(Note: This was written for the "10x10" show here in Denver, but has nothing to do with Denver, per se. Other than it was written in Denver...).
When I was a kid, I didn’t have any heroes, mainly because I thought the concept of heroes was stupid.
The idea that you, a kid, were supposed select some person on which you would model the entire rest of your life seems like it was asking a bit too much. We had different priorities to start with. Theirs was to promote good over evil. Ours was candy.
The heroes they pushed in our faces back then all had flaws as far as I could see. Take Superman, who was supposed to represent truth, justice and the American way, all that good bullshit. First off, he was a cartoon and/or a comic book character, a fact adults apparently ignored. I personally didn’t think it was right to ask someone to model their life on several different colors of ink squirted on paper, but whatever. I’m just the kid.
Even if I did accept that a two-dimensional image could be a hero, there were other factors. Superman could fly. I couldn’t. Superman could crash through walls. I found out I couldn’t. What’s the point of having a hero whose exploits you could never duplicate? A hero, I figured, was supposed to be someone whose life you could reasonably emulate. Maybe. But Superman? Sure, he was kind and protected the weak and all of that good shit, but he could also crush your head like a juicebox full of Sunny D. With that going for you, it’s not hard to be admired
They did occasionally point to real people as heroes, but I saw the flaws in these selections as well. Sports stars were basically freaks of nature and one-trick ponies: see ball, hit ball. Movie stars were fine until parents started finding out about their all-boy slumber parties and heroin for breakfast. Even Jesus was an inappropriate hero as far as I could see, because who the hell could live up to Jesus? Walking on water? We hated to take baths. Rising from the dead? I had trouble getting up on time for school.
I became bored with heroes and their one-note attitudes and their stoic demeanor. They never got pissed off, never said, “Fuck it, I’m sitting around in my underwear all day and watch bad sitcoms.” I needed heroes who were real. Which is why my heroes became villains.
Villains, I slowly discovered, had real emotions. They showed joy (at the demise of their enemies), anger (when their plans to melt the polar icecaps with a giant magnifying glass and flood the world failed), pride (in creating needlessly complicated ways to rob a bank). They had greed, lust, envy, spite, hate…all of the good ones.
The villains weren’t like heroes, muscular freaks with chests so chiseled that no one noticed they were walking around in their underwear. Villains were either freakishly thin and angular or morbidly obese. They had distorted features, bent noses, pudgy fingers, acne, hair growing out of theirs ears, possibly severe cases of flatulence, spoke with foreign accents and probably smelled like pickles.
In short, villains were like us.
As far as I was concerned, heroes could take a flying leap (and most of them could). I rooted for the guy with the bad attitude who had to create his own flying car and army of robots. Most villains weren’t born with special powers, they were just Regular Joes with a crazy dream of taking over the world and enslaving everyone. You had to admire that, even if you ended up being one of the ones enslaved.
I had no plans of growing up and creating a sonic ray that paralyzes anyone within a 15-block radius, but I admired villains for thinking of shit like that. They had style. I watched The Riddler on my TV screen, cavorting in a lime green unitard covered in question marks and I was transfixed. To Hell with Batman and his careful, measured speech. The Riddler was fucking nuts and I loved it. I rooted for Snidley Whiplash to teabag Dudley Do-Right, I wanted Auric Goldfinger to stick around and make goddamn sure James Bond ended up in two halves on the laser table.
I enjoyed them all, every cackling, plotting, scheming, ingenious one of them.
But one year I found my ultimate hero. My true hero. My villain hero. On Christmas Eve, no less, like a gift wrapped in dark, black paper.
We were at home killing time until Christmas Day. My mother worked on Christmas dinner in the usually overblown manner that meant hours of preparation and a 15-minute feeding frenzy, followed by the sound of pants unbuckling.
