Dear Ryan Reynolds,
I wish I could say this is a fan letter to you but I’m not a
fan. A true Ryan Reynolds fan would have
seen all of your movies the instant they came out on a streaming platform, be
able to quote verbatim all of your dialogue from “National Lampoon’s Van
Wilder” , spend hours upon hours combing through gossip magazines and websites
trying to find out all of intimate details of your marriage to fellow actor
Blake Lively that is nobody’s business, and gladly signed up for
Mint Mobile just because you own it even though customers complain their calls
drop frequently[i]. I have done none of the above so ergo, I am
not a fan. Thus far, I have watched you be the better half of the comedic
couple in “The Proposal”, was surprised to learn you are a good singer thanks
to Apple+’s “Spirited” (Can I expect a
duet with you and Mr. Jackman in the near future?) and a certain R rated movie
from 2016 at least 363 million dollars’ worth of people have seen[ii] to date.
I do, however, want to thank you, well you and Mr. Wade
Wilson for being a strange part of a bittersweet memory of me and my late
father.
My inspiration to become a writer came from my father. Probably because he had a lot of creative exclamations,
he would yell at me when I was mouthing off such as “Shut up, think twice, say
nothing” - a phrase that would behoove most social media users to heed in this
internet age. Another one was when he overheard me watching foul mouthed traditional
media pieces, like George Carlin stand up routines on HBO, would proclaim
“Potty mouth, empty head” and basically urge me never to watch anyone who would
dare utter the 7 deadly words of broadcasting.
Believe me, my father had an entire thesaurus in his brain to pull from
when he yelled at me for doing the typical childish mistakes and missteps kids
make while growing up without using those particular curse words to bemoan my
mistakes. I mean he would occasionally
take the Lord’s name in vain when my clumsiness led to a glass of spilt milk or
some other problem, but he never would use a conjugation of the crude tern for
the conjugal act or of the byproduct of the process of digestion while yelling
at me.
However, my desire to be a writer I think aggravated an
emotional wound with my father and created a lot of tension between the two of
us especially as I got older. Because I
know that is what my father wanted to be but never was, a writer.
You see, my father’s ambitions to be a writer were
discouraged by his family and his life in general. He ended up studying to be a physical
therapist and was working as an orderly when he met my mom who was a nurse at
the same hospital. They fell in love,
got married, and I probably arrived a lot sooner in their marriage than I think
my father was anticipating. He ended
up becoming one of the 1st stay-at-home dads and I wish he wrote
about his experiences raising me, but he didn’t. He was the one making my lunch, making sure I
did my homework, chaperoned school field trips, and maybe occasionally cleaned.
So, instead of becoming a writer, my father was an avid
reader. He read a lot newspapers, (bought
4-5 daily) magazines and especially books about the Vietnam war with maybe the
possibility of writing some comprehensive tome on a historical event he was
alive for but never really participated in nor protested against. He also, surprising, read comic books.
My father was an avid comic collector, especially of Marvel
comics which provided richer and more complicated characters than their rivals
at DC comics. I knew all about the whole
Thanos mega superhero end of the universe battle long before it came to the
movie theaters because of my dad’s love of the comics to remember that the
X-Men and the Fantastic 4 (and I believe a certain red suited starfish like
super mercenary) were supposed to be part of that Marvel “Avengers: Endgame”
plot, but Disney wasn’t able to get the movie rights back from Fox for that one
in enough time. I think he liked
Spiderman the best especially since he may have been around Peter Parker’s age
when his own father died and could relate to a teenager suddenly having the
world thrust upon his shoulders.
As it happens to all of us, my father’s health began to deteriorate
as he got older. I loved him and as a
dutiful daughter, (Not to mention payback for him and my mom for buying me a
car at a point in my life when I couldn’t financially afford it nor could I afford
to repair my own car) I frequently would drive my dad to the comic store to add
to his collection. Now, I never read
the comics themselves (well except for the one where Spiderman got married and
the one where Aunt May died) but the last comic on earth I would think he would
purchase would be a certain foul-mouthed samurai sword wielding mouthy
mercenary. As those Marvel comic book
characters began to make their big screen film debuts, we would also buy the
DVD versions of those movies as they came out to add to the comic collection. Knowing this I know someone gave my father a copy of the “Deadpool” DVD for Christmas in 2017 knowing how much
he loved Marvel superhero comics and movies and action figures, found hundred
boxes of those after he passed.
But I’d never thought he’d watch it.
Well, one day shortly before my father passed away in 2018, we
decided to watch a movie together as a family.
And to my surprise the movie he wanted to watch was “Deadpool”.
When I heard this, I kept scratching my head-What
“Deadpool”? The epitome of the
potty-mouth empty headed superhero with filthy explicit sex and lurid graphic
violence that my father derided all of my life?
To me this was the equivalent of the scene from “Back to The Future”
where Marty McFly learned his mom Loraine, after giving Marty the impression
she was a Vestal Virgin until she met Marty’s father George, was actually eager
to get into his Calvin Klein underwear while sitting parked in a car outside
the high school homecoming dance and had done the deed with other guys in
similar circumstances. My father, a
Deadpool fan? My father laughing at
potty mouth f-bomb jokes from Mr. Pool?
My father enjoying this movie?
And in hindsight maybe I was mistaking some of the Deadpool
comics as Spiderman comics (after all Deadpool and Spiderman have a similar
look). Maybe my father always had a
sweet spot for the foul-mouthed superhero whose life was more complicated than
his own. (and from what I understand may
have had some problems with his daughter as well)[iii]
Contrary to that 4th wall Deadpool break with the
meta joke about your acting abilities I thought you were great as Deadpool and
in that character, you indeed showed your range. I obviously laughed at the parts where I was
supposed to laugh along with my father and cried in the places where my father
and I were supposed to cry. That movie
helped heal some of the tension I had between my father and myself over the
years and it was a moment I’ll treasure for the rest of my life.
So, I want to thank you for your portrayal as Deadpool, your
willingness to take a bit part in previous X men movies (and I’m sure Deadpool
thanked his lucky stars when “Green Lantern” bombed at the box office and you
could bring him to life on the silver screen), and for embodying Deadpool so
much I’m hearing your voice as I’m reading his bio on Marvel’s website. And
yes, I’m publishing this in a blogpost instead of sending this letter in the
mail because I’m not sure where to send you a paper letter if anyone sends
paper letters anymore and an email to you probably would have gone into your
spam box.
Besides, I’ve got a
bad feeling Disney just blew the promotion budget for “Deadpool and Wolverine”
on the Superbowl ad and Disney may not want to spend any more money on
promoting it. Which is why Disney may have
urged the stalkerarazzi to leak[iv]
that photo of you and Hugh Jackman sporting the bubble bee colored leotard that
Wolverine was known for in the 1970’s and 80’s to social media sites where
bloggers like me can try to generate Barbenheimer level of buzz around the
movie. Especially after Mr. Wade Wilson described
himself as the Marvel cinematic Jesus which may have offended the fans of an actual
cinematic Jesus in theaters at the moment[v]
. So, thank you for giving me a
wonderful memory of my late father and good box office luck when “Deadpool and
Wolverine” comes into movie theaters on July 26th of 2024 (I’m
assuming, you never know with Disney).
