I hate to disparage a legend, and make no mistake, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper was and forever will be a legend.
He was one of the most indelible personalities in the history of professional wrestling, and arguably its single greatest villain.
Roddy was the most despicable “heel” in the business at a time when it was literally dangerous to be the bad guy. A lot of people still believed wrestling was real back then, and to those folks, Roddy’s words and actions weren’t just antisocial, they were criminal.
These fans wanted to see Roddy get hurt in the ring, but they also wanted to hurt him themselves. And when they managed to get close enough to him they tried. Sometimes they succeeded. It took real grit and guts to be the heavy in those days, and Roddy was the heaviest of them all.
To conclude this point, if a Mt. Rushmore of wrestling is ever carved, Piper’s leering mug better be up there. I’ll let the rest of you argue about the other three.
That being said, one of Roddy’s greatest pop culture achievements might not have been solely his. I’m talking about his famous line from the 1988 sci-fi classic “They Live”:
“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all outta bubblegum.”
Full credit for that line has always gone to Piper. Even writer-director John Carpenter concedes it, saying it came from a notebook Piper kept of ideas for his wrestling promos.
But it turns out he’s not the first person to use that line . . . or at least a variation of it . . . on film.
In 1973, amid a wave of “blaxploitation” films like “Superfly”, “Coffy”, and “The Mack”, there came a little movie called “Five on the Black Hand Side”; a good-natured comedy that celebrated black culture in a way that those violent, drug-and-pimp flicks did not.
The film spends a good amount of time in a barbershop, and in one scene, a character named Fun Loving, having just received a haircut, launches into a rap that includes this little adage:
“I ain’t givin’ up nothin’ but bubblegum and hard times, and I’m fresh outta bubblegum.”
Not exactly the same, but way too similar to ignore.
Roddy may have come up with the exact wording he used in “They Live”, but the fact that a similar iteration existed at least 15 earlier suggests that it didn’t travel directly from God’s lips to his ears. I have to conclude that Roddy heard the expression . . . or something like it . . . somewhere in his travels and borrowed it.
That’s not to say he gets no credit. After all, he’s the one who turned it into a pop culture phenomenon, which is a feat in and of itself.
The fact is, Roddy knew a great line when he heard it, whether it sprang from someone else’s imagination or his own.
Yet another reason why his legend lives on.
