The Movie Star Look
In 1983 I attended summer school at Northeastern State in Tahlequah. I lived with my great-grandmother, worked for my brother-in-law Terry (all three of my brother-in-laws are named Terry), watched the Chicago Cubs on WGN, ate Kentucky Fried Chicken from down the road, and read The Shining, which scared the crap out of me.
My summer school classes were speech and classic literature, interesting summer-like topics I believed. And it would be fun, going to a school where nobody knew me. I’d be anonymous for a few months.
But while going to classes in the morning, I’d get stopped all the time by strangers. “Wade!” they say, while holding out a hand for me to shake. (I’m not sure it was Wade, could’ve been Bill, or Ed, or Herbert, for all I remember. But for purposes of moving on, let’s say it was Wade.)
Or they’d walk by me and wave or give me a shout out. “Wade, man, how’s it going?”
I apparently had a near twin on campus, someone who must’ve looked way-too-much like me. I mean this happened every single day day I went to class, sometimes multiple times. In fact my sister Lori, who lives in Tahlequah, told me she was at a restaurant in town once and saw me with some people she didn’t know. She came over to give me a hug, and it took something like a couple of minutes after she was up close to Wade for her to figure it out.
Creepy.
Apparently this guy was a football player, someone later told me, although that makes the misidentification even stranger, because I weighed about 155 at the time. Too bad I never saw him.
This has been a strange recurring pattern in my life. People have always told me that I look a lot like someone they know. I guess I have one of those generic faces or it’s my curly hair or something else.
Anyway, just after college, people began telling me I looked like that guy from the t.v. show Bosom Buddies and the movie Splash. (Tom Hanks was then just becoming a star.) But I’d seen those shows and noticed only a slight resemblance, so I thought people were exaggerating. But when the movie Big came out, I noticed we did look a lot alike. I know that probably sounds crazy now, but it was something about the hair, the shape of our faces, our skin color and general build then.
This only lasted a few years. Hanks is seven years older than me, so his hairline began receding before mine and he put on a little weight. I started wearing glasses again and cut my hair short. Before long we stopped looking like each other at all. But for a few years, it was cool, looking like a movie star. I mean, Hanks may not make the top ten list of actors one would choose to look like, but he’s no Ernest Borgnine.
During my middle thirties, people would still tell me, from time to time, that I looked a lot like someone they know. Someone from Minnesota, Oregon, Turkey, or Catoosa. A friend would then confirm it. “Yes,” they’d say. “He does look a lot like Chico.”
After I lost my arm at age 40, these types of comments seemed to disappear into thin air. Apparently the absence of a major appendage was preventing people from making facial comparisons. So to distract people from my arm, I decided to change things up. I reduced my shaves to once or twice a week. And I grew my hair out again, so it was dark, curly, and wild, the “mad scientist look,” according to Skye, the girl who cuts my hair.
Since that time my hair has been compared to that of Christopher Walken, Christopher Lloyd from Back to the Future, and Kramer from Seinfeld.
However, it’s been quite a while since that brief period in my life when I had the movie-star look. 15 years or so.
But during the last two months, as chemotherapy has caused an alarming amount of hair loss, I’ve been noticing another movie star beginning to emerge in the mirror, staring straight back at me: Woody Allen.
Think about it. The dark glasses. The pasty-white complexion. The once little bald spot on the top of my head has become, uhh, ginormous. I’ve even got some of his quirks. Neurotic. A somewhat shaky demeanor. And the writer’s angst. With a little more weight loss, someone might actually want to take a look at my screenplays.
But alas, as more and more hair falls out, a new look is surely coming. For right now I’m beginning to look like “one of those guys.” You know, someone who seems incapable of accepting that hair loss happens.
Before long, I’m sure I’ll be heading back to Skye and telling her to “just get rid of it.” As an act of solidarity, I’ve already had one friend offer to get shaved along with me. He’s mostly bald already, but I appreciate the gesture.
When I asked Ken Raymond and John Clanton, the Oklahoman team who’ve been following me around, if they might want to accompany me when I get my hair cut off, they both said ”yes” way too fast. I seemed to notice a gleam in their eyes, a slight increase in their breathing, a sliver of a smile, and a smacking of their lips. They’re both follically challenged, so they seemed more than willing to escort me over to their team.
Others, who are in the medical field and are amazed that I have any hair left at all, have urged me not to cut it. But it’s inevitable.
So one of these days when you come to this site, you’ll probably see them put the razor to my head. And then we’ll see who else I start looking like.
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Comments
It will be interesting to see your bald look…but many women think bald men are sexy! Anyway, I bet you will look good bald. I am guessing you will look like…Jim Chastain!
I don’t know them…. but I’m sure Ken and John “appreciate” you relating them to the big bad wolf in Little Red Riding Hood…it wasn’t your exact words…but it is what came to my mind! 
Jim,
Have been meaning to tell you I keep seeing you in Rob Bell, who we are currently watching on DVD in our Sunday School class. He even talks like you. Google him and you’ll see.
Free yourself of hirsute tyranny! Your brain will work better without all that hair trying to smother it.