Dark Side of the Ring S5 Episode 6 - Chris Colt
Dark Side of the Ring S5 Episode 6 - Chris Colt
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 (dramatic music)
00:02 - You know you people right now are looking
00:08 at the greatest talent in the wrestling business today.
00:11 - Christopher Colt, very shrewd individual.
00:14 - I've often said that Chris Colt was the best wrestler
00:17 that nobody ever saw.
00:19 - I love pain, I'm a psychopath, I'm a sadist,
00:22 I'm a masochist, I do everything.
00:24 - He was a maniac.
00:25 (laughing)
00:27 - I'll rip your nuts out, you two.
00:30 (laughing)
00:32 - A Hell's Angel, a Comanchero, a Space Oddity,
00:36 and the original rock and roll wrestler,
00:39 Chris Colt tore up the territories in the 60s, 70s, and 80s,
00:43 thrilling audiences with unhinged performances
00:46 and outlandish characters.
00:48 - The seat of his trunk, Space Oddity,
00:50 and for all we know, Colt might well be from outer space.
00:54 - I'm surprised there were times
00:56 that Chris didn't get stabbed or shot.
00:58 That's how good he was as a heel.
01:00 - A talented performer, Chris Colt's in-ring antics
01:05 mirrored his volatility outside of the squared circle.
01:09 - When you looked in his eyes,
01:11 you thought, my God, this is madman.
01:13 - Chris was an outlaw.
01:14 He did just what you didn't want him to do,
01:17 and he was happier doing it his way.
01:19 - But beneath his psychedelic appearance,
01:21 a darkness lurked,
01:23 and Chris's obsession with death was no act.
01:26 - Chris had his own Vietnam War going on in his head.
01:31 - I don't think that it was necessarily
01:33 white picket fence, two kids and a dog, or whatever.
01:36 That's definitely not the life that he lived as a child.
01:39 - They threw rocks at me, called me queer.
01:42 Small towns can be so weird and cruel.
01:45 - Driven by demons and obsessed with death,
01:49 he became a cult icon and a legend.
01:52 But who was Chris Colt?
01:55 - Chris's favorite saying is,
01:57 hey man, I'm a homosexual,
01:59 I'm a drug addict, and I'm an alcoholic,
02:01 and I'll match you scar for scar
02:03 and you'll look like a (beep) virgin.
02:05 - I mean, Ozzy Osbourne was Mother Teresa
02:08 next to Chris Colt.
02:21 - Chris Colt stood out from the average wrestler
02:24 because he wasn't just a rock star,
02:27 he was the most wild, over the top,
02:29 strung out rock star that he could possibly be.
02:32 I'm Jim Cornette.
02:35 Before I started my 40 plus year career
02:37 in professional wrestling, as a kid,
02:39 I was a fan of Chris Colt.
02:42 Chris was overboard in every facet of life.
02:45 He wanted to have the most sex,
02:47 take the most drugs, do the whatever.
02:50 One time, he gets booked in a cage match.
02:53 What's a cage match for?
02:56 It's to keep the wrestlers in, right?
02:58 They tell the fans, no way in, no way out,
03:00 we're gonna settle this.
03:02 But they didn't count on Chris Colt
03:04 taking LSD before he got in the cage.
03:08 So now the match is going on, there's people watching it,
03:10 everything's normal, and suddenly,
03:13 Chris Colt, he starts imagining
03:16 that there are giant spiders
03:20 coming over the cage to get him.
03:22 And you've got to think,
03:24 what in the world would that be like?
03:26 You're almost naked, in spandex, in a ring,
03:30 surrounded by a cage with thousands of people
03:32 looking at you, and suddenly, the giant spiders arrive.
03:37 (dramatic music)
03:40 And he's just freaking out,
03:44 and finally he climbs over the cage,
03:48 and he starts punching people, fans.
03:51 Every fan was like something
03:53 that needed to be destroyed in his mind.
03:56 People, they can't see the spiders.
03:59 They don't know the spiders are there.
04:02 I'm watching the match from upstairs in the balcony.
04:06 Fans are just on top of him,
04:08 and they're just pummeling him, but he was invincible.
04:12 Chris didn't feel nothing,
04:13 he was having bottles broke over his head.
04:16 He's like, ah, he's like a monster.
04:19 I came downstairs, I picked up a metal folding chair,
04:23 and I started swinging it at the fans.
04:26 It just became a riot.
04:29 My name is Bill Anderson, 30-year veteran of pro wrestling.
04:34 In the summer of 1975, my rookie year,
04:40 I became a tag team partner for Crazy Chris Colt
04:43 as Bill Colt.
04:46 Cops started arriving, handcuffs going on people.
04:49 All I smelled was mace, it was in my eyes,
04:52 and everybody was burning.
04:54 The world is coming to an end in this arena.
04:57 And here I am, 18, I drank maybe two beers
05:01 in my entire life, wanting to be a pro wrestler,
05:04 that's all I cared about.
05:06 And there's my partner, a bloody mess,
05:09 drugged out of his mind, beaten up out of his mind,
05:13 and that's my new partner to start my career.
