Tag: Jerry Lawler

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Star Wars: The Cult Reawakens

CREDIT: Laura Jean Hocking

It’s a rainy Saturday in late November. Jerry “The King” Lawler sits in his booth on the dealer floor of the Memphis Comic and Fantasy Convention (MCFC), surveying the scene. About a thousand people are crowded into the basement of the Memphis Hilton, browsing tables overflowing with comic books, memorabilia, T-shirts, and handcrafted fan art. The wrestling legend is also an accomplished comic artist, and he’s here to sign his work.

I’m here to talk about Star Wars.

“I’ve got this awesome Chewbacca mug that came out in 1977, when the first movie came out. There’s no telling what it’s worth now, but I wouldn’t sell it for anything,” Lawler says. “I was a huge Star Wars fan, and I am to this day.”

Laura Jean Hocking

Jerry Lawler is an old-school Star Wars fan

Tonight is the big costume contest, so the crowd is filled with sci-fi and fantasy characters come to life: Harry Potters, Star Trek crew, Spider-Men, Wonder Women, and Doctor Whos in all his incarnations. And, of course, Stormtroopers, Jedi, and Leias.

“It was probably the start of all of this stuff,” Lawler says. “It was the precursor to geekdom, if you will.”

Origin Story

The first glimpse the world got of Star Wars was in a room at the 1976 San Diego Comic-Con, where Charley Lippincott, the head of marketing for the newly created Lucasfilm Ltd., showed a sparse crowd black-and-white slides of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Three years earlier, George Lucas had directed American Graffiti, a low-budget, sleeper hit about a group of California teenagers coming of age in 1962. For his follow-up, Lucas wanted to do something inspired by the cheap, sci-fi serials he had loved as a kid. He tried to buy the rights to Flash Gordon, but Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis wouldn’t sell. So Lucas decided to create his own outer space adventure.

“George Lucas had one good idea,” says Memphis filmmaker Mike McCarthy, on hand at the con to premiere his new sci-fi serial, Waif. “Star Wars is American Graffiti in space.”

Laura Jean Hocking

Director Mike McCarthy says George Lucas had one good idea

American Graffiti cost $777,000 and grossed $140 million, making Lucas the toast of Hollywood. But by 1976, 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation was $9 million in the hole on Lucas’ badly behind-schedule pet project, which no one but him seemed to understand. By the time it was finally ready, even the director himself thought it would flop.

Star Wars was scheduled to be released on Friday, May 27th, 1977, but when Fox executives found out the competition that Memorial Day weekend was going to be Smokey and the Bandit, they moved the premiere up to Wednesday, hoping they could lure a few people into theaters before everybody went to see Burt Reynolds. But, unbeknownst to anyone who wasn’t answering the phones at Lucasfilm, the word of mouth that started at Comic-Con had reached critical mass. Sci-fi fan magazine Starlog declared, “Star Wars is a legend ahead of itself.” By the end of 1977, Star Wars had grossed $307 million, more than twice as much as Smokey and the Bandit, and 20th Century Fox’s stock price had doubled.

The Summer of ’77

“Star Wars is my first memory of any science fiction stuff I was interested in,” MCFC founder Joe Thordarson says.

He was one of millions of kids who flocked to the theaters again and again in the summer of 1977. For him, the appeal of Star Wars does not necessarily lie in its fantastical elements. “At the end of the day, you’ve got a lot of ‘normal’ people who are flawed having to step up and do extraordinary things. I think [Lucas] did a great job originally, because it’s not just about the special effects, it’s about the characters. You actually care about them.”

Director Craig Brewer, visiting the convention with his family while on a break from working on a new TV series for Fox, agrees.”There is a very palpable feeling that every child can relate to: feeling like you’re alone, like Luke, the boy on the farm, looking at the double sunset. I think the thing people respond to with Star Wars is the Han, Luke, Leia, Chewbacca, [Cee-] Threepio, and R2-D2 squad. We didn’t know each other our whole lives, but we just came together at this one moment, and now we’re going to risk our lives for each other. There’s this whole dynamic of personalities amongst these six characters. As a child, you could easily play a type with really clear turf. You be C-3PO, I’ll be Chewbacca, you be Solo, you be Luke. Let’s go out and play. It’s about finding your friends.”

PoMo Myth

It’s a cliché to say that Star Wars and its sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) are a modern myth. It would be more accurate to call it postmodern myth. Lucas was a fan of Joseph Campbell, the scholar whose book The Hero With a Thousand Faces first outlined the “Hero’s Journey,” a collection of story elements shared by texts about Gilgamesh, King Arthur, and Rio Bravo. The entire Star Wars saga is a mash-up, self-consciously constructed out of bits and pieces of older stories and films. In 1977, Lippincott told Starlog, “The story has influences from all over the place. People have pointed out that they see suggestions from Lord of the Rings, Flash Gordon, and Dune. And there are a lot of things from outside science fiction — like the samurai tradition of Japan. … Most importantly, the story relates to legend and fairy tale. It’s what Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen were doing.”

