The Death of a Superhero

I’ve been wanting to say a few things about the untimely death of Chadwick Boseman a few weeks ago...

These days, when a prominent person dies, I usually have a somewhat different view about it than most. Very, very few people get the opportunity to live their dreams, to become a star entertainer or a successful entrepreneur or an important leader. If you are able to make it to that pinnacle, even if you die young, you still won. But yet, I found the death of Chadwick Boseman particularly sad and disturbing for a few reasons. 

First of all, while I never met Chadwick Boseman, his death feels somewhat personal as he was the star of a movie featuring an old college friend of mine, and a recent regular co-star with the girl that is the main subject of this blog. These days, my intuitive impressions of people are right more often than not, and he seemed like a really nice person. 

Chadwick was also almost exactly the same age as me, which under the present circumstances, is quite scary. It’s funny, a few days before he died, I was really sick, and being the OCD person I am, I ended up on a website that calculates when you are going to die. It told me that as a 44 year old man, my chances of dying in the next year were 0.22%. That’s the lottery Chadwick Boseman lost. 

I’m also sad about his death because I had a great job for him. I have a movie I want to make if I ever get the chance. It’s generally my view that our society’s views about race are all screwed up from all sides, and the idea of this project is to get people thinking about it in a different way. 

The story begins with twin brothers in West Africa circa 1720. One of them is kidnapped by slave traders while the other escapes, and the story then follows the social and political developments in America and West Africa to the present day through the eyes of their respective descendants. I had in mind to do this as a single-production trilogy like Lord of the Rings, and I wanted to borrow the technique used in Istvan Szabo’s brilliant and overlooked film Sunshine, where Ralph Fiennes plays different people through several generations of a family. Chadwick Boseman was at the top of a very short list of people I had in mind to do this, having shown the ability to play African and America characters well. 

I was surprised to see that Chadwick was 43. I thought he was much younger because I wasn’t really familiar with him prior to Black Panther. It’s even more tragic that he would die now when his career was really just taking off. It’s different when someone dies relatively young like say Prince or Michael Jackson where we can plausibly say that their best work was probably behind them. Chadwick Boseman’s best work was probably still in front of him. 

Because death bothers me so much, my coping strategy is to always try to look at the bright side. While I might make fun of the Avengers movies, they have become an indelible part of our cultural heritage, and in Black Panther, Chadwick Boseman had the chance to star in a role that will be considered culturally significant. And hey, at least he got to meet Scarlett Johansson before he died. Probably not as big a deal to him as it would be to me, but then again, you never know. Maybe it was. 

I see people the world needs dying all around me, people who have a lot to live for, but yet, I’m stuck here going through shit I really don’t want to have to endure. It would have been better to take me. But the wheel of time rolls on, and though it was only for a little while, there will never be any doubt that Chadwick Boseman was here.