05:17 And I'm like, wow, what the hell am I getting into?
05:20 Chris Colt was one of the early guys in the business
05:29 who was wrapped up in the rock and roll lifestyle.
05:32 And part of rock and roll, especially in those days,
05:35 was drugs, chemicals, substances.
05:37 And when the other wrestlers were, back in the '60s,
05:41 were, you know, still more old-fashioned,
05:43 Chris was on the edge of it,
05:44 and he spent time around Janis Joplin.
05:47 He worked as a roadie for Joe Cocker.
05:50 'Cause you'd been bodyguard to--
05:52 Joe Cocker.
05:53 Joe Cocker.
05:54 Twice, and it was fun.
05:55 So this is the notebook in which Chris Colt
06:00 started to write what he wanted to become a book.
06:04 There's about, oh, I think 100 pages or so here
06:07 of handwritten notes, Chris Colt telling his own story.
06:11 (gentle music)
06:13 My name is Ty Haggard, and Chris Colt was my great uncle.
06:17 As I read through this stuff, especially as a teenager,
06:20 it was like, holy cow, like, some of this stuff is wild.
06:23 Like, I don't know if this is appropriate
06:24 for a 13-year-old to be reading.
06:27 But as I read that stuff, I realized
06:29 that it was his intentions for his story to get out.
06:32 I was bored in Phoenix one weekend
06:35 and decided I wanted to go to San Francisco
06:38 for the first time, as it was always a dream of mine.
06:41 All the freedom of the '60s, people getting high,
06:44 having open sex on bars, streets, it was all open.
06:48 One night I was walking to Market Street.
06:51 I noticed a girl sitting on some steps looking lonely,
06:54 chugging a gallon of wine.
06:56 I gave her a quick look, said hi, and kept walking.
07:00 She responded with, "Hey, wanna have a drink?"
07:04 I turned and I said, "Sure."
07:06 She just smiled.
07:08 Beyond her smile, I saw sincere, deep eyes,
07:11 but I also saw tragedy and hurt and pain.
07:15 Then as he's on his way to leave there,
07:18 he stops at a head shop and sees a poster on the wall
07:22 and realizes that that's the person that he was talking to,
07:26 and it was Janis Joplin.
07:27 And so he went back and asked her,
07:30 "Why didn't you tell me who you were?"
07:32 And she just wanted a friend that wasn't there
07:35 as a beggar or hanger-on or somebody who only liked her
07:37 because she was talented or something.
07:39 And he told her, gave her a hug and told her,
07:42 "Janis, I will always be your friend."
07:44 I used to run around with her and get high.
07:49 She's a wild woman.
07:51 I was blessed by a wild and a little dirty.
07:53 A little sweetheart right there.
07:56 I styled myself as a male Janis Joplin in the ring.
08:01 Jewelry, chains, clothes, attitude.
08:05 She left everything on the stage
08:06 like he left everything in the ring.
08:08 She was living in the moment.
08:10 She didn't care about the future,
08:11 living fast and dying young.
08:14 That's the path that he figured he'd take.
08:16 Chris told me, if not once, he told me 500 times,
08:24 "I plan on being dead by 27, just like Janis Joplin."
08:29 And he did everything he could to be there.
08:34 Born Charles Fay Harris in Idaho in 1946
08:38 and raised in the small town of Drain, Oregon,
08:41 Chris's chaotic upbringing set the tone
08:43 for the rest of his life.
08:45 Monday through Friday, it was a very loving home.
08:50 They had everything they wanted and needed.
08:52 They had clothes, they had money, they had food.
08:55 It's when they started drinking on the weekends
08:58 that everything blew up.
09:03 My grandparents drank a lot,
09:05 and I've heard stories that on weekends,
09:07 they would stop and get a case of half gallons of whiskey.
09:11 They would get drunk and have brawls,
09:13 and the kids were all involved, and it got really brutal.
09:18 My name's Rhonda Rondo, and I am Chris Colt's niece.
09:25 My mother was his sister.
09:28 - Wrestling fans know your uncle as Chris Colt.
09:31 What do you call him?
09:32 - Uncle Chuck.
09:33 He'll always be Uncle Chuck.
09:35 When he was like 10, he came home from a friend's house.
09:42 It was a Saturday.
09:44 Everything was destroyed in the house.
09:46 All the dishes were broke,
09:47 and his mom was sitting over on the couch
09:50 with a bloody face, and there was a gun sitting next to her
09:54 that Grandpa had hit her in the face with
09:57 and split the handle of the gun.
09:59 It was a wooden handle.
10:02 I thought she was dead.
10:04 She was flowing with blood,
10:06 blood out of her nose, mouth, ears.
10:09 We put her in the back seat of the car,
10:11 a '56 Chevy trying to hide her.
10:14 He hadn't had enough of her yet.
10:15 He was a raving maniac.
10:18 I screamed, "I wish you were dead, you bastard."
10:22 He hit me, broke my eardrum.
10:25 He grabbed another gun and started firing it at us.
