Roddy Piper was put on this Earth to chew bubblegum and kick
ass and he’s all out of bubblegum.
He put on those dark shades in “They Live” (1988),
and saw things how they really were. The billboards read, “OBEY.” The
1%-er investment bankers were really skull- faced aliens, and the rising income
inequality that has been going on in this country at least since Reagan took
office was all laid bare in a modestly-budgeted John Carpenter sci-fi movie
starring a professional wrestler.
But “Rowdy” Roddy Piper wasn’t just any
pro-wrestler. He was probably the craziest man in the insane asylum. He busted beer bottles over his head and let the blood just drip down his face while
issuing challenges to the Sheepherders, all in front of a live studio audience.
He also wrestled a bear once in Fresno. Another wrestler slapped a handful of
honey on Piper’s trunks as he made his way into the ring. The bear buried his
snout in Piper’s rear for several painful minutes. This was called paying your
dues, and Piper paid them in full with interest.
He was an undersized hellhead in a world of giants who made
you believe that he was a menace to 6’8″ mounds of muscle like Hulk Hogan
through sheer intensity. That crazy glint in Roddy’s eye that made him a top
attraction during the WWF’s (now WWE) 1980s WrestleMania boom period, also made
him so believable as John Carpenter’s alien-blasting bindlestiff in “They
Live.” Sure, Kurt Russell, Carpenter’s muse in so many similar films in
the 1980s, could have acted circles around Piper, but he wouldn’t have put in a
better performance.
When Piper says, “You look like your head fell in the
cheese dip back in 1957,” to one of those skeletal aliens, it’s the same
kind of line that could have incited a riot in the wrestling ring, as Piper
recalls doing in Los Angeles and Puerto Rico in his autobiography, “In the Pit With Piper” (Berkley Trade, 2002). Piper knew the power of insults in
a way that no mere actor ever could.
Born Roderick George Toombs in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan on
April 17, 1954, Piper had his first wrestling match by the time he was 15. He
wrestled Larry “The Axe” Hennig in Winnipeg. Hennig beat Piper in ten
seconds.
“That match certainly didn’t help my confidence,”
he once recalled to me.
In 1975, when Piper was just 18, he made his way to Los
Angeles, where he became the protégé of “Judo” Gene LeBell, an
ass-kicking renaissance man who mastered overlapping careers in martial arts,
pro-wrestling and movie stunt work that would’ve permanently crippled lesser
men. LeBell taught Piper the chokeholds and arm bars that he needed to survive
in the wrestling ring, where the fights may have been fake, but the pain never
was.
In 1978, LeBell brought Piper into another one of his
spheres, helping Roddy land his first movie role in Carl Reiner’s “The One
and Only,” a heavily fictionalized Gorgeous George biopic starring Henry
Winkler during his Fonz heyday. For Piper’s part, Winkler smashed a German
helmet repeatedly over his skull during a sports montage. Pain was always going
to be part of Piper’s art.
While “They Live” is the film that Piper will be
best remembered for, and the only film many people think he was ever in, he
ground his way through enjoyable low-budget junk-food like “Hell Comes to
Frog Town” (1988), “Body Slam” (1986) and “Street Team
Massacre” (2007). He also amassed guest starring roles in such television
shows as “Walker Texas Ranger,” “Highlander,”
“Robocop,” and a recurring role in ” It’s Always Sunny in
Philadelphia” as, appropriately, Da’ Maniac. Like so many stars of
straight-to-streaming grindhouse fare, Piper leaves four films in
post-production, ensuring that he’ll have new releases hitting the Redbox for
months to come.
The one time I had anything resembling a conversation with
Piper was when I was the ghostwriter for LeBell’s autobiography. Piper dictated
the foreword to Gene LeBell’s autobiography to me over the phone. As he wrapped
up his piece on his mentor and sensei, I told him that I was flying out for a
two-week wrestling tour of Europe the next day.
“That’s rough, brother,” he said. “That’s
real rough.”
Then he asked how much I was making on the tour. It’s not a
rude question in wrestling circles. When I told him, he said, “$100 for
wrestling? That’s not bad for wrestling.”
That moment of empathy from such a tough man made today’s
news of Piper’s passing much harder to take than other celebrity deaths. By the
end of Piper’s active pro-wrestling career, he was a throwback who struggled to
maintain a sense of honor in an industry that increasingly had little use for
such things. He was a true mensch in a business (hell, a world) full of
thieves. He honored handshake agreements, and was loyal to those who had his
back and gave him his start.
Sometime last night, Piper posted a tweet that ended with,
“YOU PICKED THE
WRONG GUY TO BULLY!” Then he went to bed, and never woke up.
Looking
at it now, “YOU PICKED THE WRONG GUY TO BULLY” with the caps lock
going full throttle is as fitting an epitaph for “Rowdy” Roddy Piper
as any. He will not only be missed, but I know so many people who miss him
already.
Plus I got my best guy @EarlSkakel backing me up! "It's the time of the Rebel"
YOU PICKED THE WRONG GUY TO BULLY! https://t.co/BuIoIHFfpl
— Rowdy Roddy Piper (@R_Roddy_Piper) July 30, 2015
