<p> With a No. 1 movie, a No. 1 TV show and a No. 1 book, Tim Allen
is having an unbeatable year
</p>
<p>By Richard Zoglin--Reported by Patrick E. Cole and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles
and William McWhirter/Detroit
</p>
<p> Tim Allen is still learning the protocols of stardom. On a promotion
tour for his new book earlier this fall, he went on a talk show
and laughed about the private plane that his publisher, which
is owned by Disney, was flying him around in. Known for its
thriftiness, Disney hates being made to look like a typical,
money-burning Hollywood studio, and a few days after Allen made
his remarks, he received a curt memo from headquarters. Never
brag about Disney's use of corporate jets, the company's biggest
star next to Simba the Lion was told; don't even mention corporate
jets and Disney in the same sentence. Now, some stars might
have thrown a fit--or got their agent to do it for them. But
Allen reacted like a chastened fifth-grader; he told Disney
it was just a joke.
</p>
<p> Good thing Allen didn't mention the new four-wheel-drive Porsche
the studio just bought him. But then, the Disney comptroller
can hardly complain. Allen has made a pirate's galleon of loot
for the company during a year in which he has pulled off an
unheard-of triple play. Home Improvement, his ABC sitcom now
in its fourth season, is TV's No. 1-rated show, earning Disney
$400 million thus far in the sale of reruns. His jokey autobiographical
book, Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man, reached No. 1 on
the New York Times best-seller list in October and is still
riding high in second place (trailing only the Pope); it is
the most successful book yet published by Disney's 3 1/2-year-old
book division, Hyperion. Now The Santa Clause, Allen's first
movie, is the surprise hit of the Christmas season, earning
$71 million in its first 17 days and jumping to No. 1 at the
box office over the Thanksgiving weekend--surpassing Tom Cruise's
fangs, Schwarzenegger's pregnancy and both generations of Star
Trek.
</p>
<p> It's a success story as heartwarming as one of those sentimental
father-son talks on Home Improvement. Allen, 41, is hardly the
most brilliant comedy star of his generation, though some might
call him its most brilliant example of multimedia Hollywood
marketing. But few superstars seem less inflated by their success.
Allen still keeps a home in an unpretentious neighborhood in
suburban Birmingham, Michigan, where he retreats for holidays
and other family gatherings. He has been married for 10 years
to his college sweetheart, who waited for him while he served
more than two years in a federal penitentiary on drug charges.
And when he throws temper tantrums on the set of his TV show--"My set! My camera! My props!", he's been heard to shout--everybody knows it really is a joke. In contrast to stories
about some other sitcom stars, like Roseanne and Grace Under
Fire's Brett Butler, those about Tim Allen's rampaging ego are
all but nonexistent. "He just never lost perspective," says
Bruce Economou, an old friend from Michigan. "When he first
went to the Home Improvement stage, where they were building
the sets, and the people from Disney were walking him through,
they told him, `This is all for you.' Tim looked at it and said,
`Well, if this show doesn't work, can I have the wood?'"
</p>
<p> Now Allen can have almost anything he wants. After the success
of The Santa Clause, Hollywood insiders predict he will command
upwards of $8 million for his next movie (on top of the $5 million
he reportedly made this year from the TV series). But talking
in his TV dressing room last week, in between bites of a tuna-salad
sandwich, Allen said he'd be happy with a small token of his
achievement. "It's so cheesy," he says, "but I just want a little
plaque that says, no. 1 tv show, no. 1 book, no. 1 movie. Just
something for me, because I worked so hard I almost died: 18-hour
days getting in and out of a fat suit, typing ((my book)) on
my laptop. I looked forward to this day, right before Christmas,
when it would all be over."
</p>
<p> Or maybe just starting. With The Santa Clause, Allen has joined
the tiny fraternity of stars (John Travolta, Robin Williams,
Jim Carrey) who have successfully made the leap from TV to movies.
Many more--including the two most dominant prime-time stars
of recent years, Bill Cosby and Roseanne--have conspicuously
failed to transfer their popularity to the big screen. Perhaps
they are too closely identified with TV roles in which they
essentially play themselves. Perhaps their very living-room
familiarity makes it impossible for them to be fully convincing
on the larger-than-life movie screen. For whatever reason, the
stars with whom viewers get cozy around the TV hearth are rarely
the same ones they surrender to when the lights go down at the
multiplex.