10:31 (gunshot)
10:33 - Sis was now behind the wheel,
10:38 successfully driving down an old dirt road,
10:41 making our escape to the highway.
10:45 - I think by that time, my Uncle Chuck was like,
10:48 "Oh my God, I gotta get out of here."
10:50 Some weekends, there was professional wrestling in the area.
10:58 My mother and my Uncle Chuck,
11:00 they would drive to Roseburg,
11:03 which was closest big town for him to watch wrestling matches.
11:06 He just fell in love with it
11:08 and that's all he ever wanted to do.
11:11 - One day in high school, Drain High,
11:13 we were having an orientation class
11:15 and the question came up,
11:17 what are we going to do with our lives?
11:19 My turn came and I said, "Professional wrestler."
11:23 The class laughed.
11:24 It hurt me.
11:26 So my uncle went out for the wrestling team in high school
11:29 and he made the team, he was really excited about it
11:32 and then decided that he needed to stand out a little bit
11:36 and bleached his hair blonde.
11:39 - I wanted to look like somebody else, you know?
11:41 Nobody bleaches their hair in wrestling school.
11:43 The wrestling team in school?
11:44 No, no, no.
11:46 I'd rather just rebalance.
11:47 - I kicked him off the wrestling team,
11:49 kicked him out of school.
11:50 I got rocks thrown at him
11:55 and so I think that in his mind,
11:58 he was like, "I'm gonna show them.
12:01 "I'm gonna make it."
12:02 - So he jumped on a bus, went out to Chicago,
12:08 walked into wrestling school and said,
12:10 "Hey, I wanna do this."
12:11 Well, that wasn't exactly how it worked.
12:13 It wasn't just an open invitation.
12:15 He found himself in a situation
12:18 where he had to make some money.
12:20 He met a kid on the street that was prostituting himself.
12:25 He found that to be intriguing
12:26 and saw that as a solution
12:30 for how he could become a professional wrestler.
12:33 - Now remember, I never had a sex relationship with anyone,
12:37 but I had heavy bisexual feelings.
12:40 I was more attracted to men than women.
12:43 I wanted one thing, to be a professional wrestler.
12:47 So with nothing to lose,
12:48 I hit the streets for the first time in my life.
12:51 I was scared, but it was survival.
12:54 - He had a chip on his shoulder,
12:55 and I think that that contributed
12:57 to the by any means necessary type attitude
13:00 that he took towards it.
13:01 He was not going to fail.
13:02 He wanted to come back to his tiny little town
13:05 of Drain, Oregon as a star.
13:08 - Finding his way in Chicago,
13:17 training by day and hustling by night,
13:20 Charles Harris begins his wrestling career
13:22 with a variety of ring names.
13:25 Maurice Chevier,
13:26 the Magnificent Chevier,
13:29 and finally, Chris Colt.
13:32 - Colt Magazine was at the time
13:35 one of the early underground gay publications,
13:38 and that's where he got the name Chris Colt from.
13:41 - I was to go into the army in 1966,
13:46 and I said, "Chris, gee,
13:48 you're going to be drafted pretty soon too."
13:50 And he said, "No, I'm disqualified."
13:54 And I said, "Disqualified?"
13:57 Yeah, I checked out, I like boys.
13:59 So, c'est la vie.
14:01 My name is Tom Burke.
14:04 I'm a wrestling collector and historian.
14:07 I've been friends with Chris Colt since we were teenagers.
14:11 It was a different world.
14:14 It was a different world.
14:15 And so that was my first contact
14:16 with a person coming out in that sense.
14:20 I don't know that it was a big coming out party.
14:25 The challenge is that that must have presented him
14:28 in the wrestling world at the time that he was doing it.
14:31 - There were a lot of gay wrestlers
14:35 that people didn't know were gay,
14:37 but the promoters did, or the boys did,
14:40 but the fans didn't know.
14:42 I'm Princess Victoria.
14:45 I was half of the Women's World Tag Champions for the WWF.
14:49 - Princess Victoria on the warpath.
14:52 Another double tomahawk chop.
14:54 - There was one night and one of the guys came over to me
14:57 and said, "We want you to go over
14:58 "and spend some time with Chris Colt."
15:01 I said, "Why?"
15:03 And not punching my own ticket,
15:06 but he said, "If anybody can turn him straight, you can."
15:10 I guess they thought he was missing something
15:13 by not being with women,
15:15 but that wasn't the case for Chris.
15:19 - One thing I noticed when we were traveling together
15:22 and he would talk about the other boys in the circuit
15:25 and always had this image in his mind
15:30 that they were backstabbing him
15:32 and out to get him.
15:35 - Any territory, he was in and out.
15:37 He'd either have a personal issue
15:39 or just something would happen and he'd be gone.
15:42 The only place that he stayed
15:44 for any significant portion of his career
15:47 was the small territory in Arizona.
15:50 - In Arizona, Chris teams with wrestler Ron Dupree
15:56 and takes the ring name Paul Dupree,
15:58 tag teaming as the Dupree brothers.
16:00 It's a formative relationship in Chris's life,
16:03 professionally and personally.
