GR: A lot of your book came from keeping audio diaries that you kept for several years. Was there always an idea in your head to write everything down later or was it just something to keep around?
BH: I'll tell you exactly how it happened. I had just found a diary I had kept of my high school football. All the games, all the practices. I found it with some of my old papers. I remember looking at it back when I started with the WWE, reading it all the through. I'm really glad I did that. It brought back all these memories. I remember putting it away and thinking I should do the same thing for wrestling. I can't obviously write stuff down, I can't keep track of it. I've got enough stuff to carry around, and no one wants to be lugging around a diary. You don't want to lose it or have to check your bags every day. And you're never gonna get time in your room to write in it, especially rooming with somebody else and having them find it. So, I thought about it and decided I should just get a tape recorder and talk into it. So, I bought one, but I made a promise to myself that I would not listen back. The very first entry, I listened back and thought "Oh, I sound like such an idiot." You don't like your own voice anyway, and if you start doing that, if you start playing it back, listening to yourself, you make yourself a little crazy. You either stop doing it, or you're not gonna be happy with it. Just forget it, say whatever you want, don't tell anybody about it. You just keep talking and then put them away. Thirty years from now when you're seventy-five, you can pull them out and just listen to them. That's what I thought, and then just after the whole thing with Vince McMahon and Montreal, I started having all my tapes transcribed by my lawyer and reading them back. I got a bit of an idea that I really had something. There was so much detail about the little things, who was there, what town we were in at the time. So many wrestling books I read, like Dynamite Kid's, there was so much stuff that didn't happen. So many blurred stories or two stories mixed together. There were so many things that were wrong and so much stuff that never happened that I was there for. He didn't flatter himself a lot of the time either. He was a better guy than the way he wrote about himself.
GR: That was such a depressing book.
BH: He was a little punch-drunk, he had a lot of drug and alcohol problems. I think he set out to be as honestly as he could possibly be, but at the same time, he wasn't accurate. I could go through his book and find pages and say "This never even happened. I wasn't even there." When I look at my book, I think that it's dead-on. There's nothing in there that didn't happen pretty much the way I wrote it. I think if anyone could take from that is the fact that this exactly how it happened. I couldn't make it any more thorough than I did. There might be some historical things from when I was a kid that might not be a hundred percent accurate, but I think that when you're writing about my mindset on wrestling when I was three or four, you know, it's fair enough. My brother Ross came in with all kinds of little corrections. "It wasn't Killer Kowalski, it was this guy." And I was like "Ross, just read me the book and tell me if you like it or not. There's nothing I can do about it now. The book has already been printed." But in the end, the thing about I love about my book is that whenever I open it up to almost any page I can fall right back into that period. I know that I don't read it and go "Oh, that's not quite the way it happened." I just know that for me it tells a complete picture.
GR: Definitely, and I think I was going to ask you about that. The book was exhaustively detailed. Was there ever any temptation to leave anything out? And if not, do you feel like you said everything you wanted to say?
BH: There were six hundred pages that were edited out. I had twelve-hundred and thirty-five pages when I was done. A lot of the stuff that was edited out were the camaraderie stories, pranks and stuff like that. There's enough of that still in there that you get the gist of the whole thing. There's no gaping holes where you'll think that I didn't tell this part or left that guy out. I think I pretty much touched on everything I could. I really didn't want to take a lot of shots at people in my family. That was one of my biggest concerns. I didn't want to write anything that would hurt my family, but I also wanted to write the truth.
GR: What was your favorite chapter to write?
BH: I really don't know. I guess the first one. It was fun for me to go back in my head, envision all that and write about it. I thought I did a pretty good job. I'm surprised that none of my siblings have come up to me and said "I can't believe your memory from that long ago." I just one woke up one day, and I was in this strange, giant house filled with kids, brothers, sisters, wrestlers, midgets, dogs and cats. I remember getting up and rolling out of bed every day and thinking "Okay, what's gonna happen today?" It was that kind of adventure all the time. I think writing about that was the hardest part to do in some ways. Recreating that first chapter was the most fun. The hardest chapter was probably the last one though.
GR: The last chapter?
BH: For sure, yeah. That was the one where I found myself humbled at the end of the book. Every day I kind of feel like everything is a blessing. I'm really just glad to still be here. I wrote about how I thought the grim reaper was coming to get me like he got everyone else, but I didn't go. He ended up having to leave me. I think it was pretty close though. I didn't realize how in having a stroke how close I was to death. I didn't realize it for years. I thought it was about the worst possible thing just the way it was. You don't realize how you're one degree away from being dead. The line between life and death is so thin there. Just not to be dead is a miracle, being able to get back all the things I got back. I'm not too bitter about anything today. I'm just glad I'm here. I just wish some of the guys like Curt [Hennig], Davey, Liz [Elizabeth "Miss Elizabeth" Ann Hulette] had had some better luck and maybe smartened up with their behavior.