Like fairy tales, the films have become something passed down through generations.”It was very important to me when I had a son that he know Star Wars,” Brewer says. “As I’m reading the opening scroll, I had this sense-memory sensation that I had not felt or heard — that almost sounds like a line out of Star Wars — since I was 6. It was my father, who has passed away, whispering in my ear in a dark theater, reading the scroll from Star Wars to me. It was one of the most spiritual moments I have had in a long time.”

The Sandbox

In the heady days of 1977, Lucas was widely quoted as saying he wanted to start a film series “like James Bond” — a sandbox in which different directors and writers could play, adding their own touches to the mythology. He promised a trilogy of trilogies, and for its 1978 rerelease, Star Wars gained a new subtitle: Episode IV: A New Hope. For Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas enlisted writer Leigh Brackett, a Hollywood veteran whose first screen credit, The Big Sleep, was shared with William Faulkner. Brackett died of breast cancer after turning in her first draft, and the job passed to Lawrence Kasdan, who had just written Lucas’ side project with Steven Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Lucas tapped his USC film professor Irvin Kershner to direct the film, which is widely regarded as the best of the entire series.

“Watching Empire with my family recently, nothing beats Yoda,” Brewer says. “I was surprised that my daughter required no explanation when Luke went into the cave that was strong with the Dark Side of the Force, doing battle with phantom Darth Vader, lopping his head off, and seeing his own face in the helmet. She got it at age 7. It starts conversations. Who are you fighting? Who is your real worst enemy? Is it yourself?”

Laura Jean Hocking

Director Craig Brewer with Yoda

Kasdan returned to write Return of the Jedi, the most financially successful of the original three movies. Lucas devoted himself to running Lucasfilm and its spin-off companies Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Skywalker Sound, which not only revolutionized special effects and sound design, but also produced innovations like nonlinear video editing and Photoshop.

But after seeing the computer-generated images ILM had created for Spielberg’s 1993 hit Jurassic Park, Lucas had a change of heart. He would write and direct a new trilogy of films in the Star Wars saga, Episodes 1-3, which would tell the story of Darth Vader’s transformation from heroic Jedi knight to scourge of the galaxy. When The Phantom Menace was released in 1999, it was initially greeted with enthusiasm. But then, a realization set in among fans. It just wasn’t as good. Lucas the filmmaker was now Lucas the toymaker. The thrill was gone.

Scarred For Life

“It was an impossible task to make 1, 2, and 3,” Memphis comedian Brandon Sams says. “With the majesty of the first three, and all of the comic books and lore, and Lucas hadn’t directed a movie in 20 years, it was just doomed. It was too important to people. But leave it to the fans. There was a whole lot of great fan-created content that came out around the prequels.”

Brandon is at MCFC with his wife, Alexandria, who skipped Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005), because they lacked the scrappy, handmade quality of A New Hope. “Being a loyalist, I didn’t like the CGI. I’m still not a fan of CGI. If there’s not any Jim Henson puppetry and old school art, I’m not as interested.”

She wasn’t the only one turned off by the prequels. “I got thrown off the track by the introduction of Jar Jar Binks,” Jerry Lawler says. “It scarred me for life, really.”

Even if they fell short artistically, the prequels still did huge business — The Phantom Menace alone has grossed more than $1 billion.

And they created a whole new generation of fans, like Lara Johnson, director of the 2014 documentary Geekland: Fan Culture in Memphis. “I was 10 years old when Revenge of the Sith came out,” she recalls. “My dad had tried to show me Star Wars, but it was just a lot of sand, and I wasn’t into it. My grandmother took me to see the Will Ferrell movie Kicking & Screaming. We bought the tickets, but the print was broken — back when prints were a thing. So my grandmother went back to the ticket counter, and said they needed to give us another ticket, because they sold us a broken movie … And I said, ‘The kids at school have been talking about this Star Wars movie.’ So we watch it, and my mouth was just hanging open the entire time. It was the most magical experience I had ever had. Before that point, I played softball. I was sporty. I was a jock. After that point, I was a geek.”

Memphis actor/director Drew Smith, star of the upcoming comedy Bad, Bad Men and creator of the viral video “Force for Good” starring Mayor-elect Jim Strickland, is at the con wrangling his two sons, Hank, 5, and Jonah, 11, who are dressed as a First Order Stormtrooper and Jango Fett. “Those of us who grew up with 4, 5, and 6 didn’t appreciate 1, 2, and 3 the way this generation did,” he says. “They get it, even if we don’t. They’re a little bit into it.”

At that, Hank turns and menaces me with his lightsaber. “ALL into it!”

The Force Awakens

The parade of costumes continues. There are obscure anime characters like Vash the Stampede, and a flock of Harley Quinns, a fan-favorite Batman villain. We’re living in the world Lucas made, but geekdom has mutated into a thousand different subspecies. Surely, I can find someone at the con who doesn’t like Star Wars.

I stop Megan Rook, who is dressed as 1990s alt comic book hero Tank Girl. “I’ve always been into geeky stuff,” she says. “My dad’s a big Star Wars fan.”

Exactly. Doesn’t Star Wars seem like a relic of an older generation? “There are those guys who are like, ‘OMG, I saw it in the theater,'” she says, rolling her eyes. “But I don’t hate it. I’m actually pretty excited about the new movie!”