16:06 - Ron Dupree was my Uncle Chuck's very best friend.
16:10 They were very close.
16:13 I only got to be with him a couple times in life,
16:17 but he was a very, very nice, kind guy.
16:20 - They were a couple.
16:23 Ron was older, probably by about maybe eight years,
16:27 maybe 10.
16:28 Their love for the business kind of gelled them together.
16:31 - Chris and Ronnie became lovers.
16:35 I just never asked a lot of questions along the way,
16:38 but it was something I understood to be the way it was.
16:41 I can't imagine it would have been easy to be gay, period,
16:45 in wrestling in the '50s or '60s,
16:47 much less to be a gay couple.
16:49 It was not something that was easily accepted
16:52 and it wasn't information that was offered freely.
16:55 So in a lot of cases, a promoter or a booker
16:59 or the wrestlers in a particular territory
17:02 might not even know.
17:03 And through a number of different gimmicks,
17:06 they kind of changed their looks
17:07 and changed their presentation,
17:09 but they were always together.
17:11 - Weighing in at a combined weight of 450 pounds,
17:13 the World Tag Team Champions,
17:15 the California Hells Angels.
17:17 - The California Hells Angels were a chance for them
17:20 to have a gimmick as a team
17:22 and sort of bring real life into the thing.
17:25 The metal, the studs, the iron cross, the leather.
17:30 Well, they sell all that stuff
17:32 in the village in New York City.
17:34 They were so far ahead of their time,
17:36 nobody even knew what the (beep) it was.
17:39 They said, "Okay, they're bikers."
17:41 "No, they're gay."
17:42 Same tailor.
17:45 - Pushing the limits of what's acceptable
17:50 to audiences of the era,
17:52 Chris is determined to become the ultimate villain.
17:55 - Chris was so excited on TV once
17:58 and he knew, Chris knew how to generate heat.
18:00 - In those days in wrestling,
18:02 trying to push the envelope
18:04 either meant you could draw money
18:06 because people would be shocked
18:07 and surprised,
18:10 or you could go too far and get heat
18:14 and the whole company could go under
18:16 in the twinkling of an eye
18:17 because you thought it would fly, but it wouldn't.
18:20 - Chris was not an anti-American by any means,
18:26 but he took an American flag with a lighter
18:28 and lit it on fire and burned it up.
18:31 - They went too far
18:34 and they got kicked off the television for it.
18:37 Not the wrestlers,
18:38 the actual wrestling program got taken off the air.
18:40 Even in a small territory in Arizona,
18:43 even 50 years ago,
18:44 even back in those days on a local television show,
18:47 even if you were heel wrestlers,
18:49 it was going a little too far
18:51 to burn the American flag on television.
18:53 Didn't fly.
18:54 - Chris's time in Arizona comes to an abrupt end
19:00 when his lover, Ron Dupree, suffers a heart attack.
19:04 Though Ron can no longer wrestle,
19:06 the two continue their relationship outside of the ring.
19:09 As Chris searches for a new tag team partner,
19:11 he ends up in a trio with Bill Anderson and Mike Boyette.
19:15 - Chris had approached me and he says,
19:18 "I got a proposition for you."
19:20 And not that proposition, a different proposition.
19:23 He says, "I'd like to have you be Bill Colt,
19:26 my younger brother."
19:27 - When they came to Tennessee,
19:29 the team was supposed to be Chris Colt and Mike Boyette
19:33 with valet Bill Colt.
19:34 - William Colt, the valet, preceding his brother,
19:38 and he almost got run over.
19:40 - Colt changed outfits, he changed gimmicks
19:43 because he was so wrapped up in the rock and roll lifestyle,
19:47 the makeup, the hair he already had,
19:49 the personal habits he already had.
19:52 He wanted to create his gimmick being that he is a rockstar.
19:57 Bill, at the time, he has no body weight whatsoever.
19:59 He just started.
20:01 So he's a lost ball in high weeds.
20:03 And if you were gonna say,
20:04 "Okay, who is the professional wrestler
20:07 that is using the most mind-altering substances?"
20:10 If you weren't pointing at Chris Colt,
20:12 you'd be pointing at Mike Boyette.
20:14 So this team was destined for disaster to begin with.
20:19 - One night we left Johnson City, I'm driving,
20:23 Mike Boyette's in the passenger seat,
20:25 Chris is in the back seat.
20:27 He's getting high just like he wants
20:29 to live in the Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker life.
20:32 And all of a sudden I feel a punch to the side of my head.
20:37 And I was like looking in the mirror,
20:39 like, "What are you doing?"
20:41 He says, "(beep) you."
20:43 And then he reached up with his right hand
20:46 and grabbed Mike's hair and yanked it and pulled him back.
20:51 Then Chris reached up with his other hand
20:53 and grabbed my hair and he's pulling me.
20:54 And Mike just said, "Stop the car, stop the car."
21:00 What I learned, Mike is nobody to F with.
21:03 He was a Vietnam veteran, he was a world judo champion.
21:08 He was a very tough, legitimate guy.