GR: Well, I was going to ask you about that very briefly. For me, it was always painful, as a fan, to read about these guys that I grew up watching. Curt was probably one of my favorite wrestlers when I was five years old, and of course, Owen was another one and Chris Benoit. It was a huge thing against the business when the Benoit murder-suicide story broke a couple of summers ago. You yourself were on TV several times about it. Do you think the whole thing is getting any better? Do you think that stuff like WWE's rehab program is doing any good?
BH: Yeah, they've done a lot, but I think they could do a lot more. I think they, the wrestlers really do need to think about unionizing, or at least they need to get some kind of package of benefits that would protect them from themselves sometimes. They need to have some ability to protect themselves. Wrestlers shouldn't be left hanging when it's all over all the time. I'm assuming WWE helps them handle their money and gives them some advice. Guys like Sheik, Jake Roberts, guys who made a lot of big money and didn't know what to do with it. It was more money than they had ever made in their lives, and it's easy to start spending money on drugs, girls, cars, this and that. I was maybe lucky that I didn't make a lot of big money in the beginning. I loved the Sheik. He was always a good guy. I see him on these YouTube videos, and my heart goes out to him. He's a better man than what he's got. It's just a shame. I think WWE has done things with the Wellness program. I think they're trying, but I think there's a lot more room. Any wrestler who says they don't need a union is an idiot and needs to give his head a shake. They need a union. They need someone to speak for them, defend their rights as an athlete and a performer. They should find some way to allow wrestlers to have the same rights that most people have every day.
GR: Absolutely. I remember Roddy Piper was trying to do something about that a few years ago. My next question would be what you think your job as a professional wrestler was. What was it that you think you had to accomplish night after night, match after match?
BH: My belief and philosophy was to go out there and make the wrestling seem real. Make the fans believe it was a real contest and get them into the story of whatever that contest is. Make them believe for a few minutes that this match is real and that what's at stake is real. That was always my job. My job was to protect the guy I was working with and make sure nobody got hurt telling this pretend story. At the same time, let's do this as real as possible, so that everyone's happy. The fans think it's real, and we come back to the dressing room. Most wrestlers when it's over give each other a hug or shake hands. You're putting your life in somebody's hands, and when you're jumping on top of him or diving across the ring on top of him with an elbow, it's very easy to kill somebody or break his neck. There's so much at stake that way. That's what I didn't get from The Wrestler. Anyone who knows wrestling or believes in what it's principally in the real foundation of what it's all about, it's all real tough guys pretending to hurt each other. That's what I know about wrestling, whether it was the shooters from the 30's, 40's and 50's, moving into a different element in the 60's after Gorgeous George. It seemed less real all the time, but at the same time, you never really knew. You'd watch Abdullah the Butcher and wonder what was real and what wasn't. I've heard a lot of fans say stuff like the first one was fake, but the last three were real. They don't know that it's all the same. It's just who does it best. All anybody ever told me in wrestling was what to do for the last three seconds. Very rarely did anyone tell me more than that. No one tells you how to fill in the gap from the time the bell rings until that time comes. That's where I think I really was the best there ever was at that time. I don't think anyone could tell a better story, make it real and give you a real contest. Some of my best matches were with guys that weren't even that good. Guys like Isaac Yankem, I remember wrestling him in the Summerslam in '95. He wasn't even very good. He had just started, coming from [Jerry] Lawler's territory and could barely lace his boots up. It's not the greatest match in the world. No one really remembers it, but it was still a pretty good match. To take a guy like that, give him that good of a match and make him feel that proud of himself, I think he learned so much in that one match. It really propelled him in the WWE [By the end of 1997, Glen Jacobs had dropped the Isaac Yankem character and become The Undertaker's brother, Kane. He remains with the WWE to this day as one of their most popular performers and most talented big men]. Those were the things I did. Steve Austin says about me all the time that I really calmed him down. Steve was a really great wrestler, but he was a little erratic and could fly off the handle. His motor would go too fast, and he would spin out of control. I was green about his style, and he seemed to kind of like that. But when he did fly off and kind of get lost in the match, I was the guy to slow him down, pace him and teach him how to get back on track. I'd pull him back in and get him back to where he needed to go. I think I helped Steve calm himself down and become a more patient, more controlled and smarter wrestler in the ring. That may have been the one thing he was missing in WCW, and I think I was a good teacher that way. I could teach you how to have a match. If you would just shut up, listen to me and follow my lead then I can get you through the match. You can learn from that and become a better wrestler. I think I was good at psychology.
GR: Absolutely. So, still talking about what your job was as a pro wrestler, the business has definitely changed a lot between when you started and now. At the beginning of your career in the 70's there was still that obsession with maintaining that complete illusion of reality in the business. That need to protect that fantasy is still there, but it's not as severe as it used to be. What's interesting to me about a book like Hitman is that you probably couldn't have written a book like that twenty years ago. Do you think that evolution from then to now is a good thing?
