The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Let's Honor Chadwick Boseman Together - Wakanda Forever! | PPP #49

Episode Date: September 1, 2020

A reflection on the value of comic books, cancer's wicked impact and honoring Chadwick Boseman as a fellow human and the Black Panther.

Welcome to the People Process Progress Podcast, where we understand that people are our most important asset. We emphasize and share examples of the importance of shared process so that we can move ourselves, our teams, and our organizations toward progress. I'm the host of the show, Kevin Pinnell. To learn more about me and the show, go to peopleprocessprogress.com. But for now, let's get on with another great episode of the People, Process, Progress podcast in 3, 2, 1. There are two little kids, Ian and Taylor, who recently passed from cancer. And throughout our filming of Black Panther, I was communicating with them knowing that they were both terminal. What their parents said to me was that they're just trying to hold on until this movie comes.

To a certain degree, you hear them say that and you're like, wow, I gotta get up and go to the gym. I gotta go to work. I gotta learn these lines. I gotta work on these accents. It's a humbling experience because you're like, this can't mean that much to them. But seeing how the world has taken this on and how it's taken on a life of its own, I realized that they anticipated something great. And I think back now to a kid waiting for Christmas to come, waiting for a birthday to come, waiting for a toy that I was going to get to experience or a video game. I did live life waiting for those moments.

And so it put me back into the mindset of being a kid. That's from an interview Chad McBoseman did a couple years ago on Sirius XM. And as they were promoting Black Panther, talking about while, mind you, he was going through cancer treatments and surgeries and things. He visited these two children who passed away and what a big deal it was for them. And on this episode 49, Comics, Cancer, and Heroes Come to Life, I want to share a little bit about why it's a big deal to me, these comics, my admiration for Chadwick Boseman, how he, well, I mean, suffered in silence and gave the world something in a few different roles, but in particular, Black Panther, the most well-known

black superhero, not actually the first, but certainly with the movie, just expanding kids horizons, adults horizons around the world. And then talk about, just a brief about him. I didn't know him, some background you could go over yourself but you know i think it's worth remembering who someone is where they're from what they've done right and to hear another quote from him and kind of get us all thinking and just appreciate the life that he lived um and in his words over the last decade i've definitely had that christmas-like feeling because i grew up reading comics um good times bad times uh now i read them electronically on comixology c-o-m-i-x-o-l-o-g-y.com it's an amazon company so if you're ever an amazon account you can log in there uh but i read so many i'd save my money go get my stash of comics take them home

read draw help me help me learn mythology to help me be a better drawing. Just for me growing up, I got really into them. I still have, I don't know, a few thousand probably, at least in the high hundreds or a thousand. My wife and I started cataloging them once and then stopped. But I need to go back through that. But at any rate, for comic book readers out there, you feel what I'm feeling. And even if you haven't read comics for a long time, the past decade of Marvel movies and the people that have been in them, the characters that they've cast and the stories they've told and how they brought them together have really hooked people in. And it's really good storytelling. And I've actually heard in the news,

you know, that's not acting from, you know, whoever, whether it's critic or other actors or whatever. But, you know But I would submit it totally is. I think it's harder. Can you imagine? They're all imagining things are in front of them. They're not, right? Because they're not there. But it is the perfect reimagining of a comic book come to life

if you think about how to extract when you're reading a comic, how the sounds are there and the smells and what's happening in the world. And you imagine that on paper or electronic or something. It's pretty amazing. And one thing I wanted to share too, so in addition to the Black Panther, who, again, was not the first Black superhero, but the most well-known for sure and powerful and has great leadership and stature and just really a great example for everyone, right? For everyone of

every creed. He's as good of an example, just as Captain America is just as Superman is. So it's, I think it's really awesome that Black Panther exists as the character that Chadwick Boseman played him with such, you know, grace. And it seemed like he acted the same way when he wasn't playing Black Panther, which is pretty awesome um and so i just want to touch on some of the things that comic books through since the 50s uh that's as far back as i kind of look through now have addressed they've talked about discrimination batman and superman and and talking about that um ryan warren assassination you know there was a thing i found green era in the 60s king had been been assassinated, and Kennedy, you know, it's like, enough, these are humans, and we've got to humanize each other. Sounds like 2020, right? Drug abuse, feminism, race and feminism. The first Captain Marvel, actually, body image. There's a whole religious extremism.

There's a whole list of things that comics have addressed pretty directly in the written word and the stories. You can Google some of these. Diverstechgeek.com has a good list. And then Ranker.com has a good progressive comics list. But, you know, in addition to just providing good entertainment, good writing, learning actual things, being able to emulate heroes that are larger than life, comic books address real issues. Unfortunately, one of the issues that's brought up now with the passing of Chadwick Boseman is cancer.