21:11 So we pull over, Chris gets out of the car,
21:14 walks around to my side, boom,
21:17 as hard as he could, punches me in the face.
21:19 Then he walked back over to Boyette, did the same thing.
21:22 Mike says, "This is your warning,
21:24 "one more time and I'll kill you."
21:26 Chris went to swing, Mike blocked him,
21:29 hooked him in a front face lock and just cinched on it.
21:33 And Chris just went limp.
21:36 Mike just dropped him.
21:39 Chris was laying right beside the car.
21:44 Mike gets in the passenger seat.
21:47 He says, "Back up."
21:49 I said, "What do you mean back up?"
21:50 He says, "Just back up."
21:52 So I started slowly backing.
21:54 I get about an eighth of a mile down the road
21:57 and Mike grabs the wheel, puts his foot on top of my foot
22:01 on the accelerator on the gas.
22:02 And he says, "Killing this mother (beep) right now."
22:07 Chris Colt's erratic and violent behavior comes to a head
22:18 as he's tossed onto a highway
22:20 and stares down a car speeding in his direction.
22:25 Mike says, "We're putting an end to this shit.
22:28 "It's never gonna happen again, ever."
22:30 It's the headlights getting brighter and brighter
22:34 and brighter and brighter on Chris's body.
22:37 And at the last second,
22:38 I hit Mike's arm just to the side and I turned the wheel.
22:43 I says, "Mike, we can't kill this guy.
22:46 "We can't kill him, we can't do this."
22:48 And Mike says, "That mother (beep) deserve to die."
22:51 He says, "(beep) him, leave him, leave him."
22:55 I honestly did not really overanalyze the story in my mind
23:00 until many years later that I could have been in prison
23:04 the rest of my life for murder.
23:06 The cops could have easily arrested me and said,
23:07 "You purposely ran this guy over, first degree murder."
23:12 Could have been death, easily.
23:15 Bill Anderson and Mike Boyette leave Chris for dead
23:19 on the side of the Southern Road.
23:21 But the next day when Bill makes his way home
23:23 to his Nashville apartment, a surprise is waiting for him.
23:26 Open the apartment door, look in,
23:30 and Chris is sitting at our dining room table
23:33 and he's just big smile comes on his face.
23:36 Come on in, sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down.
23:40 And I'm like looking at Chris, never saying a word,
23:42 like, "Oh, I'm back to being a brother,
23:46 "maybe a friend again, I don't know what's going on."
23:50 He says, "We're getting rid of Boyette."
23:53 And that was the end of Boyette.
23:54 We were leaving Tennessee as a tag team,
23:58 going to wrestle in Seattle.
24:01 Before I could even get off the plane,
24:04 Chris was already off the plane and sitting in a bar.
24:07 Remember it just like yesterday.
24:11 Remember him sitting there with a drink in front of him?
24:14 And that's my last visual of Chris.
24:17 And I hadn't made up my mind exactly what to do
24:19 until right then.
24:20 And I said, "I can't do this anymore."
24:23 And I just walked away.
24:26 Not long after his partnership with Bill Anderson ends,
24:34 Chris's attempt to get his career restarted
24:37 is stopped when he suffers an unimaginable tragedy.
24:40 It was in Washington State at a small show
24:45 that Ron Dupree had ring announced at
24:47 and he had a heart attack at ringside
24:50 in front of all the people.
24:51 They called an ambulance.
24:54 Chris rode with Ron in the ambulance to the hospital
24:57 and Ron died on the way, right in front of Chris.
25:00 He witnessed the whole thing.
25:02 He had loved Ronnie all his life.
25:06 That was the only time that I ever heard him come out
25:10 and say anything of emotion of that way.
25:14 Chris was holding his hand.
25:19 Chris told me that he just weeped and weeped.
25:23 I don't think Chris ever overcame the death of Ron Dupree.
25:28 He was devastated 'cause they were so close.
25:37 He didn't know how to go on without him.
25:39 My uncle was like, "I don't know what I'm gonna do."
25:43 Well, they'd been together at that point for over 10 years,
25:46 not only professionally, but personally.
25:48 That was a big turning point for Chris
25:51 'cause he kind of lost an anchor that he had had
25:54 that somebody to keep him tethered
25:56 to some element of reality.
25:59 After losing my lover of six years, I hit bottom.
26:05 I thought, the bottom under the bottom came later.
26:08 More dope was yet to come.
26:11 More fixes were to be made.
26:13 More hearts were to be broken, mainly mine.
26:16 And he just metamorphosized himself
26:19 to fit whatever mood he was in at the time.
26:21 This is where he decides
26:23 he's not just gonna be called Chris Colt.
26:25 Now he's the Chris Colt Experience.
26:28 The Chris Colt Experience.
26:31 The referee, Joe Gollum.
26:32 ♪ Welcome to my breakdown ♪
26:35 And he uses Alice Cooper's "Welcome to My Nightmare"
26:40 as his entrance music.
26:42 What he did in that period of time
26:45 was invent modern entrance music in wrestling.