Cue the Excitement

Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which opens Friday, is easily the most anticipated pop-culture event of 2015. It is the first Star Wars movie in a decade, and the first since Disney purchased Lucasfilm from Lucas for a reported $4 billion. Stung by criticism of the prequels, Lucas retired, leaving the franchise in the hands of producer Kathleen Kennedy, whose credits include everything from E.T. to Persepolis. The film, penned by Empire Strikes Back writer Kasdan, is set 30 years after Return of the Jedi and reunites the original cast of Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Harrison Ford as Han Solo, and, most importantly for many, Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia.

Harrison Ford returns as Han Solo

“Leia Organa is my favorite female character — no, my favorite character, period — in all of pop culture,” Johnson says. “She’s amazing. She watches her entire planet die, and she keeps going. She can do anything and take it over.”

Johnson says Fisher’s sharp portrayal of the galactic freedom fighter broke open the sci-fi boys’ club and inspired a generation of female characters that included Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley from Alien and Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor from The Terminator. “They are strong women, but they are also flawed. They save the day in the end, but they have a lot of depth as characters. They’re not just there to be an object to catch.”

A 21-year-old woman named Katie, who, along with her friend Charlene, is dressed as a character from Mad Max: Fury Road, says “Princess Leia wasn’t like, a damsel in distress. She was like, ‘I’m going to take care of this, and if you can keep up, awesome.'”

Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in 1980

Charlene, whose road to geekdom started with Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man, says Leia is a big reason she’s a fan of the “Orig Trig.” “I feel like it’s something every generation likes. There are a lot of little 6-year-olds now who are in love with Star Wars, and my dad’s a huge Star Wars fan.”

One fan from Charlene’s dad’s generation is director J. J. Abrams. The creator of TV series Felicity and Lost was hired by Kennedy to direct the first film of the new Star Wars era after rebooting the Star Trek franchise for Paramount. Abrams’ work on The Force Awakens will be the the first test for Disney, whose stewardship of the franchise was initially met with skepticism by the faithful. But that skepticism melted away after a series of spectacular trailers that have been received by the geek community with something approaching religious awe.

Daisy Ridley as Rey and John Boyega as Finn

“The new movie is going to be amazing,” says Memphis Star Wars fan page administrator Liza Andersen. “I hate that George Lucas doesn’t have anything to do with it, but I trust J. J. Abrams to do the right thing. I went to Star Wars week at Disney, and it was amazing. When the new park opens, I intend to fall off the face of the earth. I’ll be there in costume, working, and no one will know they even hired me.”

Andersen is not in costume at the con but says she’s dressed as Padmé, the mother of Luke and Leia who was played in the prequels by Natalie Portman. “But,” she says, “I plan on joining the 501st as soon as I can afford a costume.”

Blurred Lines

In the lore, the 501st Legion is Darth Vader’s personal Stormtrooper detachment, known as “Vader’s Fist.” In real life, it’s an 8,000-member organization of Star Wars enthusiasts who make their own obsessively detailed costumes. Garrison Commanding Officer Justin Bryant says the Legion is often called upon to make public appearances, such as at the recent Memphis Grizzlies Star Wars Night. “A large portion of what we do is charity. It allows us to get involved with our local community,” he says. “We’ve worked for Habitat for Humanity, Food for the Poor, Children’s Miracle Network and Le Bonheur. Our motto is ‘Bad guys doing good.'”

Bryant joined the 501st in 2005, after appearing in a borrowed costume and being amazed at the wide-eyed reactions he got. “When I’m in my Stormtrooper costume, I get the excited fans who are smiling and cheerful. Then you have those who fear you, who are intimidated by you, whether they know what a Stormtrooper is or not. We get that not only from children, but also from adults.”

This blurring of lines between fantasy and reality is no surprise to Johnson, whose next film project explores identity in international geek culture. “You see characters that you love, and you want to be them. So you dress up like them. It’s also a good shorthand that helps you meet other people who think like you.”

She says when the fans line up this weekend for The Force Awakens, their excitement will not just be about seeing a new movie, but about returning to a shared universe where they have found their friends. “You don’t have to have Harry Potter to make Harry Potter great. He’s got this whole magical world around him. And Star Wars is the same. Nobody’s favorite character is Luke. They love all of the tertiary characters.”

Johnson gestures to the crowded convention floor. “There are 2,000 people here. I’m sure if you asked anyone here if they could jump into their favorite universe, they would do it.”

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News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1393

Neverending Lawler

Memphis wrestler Jerry “The King” Lawler was involved in an automobile accident on Halloween night when 21-year-old driver Melanie Baum ran a red light, totaling Lawler’s car and injuring his girlfriend. Baum wasn’t charged with attempted vehicular regicide but was ticketed for running the light.

Verbatim

“He’s as dead as Elvis.” That’s how former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee described a pheasant he killed on a hunting trip in Iowa last week. Huckabee shot two additional pheasants, killing them both as dead as his presidential campaign.