</p>
<p> Yet with his white-bread affability and a face as wide open
as the Great Plains, Allen seems at home everywhere. On Home
Improvement he plays Tim Taylor, a father of three and host
of a TV fix-it show. Tim is a guy's guy who gets excited about
playing with power drills and rewiring the dishwasher; yet he's
something of a klutz around the house. It's an old sitcom formula--Dad as doofus--but brightened by the sarcastic, surprisingly
adult interplay between Tim and his wife (Patricia Richardson)
on the subject of maleness and its drawbacks.
</p>
<p> In The Santa Clause, Allen is another all-American befuddled
Dad. He plays Scott Calvin, a divorced father who is having
trouble communicating with his young son--until, on Christmas
Eve, Santa falls off his roof, and Scott is pressed into finishing
the gift-delivery chores. It turns out he is expected to give
up his former identity and become Santa for good; over the next
few months, he grows fat and acquires white whiskers and white
hair. (Is this a Christmas fantasy or a horror film?) Scott
eventually reconciles to the idea of spending his declining
years at the North Pole, winning his son's love in the process.
"Pretty cool, eh?" he tells his ex-wife before catching the
last sleigh north. "Your parents thought I'd never amount to
anything."
</p>
<p> Allen has amounted to quite a bit, considering the misfortunes
that befell his typical middle-class suburban upbringing. He
was born in Denver, one of six children (five boys and a girl)
of Gerald and Martha Dick. His last name was the occasion for
a thousand playground taunts, which taught him early on how
to steel himself with humor. At age 11, however, Allen faced
a far more serious trauma: on the way home from a college football
game, his father was killed in a car accident. "My world changed
overnight," Allen recalls in his book.
</p>
<p> His mother remarried about two years later, and the family moved
to the Detroit suburbs, where Allen struggled through high school
and barely made it to college. He graduated from Western Michigan
University with a degree in TV production, but not long after,
got caught up in drugs. He fell in with a fast, hard-partying
crowd, started selling cocaine, and in 1979 was arrested and
later sentenced to eight years in a minimum-security federal
penitentiary in Minnesota.
</p>
<p> Allen served just over two years there, and it was a transforming
experience. He occupied himself by reading books and writing
letters, and slowly faced the realization that he had screwed
up his life. "It was frightening, that whole time, how much
anger I had," he says. "Then the anger was directed toward me,
so I had to take the blame for this whole situation I put myself
into." A supportive family helped him through the ordeal. "Tim
accepted it," says his mother. "He knew he deserved it, and
he didn't fight it. Everyone in the family came out and rallied
behind him."
</p>
<p> Allen found humor useful in prison. He made the meanest guards
laugh by putting pictures of Richard Nixon in the peephole of
his cell when they made their rounds. Later he staged comedy
shows for the other inmates. Once, while riding a bus to another
prison, he managed to slip out of his handcuffs. The only thing
he could think to do was bum a cigarette off the old bank robber
sitting in front of him. "I reached into his shirt pocket with
the handcuff on one hand, and then tapped him on his other shoulder
to get a match. He said, `What's going on?' and I told him I
got my handcuffs off and was getting ready to break out. Of
course, I still had shackles on my legs and everywhere else.
But just that one moment, when I asked the guy for a match,
was what I lived for--the expression on his face."
</p>
<p> Returning to Detroit after his parole, Allen went to work in
advertising while trying to develop a stand-up comedy act at
night. Mark Ridley, owner of the Comedy Castle, remembers how
Allen, dressed in coat and tie, stood out from the usual crowd
of overage class clowns even in his first appearance. "He was
a bundle of nerves," says Ridley, "shaking his hands and pacing
himself into a frenzy. But boom, once he was up there, he was
in control." His early material, Allen recalls, was full of
sexual and scatological references: "It was like turning your
guitar up real loud." Eventually he hit on the macho-tool-guy
persona that became his trademark. "What really interested me
was garages and tools and all that I call `men's stuff.' The
more I started talking about it, the more I would get men to
stand up and listen to my comedy. And then women would go, `He's
like that,' and it started getting couples to enjoy the show."
</p>
<p> Allen began shuttling to Los Angeles, picking up a commercial
agent and eventually breaking into the big-time comedy clubs.
