On August 23, 2018, the world premiere of the film âDonât worry, he wonât go farâ, filmed by director Gus van Sent based on the self-titled autobiographical book of the cartoonist, animator and just an extraordinary person John Callahan, remained as a result of an accident for the rest of his life wheelchair.
Childhood and youth
The future prototype of the main character of the biopic âDonât worry, he wonât go farâ, the role of which was brilliantly performed by the famous Hollywood actor Joaquin Phoenix, was born on February 5, 1951 in the provincial town of the United States, called Dulles and located in Oregon.
The biography of John Callahan from his very birth was devoid of the slightest predisposition to well-being. The identities of his mother and father are unknown. A newborn baby was left in an orphanage, where David and Rosemary Callahana, a married couple from Portland, saw him. They adopted the boy and gave him a double name - John Michael.
In Portland, the Callahans owned elevators serving one large grain company. Subsequently, God gave them five more children, John's half-brothers and sisters.
The boyâs childhood was quite stormy. He grew up a big troublemaker and a fighter, inventive of various nasty things. When John was only eight years old, he, a student of the Catholic school, was seduced by a forty-year-old nun teacher, holding the boy in a secluded corner. So John Callahan suddenly became a man.
It is not known whether such an early injury affected his further development or whether the transitional age and lack of attention were to blame, but when John was twelve years old, he already drank alcohol and, naturally, skipped school.
His adoptive parents waved his hand at him, and the early-grown boy, left to his own devices, spent all subsequent years in bars and suspicious companies. After leaving school, John worked for some time as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital, after which he got a job at an aluminum plant. Callahan himself subsequently described the days of his youth as a generally meaningless pastime for a drink, interrupted by hours of work in an alcoholic fog.
Tragedy
Misfortune happened to John Callahan in 1972. He, a drunk twenty-year-old guy, along with his friend was returning home from the next bar in a car. A friend who was driving lost control and crashed into a pole at high speed.
John suffered a concussion, multiple fractures, and, worst of all, serious spinal damage. Callahan became an invalid, forever confined to his chair.
All John could do now was just somehow hold a glass or pen in his hands. By the will of fate, it was the glass and the pen that became key objects for him for all subsequent years. From the fact that his whole life finally collapsed, John began to drink even more. At the same time, remembering that, while still a student of the Catholic school, he portrayed teachers quite well in his first children's cartoons, he began to somehow try to take a pen in naughty hands and draw. He had to hold it with two hands, with which he carefully removed the little men who, by Johnâs will, find themselves in strange and gloomy situations, full of black humor.
Gradually, drawing caricatures - almost the only occupation he could afford except drinking, - completely mastered Callahan. For him, the prospects of his new life were surprisingly revealed.
The life of a person confined to a wheelchair.
Creation
Alcohol addiction of John Callahan after the accident lasted another six years.
All his attempts to take rehabilitation courses were unsuccessful. Only caricatures helped. Once, one of his acquaintances, who saw Johnâs original and witty drawings, advised him to try to sell them to someone. At first, Callahan was very skeptical of this idea, but after some time he nevertheless sent his work to the local newspaper Willamette Week, enclosing a note with the following content:
I am a cripple, an alcoholic, and a great illustrator, and I urgently need work to finally not sleep ...
Both the cartoons and Johnâs sharp humor were appreciated by the newspaper, soon launching some of his works into the publication. After some time, the editor-in-chief went to his house to get acquainted, and at the same time to make sure that the author of the drawings is really a cripple. He later recalled this meeting at John's house as follows:
We really saw in front of us a well-suited man in a wheelchair with a handle in his twisted arms. I had never seen a man at the same time so charming, smitten with a drunk and depressing, but naughty at the same time ...
In 1983, John Callahan was hired by the Willamette Week newspaper as a full-time cartoonist.
The style and themes of his work were ambiguously perceived by readers of the newspaper. Callahanâs drawings delighted some, others only annoyed him. But for John himself, who essentially describes his life in his sharp and full of black humor cartoons, only the reaction of other disabled people remained the main thing. And they really liked his drawings.
Year after year, Callahan's work was gaining more and more popularity around the world. By the end of the 90s, the number of print publishers, magazines, and newspapers publishing John's drawings exceeded two hundred.
In 1989, Callahan wrote the first volume of his autobiography âDonât worry, he wonât go farâ, the right to film adaptation of which was immediately bought by the famous and beloved by millions of viewers actor Robin Williams, who dreamed of translating the image of John on the screen. However, unfortunately, he did not manage to do this ...
Ten years later, the second volume of the artistâs autobiography, âThe Real John Callahan, Please Stand Up,â was published.
Animation
In 2000, Nickelodeon became interested in the work of John. The sharp and sometimes harsh content of Callahan's cartoons was not suitable for children's cartoons, which this channel specialized in, but their concept and style could really appeal to an adult audience.
Nickelodeon management decided to adapt Callahan's artwork to animated television series. So John Callahan became the executive producer of the animated series Pelswick, the release of which lasted from 2000 to 2002, and since 2001 took part in the creation of the series "Quads!"
Pelswick was dedicated to the life of a boy in a wheelchair, despite everything tuned into a normal full life.
The series "Quads!", Intended for the audience of the older generation, was a menagerie of characters as close to life as possible and also having various deviations in mental or physical development. The main character of this animated series was the character Riley O'Reilly. And he, despite the fact that he is a paralyzed alcoholic, is doing well.
Movie
In 2018, the famous director Gus van Saint, inspired by Johnâs read autobiography, shot the film âDonât worry, he wonât go far.â The embodiment of the image of the hero himself on the screen was taken over by the famous film actor Joaquin Phoenix.
In the photo - John Callahan and Joaquin Phoenix.
In order to get as close as possible to his hero, Joaquin not only read both volumes of his autobiography, but really studied them. He also watched all of Johnâs existing videos, went to the rehabilitation center, where Callahan got after the accident, talked with his doctors and friends. The actor spent many hours on his drawings, pondering every joke and trying to understand the very essence of this infinitely interesting, intelligent and talented person.
The film, released on August 23, 2018, deservedly became the winner of the Golden Palm Branch and was repeatedly nominated for the Academy Award.
Also, John Callahan has a fairly well-known namesake in the world of cinema and comic book lovers - Nancy Callahan, the fictional character in the graphic story Sin City, created by the artist and kind of colleague John Frank Miller, who was shot in 2005 by famous film directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino film of the same name. One of the main characters of Sin City was also private detective John Hartigan, the eternal protector and patron of Nancy, whom he met in her childhood. The story of Nancy Callahan and John Hartigan fell in love with millions of viewers around the world.
Death
In 2009, John underwent another operation, but there were no improvements in his well-being. On the contrary, after some time, complications arose.
On July 24, 2010, Callahan died before he was 60 years old.
It is not known exactly how and specifically from which John Callahan died. The official cause of his death, doctors called breathing problems, exacerbated by quadriplegia.
Shortly before his death, in an interview, Callahan admitted:
I like everything connected with extreme, with longing or suffering in life. Everything is very intense - religion, politics, disease. Real soft things in life do not interest me ...
Callahan was one of the most extraordinary, gloomy, ironic and powerful contemporary artists. At the same time, John Callahan was distinguished from all the rest by the fact that, despite the obvious blackness, his work always remained truly funny ...