it, it’s your turn to bask in this soft shine from the star you came to see in daylight! But what will you do with your brief time?
As you approach the table and the euphoria overcomes you, your mind races as you try to figure out what to say or ask that hasn’t already been said or asked before!
You desperately want this star to see you and shine down on you and only you! A moment in time you will always treasure. A story to brag about to your friends and family later.
However, some times we may forget this brilliant star in front of us, as talented as they are, is human too. Have friends and families of their own. And yes, they have had their own trials and tribulations.
I have always been a firm believer that a movie or TV show does not define an actor. Even though we may try to identify with their character in our own lives, is it not what the actor has brought with them that actually attributes to their character?
Personally, I love to spend my precious moments with these stars, trying to get a glimpse of their essence. Not so much the stories they were casted in but what makes them shine so brilliantly as a person?
This next interview I have for you, which is such an honor for me to be given this opportunity, lets you see a glimpse of his essence. And let me tell you, the shine that he bestows on you will never dim or fade! His smile is beautiful and contagious. It’s as if he charges the shine we all have inside us!
Let me introduce you to Mr. Michael Berryman. You will know him from his roles in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Hills Have Eyes, Star Trek, and The X-Files, to name a few.
At the latest NJ Horror Con in AC, I was determined to meet Mr. Berryman! I had the very same nervous anticipation as others around me. My turn came, and as I looked down on his table and saw all these wonderful headshots from the movies and TV shows I grew up with, the one thing that drew my attention the most... was a single hardback book entitled "It’s All Good!".
I knew then exactly how I wanted to spend my precious moments with him! Little did I know, that book would reveal more about him than I could have ever dared hope for!
Let's let him give you a glimpse of his new book, “It’s All Good!”.
Tammy - Thank you, Michael, for giving our readers a chance to know more about you! We have so much to cover! Speaking of cover, let’s talk about the cover of your book "It’s All Good”.
I have to say, it intrigued me right from the beginning! Can you tell us about the cover and why you chose it?
Michael - At first I had plan on doing a head shot but I wasn’t really happy with that idea. I started going through family photos I had inherited and I came across this photo of my sister, my father and myself. Knowing how I wanted to portray my story, seen through the eyes of this small boy, it fit.
Tammy - I think it’s perfect! You can just feel the love it emits. Your father is so handsome, strong, and protective. While your sister and you look so happy and loved. A picture that so many of us may have of our own.
Already we feel ourselves identifying with you, but this time not as a character in a movie or TV show. But as a sweet, innocent child with a full life ahead of them!
I opened your book, and your very first sentence is (and I quote) "As a story has a beginning, so do our lives." I love that! A perfect way to lead in to telling your story!
But before we get into your story, I’m curious: did you write this book yourself?
Michael: Every word! When I had to dance the dance with the literary agent and co-writer it got to a point where it was obvious to me they were going to change the narrative. They were going to change the feel and perspective of the young boy’s life. They wanted a movie star story.
After going back and forth over a year I said no. I am taking full control over it. I wrote every word myself.
Tammy: I am so impressed that you did! Too often, stars have ghostwriters write their books, and though they still may be interesting, having a star write their own book lets us actually see it through their own eyes!
Michael: That is correct. That is exactly the way I describe in the beginning. I invite you into the young boy’s mind. I want you to be comfortable in a theater chair inside his head, experiencing through his eyes, so you get the emotional context, not content - context.
Tammy - And its raw.
Michael - Very raw.
Tammy - Let’s talk about the beginning of your life.
Michael: My father was at ground zero at Hiroshima. The reason he was there, was to see the affects radiation from nuclear weapons would have on people.
Ironically he found that out, in a bittersweet manner, by having a premature son with multiple birth defects. He soon realized my skull was fused, I would go blind and soon die.
My first grade class room was having my skull reconstructed so I could survive.
