Expat Observations: Wrestling Hemingway

Hemingway.

One of my college buddies insisted on watching a beat-up VHS cassette tape. The movie wasn’t even a decade old, but the box it came in looked like it spent the last two sliding around in the back of an old Conversion van. It smelt of stale cigarette smoke and had tattered edges.

I didn’t care. At that stage of my college life, I thought it was cool not to be into anything mainstream. We had a great foreign film series every semester, and I absolutely loved it. First of all, it was free. And second, it was an excellent way to figure out if the chick you were trying to holler at was willing to expand her horizons.

My friend’s movie had an all-star cast–Richard Harris, Robert Duvall, Shirley McClain, and Sandra Bullock. He loved the film, and as he slid it into the VCR and turned on the tv, he mentioned something about having watched it twenty times already.

I stupidly asked if they really fought Hemingway. He just shook his head. It wasn’t that type of movie, he told me.

It’s been over twenty years, so I don’t remember much of the movie. I know that Duvall and Harris played two characters with completely opposite personalities. One reserved, one outgoing—one polite, the other a caveman.

Harris’s character, though, had this thing he liked to do when going out for exercise. He’d run forward half the time and then jog backward the other half. The character claimed it was to provide balance for his leg muscles. Everyone else just looked on incredulously.

A few years later, in grad school, I had another buddy who used to walk to class backward. He came to the same general conclusions as Harris’s character but independently of the movie. So, of course, I recommended it to him. A few weeks later, he told me he enjoyed the film.

Trailer for Wrestling Ernest Hemingway

I haven’t thought much about the movie or my buddy’s antics in grad school. But over the last two months in Beijing, I’ve seen several older men walking backward as a part of the exercise routine. It’s happened enough that I convinced myself these folks have all seen the movie. That makes no sense, though, because the film was a bust. A $20 million budget and only grossed a smidge under $300k. I doubt there would have been any international distribution.

It’s probably more likely that they align with my grad school buddy and Harris’s character–balance, the main idea. Work every part in equal ways; otherwise, your body won’t be balanced.

All of this is to say that I should start doing that too. I can see it now, The Backpeddling American Fool in Bejing. That’s got a nice ring to it. It would be great for engagement on the socials.

“YOUR AN IDIOT,” a poster would say.

“Yes, but you watched the whole video, engaged, and still misspelled you’re. Who’s the idiot now?” I would respond back. Engagement is KING!

Who am I kidding? There’s not a snowball's chance in hell I’d be caught doing that. It’d sure be funny, though.