BH: No, I think if I could have I would have protected it for as long as I could. I would have tried to keep it as real and been a little more guarded about it. But I know it was hard to do that. In the 80's, when WWE became this huge medium, it was hard to keep the veil on wrestling for much longer. But I think everything changed in and around Survivor Series '97. In my case, it was with that documentary [In 1998, Bret Hart starred in Wrestling with Shadows, a documentary detailing his final year in the WWE, culminating with the infamous circumstances of Montreal and Survivor Series 1997] that came out and showed an inside world to wrestling that had never been exposed before. It was the timing of that, plus the Internet and fans getting smart. They were filming things in the actual arenas, fans could download results and find out that it was pretty much the exact same ending in Boston that it was in Philly. But you know, telling somebody something is not the same as seeing it. I think, for me, that as far as being a kid or a wrestling fan goes, I would rather live in a world where you think some of its real or all of its real. I would have loved to have kept that going. I think that's part of the fun of it.
GR: For me, it's still possible to pull people in, to make them forget what they know about wrestling going in. So, I guess if there's any good in the way wrestling is now it's that the wrestlers have to work that much harder to get that illusion going.
BH: That's the reason I did that documentary in the first place. It was because I didn't know what it was like to be Gorgeous George, other than remembering things from when I was kid, what my dad might have told me. But I was always more curious to know what it was like to be Gorgeous George and what the wrestlers were like back in the 50's. That whole sort of world of wrestling was lost—wrestlers driving in a Caddy from Salt Lake City to Seattle for a card. That's how it kind of was back then. They'd all sit in the car, drinking juice and eating sandwiches at truck stops. It was a whole life that was lost and no one remembers it. I talk to some of the old wrestlers sometime, and they start to reminisce with me about it. It's really interesting for me. Nobody captured it or recorded it. It was such a guarded secret. That's why I agreed to do the documentary. I wanted people to someday know what it was like to be me. When it's all over, they can throw this DVD in and honestly see what my life was like. That's where that came from. I even had a promise from [director] Paul Jay that there would be nothing in there that would expose wrestling in any way. If I felt uncomfortable about anything, they would take it out. I never did do that. If anything, when they [WWE] screwed me, I didn't even care what he filmed. I told him to tell whatever story he wanted. I felt betrayed by them, and I felt it was really my only chance to tell my side of the story. I was lucky my story came out as well as it did in that documentary. I didn't think it could be done.
GR: Well, it's a great documentary. So, with the book done, what's next for you?
BH: Maybe, more writing. I'd like to do a follow-up book after this one. I don't have a thought on how I'd do that. I said a lot in the first book. I don't know what else I'd say in a second one. Looking at it now, there are lots of little things I could write about, piece together a bunch of little stories.
GR: That's what Bobby Heenan did. He wrote a first book that was a straightforward biography, and then he wrote a second book that was really just a collection of random stories.
BH: Yeah, I might do the same thing. I cut about six hundred pages from the first book, and it was a lot of Stampede Wrestling and stuff that would be fun to rework into a book. I almost have enough that I could release a book of just the stuff I edited out. I don't know. I have to really play with that. I'd also like to write a novel. I'd love to go to film school. I'd like to spend the next ten years being very creative with my imagination and my other abilities aside from wrestling.
GR: Maybe you'd jump back into acting?
BH: I would do acting if the right role came along, but I see that less and less as being my strongest suit. I think that because of my stroke I have a bit of a delay of my lip. Film or television work is not easy work. It's hard work and long days on the set. When I did Aladdin in the theaters up in Canada a couple of years ago, that was really fun. I would do that in a heartbeat. I would do almost anything that's fun.
GR: Speaking of your acting career, this might interest you. I was doing a little research for the interview, and I re-watched the episode of The Simpsons that you did. I listened to the audio commentary, and they actually talked about you a little. They said that you were really nice and a pleasure to work with, but they did make fun of the fact that you were so polite. Because, you know, everyone from Canada is so polite.
BH: That's nice. I didn't know they said that about me. One of my funny little stories about The Simpsons is that they didn't want me to do my voice. That wasn't supposed to be Bret Hart. They just wanted me to do the voice of a wrestler.
GR: Yeah, I remember that from when it premiered. I remember watching it and thinking "That's not Bret Hart!"
BH: Well, what happened was that I was supposed to be The Mad Viking or something like that. And I said "Can't I be Bret Hart?" I kept trying to get them to let me be Bret Hart, and they finally said "Take it or leave it. Do the voice or we'll get somebody else." So, I said I'd do it. I flew all the way in from Europe to do it. It was just a payday for me. I didn't care. I just had a couple of lines, and they just wanted me to keep doing them madder and madder. I did it every possible way I could think of. Then we were done, I was waiting for my limo to come get me, and I was doing a little mini autograph session outside Fox Studios. I signed autographs for about two hundred people who were just on their lunch break and wanted stuff signed like magazines, action figures and all kinds of stuff. And that's when the director came up and said "I had no idea you were this big of a name in wrestling. If we haven't done the artwork, we're going to draw you in as you."
GR: That's really cool.
BH: That's why it didn't sound like me, but it is.
GR: Is there anything you want to close with?
BH: I'm doing really good. I'm gearing up to do some great things in the next ten years.
Gabriel Ricard is the Assistant Editor at Unlikely 2.0. You can learn more about him at his bio page.