Memphis as F&#k

SB Nation writer Jake Whitacre compared the Memphis Grizzlies to TV mercenaries The A-Team last week, describing the team as “a crack commando unit sent to prison for refusing to play up-tempo and shoot more threes.” These comments were inspired by a Grizzlies play called “What the F&#k?”

Oops!

Hobby Lobby owners became targets of a federal investigation when customs agents seized hundreds of ancient clay tablets in Memphis in 2011. They were acquired for the Hobby Lobby-funded Museum of the Bible, which is scheduled to open in Washington, D.C. in 2017.

It’s a Sign!

A Memphis-area dry cleaning business has announced that it will not be responsible for any activities carried out in a predetermined order. They won’t be responsible for any buttons, beads, or zippers either.

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Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

When Dave Brown Met Batman.

It’s WMC weatherman  and wrestling host Dave Brown’s last day on the job. He’ll be missed for many reasons. In addition to weather reporting he was a disc jockey, and hosted local TV shows like Dialing for Dollars. But this is how your Pesky Fly chooses to remember him— moderating a squabble between Jerry Lawler and Adam West.   

When Dave Brown Met Batman.

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Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

Jerry Lawler in a Batmobile

To the King Cave!

This week the internet discovered something Memphis wrestling fans have known for a long time. King Jerry Lawler is one of the biggest nerds on Earth.

Buzz culture website Uprox.com had this to say:

“Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler owns an original 1966 Batman TV show Batmobile. Maybe you already know this. It’s one of those stories I see, assume everyone knows about, see written up on Deadspin four days later and have to post about on day five for residual traffic. So, yeah, whether you were aware or not, Jerry Lawler owns a goddamn Batmobile.”

It’s true, of course. Sort of. Lawler owns a replica, pulled from the original Bat-mold.

Jerry Lawler in a Batmobile (2)

In 1966 George Barris built the original TV Batmobile. There were six additional stunt cars modeled after the original, and five duplicates built for promotional use. Lawler, a longtime collector of Disney, Coke, and superhero memorabilia purchased his a little over a year ago from Bat-fan and fabricator, Matt Dollar. 

It makes perfect sense, of course. Lawler’s origin story, as explained by former ring announcer Lance Russell, goes something like this. When the King was still a young prince he wanted to be a comic book artist and spent much of his spare time learning to draw the superheroes of DC comics. The skills he developed, however, lead to a surprise opportunity to draw Memphis wrestlers for use on WHBQ’s weekly televised wrestling programs. That, in turn, lead to Lawler’s colorful career in wrestling, which included dressing up in a superman suit and sparring verbally with West/Batman. 

Jerry Lawler in a Batmobile

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News News Feature

Memphis Heat Redux

Memphis’ Wild Fire Wrestling is hosting “Long Live The King,” to celebrate the life and career of King Jerry Lawler, the man whose name is synonymous with Memphis wrestling. In addition to a meet-and-greet, the house will be full of local legends, including Handsome Jimmy Valiant, Superstar Bill Dundee, Brian “Grand Master Sexay” Christopher, The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, Koko B. Ware, and other Saturday morning  favorites.

Best of all, perhaps, this event reunites wrestling commentators Dave Brown and the great 88-year-old Lance Russell.

Russell, a longtime program manager for WHBQ and one of the most beloved wrestling commentators in the history of sports entertainment, talked to the Flyer about King Lawler, Memphis wrestling, and playing himself in Man on the Moon.

Memphis Flyer: You and Dave Brown were the eye of this colorful, chaotic storm. Calling wrestling like it was any other sport during the glory days of Jackie Fargo, Tojo Yamamoto, and Jerry “The King” Lawler vs. Andy “the clown” Kaufman. Can you even go a day without talking to somebody about wrestling?  

Russell: Well, it’s easier down here [in Florida] than it was when I lived in Memphis. When I wasn’t talking in person to some fan about wrestling, I was talking on the telephone. Somebody was always calling. You know, people say, “Boy, whatever happened to the good old days of Memphis wrestling?” Well, I can tell you Memphis wrestling is just as alive as it ever has been.

You’d be the one to know.

My son was looking at his computer a couple of nights ago and found where somebody had made a list of people who were involved in wrestling as promoters or wrestlers or managers or referees and even announcers. And they have them ranked by age. My son said, “Did you realize that in the United States you are the fifth oldest person involved in wrestling that is still alive?” When I got up the next day I said to my son, outside of wanting to kill you, I was amused all night long. I didn’t sleep, but I was amused.

I suspect that makes you a go-to

resource, having seen wrestlers from so many territories and having also worked for Turner Broadcasting.

I can tell you as a director of programming for WHBQ in Memphis for all of those years, I’m not proud of the fact that I didn’t put an edict out that there will be no erasing of tapes from Talent Party or wrestling or any of those kinds of things. We erased everything. And sometimes we would record on the same tape two weeks in a row. We kept telling ourselves we were saving money.

