Dustin Diamond, who played the character of “Screech Powers” on hit teen show “Saved by the Bell” has been widely reported to be going through a huge financial problem, and he’s asking his many fans and the general public to go out and buy a line of T-shirts from his website getdshirts.com.
As he says himself, he’s at risk of losing his Wisconson home — it has something to do with his “shitty credit” and his inability to get a mortgage or, one might sumaize, a job… In short, Screech recieved a letter stating that I had 30 days to pay $250,000.00 or get out.
Diamond complains that his family “stole his money” and that the money he made from a reality TV show where he boxed “Horshack” (Ron Palillo) has all but disappeared.
Dustin, who describes himself as a “stand-up comedian” has met quite a lot of derision and skepticism from people who describe Dustin’s antics as cynical. They point to the fact for many years he’s been using blue humor to get away from the Screech character, to distance himself from what many teens consider to be the person they grew up with; and perhaps could relate to — but Dustin is well known on some comedy circuits to take himself way too seriousily and get easily frustrated with audience members who try to goude him into the Screech voice.
Further, reviews of Dustin’s comedy scene indicate that he is over-relying on blue humor and that his skits have little else to go except to denegrate the other actors on the hit TV show, Saved by the Bell.
On June 15, 2006, he conducted a phone interview with the Toucher and Rich radio show on WBCN in Boston. Despite repeatedly attempting to promote the sale of his T-shirts to save his home, the hosts ridiculed him and would only refer to him as his Screech character. Diamond ultimately hung up in apparent disgust after making his frusturation apparent, and the ridicule continued after the hangup.
In short, some claim that Dustin has spent a lot of time distancing himself from the Screech character; and when he’s on his knees – he wants to milk it for all it’s worth; what’s worse Screech, sorry I mean Dustin, mis-spells “Screech” with an extra ‘e’ to, quote, “get around copyright issues”… me-thinks he didn’t think it through. Adding an extra “e” to the name of Screech won’t get him around the copyright issues any more than he can win over those people who want to take him down to the gutter.
Whether this whole thing is a publicity stunt, or is a genuine attempt to solve money problems I don’t know — but surely he can solve his money problems by selling an autobiography, going on another MTV reality TV show; or perhaps even getting the old Saved by the Bell crew together one more time… but I don’t that’ll ever happen.
It’ll be interesting if Screech, I mean Diamond follows up on his threats to sue the people involved, and if he can raise the money he needs to save his 250K home in WI.