I was 14 and my sister, a couple of years older, was watching yet another of those old black and white movies on some channel higher than 12. I never understood the appeal. They were dry, crackling images that frequently jumped and had storylines as dry as plain white toast, usually involving some man and woman who basically talked in a room for what seemed like hours about whether they truly loved each or not. Sometimes they danced, but then went back to talking again. Like I said, I didn’t get it.
I was bored and unable to sleep so I sat and watched the movie with my sister, making sure to mock the movie whenever I could to bug the shit out of her. As near as I could tell, the movie was about some guy was helping everybody he came across and wasn’t too happy about it. Making sacrifices and getting screwed every time. Serves him right, I thought, as I watched this Bailey guy digging in his own pocket to help out some yokel who apparently wasn’t smart enough to get his shit together on his own. My sister seemed to love this movie, sitting quietly and staring at the screen, but I couldn’t stop thinking that this guy’s life was screwed.
But then “he” appeared on the screen. My soon-to-be hero. I didn’t pay much attention at first, still wondering what my sister saw in these grayscale movies. I was about to tell her, “you know, they’re making movies in color now”, you know, when a new character caught my attention, growling, grumbling with a voice that sounded like an old car with a bad muffler. He spoke in tough, no-nonsense terms, and despite his wheelchair, looked as if he would have no qualms about kicking someone in the balls, then toss a ten-spot at them as they writhed on the ground to pay for the damages. He glowered, he glared. He found pleasure in the pain of others. He had ambition and that ambition was to run the world, even if the “world” consisted of only this small little piece of it called Bedford Falls.
“Who’s that guy,” I asked my sister.
“Who?”
“That guy on the screen, who else, dumbass?” That was our cute pet name for each other when our mother wasn’t in the room. “What’s that guy’s name?”
She gave me a look like I had just asked her if our mother was really our mother. “That’s George Bailey. He owns the building and loan and…”
“Who, the guy in the wheelchair is George Bailey?,” I asked, seeking clarification.
“In the wheelchair? No, dummy, that’s Mr. Potter.”
Mr. Potter. Even his name sounded like it didn’t take shit from anyone. It was now etched in my mind.
“You’ve never seen this before?,” she asked. She seemed dumbfounded.
“It’s in black and white and it’s not King Kong, so no, I haven’t seen it before.” I hated black and white movies. They were old and so…black and white. But this Potter guy…black and white worked for him. Color would have dulled his power.
“What’s the name of this movie,” I asked, still staring at this balled fist of a man ripping that George Bailey a new one about being worth more dead than alive. Ha! I gotta use that one. “Hey! I said, what’s the name of the movie?”
Again, she looked at me as if I had asked her is she would like to join me in worshipping Satan.
She gave an exasperated sigh. “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
“Nah, not really,” I said.
I apparently misunderstood. “That’s the name of the movie, dumbass. I can’t believe you’ve never seen this before. It’s on television, like, a million times every Christmas.”
She was only exaggerating a little. Back before one network decided to corner the market on “It’s A Wonderful Life” viewers and bought the rights, every channel that could lay their hands on a copy aired it. It was like “It’s A Wonderful Life-A-Palooza” and you could literally watch the entire movie by flipping through channels. A character would say something on Channel 2, you could switch to Channel 5 and hear the other character’s response, flip to Channel 9 and hear the next response and by Channel 32 you were on to the next scene of the movie. It was an ADHD kid’s dream.
But yet the story in the movie remained the same. Frustratingly, maddeningly the same. For the two people who haven’t seen “It’s A Wonderful Life”: spoiler alert. The story concerns some mope named George Bailey who spends much of the movie basically letting himself get kicked in the ass by life and the entire town of Bedford Falls. Oh, they tried to make George appear to be an unsung hero who continually saved the day, but he was patsy, a sap, a pushover whom an entire town used as a doormat. His “reward” for his good deeds was being shown how life would be if he had never been born at all, which, in actuality, didn’t seem so bad because he could walk around town without a care in the world…no bills, no kids, no responsibilities. It was like God have given him a celestial do-over. Even the town seemed more alive now that George Bailey had never been born. Strip clubs, gambling … It was Vegas without the oppressive heat and Arkansas tourists.
