CALDWELL'S TAKE CALDWELL: Bret Hart Book review Part 4 - Hartbreaking Honesty Jan 19, 2008 - 11:58:35 PM

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By James Caldwell, Torch columnist

"If I'd had to write a will, it would have been a few lines, but if I'd had to write a suicide note, it would have been a thousand pages long."

- Bret Hart, pg. 531, on falling into a pit of despair as the Hart family was torn up after the Owen Hart-WWF settlement.

In my series of reviewing Bret Hart's autobiography in the Corner Cube, I last reviewed Part 2 of Bret's story. After reading Part 3 of Bret's book, which deals with the lead-up to Survivor Series '97, I haven't decided how to present a review of that part. Last night and this morning, I wrote a lengthy analysis of Bret's story vs. Shawn's story from their respective autobiographies, but the story has been told so many times that it may not be worth diving into the whole mess once again. It is fascinating, however.

One thing I can say is that after going back through portions of Shawn Michaels's book, which was published a few years ago, is that neither man tells the same story. A lot of the opinions formed by people inside the wrestling business on Survivor Series '97 are subjective interpretations of Bret's side, Shawn's side, or Vince's side. Even on the WWE 24/7 Legends Roundtable, the subject is a matter of disagreement. Pat Patterson sides with Vince. Mick Foley sides with Bret.

Yet, most interesting is how Bret and Shawn are in complete disagreement even on some of the objective elements, such as who came up with the Sharpshooter spot. Bret says Pat. Shawn says Bret. That's just one example of their differences on facts. It's also rather interesting to see both men taking shots at each other ten years later in their books. Barring a small miracle, I don't see how their relationship will ever be remedied.

But, for this review, I'm looking at Part 4 of Bret's book. After I reviewed Part 2, a Torch reader emailed me with a warning to tread carefully through the last 50 pages or so of the book. Little did I know how depressing and heartbreaking the end of Bret's book would be. Yet, I recommend that every single wrestling fan read this part. Bret tells one of the most important stories in wrestling history, with applicability not only to wrestling, but also to life in general.

Part 4's timeline is right after the Montreal screwjob at Survivor Series '97 until October 2003 for Stu Hart's funeral. Bret includes a three-page afterword to quickly bridge the gap between the end of 2003 and the middle of 2007 - when the book was published. The afterword is almost worth the price of admission by itself.

After reading through Part 4, I didn't know how to react. Reading Bret's viewpoint on how his WCW run was a complete disaster because his heart wasn't into it and the booking was atrocious, how his family fell apart after Owen's death, and how everything took a major toll on his health and his parents' physical well-being, I felt sorry for Bret. In the back of my mind, though, I revisited Part 1 of the book where Bret set himself up as the sympathetic figure in this family tragedy.

Is Bret the sympathetic figure he sets himself out to be in Part 1 - when describing his childhood and teen years? I don't think he is, and by the time Bret tells his story in Part 4, I think he wants the reader to decide for his or herself. Actually, this whole book is about Bret presenting very detailed information, providing his past and current thoughts, adding a little Bret Hart sugarcoating because it is his book, and allowing the reader to ultimately make a decision on what to believe and how to react.

The stories in Part 4, though, are unbelievably raw. The stories earlier in the book about his infidelity, his recreational drug use, and the heavier drug use of his relative and non-relative wrestling co-workers don't even hold a candle to the raw emotions after Owen Hart's death.

Bret paints a dizzying picture of chaos and frustration in Hart house. He almost takes the approach of becoming a journalist to tell the story, but with only one source - himself. And considering he's basing his accounts on the audio diary he maintained for nearly two decades, it's a pretty darn good source.

Bret includes direct quotes from phone conversations with his family members, especially sisters Ellie and Diana, who Bret felt were tearing the family apart to keep their husband's wrestling jobs. Bret doesn't always present their opinions in a favorable light (which could be considered fair in some cases), but he does include their viewpoints in his book.

One in particular is Ellie accusing Bret of still being mad at Vince for Montreal and letting lawyers rip the family apart to get Martha a monetary settlement for Owen's death. Bret doesn't seem to hide from the opinions of others. He tries to present a very real look at all of the emotions running through the family - even if Bret sometimes tries to get inside other people's minds to do so.