Tammy: Ok, so you discussed the medical issues you had as a child in the very first chapter. You lay it all out for us to see. Heart wrenching! Not only as a person who is trying to wrap our minds around all that you went through but also as a parent.
And I think even more so because your parents were so hands on with your treatments. Your father there for you as a nurosurgeon, during your surgery! Your mother there as a nurse caring for you not only as a patient but as her own child!
Most parents come in after their child is all cleaned up and taken care of but they were there with you for all of the stages of these amazing medical procedures that allowed you to be with us today. I can’t even imagine their pain of seeing you going through all that you did!
I mean just look at this little boy on the cover, how could they not? That beautiful care free smile. It just makes me want to scoop him up, protect him and give him the most I can and they did! Its obvious through your smile from then and now.
Michael: My mother had the emotional burden of giving birth to a premature child. My father, the idea during surgery, is my child going to live? They were wondering I’m sure, one how to proceed? Two, I know they were trying to deal with not just grief but responsibility.
Responsibility went beyond the family realm. Its axis painted a picture of a war. A horrible terrible war. My father brought home pictures of vaporized shadows that used to be humans. This touched him deeply, we had many conversations about that.
Tammy: And yet, the outlook you had as a child, through your eyes, is so uplifting, innocent and inspiring! My heart ached for you, but your tone was just as you titled the book, "It’s all good!”
I have to know, was there any time you were angry to why this happened to you?
Michael: I was never angry about my situation. I never felt that I was cheated. I never felt like I was being punished. I never felt resentment. Because I knew that there were people who also had syndromes that were challenging.
I mention Billy in the book. Billy had polio. I mention how I was angry not that he had polio but I was angry at the people who were ignorant, disrespectful, and mean. At a very, very early age I was repulsed at insitivity on purpose.
Things happen and you have to ask yourself are they doing this out of ignorance and what they have been taught or are they doing this out of spite and to cause harm?
Those ethics came with me at a very early age from my mother, my father, my nana Sophie and my Aunt Peggy. Compassion and walk a mile in their shoes became a precept and a theme for me.
Tammy: I admire that about you. Because you are able to be reasonable, forgiving and understanding to one’s actions. Your up-bringing is so commendable! For you to have the ability to question people’s motives before you assume …it’s just so admirable! I love that about you!
You proceed to tell us about your school life. We all know how hard childhood can be, even without adding medical hardships to it. But your school life was unlike the public school life I had grown up in.
Giving some of us even more glimpses of a life style we may not have known about. Unusual rewards, in forms of graphic cards for such a tender age, to physical punishments.
Did this school life, that was chosen for you, seem normal to you as a child since you had nothing to compare it to? Or did you sense or have an intuitiveness that it may be different from what other school environments were like?
Michael: I describe how I witnessed in the classroom and the nuns, striking children with wooden pointers. Graphic Holy cards in grammar school. I started seeing a sense of hypocrisy.
Tammy: I’m beginning to think you were advanced in intuitiveness as a child too, because it seems you were quick to sense things that were wrong.
This next subject was hard for me to read and, I’m sure, even harder for you to reveal. And yet you did. I am so proud of you for doing so, and I admire you for revealing something so personal to help and protect our children.
You call it "betrayal". And yet, I don’t think there is one word that exists that can encompass all that you endured. The fear, the unknown, being trapped by an upbringing of being respectful and yet knowing the situation was wrong.
Then to reveal the incident in hopes of trying to understand all those feelings only to be punished. And yet, you were forgiving and tried to understand the reason.
What would be your advice to parents when a child reveals to them such a traumatic event?
Michael: Honesty. Protection. Not retaliation. But take the person to the pulpit, so to speak. Its like watching someone being attacked and everyone is gawking and no one is intervening.
Those are the type of scenarios that I could never not engage in. I try to assist, to save others. That would be more important to me than trying to save myself.
I knew my lot in life would be forever different and I didn’t know how to protect or save myself I just knew that the humanity that is in all of us. Some of the things I learned in Catholicism stuck with me as bright gems of truth. But the Dogma is the evil entity.
