In the 21 years since Brian Peck was arrested there have been few articles talking about him and his crimes, starting in 2013 and onward people were starting to hear Brian’s name from the documentary An Open Secret, and a 2015 article from DailyMail brought light to the fact that even as a registered sex offender, he was still somehow able to get a job working on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, albeit he was only doing a voiceover for London’s magic mirror, but I maintain my stance that he should have never gotten hired regardless of if he was never on set with any of the actors.
Who is Brian Peck?
In the interest of keeping people aware of Brian Peck and his crimes, I’d like to explore questions I’ve seen a lot of people asking since Quiet on Set came out. Who even is Brian Peck? He’s no high profile Hollywood bigwig so why was he able to commit such crimes and all but get away with it?
Now obviously Brian was arrested in 2003, convicted of two counts out of the original 11 charges because he took a plea deal, and after his release from jail he was required to register as a sex offender, to some that might not seem like getting away with it if he was still punished — but despite being on the sex offender registry and having that criminal record, he didn’t seem to lose work because of it, at least not from 2004 onward.
Brian Peck studied theater at the University of Southern California and in several interviews he had done in the past with different magazines (mostly horror based) he mentions his interest for acting, his first role was in The Last American Virgin but his breakout role would be as “Scuz” from The Return of the Living Dead.
So excited to be in the business he was offering to help in any way possible on the set of the film, this ended up endearing him to co-workers and producers and so we begin….
Brian’s enthusiasm for working on ROTLD seemed to have made people quite fond of him, and if you’re fond of someone you can generally trust them — the more trust you gain from others, the more likely it is that they’ll refer other people to you. Brian was in two other Return of The Living Dead films as extras.
Soon after Return he became a dialogue coach and started working on Growing Pains where he befriended some of the cast and crew, seems like everywhere Brian went he was able to collect friends like Pokemon cards; working on shows as crew and endearing himself to everyone around him Brian eventually got a job working as a dialogue coach for Nickelodeon. He became a trusted name in the business, everyone who met him only had good things to say about him.
Since he’s been in the industry for a very long time and he knows or has met so many high profile people, it legitimized him as a trustworthy person and someone who would only ever do good and help others out of the kindness of his own heart — ha! So not only did he ingratiate himself into the lives of the people he knew, he also wormed his way into so much of hollywood culture, and don’t even get me started his Tiki culture obsession.
Planet of The Apes
Brian Peck was born in the 1960s, so he was about eight years old when the very first Planet of the Apes movie came out and it became a lifelong obsession of his from that moment on. Some kids are Star Wars kids, and some kids are Planet of The Apes kids.
Obviously liking Planet of The Apes isn’t some huge sign pointing to Brian’s various dark interests, the only reason I bring it up is because he was able to so perfectly ingrain himself into the POTA community and fandom and I find it interesting how easily it seems to be for him to be accepted, and even further builds this reputation of him and it allows him to collect more friends, as it were.
In a 2011 behind the scenes look at old locations from the ROTLD film, one of his co-stars from the movie mentions that Brian was always everywhere and involved with everything and on the February 2024 episode of Pod Meets World, Boy Meets World actor Rider Strong says…
”We used to call him the Forrest Gump of Hollywood, because he knew everybody.”
Brian was interviewed by the Malibu Times in 2017 as a “Planet of the Apes super fan” because he has a converted garage in his home that houses tons of POTA memorabilia, so well known and popular that there were even people visiting his home in 2008 and onwards to see his collection and marvel at the Lawgiver statue that served as the centerpiece to the room.
After An Open Secret came out it became a little more difficult for Brian to get work, but he was still happily involved in any way he could be with the Apes community, he even worked with the makers of “Making Apes: The Artists Who Changed Film” in 2018. He is featured in the documentary at several points as well, but his face mostly obscured, and by the end he is entirely transformed into Dr. Zaius.
Not the first time he’s cosplayed as Dr. Zaius either, according to a Reddit post he was at an event at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts hosted a free, semester-long Planet of the Apes exhibit and film retrospective to celebrate the franchise’s 50th anniversary in 2018 as well, Brian and several other Apes walked around the event portraying the character(s) from the franchise.
In 2011 Brian was interviewed by a podcast host because of his interesting collection of POTA items, at one point himself saying “I collect people like I collect monkey masks” a ‘joke’, I’m sure, but in retrospect — maybe a guy who had a signed painting by notorious serial rapist and murderer John Wayne Gacy shouldn’t be making those kinds of jokes.
Anger Management / Charlie
Charlie Sheen’s very public feud with Chuck Lorre and subsequent firing from Two and a Half Men was the talk of the internet back in 2011, awash with memes of “tiger blood” and “winning”. Charlie had a plan to make a comeback in the form of Anger Management, a series for FX that was very loosely inspired by the Adam Sandler film of the same name.
In 2012 Charlie hired Brian Peck to work on the set of the series, nine years after Brian was convicted of the horrific crimes against Drake Bell.
According to an insider, Charlie Sheen asked for Brian Peck himself to work as dialogue coach and stand-in on his series, it’s unknown when other crew found out about Brian’s registered sex offender status but when they did, they took it to the higher ups who said that it was Charlie’s decision.
Peck was able to remain working on the show, but he had to stick to Sheen’s trailer when they weren’t filming.
In 2013, Charlie — allergic to not doing something absolutely out there — decided to go on a “hunt” for mythological creature The Loch Ness Monster, heading to the Scottish Highlands with Brian and another friend.
In an interview that Brian had done for another magazine in 2012 he states that he was working on Charlie’s show and the two were having so much fun together. “I adore Charlie” he stated.
Why a man like Brian who has always seemed like a huge fan of living under the radar would befriend a man like Charlie who was in the news every second of every day from 2011–2014, I’ll never know.
“Forrest Gump of Hollywood” indeed.