The startling quote I included at the beginning of this review comes on the heels of Martha Hart settling with Vince for $18.0 million, then Martha ripping on the Hart family in the local paper. Bret details his frustrations boiling over when he felt that Martha had used him the entire time to tear the Hart family apart in what he thought was an altruistic defense of Owen's widow.

The breaking point was anti-Bret family members bringing Stu and Helen to a WWE show in Calgary against Bret's wishes, as if to say everything was forgiven between Vince and the Harts for Owen's death. Bret says he fell into a "bottomless pit of despair" at the time. This was before his stroke, which was probably the gradual result of Bret not being treated immediately for his concussion at Starrcade '99.

With more evidence surfacing this past year on the link between concussions and depression, I would argue that Bret's depression was a mix of Hart family frustration and the aftermath of not treating the concussion that essentially ended his career before he was ready. (WCW management's handling of Bret's concussion was almost comical based on what we know today, but they and the wrestlers were seemingly oblivious to the long-term effects at that time.)

In the midst of trying to repair the family, caring for an ailing Stu Hart after Helen's death, and recovering from a stroke, Bret tries to find humor in one strip club incident in late 2003. While doing a publicity tour in Australia, Bret details one last fling on the road where a bunch of wrestlers went to a strip club. Bret started talking to one dancer, who was mad at her husband for flirting with another dancer. She cried out to Bret that she wanted something different. Suddenly, three wrestling midgets came through the door, and Bret quietly asked her when was the last time she was with three midgets. The midget wrestlers then appeared on the scene and she became angry at Bret for saying such a thing. "I was only making a suggestion," he recalls telling her, with a sheepish grin probably creeping across his face.

It certainly doesn't fit Bret's heroic image to be in a strip club in Australia, then sleeping with a stripper back at his hotel room, while so much chaos was going on with his family. It was a similar conflict that Bret experienced throughout his career when attempting to keep his sanity on the road thousands of miles away from home while trying to maintain his family with former wife, Julie. On what he was thinking in that moment, Bret writes: "Yeah, the old Bret Hart is back."

It was as if he had to find his wrestling persona just one more time after his career ended so abruptly from the concussion. Who he was as a person and who he was as a wrestler seemed to be directly tied to each other. Throughout the book, Bret includes comments from wrestlers and family members questioning whether there was ever a separation of the Hitman character from himself. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't.

It's not until the three-page afterword at the end of the book where Bret says, "After my father died, I said goodbye to The Hitman too." If there was no Stu, there was no wrestling. Bret never really could say good-bye to that life until the music stopped, so to speak. And the music stopped for Bret, when he concludes in the afterword: "I'll never forgive Shawn, or Hunter, for killing the business that so many of us gave our lives for. Although pro wrestling will never truly die, but always morph into something else, the business that I knew and loved and gave all I had to is dead and gone forever."

Bret is very raw, with bitterness toward Shawn and Triple H still raging inside of him from everything that led to Montreal, included Montreal, and followed Montreal. This seemed to be his final send-off to a wrestling business that he always felt was more than just one big cartoon work that people told him he took too seriously.

He's almost resigned to helping a business that he feels is dead. No hope for the unions, benefits, or wrestlers looking out for each other that he talked about after Owen's death. No hope for all of the ways to make the business better that he talks about in Part 2 among his stories of advancing up the wrestling ladder.

Very introspective, Bret pulls no punches in Part 4. There are quite a few potatoes mixed in. Some people will call him bitter, some people will call him a hypocrite for defiling the heroic image he built up with the Hitman persona, or some people call him just another wrestling con man who tried to get people to believe he was a hero in a hero-less world.

Trying to make sense of some of the most poignant and raw emotions ever published in a wrestling book, my ultimate takeaway from reading Part 4 of Bret's book is his honesty. He had everything to lose by publishing this memoir. But, to Bret, he'd already lost everything in the wrestling business that ever mattered to him in the first place.

Coming soon to the Torch Newsletter: Caldwell's overall review of one of the Top Five wrestling books ever written.

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