Straight Shootin’ with Chad Cruise: RIP Sir Christopher Lee
You may think that you’re pretty cool. I know that your mom told you were special growing up but few can compare to the sheer awesomeness of Christopher Lee. Lee’s passing came as a pretty big shock to me as the dude had lived so long and through so much stuff that I thought that he was immortal like the Dracula character that he’s played so many times. A bucket list for most people is what Lee did on just a normal week in August. To make a list of his accomplishments and totally awesome behavior would give a court stenographer carpal tunnel. This day is normally reserved for listing great and sometimes not so great foreign films that I’ve seen but today I’ll instead focus on a product of Great Britain who in his 93 years on this Earth carved a statue of manliness that it will stand forever as a symbol of what a passionate and talented man can accomplish. As the great Iron Shiek would say….respect the legend!
- Christopher Lee and J.R.R. Tolkien: Unlike all of the other actors in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Lee actually met Tolkien when he was just a young man while at a pub. Lee was a huge fan of the writer and years later would send Peter Jackson a picture of himself dressed as a wizard in the hopes of getting the Gandalf role in the film series. Lee would go on to play Saruman opposite another knighted actor; Sir Ian McKellen.
- Going Commando: Christopher Lee is way more badass than you. He was a member of SAS; a British commando unit during World War 2 that carried out missions that I dream of and Cannon Films used to make movies about. We may never know what exactly Lee did because the actions of his unit are still classified and he wouldn’t speak much on his time in the SAS. While filming a scene for Return of the King, Lee’s character was to be stabbed in the back and director Peter Jackson wanted him to scream out in pain. Lee, having experienced shit that would make most people wet their pants asked Jackson if he knew what stabbing a person in the back sounded like, “Because I do”. Jackson bowed to Lee’s knowledge and I’m sure had a story that he’ll tell in every interview for the rest of his life.
- Wait, what?: Lee has ancestral ties to all sorts of historical badasses. He was related to Civil War General Robert E. Lee, cousin to James Bond writer Ian Fleming, and a descendant of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne. I think I even read somewhere that he was somehow related to several members of The Avengers.
- Headbanging with Dracula: Sir Christopher Lee was an absolute gentleman but that didn’t keep him from rocking hard as f**k! Despite being in over 350 films and TV shows, Lee somehow found the time to make several Heavy Metal albums guaranteed to put curly black hair all over your balls. He even contributed some songs to a Christmas-themed Metal album and contributed not one, but two metal albums dedicated to his buddy Charlemagne. You can’t make this stuff up folks.
It really does go without saying at this point but Sir Christopher Lee was much cooler than you or I. He gave us so much and I think I can speak for all of us here at Bulletproof Action when I say THANK YOU FOR ALL THAT YOU’VE DONE. I love you….