You know Vince McMahon is getting ready to program Memphis wrestling on the network he started so he’s trying to pin down all the programs. And, in Memphis, everything we ever had in terms of tapes is all just blasted asunder. Jerry Lawler ended up with the biggest quantity of tapes. Jimmy Hart, a wrestler and wrestling manager who worked with Vince McMahon in New York after he left Memphis, ended up with a lot of tapes. People pay good money for them too, and now Vince McMahon wants to broadcast Memphis wrestling every day.

Why are people still fascinated with Memphis wrestling?

I’m gonna tell you, Memphis was absolutely totally different than any territory in the country. I eventually went with Turner Broadcasting, and when I went there and I ran into guys from the East Coast and West Coast they’d say, “All you clowns in Memphis spend more time making jokes than anything else.” And we did, because it made people happy. They were tickled to death to look forward to some of the foolishness that went on. And we were proud of it. It was good entertainment.

You and Dave Brown had great chemistry.

What made Dave and I different was the programming. The different matches that we booked. The different characters that were made up. Like Kamala the Giant, who is from right down in Mississippi and was very popular all over the country. I hired Dave to work in television. Dave was an all-night radio jock for WHBQ, and I knew him as a person and liked him very much. Anyhow, he questioned wrestling. I said, “Man, if you want to work in television, you will learn more in two months of wrestling than two years of anything else.” So he took a chance, and he was great. Dave and I also agreed on one thing you never talk about in wrestling. See, I was a wrestling fan, and I had been ever since the days when I grew up in Dayton, Ohio and worked in the auditorium as an usher. I never wanted anybody to say to me, “Hey, I’m going to win in the third fall on this match.” I don’t want to be a stiff actor saying some lines, I wanted to call things as I saw them in my face for the first time.

No matter how over the top it was, it was completely alive. Anything could happen.

We had great matches too. But in the meantime, we didn’t mind tickling your funny bone. We’d have a guy or a gal shaved bald right there in the middle of the ring.

I thought I was going to get killed one night in the Memphis Coliseum, when Jerry Lawler put up his hair and Bill Dundee put up his wife’s hair and Dundee lost. We had our own barber who was there to cut hair when necessary. He thought he was going to be killed. The crowd was incensed that Lawler had cheated to win and this vivacious young redhead was losing her hair. It’s hilarious when you stop and think about a situation getting that serious over what was actually a very funny incident.

But that’s the Memphis audience, right? It’s why the famous Lawler/Kaufman feud couldn’t have happened anywhere else.

You’re right about that. There was a kind of audience reaction that we had cultivated either on purpose or unknowingly. And this is the thing that attracted Andy Kaufman. As a kid, Andy would watch wrestling and he would see the bad guy: Just by raising his hand he could get this big reaction from the crowd. That power that wrestlers held captivated him, and he initially tried to get the attention of Vince McMahon’s father and his grandfather who, in addition to promoting boxing, also promoted wrestling. They said “What are you trying to do, make a joke out of wrestling?” Well, Andy ran across a guy who worked for the wrestling magazines and he said to check out the guys in Memphis, who will do anything. And they’re great show people.

Even if the outcomes are known, this is unscripted stuff.

I got a big guy from Canada supposedly. He comes out there [to interview] and he says, “Jerry Lawler! I’m going to get him! I’m taking a blood oath!” And I’m the program director at WHBQ, so I say, “No, I don’t want any blood. Don’t be busting his eye open on television. We don’t want our audience to have to put up with that.” And this idiot has got one of these big double-headed axes, and he runs the blade down his massive arm and I’m sitting here looking at it, and I know that the camera is right on this thing, and all of a sudden here comes the stream of red right into the camera. I thought, “Oh my God, he’s cutting his arm open on television for crying out loud.” I almost had a heart attack.

This wrestling event is to celebrate Jerry Lawler, the King of Memphis wrestling. It’s been three years since his heart attack, and he’s getting back in the ring.  

The superlatives for Lawler? I don’t have enough of them. But I can tell you I’ve seen a lot of wrestlers, and Jerry Lawler is a guy who is gifted in so many directions. I promise, I don’t owe him money or anything. I’m just telling the truth. He is the most talented guy in the business and people hated him in the East because of what he’s done in Memphis. I mean, he became a television host on Channel 5, and he was very good at what he did.

And you recognized his skills right away.

When he was 15, his dad took him down to the auditorium every Monday for wrestling. We had no way to record the matches; it was too expensive at that time. So when Dave and I did the show, we’d have to just talk about what happened. Well, Jerry was a natural artist. He draws these 11″ x 14″ pictures on pieces of cardboard. He drew maybe the finishing move from a match or something. Then Dave and I could talk about the picture.

I found those pictures in my attic about five years ago. I’ve had them for 35 years.

You got to play yourself in Man on the Moon. That had to be affirming to have that Kaufman/Lawler feud become widely recognized as a big moment in pop culture.

Yeah, yeah. I’ve got several copies of it. Unfortunately they cut out some of my best scenes. That was fun though.

And what about the actual feud. Did you guys know you were making history?

We were all working. That’s what we did for a living.

“Long Live the King,” a wrestling tribute to Jerry Lawler, is at Minglewood Hall September 18th,  7 p.m.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1328

It’s a Sign!

