When the Legends Die — Chuck Norris
Late in my Hollywood writing career, I almost got the Big Break. I’d written a “spec” script (industry lingo for a “speculative” or non-commissioned screenplay) for Homicide: Life on the Streets. White male writers were still being hired in 1999, and were often agent-represented, like me.
My script was about the murder of a black conservative radio talk show host. The Homicide team suspects a militant black group, only to discover that the killer was the white program director, seduced by the victim’s liberal black wife, who was ashamed of her husband’s right-wing influence. The tag line went to the detective played by the late great Andre Braugher, “If a black woman and her white lover can get together to commit murder, there’s hope for race relations in America.”
A Homicide producer loved the script. Unfortunately, he told Barry my agent, there would be no next season for the series. So, Barry sent it around to other TV producers. In early 2001, he got a call from Gordon Dawson, the showrunner on Walker, Texas Ranger. He too loved the script, and wanted to meet me as a potential episode writer. I reeled.
I left the office so pumped, I was ready to take on Bruce Lee myself. The contract never came.
Civilians have little concept of what it meant for a struggling screenwriter — whose last credit was a Roger Corman-Shannon Tweed direct-to-video sci-fi movie (Electra) — to get a shot at a hit show starring an already screen legend. Not only was I a huge Chuck Norris fan from youth — cheering movies like The Delta Force, Lone Wolf McQuade, Invasion USA, and Missing in Action. Not only was Gordon Dawson the writer of one of my favorite Westerns of all time, Sam Peckinpah’s The Ballad of Cable Hogue. But a Walker: Texas Ranger episode could have been the closest I ever came to writing for a successor to John Wayne.
Chuck Norris, who died last week at age 86, never tried to be a blockbuster movie star like his 80s action counterparts Schwarzenegger, Gibson, and Stallone. He knew his level — lower-budget thrillers — and his persona — the stalwart American hero that boys could look up to and emulate, as their dads had Roy Rogers. And he had no interest in dark, edgy protagonists.
“There’s an image people are looking for today on the screen,” Norris said in a 1986 interview. “There’s been a lot of anti-heroes, but no positive images for a long time. If I can create that kind of image, then there’s the possibility of me being a success.”
His instincts paid off with consistent moneymaking movies. In 1984, he scored his biggest hit to date, Missing in Action, as a former Vietnam War P.O.W. who goes back in the present to rescue still held U.S. prisoners — and give the commies a little audience-rousing payback. By the time he did another military thriller, The Delta Force, in 1986, he had top billing over fellow screen legend Lee Marvin.
Unlike most male actors today, Norris understood the esprit de corps and the masculine American dream, because he exemplified both. Born in 1940 in Ryan, Oklahoma, he married his high school sweetheart in 1958, and joined the Air Force the same year. While stationed in South Korea, he became drawn to — then expert in — martial arts, such as the Korean Tang Soo Do.
Following his honorable discharge in 1962, Norris began teaching karate in LA. Among his students was Steve McQueen, who encouraged him to take on movie work. Norris had some bit parts but continued to compete in karate matches. He won the World Professional Middleweight Karate Championship in 1968, and defended the title for six years in a row. After which his film career took off.
In his first and last major role as the villain (The Way of the Dragon, 1972), Norris took on his real-life good friend Bruce Lee in a classic fight in the Roman Colosseum. Movie stardom followed in the late 70s, and TV stardom in the 90s. So did Norris’s embrace of Christianity, then political conservatism. “I used to be a Democrat, but unfortunately the Democrats went too far to the left … and lost all reality of what America stood for,” Norris said.
Although everyone who knew Norris lauded his sterling character — including liberal stars such as Ben Stiller, who worked with him in Dodgeball — his conservatism proved too much for Hollywoke media. “Chuck Norris Was a Great Action Star — but Politics May Overshadow His Legacy,” read the Variety headline on his death. Don’t think the show business rag stopped there.
“His roles were part of a body of work used to show American strength, might, and the pernicious attraction of taking the law into one’s own hands,” declared the article. “Something that seems less fun in a year in which our country is funneling money into bombing Iran and ICE agents are acting like one-man militias.” Not surprisingly, normal people blasted the publication. “Couldn’t wait a day … not even half a day,” tweeted Christian Toto of Hollywood in Toto. “Yeah, we can judge them.”
I ended up meeting with Gordon Dawson and two Walker staff writers, all men, one Asian, given the orientation of the show. They liked me, and asked for my episode ideas. I pitched a story about Walker and his father-in-law (played by the great Rod Taylor, whom I admired) on a weekend fishing trip encountering a possible Sasquatch-like killer (evoking Taylor’s role in Hitchcock’s The Birds). Gordon loved it, and told me to expect a contract.
I left the office so pumped, I was ready to take on Bruce Lee myself. The contract never came. Walker: Texas Ranger got prematurely cancelled that same season. So, I didn’t get to meet or write for Chuck Norris, only mourn the loss of him with the rest of the world.
READ MORE from Lou Aguilar:
The Fall of Britain — and the Warning for America