But apparently George Bailey was too stupid to realize the luck that had just landed in his black and white lap. He silently fumed at his bad fortune, but eventually acquiesced. He raged at the stupidity of those around him but then told them everything would be ok. He saw the mistakes of others but then agreed to be the fall guy. He was no hero, he was a sucker in a grey flannel suit.
Ah, but Mr. Potter, now there was a true hero, a man with conviction and purpose. They may call him the villain, but he was determination and drive in a creaky wheel chair. He had but one mission and pursued it with a shark-like focus: to own Bedford Falls. In any other scenario, a man with a handicap such as Potter’s would be hailed as someone to be admired for fighting against adversity. But in insane world of Frank Capra’s, this poor man who had overcome adversity and a debilitating condition was “the bad guy”, the villain. Stephen Hawking makes up some vague theory about bending time that does no one any good and he gets a “yay”. Potter wants to show that handicapped people can be a driving force in the burlesque industry and he gets booed. Go figure.
But I saw the admirable qualities in Mr. Potter and he was my new hero. His every utterance was a reason for me to stop whatever I was doing and run to the television and listen to the Gospel According To Potter.
I cheered when Mr. Potter gave George Bailey a verbal smackdown by summing up Bailey’s pathetic life in one devastating monologue, after poor George had to come to Potter, hat in hand, asking for help (like I knew he would).
“Look at you,” Potter sneered. “You used to be so cocky. You were going to go out and conquer the world. You once called me "a warped, frustrated, old man!" What are you but a warped, frustrated young man? A miserable little clerk crawling in here on your hands and knees and begging for help. No securities, no stocks, no bonds. Nothin' but a miserable little $500 equity in a life insurance policy. Ha! You’re worth more dead than alive.
I shed a slight tear when Potter bared his soul in heart-breaking honesty.
"George, I'm an old man and most people hate me but I don't like them either so that makes it all even."
Yes, that was me too! Well, except for the old part, but, yes, I hate people too, Mr. Potter.
And then there was the ultimate Potterism, the sentiment that solidified him as my hero. There’s stupid ol’ George Bailey, running through the town after being duped by some angel into believing that his miserable life is somehow wonderful because he has friends, blah blah, blah, whatever. He’s galloping through the snow, heading home toward and possible imprisonment thanks to the stupid mistakes of others (yes, YOU, Uncle Billy) and he’s wishing season’s greetings to inanimate objects – the movie theater, the Emporium, the old Building and Loan…he’s clearly lost his effiin’ mind. He passes by Potter’s office window (Potter is working late on Christmas Eve, I might add, clearly showing his strong work ethic).
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Potter!” the obviously delirious George Bailey screams like a snow-covered madman.
Potter, my hero, confidently responds: “Happy New Year to you…IN JAIL!”
Oh, snap! Well played, Potter, well played. In your face, George Bailey!
For several years after, this was my standard response to holiday greetings, and as expected, it earned me several confused looks. But there were a few others like me, guys who hung around in bars and felt a similar kinship with Potter. “You once called me a warped, frustrated old man,” one of us would say, and the other would immediately respond with, “Well what are you but a warped, frustrated YOUNG man?” It was the password into Potterland.
I don’t catch the movie as often as I’d like these days, mostly due to its limited airings. And it’s not the same watching it on DVD, all high-teched and Blu-Rayed, though the idea of fast-forwarding past that Zuzu’s petals bullshit and getting to the Potter highlights.
But until then, I’ll try to catch it when the network gods decide to air it, leaving it on in the background while attending to other important business like complaining about buying Christmas gifts and figuring out the point of eggnog, until I hear the gravel road voice of Mr. Potter on the screen and I stop to watch a true hero in action.
Happy New Year to you, Mr. Potter…wherever you are.
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