If we remember our gangster movies correctly, “inside job” refers to a shocking betrayal. You know, a crime committed by someone who’s gained some level of trust and then used their “inside” knowledge to nefarious ends.  

Depressing Headlines

According to a headline from Tulsa World online, U of M football coach “Justin Fuente says hometowns of Tulsa, Memphis very similar.” True, he was mostly talking about college recruiting issues, but even then, the article linked to a separate related story titled, “Tulsa picked to finish last in American Athletic Conference.”

Lawler Eats Puppies

Memphian and WWE legend Jerry “The King” Lawler tweeted that Denny’s is his new favorite place to eat and attached a photo of something called “Strawberry Pancake Puppies,” which is apparently what you get when a strawberry pancake and a hushpuppy love each other very much.

Elsewhere in Tennessee

Franklin, Tennessee’s most insightful Dude/Alderman Dana McLendon just wants to help his fellow bro. McLendon posted a YouTube video explaining “what you need to know about how to deal with women.” The instructional video uses a chart to measure a lady’s hotness against her craziness. Too much of the latter, McLendon says, may lead to regrets.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Jerry “the King” Lawler Has a New Wrestling Museum

[slideshow-1]

The exploits and artifacts of Jerry “the King” Lawler—- wrestler, announcer, artist, well-known personality in Memphis and the world, and, let us not forget, once (two races for mayor) and possibly future political candidate —- are now accounted for and housed in a free museum.

On Saturday, the museum had a grand opening at Wynn Automobile, 1831 Getwell, Memphis, where the proprietors have afforded it a generous and well-appointed space of several rooms.

Lawler, host of Monday Night Raw, one of the most watched cable shows in the world, has a widespread fandom — a fact indicated by the signatures on a wall-sized Get Well card signed by admirers after the King had a heart attack last year (on air, while doing a show!)

He was at the museum on Saturday, signing autographs. His lifetime mementoes as well as exhibits chronicling the larger story of wrestling itself will be on display at the museum from 1:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m. daily.

Check out the slideshow above for a teaser featuring some of the exhibits at the museum — and some shots of Jerry the King as well. (Note Lawler’s signed poster-sized sketch of the late comedian Andy Kaufman, a famous Lawler wrestling foil.)

Categories
News

Wrestler Jerry Lawler Accused of Assault in Mississippi

Back in his glory days , Jerry “The King” Lawler came up with a lot of moves that were, shall we say, less than legal. He used to hide brass knuckles in his tights and surprise his opponents, causing the audience to boo or cheer, given the circumstances. Sometimes, he’d even throw fire. Such is wrestling.

Now, he’s in in trouble for throwing punches. An affidavit was filed late last week claiming that Lawler punched wrestling manager Sal “The Big Cheese” Corrente three times on June 15th.

Keep in mind though that this alleged assault happened at a wrestling event in Tunica. According to the complainant, Lawler (who was not scheduled to make an appearance) punched Corrente when he was on his way to the locker room. There was another fracas later in the parking lot afterwards.

According to Rasslin’ Riot News (and if you can’t believe them, then something’s just wrong in this world), Lawler was under the impression that Corrente had hit a fan. During the alleged assault, he yelled, “You stupid mother f***er, don’t you ever hit a fan!”

Now the legal s**t may be hitting the fan, but Lawler isn’t concerned about the charges, saying that being punched is a part of the business.

Lawler cannot be served until he makes another appearance in Mississippi. The trial is scheduled for August 1, but only if Lawler gets served on time.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Lords of the Ring

Jerry Lawler says he ain’t gonna wrestle with Hulk Hogan on April 27th at FedExForum. Does that necessarily mean the King ain’t gonna wrestle somebody on April 27th at FedExForum? Well, does it?

In the world of professional wrestling there’s something called “heat.” The expression is used to describe public animosity between wrestlers and the degree to which any given feud is whipping the fans into a frenzy. Heat is desirable. It’s the brutally elegant currency of professional wrestling, and, at 57, Jerry “The King” Lawler still has it.

On April 12th, only a month after his induction into the WWE Hall of Fame, Lawler walked into FedExForum, faced a bank of television cameras, and told a roomful of reporters that, in spite of recent announcements, he wouldn’t go toe-to-toe with 54-year-old Hulk Hogan or participate in Memphis Wrestling’s “Clash of the Legends,” an evening of fictional fighting that local promoter Corey Maclin has described as the largest independently produced wrestling event in the pseudo-sport’s history.

Lawler looked unusually trim as he swaggered up to the mic. His Pepsodent smile and baby blue eyes flashed against his dark Hollywood tan as he excused himself from the bout, citing a conflict between his employers at the Paramount/NBC-owned USA Network and Hogan’s contractual obligations to Viacom’s VH1. Then he left the building.

“I had to get out of there before Hulk came in and VH1 started shooting him for his reality show [Hogan Knows Best],” Lawler explains. But can you trust a wrestler? And more importantly, can you trust Lawler, the man who helped turn wrestling into performance art and blurred the line between entertainment and reality when he teamed up with Taxi star and late comedian Andy Kaufman to perpetrate the greatest entertainment hoax of the last century?