26:50 He saw the tie-in that it could have
26:52 with the fans to set a tone.
26:54 Definitely a pitch black, dark, psychedelic edge to it
27:01 because that's where he was in his mind space.
27:05 I will not be responsible for hurting, crippling,
27:11 or putting anybody in the hospital
27:12 that I wrestle up against right now, man.
27:14 He'd make you hate him.
27:16 My name's Edward Giuvenetti.
27:18 I wrestled for 35 years as Moondog Ed Moretti.
27:22 - From Idaho, Moondog Moretti.
27:25 - Back then, you didn't have people like that.
27:29 He would shock people, he would scare people.
27:32 He's bizarrity at its best.
27:34 He was so bizarre, he got banned in England
27:38 from wrestling on TV.
27:40 They called him the vampire.
27:42 They couldn't take how he was.
27:45 He was just too bizarre, he scared people.
27:47 And he was just being Chris.
27:50 - When you look at the picture of Chris
27:52 in his younger years, he's a good looking guy.
27:55 As the years progressed,
27:57 and he got into his demonic possession image
28:02 where he would put needles and stuff in his face.
28:06 Just totally strange.
28:09 It was like out of a horror movie.
28:11 You know, the whole vibe of welcome to my nightmare.
28:14 He was living it.
28:16 Chris's life from that point didn't get better.
28:18 Definitely got more out of control.
28:20 - Throughout the mid 1980s,
28:29 Chris's erratic behavior and appetite for drugs
28:33 are both wildly out of control.
28:35 - And another disappointing loss for Chris Colt.
28:38 - Into the 80s, if he popped up here.
28:41 It's gonna be a fight.
28:42 - My God, he might look like he hasn't seen the sun
28:45 in 10 years.
28:46 Or if he pops up over here, now he's got more hair
28:49 and he's got a mustache and a beard
28:51 and he's gained some weight
28:52 and he looks like he might've once been out in the sun.
28:56 And over here, he's barely able to stand up straight.
29:01 - And promoters kind of got tired of, you know,
29:03 is Chris gonna show up or, you know,
29:06 and if he does, what shape is he gonna be in?
29:08 - From Germany, 220 pounds.
29:10 - Several years later, he's in Alabama as Chris Von Colt
29:14 and he's a Nazi.
29:15 He just said, "Well, what is the most offensive thing
29:18 that I can do to the general public?
29:20 Ah, I'll become Chris Von Colt and I'll be a Nazi."
29:24 Nazis were big in wrestling in the 50s and 60s
29:28 to get all the heat 'cause they were heels.
29:30 As it was after World War II.
29:31 When you get to 1987, he just wanted to be a Nazi
29:36 just to piss people off.
29:38 - I think it was desperation maybe.
29:40 Trying to find heat, you know.
29:44 His reputation was getting tarnished left and right.
29:48 Probably because, you know, at that time,
29:50 I think he was getting too absorbed into drugs.
29:53 - Chris Colt started doing cocaine
29:56 and I think that that was the beginning of the turning point.
30:01 Then from there, it switched to crystal meth.
30:04 I think that that's where it got really dark
30:06 and that's where the desperation came in.
30:09 - By the late 1980s, Chris Colt's wrestling career dries up
30:13 due in part to his mounting substance abuse issues.
30:16 After alienating most of his friends and allies,
30:19 he fades into obscurity.
30:21 - He was done wrestling.
30:22 He has no income and so he gets this idea
30:26 that he'll start busting drug houses.
30:31 - I would go on six and seven days up.
30:34 By the way, now I'm addicted to crystal meth, speed.
30:39 Not like the cocaine a few years ago.
30:41 I'm clean from coke.
30:43 I just switch drugs, a more dangerous one.
30:45 One where you require no sleep, no food.
30:49 I'm in a dope house in Hollywood in the Silver Lake area.
30:52 One of the biggest dope houses around.
30:54 It took me four buys just to get in.
30:57 I walk in, confident, and place my order for an eight ball.
31:00 As soon as the dealer shows me,
31:02 I flash my badge so fast they don't check it
31:05 and say, "You're all under arrest.
31:07 I work for LAPD undercover."
31:09 I tell them the house is surrounded by police cars.
31:12 I catch them off guard.
31:14 Take the dope and run.
31:16 - You'd always hear a different story if you asked somebody,
31:25 "Hey, have you heard anything about Chris Colton?"
31:27 They're like, "Yeah, he's in Portland or he's in Seattle,"
31:32 but they never knew anything definitive.
31:35 That's what kind of set about this mystique
31:38 about Chris Colt today with the modern generation
31:40 because he has a 20-year career
31:44 with the most amazing ups and downs
31:46 and all kinds of outlandish behavior
31:50 and then disappears off the face of the Earth.
31:52 I mean, you could have said,
31:55 "Oh, he's become an international double-knot spy
31:58 or an astronaut."
31:59 It would have been equally as believable
32:00 because his whole life was insane.
32:05 And nobody in wrestling knew where Chris Colt had gone
32:09 until somebody saw an adult movie.