After a few TV appearances and cable specials, he was discovered
by a group of Disney executives who were having a meeting to
discuss new TV projects. "We were sitting in the room practically
snoring," recalls Jeffrey Katzenberg, the former Disney movie
chief. Then someone put one of Allen's Showtime specials on
the vcr: "He set the room on fire," says Katzenberg. "It was
like everyone had touched a raw electric wire." Some of the
group, including Disney chairman Michael Eisner, later went
to the Improv comedy club to see him in person. "It was one
of those nights that was magic," Allen remembers. "They came
backstage and said they'd like to have a meeting with me at
Disney."
</p>
<p> The studio's first offer wasn't quite magic: a TV sitcom based
on the movie Turner & Hootch, in which Allen would co-star with
a dog. Allen turned that down, along with two other proposals.
Then he came up with his own idea: a series about the host of
a TV handyman show. Disney teamed him with producer Matt Williams
(the former producer of Roseanne), who added three kids to the
mix and helped turn Home Improvement into TV's biggest family-show
hit of the '90s. Allen's first movie went through a similar
Disneyfication. The original script, by Steve Rudnick and Leo
Benvenuti, was a dark fantasy about a man who accidentally shoots
Santa Claus. Eight drafts later, with a more benign death scene
and the addition of the father-son relationship, it became a
cuddly holiday family film.
</p>
<p> "I think what people see in Tim Allen," says Williams, "is a
man-child. He's attractive, sensitive and strong, and he's a
little impish 12-year-old boy. You feel like he could be you."
People might feel the same way about Allen's offstage life.
He lives in the San Fernando Valley with his wife Laura and
five-year-old daughter Kady. But they travel frequently back
to Michigan and just bought a lake house in the northern part
of the state, right next door to his in-laws. Allen remains
friendly with a clubhouse gang of old neighborhood pals. Ken
Calvert, a Detroit disc jockey, still tries to match him in
things like power lawn mowers. Calvert cross-cut his yard with
twin 21-in.-blade Lawn-Boys; Allen bested him with a John Deere
riding mower--with Baby Moon hubcaps.
</p>
<p> Allen's leisure-time pleasures include a collection of automobiles--among them a '66 Ferrari and a pair of Mustangs. His latest
passion is reading books on physics. Allen remains close with
his family, though they're seeing less of him. Allen missed
his stepfather's ordination as an Episcopalian deacon last June
but managed to make it to the Detroit Grand Prix the next day.
"You can imagine, we were very disappointed," says his pink-cheeked,
white-haired, mother, known as Marty. She is also a little bothered
by the chapter in Allen's book in which he makes fun of his
original family name. "It's not something I would recommend
reading," she says. "I don't like the connotations."
</p>
<p> On the set of his TV show, Allen jokes easily and incessantly
with cast and crew, who are effusive in their praise of him.
"There are stars who have an imperial rule," says Carmen Finestra,
one of the show's co-creators. "Tim has made this a great place
to work." He can be fussy about scripts, but there are no shouting
fits. Says co-star Richardson: "When Tim gets tired or bummed,
he gets quiet and stops entertaining the crew. That's the way
he keeps himself under control."
</p>
<p> Beneath that control is an anxiously competitive man. Allen
paces furiously backstage before performances to work off his
nervous energy. He scrutinizes each week's ratings and sometimes
broods over them. Right now he is unhappy that Frasier--which
NBC moved opposite his show this season--has been cutting
into Home Improvement's audience. "Frasier is killing us," Allen
confides. "He's taking away our heat." (Home Improvement still
beats Frasier handily, but it has slipped from the No. 1 spot
in a few recent weeks.)
</p>
<p> Another thing that bothers Allen is that Home Improvement, despite
its high ratings, rarely gets much attention from the critics--or statuettes at the Emmy Awards. "It hurts because I have
so many people ((on the show)) I feel for," he says. "I get
rewarded for this, but for the crew and the people who really
grunt to get things done on this show--well, I take it as
an affront to all of them. Everybody wants to have what we have
and be No. 1. But after you get here, then what do you want?
Roseanne said something to me: `You've already been No. 1. Don't
make it your life's goal to stay No. 1, because that will not
happen. Move on, strengthen your team, and go forward again.'"
</p>
<p> Allen has more places to go forward than almost anybody. He
seems almost embarrassed at his power. "Now I go to meetings,
and if I just start to say something, everybody shuts up. And
any idea I say, people go, `Oh, yeah!'" Among other things,
he's writing a movie script about a mad scientist. "It's about
how quickly you could change the world and how everybody could
do it," Allen explains. "The more I read about physics and science,
the more I know that a guy like me of rather average intelligence
but a lot of interest could make things happen." As if he already
