| Screech brings new act to Ames Register Staff Writer Amanda Pierre April 07, 2002 Imagine being forever typecast as the geek you were in high school. Then imagine you're weren't a geek, but no one believes you. They only remember that you played a goofball on television. This is the lot of Dustin Diamond, who created Screech, the nerd on the NBC sitcom "Saved by the Bell" and its spinoffs from 1989 to 2000. "Life is very strange for me," Diamond said. "It's not all glitz and glamour. But one thing that it always is, is funny." Diamond has taken his life stories on the road with a stand-up comedy act. He will perform at 8 p.m. Monday at the Maintenance Shop in Ames. Diamond is no longer that gangly, goofy guy that was on the popular sitcom. "It's such a powerful persona, of such magnitude, that people are going to have a really hard time separating it from me," he said. Samuel "Screech" Powers was the only character to experience every incarnation of the show, which was based on the vaguely surreal lives of the students at Bayside High School. Diamond's stand-up routine incorporates a little of the Screech character, but will also get into material that he has written himself. "My act isn't dirty, it isn't like Bob Saget's," Diamond said. (Saget is the former "Full House" star and "America's Funniest Home Videos" host who reportedly has a raunchy stand-up performance.) "Then again it's not "Sesame Street" either." "Some people get confused, they're thinking, "This is a guy from a wholesome, Saturday-morning show, and all of a sudden he's doing adult humor?" But I book myself as Dustin Diamond, not as Screech." In a steady, mature, screech-free voice, he talked about his course in life from his new home in Milwaukee. "Most people start off with stand-up, and they hope to one day do TV. I'm doing it backward," Diamond said. "Next year I'll be talking about doing security for Gary Coleman" (of "Diff'rent Strokes" fame). Diamond, now 25, has just moved from California, where he lived all of his life, to Milwaukee. Just weeks ago, he made the cross-country trip himself in a rented truck to save money on moving costs. He moved to be closer to his management staff and his girlfriend, a musician in a band called You're Pretty. Her band played at the Maintenance Shop last month The couple has music in common. Diamond plays bass guitar in the band Salty the Pocket Knife. The band has three songs available on MP3.com. Its first album is due out this summer. "Right now, we're bottling everything up for the big explosion," he said. "We don't want it to trickle out. It's going to hit everybody all at once." Music runs in Diamond's family. He said he is a second cousin of Neil Diamond, although he has never met him, and doubts the pop singer would return his phone calls. "He's such a big guy. And he's so busy." Diamond's recent projects prove the range of his interests and talents. "It's basically that I am constantly doing something different," Diamond said. "Most people don't. They stick with what they're good at, and that's fine." His co-stars from "Saved by the Bell" have mainly stuck with acting. Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who played the clever and popular Zac on the show, now has a role on TV's "NYPD Blue." Zac's love interest, Kelly, was played by Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, who had a stint on "Beverly Hills, 90201" and went on to act in movies such as 2000's "Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th." Jessie, the pretty/nerdy character on "Saved by the Bell" was played by Elizabeth Berkeley. One of her first roles after "Saved by the Bell" was in the 1995 film "Showgirls," named as the worst film of the 1990s by the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation. She also was in "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion" last year. Lark Voorhies, who played Lisa, was in "Fire and Ice" and "How High" in 2001. Mario Lopez, who played the mullet-hairstyle sporting Slater, is now the host of TV talk show "The Other Half." "I'm just glad people out there liked the show and liked the work," Diamond said of his days with "Saved by the Bell." Although Screech no more, he still aims to make people laugh. "I'm always doing new stuff," Diamond said of his act. "I like to talk to the audience. At clubs you might get 50-year-old drunk cowboys at a table who don't know Screech from Jack. On college campuses you might get people ages 15 to 18, or in their 20s, who do know who I am, that are loving the show." "I think Seinfeld said it best: Celebrity status will guarantee you five minutes of success. After that, it's up to you." |
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