In the mid-1980s, the Monkees are hot stuff again after MTV has reintroduced them to a whole new generation of fans. The executives at their old recording label wants them to record some new tunes for a 20th anniversary album and go on a reunion to...
Micky hit the road to begin filming Keep Off My Grass! in New Orleans in the beginning of September of 1975. He played a member of a hippie commune who was named, curiously and inexplicably, "You Know." You Know was a naïve guy whose two goals in life were to nurture his single pot plant and parlay it into an industrial operation that could help support himself and his fellow hippies, and to finally lose his virginity.
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While You Know managed to achieve his sexual goal, being seduced by the town's rich girl tramp and acquiring a venereal disease along the way, his dream of cultivating a crop of pot plants was crushed when he discovered his plant was literally just a weed. Like the two theatrical masks of comedy and tragedy, Micky milked his role and played it for laughs and tears. There was a hysterically funny scene in which he's trying to convince the local physician treating him for gonorrhea to break his professional oath of privacy by gossiping about him contracting VD because You Know can't convince anyone that he actually did get laid. He even wants the doctor to give him a framed copy of the certification of infection that he's lawfully bound to send to the Board of Health. On the downside, when he finds out that his plant is just a weed, he kicks down the picturesque little white picket fence he'd lovingly constructed to protect it and emotes quite poignantly. The movie wasn't going to earn any award nominations, but it was a solid performance for Micky and a satisfying tune-up for what was next on his agenda – Harry's play in London.
While Micky was on the road, he faithfully called Gabby every night. He found it more difficult than he anticipated to break away from filming to get to AA meetings when he planned to attend them. But following the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous exhortation to be willing to go to any lengths necessary to recover, on the days he missed his meetings, he and Gabby or his sponsor would hold meetings over the phone and read passages from the Big Book together and talk about what they meant to each of them. He also had a list of telephone numbers of his fellow drunks back in L.A. and he'd make phone calls to them when he couldn't make a meeting. He checked in daily with the local temporary sponsor his L.A. sponsor Jack had hooked him up with. So he was walking the talk and making sure that he worked his program of recovery all day, every day, just as he had in L.A.
Micky knew that substance abuse was only part of the battle, however, and he took care not to fall in with the wrong crowd or leave himself open to groupies. He was friendly to the cast and crew, but he held himself a bit apart and didn't socialize with them past a certain hour when he observed everyone's judgment going south. Just as he had in his days playing drums at Cornwall's, he developed blinders that helped him ignore the women who would hang around the set hoping to grab an autograph or a roll in the hay, and he refused to interact with them. And finally, he didn't rely solely on Gabby for support. He called Peter and Robert on a few occasions, and even Mike once, just to make sure he was keeping in touch with the rest of the Monkees family, to remind himself what he would lose if he messed up, and also to convey to them that they could trust that he wouldn't blow it again this time. This time, he felt like he was bound up in support and was able to navigate the minefield of the shoot with relative comfort and confidence. He did the footwork and reaped the rewards.