32:13 - With him as a gay man who, at least in his work,
32:21 always kind of had to keep that under wraps.
32:26 He was attempting to show the world that side of himself.
32:29 This is not something that I see as shameful.
32:32 This is who I am.
32:34 - I have not seen any of his productions,
32:36 but I understand that, again,
32:39 he was over the top with everything.
32:42 Whether it was wrestling, I got to take all the bumps
32:44 and cause all the riots, or with sex,
32:46 I got to have as much of it with as many people as possible
32:48 and I don't care who and what and who's watching.
32:51 - I did not hear about him doing those videos
32:56 until very late in life.
33:00 I Googled his name and he was on the cover
33:03 and what I saw was like, "Oh my God, that is not my uncle."
33:08 That was very secretive.
33:12 I had no idea that he had done any of that.
33:16 - Now I'm back, I'm back and I'm in shape
33:19 and I'm ready to fight and I'll run you right out of town
33:22 and then I'll (beep) you.
33:31 - After disappearing from the wrestling scene
33:33 in the mid-80s, Chris Colt resurrects himself
33:36 as an adult film star.
33:38 - Here, (beep) with a professional wrestler.
33:41 - Shocking many from his past.
33:43 - Chris was a dream to work with.
33:45 I sat him down in front of the camera
33:48 and as soon as I turned the camera on and yelled action,
33:52 Charles Harris turned into Chris Colt.
33:55 The same way that Norma Jean Baker
33:59 turned into Marilyn Monroe.
34:01 I'm Jack Fritcher.
34:04 I've been a writer and a university professor
34:08 teaching film and literature and pop culture,
34:11 the editor of Drummer Magazine
34:13 and I've written 20 books and I shot 150 videos.
34:17 Well, Chris had been reading my writing in Drummer for years
34:21 and he liked my Palm Drive Video movies
34:25 because Palm Drive Video's tagline was,
34:28 "Masculine videos for men who like men masculine."
34:33 In 1987, Drummer had a cover
34:37 featuring the Barbarian Brothers.
34:39 They were actors and bodybuilders
34:42 but their gimmick was acting like pro wrestlers
34:45 and shortly thereafter that,
34:46 Chris contacted me about shooting a video
34:49 and we set it all up that he came here
34:52 and stayed for a week.
34:54 - How old were you?
34:55 You were 17 when you started, what year was that?
34:58 - 1921.
34:59 - 1921.
35:00 (laughing)
35:02 During the San Francisco--
35:02 - I was four years old.
35:04 - Palm Drive Video was like the USO,
35:08 entertaining the American troops during the war.
35:11 Palm Drive entertained gay men during the 1980s.
35:16 We specialized in solo videos,
35:18 that is one actor talking to the viewer
35:21 through the camera lens, Chris Colt's heat
35:24 was in his person, in his face
35:27 and the way he related directly to the camera.
35:29 - Yeah, I'm the street fighter,
35:30 I'm the original rock and roll wrestler,
35:32 the original Hell's Angel of wrestling.
35:34 - Chris knew also that I was not gonna give him a script,
35:38 he could let it all hang out and be as crude
35:42 and honest and open and vulgar even as he wanted to be.
35:45 - You want a wrestler dick?
35:47 A real man, a professional wrestler dick?
35:50 I am the king of wrestling.
35:52 - He said one of the greatest powers he ever felt
35:55 in his life was walking into a ring
35:57 and making 10,000 fans scream.
36:02 The way he made 10,000 fans scream,
36:04 he put that energy into the camera to make the viewer come.
36:09 Most people don't bring this amount of energy
36:11 to the screen right away, you have to build them up to it
36:14 but he hit the set running.
36:16 I mean, this is not fake, this is real.
36:20 - That's you in the mask.
36:21 - That's me in the mask, yes.
36:23 I shall have these moments to remember.
36:28 Chris was trying to create a statement
36:30 about his triumph in wrestling,
36:34 in his wrestling career as a homo-masculine man.
36:37 - Another victory.
36:39 One more time somebody goes down
36:42 and they're gonna go down on me.
36:45 - Pro wrestling has always been soft core porn for gay men
36:50 and Chris knew that as a wrestler,
36:53 he himself was a fetish object.
36:57 - I ran Hulk Hogan out of New York City.
36:59 He was scared to sign a mask with me
37:00 because I'd take his belt and slap his ass with it.
37:04 - Hulk Hogan was a god to the gay community.
37:08 When Hulk would play with the WWF at the Cow Palace,
37:13 the Cow Palace would be filled with gay men there
37:16 yelling the Hulkster on.
37:18 Because to them, he was a strong, powerful,
37:26 well-built, healthy looking man.
37:29 - That is 24 inches, that is incredible,
37:32 that's awesome, I'll tell you.
37:33 - And they were strong, powerful men themselves
37:37 but they were afraid that they were going to shrink away
37:41 because AIDS is known as the wasting disease.
37:45 - Did Chris himself, was he infected?
37:46 - I don't know if he was infected.
37:50 I presume that all my models in the 80s were infected
37:53 because you didn't ask and they didn't tell.
