CELEBRITIES
Sound Bite: Roddy Piper – on acting and what he’s doing now
Hey, when I did They Live, I wasn’t ready for Hollywood. The name Hollywood is very generic name, the industry of making movies is very specific. All that I’ve told you, I came right from Wrestle Mania 3 as I told you John Carpenter, and right argh in and scared everybody, and my reputation went around that you can’t control this guy, and I ended up having to go back to fighting to feed my family. Well now I’m they’re putting me in my third hall of fame now, I’m quite proud the Dan Gable hall of fame, it’s one of the greatest amateur wrestling coaches of our time and long ago very proud, but that’s 3, thank you sir, that’s 3, that’s enough, and now um I’m ready and I understand the industry and I understand being a gentleman, a gentle man, I don’t have to be a gentle man, but I prefer to, and having raised children, I know how important it is to be gentle, no one ever raised a hand in my house, and how important it is to be gentle. I’ve done, just finished wrapping a movie about a father in a wheel chair, and his son, I don’t wanna give away the plot, but uh, it was very very deep dramatic piece, and it’s the kind of thing you know I’ve done about 34 movies, but I think I just caught on how to act, and it’s because it’s because I got a little bit of peace now, I don’t have anything to prove, if somebody says something to me, I don’t need to fight, and if I see somebody that has got a problem, you become a master of psychology when you come to the ring. I hate music because when I used to come to the ring I could tell you how I needed to start the match by listening to the hum of the audience. If they were humming, I’d start real slow, because the match before me must’ve been a barn burner. If they were sittin on their hands, I’d kick it in a 10, or 2 to 9, whatever it happened to go, and as I took you for that ride, you become a master of mass psychology, and having, I’ve had cancer, I got cancer, and I’ll try to make this quick man. It’s the wrestling fans that saved my life. There was this event that’s called Cyber Sunday, and it was the Christmas of, where are we now, 08? It was 06. And the Rick Flair, uh one of the greatest wrestlers of all time and brother of mine, he was half the world’s taking champion, Dusty Roads, Sergeant Slaughter, myself were up, the fans voted, bottom line, they voted for me to be Rick’s partner, to go for the tag champions, we won the tag team champions, boom we went over Glasgow, Scotland, I got to Glasgow, Scotland, and my hips wouldn’t work. And I figured well I was trying I don’t know and the tour was goin on and being the honorable wrestlers they were they left me, so I was bent over like one of those poor Japanese ladies been pickin rice for 30 years and I made it from Glasgow to Portland, Oregon and I got in there and they put me on the slab and a good Irish doctor named ? and when they got me on the slab they found that a piece of bone chipped from a disc, but like a potato chip thin was, my sternum on the back was cutting my nerves, my nerves to my hips, and so boom he opened that up, and he saw a lymph gland, and he said get a biopsy of that, and turned out I had lymphoma cancer, low grade 2A lymphoma cancer, so uh if the fans hadn’t had voted for me, I would have never found that out and possibly could’ve been another Christopher Reeves, God bless his soul, he was such a brave man. But so I’m laying in the hospital and I find out I got caner and all my kids come now, my daughter from LA, who’s she’s an actress, Ariel Tiel, and they’re all there and I gotta tell them I’m in room 930, and their great grandma, I don’t know something happened, I can’t remember what it was, and I gotta make up the room, we’ll just say she was in room 430. Here’s the kids, I don’t know I don’t wanna, dad’s got cancer, what are we gonna do here and, go down and see great grandma, so they go down to see great grandma and she dies right in front of them. And they all come back up, little corn muffin, so I gotta tell them I got cancer. (tape ends)