Moments after Lawler’s hasty exit, Hogan stalked up to the stage wearing a tight black T-shirt and his trademark bandanna. In typical wrestler fashion, he bad-mouthed Lawler for breaking his vow that their fight — a grudge match 20-odd years in the making — would go on, no matter what the WWE’s owner and chief ringmaster Vince McMahon had to say about it. Shortly thereafter, former WWE superstar Paul Wight, Lawler’s last-minute replacement, took his turn dissing the WWE.

And so the classic David and Goliath storyline was redrawn: Wight and Hogan would throw down under the banner of Memphis Wrestling as an act of defiance against the all-powerful networks, the WWE, and McMahon’s lapdog, the cowardly and duplicitous King Lawler.

“I wish it really was all just part of some big storyline,” Lawler says, fidgeting with his ever-present Superman ring and swearing that he won’t even be in Memphis on the night of the big fight.

“It’s all about the networks,” he says with a shrug, disappointed that the biggest hometown match of his career has been yanked out from under him. “This is reality and kind of a personal thing [between Hogan and the WWE],” he says. “And it’s a shame, because that kind of reality is what makes for the best storylines in wrestling. When you have something reality-based that has a personal side to it, you can get the fans’ interest much better than you can with ‘Hey, here’s two guys wrestling for a championship belt.'”

Still, sitting on a barstool in his comfortable East Memphis home, surrounded by his Coca-Cola memorabilia, his jukeboxes, and his Disney collectibles, Lawler radiates contentment. And why shouldn’t he? He’s the host of Raw, the longest-running weekly entertainment series in the history of television. “I suppose I could get all mad and quit,” he cracks, only half sarcastically. “But I’m on the top-rated show on USA. And I can have that job for the rest of my life if I want it.” At this point in his career, Lawler has nothing left to prove to anybody. Except maybe Hulk Hogan.

“I was really looking forward to [fighting Lawler],” says Hogan. “I was hoping we could work it out where, at some point, he’d throw a pot of coffee in my face” — a reference to the famous moment in 1982 on Late Night with David Letterman when Lawler appeared to smack the hell out of Andy “I’m from Hollywood” Kaufman, who was still wearing a neck brace from the pair’s clash at the Mid-South Coliseum. Kaufman responded to the attack by tossing a cup of coffee on Lawler and uttering a litany of bleeped profanities that left the famously unflappable Letterman … well, flapped.

That exchange, named by the Museum of Radio and Television as one of the top 100 moments in the history of television, marks the moment that professional wrestling made its jump from niche sport to lucrative mainstream entertainment. McMahon’s over-the-top empire was, to a large extent, erected on Lawler’s and Kaufman’s shtick.

As the WWE became an international phenomenon on cable television, smaller regional wrestling organizations fell by the wayside. Memphis Wrestling, buoyed by some diehard fans, is about all that’s left of the old school. Since Lawler first joined WWE in 1993, the organization has allowed Lawler to work with Memphis Wrestling and put on a show for the home crowd now and then. But when Hogan came into the picture everything changed.

“Sometimes in the wrestling business you cut off your nose to spite your face,” Lawler says. “Pairing me with Hulk Hogan would have generated a lot of interest locally, but now there’s much more national appeal with Hulk going against Paul Wight. After all, that’s the match [the WWE] wanted but couldn’t get for WrestleMania 23.”

Maclin, the Memphis wrestling promoter behind “Clash of the Legends,” agrees that McMahon may have made a mistake, but he also says he was surprised and let down when Lawler, who has worked so hard to keep independent wrestling alive in Memphis, caved to corporate pressure. Maclin, who had already made a $10,000 deposit on FedExForum and placed orders for T-shirts and other merchandise when he got the news that Lawler was out, promises that if this event is as successful as he thinks it will be, there will be more.

“When you can’t deliver the fans what you’ve promised them, you’ve got to bring something better,” Maclin says. “That’s what I think we’ve done. I understand that Vince McMahon has a job to do in New York, but we’ve got a job to do in Memphis too.”

“In a way, McMahon shot himself in the foot at the very beginning,” says Lance Russell, the iconic Mid-South wrestling announcer who began his career in the early 1950s. “All of his original talent came from these regional territories, and when the regional organizations went away, he lost this wonderful training ground. He lost his farm team — where the Hulk Hogans, the Randy Savages, and the Jerry Lawlers learned how to do what they do.”

Russell, who, at 80, is a walking encyclopedia of wrestling history, traces the origins of the modern entertainment back to Gorgeous George, a blond, boa-wearing grappler from Texas who made everyone else in the business seem boring by comparison. And he cites Memphis as the place where all the gaudy pieces came together: the wild characters; the treacherous alliances; the high-stakes storylines; cage and scaffold matches; and a business model built around television. In the 1970s and ’80s, Championship Wrestling was the top-rated Saturday-morning show in Memphis.

“Memphis was like the Wild West,” Hogan says. “Nowhere else have I dodged more razor blades thrown at my head.”