37:56 And I made sure that everything on set
37:59 was very sterile and sanitized
38:02 and there was no discussion of that.
38:06 He looked perfectly healthy
38:07 but somebody with AIDS can look perfectly healthy.
38:11 And Chris was writing a book about wrestling,
38:14 The Inside Story, and I'm gonna help him with it
38:18 on the final version.
38:19 - That's gonna be in there.
38:20 - You'll have to write the whole thing.
38:21 Chris came to me because he knew he needed
38:24 a different kind of publicity and coverage
38:27 for this last part of his career.
38:29 In a sense, movies are like a gladiator
38:32 entering the Coliseum for his last match.
38:35 Hail and farewell.
38:37 We who are about to die salute you.
38:40 (laughing)
38:43 He had hoped to have an extra act
38:48 by being a trainer and a coach,
38:51 but that never happened.
39:03 Almost 10 years after his wrestling career was over,
39:07 Chris Colt's wild and chaotic life
39:09 quietly comes to an end.
39:11 So many stories of how he passed away.
39:14 What is your understanding of how Chris passed away?
39:18 - He was found in a back alley in Seattle.
39:21 I'm sure of that.
39:22 Sure of that part.
39:24 How and what the circumstance is were
39:27 in regards to how he ended up there, I'm not sure.
39:32 - I had heard through the grapevine
39:34 that he was found in a chair
39:38 with a needle in his arm when he died,
39:40 when they found him dead.
39:42 And he had been dead for like about two or three days.
39:44 - Shortly after he died, I got a phone call
39:47 from somebody asking me if I knew anything
39:49 about his death, and I said no.
39:51 And they told me that they thought
39:54 that he had died of AIDS
39:58 in some kind of flop house in Seattle.
40:01 He died the way he wanted to die.
40:02 That was Chris.
40:04 And it was probably on the streets.
40:06 He didn't want to live in this world any other way.
40:10 - I don't think it was peaceful.
40:11 I can tell you that.
40:13 He's not the type of guy who was ever not at full tilt.
40:17 And I would believe that he died in that same vein.
40:22 - The official death certificate for Charles Faye Harris
40:28 dated May 23rd, 1995, lists HIV as a factor in his death.
40:33 No autopsy is performed.
40:36 His listed occupation, professional wrestler.
40:41 - Been a lot of years to try to make it here.
40:49 That's why this means so much.
40:51 He lived his life the way he wanted to live it.
40:56 He lived a rockstar lifestyle.
40:58 And that's the way he would have wanted it.
41:01 I mean, if he would do it over again,
41:03 he would have done it the same way.
41:05 He died too young.
41:07 Although it's what he wanted, honestly.
41:11 If he had it his way, it would have been 27.
41:17 But at 49, his body succumbed.
41:20 And I just, I can only just say,
41:23 I'm really sorry that he's gone.
41:25 And I wish he was here.
41:26 - He was the first at so many things.
41:30 And he was so good at what he did.
41:32 The way that he could work, the way that he could bump,
41:35 the way that he could get heat from the crowd,
41:37 the way that he could talk on promos.
41:39 He was decades ahead of his time.
41:42 And his talents would be in the upper 20%
41:46 of anybody in the business today.
41:47 - Chris was just outstanding.
41:54 He was ahead of his time.
41:56 I think Chris was one of the true icons of wrestling.
42:02 A person who changed the focus of wrestling
42:08 and brought rock and roll into wrestling far earlier
42:13 than Cyndi Lauper, Hulk Hogan, et cetera.
42:17 - He was doing things like coming off of the top rope
42:20 with an elbow before a lot of other people were.
42:25 - If Chris was not on drugs and alcohol,
42:28 Chris would have been one of the greatest.
42:30 - If you reduce people to one word,
42:33 you miss the entire world of what they are really about.
42:38 And so reducing Chris to a drug addict,
42:41 an alcoholic, a faggot, does not come anywhere near
42:46 to the inner truth of what that man was about.
42:50 And I think a lot of his addictions to alcohol and drugs
42:55 grew out of the homophobia that he experienced
42:59 in the world and in wrestling.
43:02 - He was a complete human being.
43:03 You can go to online forums that talk about pro wrestling
43:07 and they'll talk about the character that was Chris Cole.
43:10 This is a real human being with his own demons
43:14 and family and people that he loved.
43:17 - He was a really, really good uncle.
43:20 You know, he would always bring us something
43:22 when he would come to visit.
43:24 Sometimes it might've just been a roll of toilet paper
43:26 from a motel, but we were happy to get it from him
43:29 because he was our uncle.
43:31 - The last letter I got from him was 1991.
43:36 I stopped drinking and drugging.
43:39 I'm clean and sober the way I should have been.
43:44 And from now on, Chris Cole is buried.
43:49 Chuck Harris lives.
43:52 I want to talk to you soon.
43:55 And he signs off, write well, keep well.
43:58 Your buddy, the legendary Chris Cole,
44:03 AKA Chuck Harris.
44:05 Such is life.
44:07 (dramatic music)
44:10 you