Corey Feldman knows what you are probably thinking.
"There's a cynicism that goes along with my name," Feldman, who'll be 38 this month, said. "I have been vastly misrepresented by the press, media, bloggers, pessimists and naysayers, and it hurts. I spend 80% of my time doing charity work. . . . It deeply saddens me every time I hear somebody quickly . . . discarding me as some crazy drug addict or loser, or washed up. I was called 'washed up' when I was 20 years old."
The 1980s movie icon -- Mouth of "The Goonies," Teddy of "Stand by Me," Pete of "Gremlins" -- wants you to know he really is a good guy.
Since last summer's second season of the A&E reality show "The Two Coreys" and last July's long-awaited (but direct-to-DVD) feature "Lost Boys: The Tribe," Feldman has kept largely quiet. But lately, he has been talking up his Pink Floyd-esque band Truth Movement and its goal of making concerts environmentally friendly. In addition, he says a "Lost Boys 3" is in the works and a sequel to the beloved "Goonies" is not entirely out of the picture.
"My job, it seems, in life is to educate the world that, 'Hey that was just the beginning of my life, I'm still very young and have a long way to go.' "
But sometimes it seems letting go of the past is the hardest part of going forward. Two days before Feldman's first concert on his band's "Off the Grid" tour at Universal CityWalk, Michael Jackson died.
Feldman, who famously befriended the pop singer during his own teen years, went into a painful self-reflective mode. Although Jackson and Feldman were close at one time -- and Feldman said he remains friendly with the Jackson family -- they had a public falling out in 2001. Then, amid the singer's felony child abuse charges, Feldman publicly stated in 2005 that their relationship may have been inappropriate.
Since Jackson's death, though, Feldman has been calling him a "role model" and "dear friend."
"It makes you realize that you really have everything you value in life, and every moment and breath," Feldman said of Jackson's death. "I really learned it's a bad idea to let unfinished things go unfinished.
"It's nice to have closure," he continued. "It's unfortunate to me that I will never have that closure. But there is also a part of me that says I do, because of the reconciliation with the family and friendship there."
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The domestic scene