When Hogan was learning his moves in Memphis, Lawler was already the King. In 1975 — six years before Kaufman first visited Memphis, Hogan appeared in Rocky III, and McMahon purchased the Capital Wrestling Corporation (forerunner of the WWE) from his father — City of Memphis magazine reported that Lawler was the driving force behind unprecedented sellout crowds at the Mid-South Coliseum and personally raking in over $90,000 a year.

“He’s the smartest guy in the business,” says Jackie Fargo, Lawler’s trainer, friend, and mentor. “There’s a reason why he’s living in that big old house.” Fargo’s assessment is echoed by Russell, who points to Lawler’s involvement with Kaufman as proof of his business savvy.

“Andy tried to go other places first, but nobody wanted some comedian from a sitcom coming in to make fun of them,” Russell says. “But Jerry saw the potential. And Andy was perfect because he was so genuinely fascinated by wrestling and wanted to learn everything. Andy was particularly amazed at how a wrestler like Lawler could just raise his hand and whip the crowd into a frenzy or into rage.”

“At first, I had no plan to fight Andy,” Lawler still contends. “I was just trying to catch a little heat of the big star who was coming to town.” Before the release of the Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon in 1999, 17 years after the comic first came to Memphis to wrestle women, Lawler finally ‘fessed up, admitting that everything had been a hoax, saying that the two men were friends all along.

“If Andy was still alive, there would have been no question as to who would have inducted me into the Hall of Fame,” Lawler says. “Andy would have done it.” (In Kaufman’s absence, William Shatner performed the honors.)

Helen Stahl, Lawler’s high school art teacher, describes him as one of the five most gifted students she ever taught. “I would look at his drawings and tell him he should be working for MAD magazine,” Stahl says.

Lawler never went to work for MAD, but his photograph did appear in the humor magazine’s most recent issue. And one of Lawler’s lifelong fantasies was fulfilled only a few months ago, when DC Comics invited him to draw Superman for an upcoming comic book project. Lawler claims that art (and Helen Stahl) saved his life, when a commercial-art scholarship to the University of Memphis got him out of Vietnam.

His first big break as an artist was also his first break into the world of the ring. Russell started showing Lawler’s caricatures of local wrestlers on television, and that exposure led to a job painting signs for Fargo, who, along with country-music singer Eddie Bond, co-owned a nightclub and the adjoining Bond-Fargo Sign Painting Company on Madison Avenue. During the time he spent slinging paint for Fargo, Lawler also held down the 7 to midnight shift spinning country records for KWAM radio.

“I remember going into Eddie’s office when he was on the phone,” Lawler says. “He motioned for me to sit down and pick up the other receiver. And it was Jackie on the other end. He didn’t like that I was talking about these outlaw shows on the radio, just like the WWE doesn’t want me doing this outlaw show in Memphis. And he was saying, ‘The kid doesn’t need to be over there wrestling with those punks. Maybe we needed to get a bunch of the real wrestlers together and drive down to West Memphis on Saturday night and break some arms.'”

It was all a bluff, and Lawler called it. No arms were broken, and a week later Fargo invited him to fight on TV in Memphis. All Lawler had to do was talk about Memphis wrestling instead of West Memphis wrestling on the radio. And right up until the time he was fired for playing Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” on a country station, that’s exactly what he did.

In his early days, Lawler served as a whipping boy for regional stars like Fargo, Tojo Yamamoto, and Nick Gulas. He paid his dues by allowing himself to be beaten up repeatedly for $15 a week.

“I honestly thought wrestling was something I only wanted to try one time, like jumping out of an airplane or riding a bull,” Lawler says. “Now I’ve never tasted a sip of alcohol or done any drugs, but that’s what I compare that first time to: It was like somebody shot me with some kind of drug, and I was hooked right away.”

Chris Davis

Superman: Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler

Nearly 40 years and 111 title fights later, Lawler is still excited about wrestling. “I never get tired of it, but I do get tired of the travel,” he admits, flipping through his datebook. “This weekend I’m off to San Juan, Puerto Rico, then on to Milan, Italy, then back to San Juan, then to London. It sounds exotic, but it’s all one big security check or waiting in line at the rent-a-car place. It gets old fast.”

Jim Ross, Lawler’s Raw co-host, agrees that being on the road every week is the kind of life that only someone truly devoted to their career would ever want to live.

“It takes passion,” Ross says, “and Jerry’s full of it. And he knows more about wrestling than just about anybody.”

“There are a lot of reasons Lawler has had such a long, successful career,” Maclin says. “He’s helped a lot of people get their breaks. And because of Lawler some of those people are now millionaires.”

Hogan makes no bones about why he agreed to stage his comeback show in Memphis: He thought he was going to use and abuse Lawler the way Lawler used and abused him at the Mid-South Coliseum back when he was still an unknown learning his way around the ring.

“I don’t know why Lawler would break his word to me,” Hogan rails, maintaining the heat.

And just as steadfastly, Lawler maintains he ain’t gonna wrestle the Hulk on April 27th at FedExForum. But with this kind of storyline, how could Memphis’ greatest media prankster not show up, throwing fireballs, pile-driving the bad guys, and yanking the shoulder strap on his singlet down around his waist to show he means business. Memphis, after all, is his city — and he is still its King.