Tammy: ‘The dogma is the evil entity’. You know, honestly (and I am showing my naivety here) I knew of the word dogma. Saw the movie Dogma, but when I read it in your book I really didn’t know or understand what that word truly meant.
So, I looked it up. I’m not lying and I’m not ashamed. I really wanted to know what it meant. And I’m glad I did because when you said that sentence to me, just now, you said it with such conviction. So much power and feeling went into that sentence from you!
Dogma’s definition is (for ones who may think they know but aren’t sure): a principal or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly (not able to be denied or disputed) true. Then, I instantly knew what you meant.
I can’t thank you enough for sharing. The innocence of childhood should be protected, at all costs and knowledge gives us the power to do so. Your resilience amazes me.
Not only were there major medical challenges for you to overcome.
There was an ideology that encompassed you and your family. A horrific war you grew up knowing about while most of us growing up, were sheltered from until much later in life for a brief moment in a history class!
Then to be thrown into theology, where you miraculously to this day can still find bright gems of truth from. All of this and you still have half a book left to go!
Without revealing too much more I wanted to talk about your adventures at the beach. The incredible things you experienced in the ocean. Your ability to see beauty in the nature around us.
Unfortunately, too many of us get caught up today with the economy, stress of mortgages, bills and ‘stuff’. And yet, I think we forget the age-old saying ‘the best things in life are free’.
Do you have some ideas on how people can see the beauty that you do?
Michael: Yes. You should be child like. Not childish. And child like to me is a description of almost a virgin mind experiencing something majestic for the first time. It has an affect on you.
The effect has an affect. By that I mean an appreciation of why does it make you feel the way you do. If it does not make you feel, its not a why but a question of how do you embrace this experience? You embrace the experience if the experience is not contrived.
And that is how nature is, nature is not contrived. We are part of nature. That being said its like a touch stone that we should always remember that we are a part of.
Spirit, body, mind and the physical body. They all work together but anytime I had doubts about behavior so to speak I would always reflect on nature and how they do things.
For instance, if there is a pack of animals and one of them is born different they don’t send them off to die. They are still part of the pack. There is no physical perfection in this life.
Tammy: I’m sorry, I have to say I feel child like around you right now! I find you so very interesting! And your intellect, honestly, is challenging to me but refreshing. And I mean that in the highest complimentary form.
I truly feel I could be a sponge right now soaking this all up! I know that was a bit random and I apologize. However, I want our readers to realize these are your words you are speaking to me right now.
It didn’t take a staff of writers and several re-writes. I had the honor of having you speak to me here for thirty-six minutes and every minute was powerful, intelligent and raw and that is exactly how your book reads!
There are so many more things I would love to go over with you that is in the book but I’m a firm believer in not revealing spoilers. Even though we did reference items in your book, I believe it will merely wet our audience’s appetite to want to find out more about this precious little boy’s life.
Thank you so much for giving me a front row seat, it will be something I will always cherish!
I’m sure our readers are anxious to know where they can purchase this amazing book and get their own front row seats. Mind giving us the details?
Michael: It is on Amazon. Currently being processed into Barnes & Nobles and I hope to have an audio version of it out soon.
Thank you so much, Michael, for letting me do this interview. I know I am gushing but you truly are such an amazing, caring, talented and intelligent man! I know, your family were and are, so very proud of you - as all of us are!
I have read the book "It’s All Good" by Michael Berryman, and as I said at the beginning, I had no idea there was a book out there that satisfied my thirst to know more about this star I grew up with at the movies and on TV.
I was pleasantly surprised to be able to read it, knowing it was his own words, and to see his life through his eyes as he grew into the icon we all know and love.
I encourage all of you to pick it up, but know this: it will be hard to put down! It will tug at your heartstrings but inspire you in the same breath.
It gives you a new perspective on your own issues, and in the end, you realize, "It Is All Good!”