That's affected millions. It's affected me. I'm a cancer survivor. I had kidney cancer in 2009. I had surgery. I'm fortunate I didn't I had kidney cancer in 2009. I had surgery. I'm fortunate I didn't have to have any treatment. I have family members, my spouse, other folks that have had cancer still have it. It's horrible. It's terrifying to have the sit down where the doctor comes in and

says it's cancer because your mind goes everywhere to the darkest places it can. And whether you just have surgery like I did, whether you have surgery and you're going to have treatment, whether you have a combination of all those, the journey is hard. And the physical piece is one thing, which I got lucky. I had some soreness and I had robotic surgery. So, yeah, my abs were sore and my muscles and all that kind of stuff. But I didn't have the sickness and the treatment things. But the mental weight of it never goes away. I still wonder what bumps are.

I still hope it doesn't come back in my brain or my heart or somewhere. It's never going to go away. And so again, to see the example of someone with stage three cancer to shoot a bunch of movies, look after others as it progressed. So who was Chadwick Boseman? Again, I didn't know him, so this is my quick search. He was born in November 29, 1976 in South Carolina. He attended Howard University. Great speech. If you can look up Chadwick Boseman, Howard University speech, do it. You want to talk about good leadership and example outstanding uh and he attended the british uh american drama academy so in his howard speech he'll talk more about and i'll talk about that as well here in a second um his start in some of his roles and he was a

you know he has 34 actor credits eight producer credits one writer credit two director credit credits this is from imdb um he's won 10 awards and has 30 award nominations. And unfortunately, he died August 28th, 2020 at his home in Los Angeles. And for me, I'll say I was pretty heartbroken from the standpoint of just being exhausted from seeing good people that this happens to do and then some folks that aren't so good will live for 100 years and there's probably other people like that other that just admired his work so much in him from what they'd seen of him that to lose someone who seems like a good human is really crappy particularly these days when we're seeing a lot of actions that aren't good humanity which hopefully ends soon but this isn't just reading a an imdb profile for chadwick boseman so

you know who did we see him as i think to me his commencement speech at howard university provided some good insight right his speech to the new graduates provided us with accounts of his early days in the biz where he was stereotyped to play a black man with anger issues whose father left whose mother was absent because of drugs but bozeman said well let me learn a little bit more about this character and there's some spoiler alert so if you don't want to hear this part and you're going to go watch the speech uh chadwick bozeman's howard university speech go do that and then come back but he didn't accept it just on face value, right? And would you have what I have?

He was typecast with his father was gone, his mother was absent in this role that he was applying for. And she was on drugs and he was like, well, why is that? And asking questions. And then he got kind of looking at your resume and you went to Howard and okay. And then the next day he was like, let go. Right. So to me, this was a great example of not accepting things on face value, not taking somebody's assumptions, but asking the probing questions, but having a dialogue.

And then also realizing that this happening and his faith in God or God led him to the path that he was meant for. So if that wouldn't have happened, would he have been able to play Thurgood Marshall or James Brown or Jackie Robinson in 42, which was outstanding, or the Black Panther? Now, that doesn't excuse what happened at all. I think his point is push back when you need to sometimes. Don't accept others' assumptions about you. And if your path does change because of that, accept it, embrace it, and take advantage of it just like he did. So we knew that he was fighting cancer for four years, four, while he made all the movies, right, while he dealt with the mental and physical pieces of it, diagnosed, fought,

had surgeries, suffered pain, but still when you see him speak, both at the Howard commencement and interviews he's done, he's talking about others and their pain and what they can do. And the quote I read at the beginning, just you can imagine the thoughts going through his mind as he's talking about these kids that are waiting for his movie that he's filming while he is in treatment and surgery for cancer to try and get it out there for them. That's pretty amazing, right? And so, you know, he still showed up, put others above himself to bring the characters for us older folks to life, right? To bring it to life for new characters or new fans to the theaters,

to open a whole new path, right? Break new ground for the black community, which is outstanding. And it's to me to really be admired by everyone and to close out again i'll have links to these i'll do a blog post to check out people process progress.com and all the connecting links subscribe all that good stuff is on there and i'll link to where i got these quotes from which really again if you google chwick Boseman quotes, you can find some. This one talks about how we should be the hero of our own story. And I've heard a similar quote from Joe Rogan.

I think this one certainly is timely, being from Chadwick Boseman, just having passed a few days ago. And here it is. Everybody's the hero in their own story. You should be the hero in your own story. You should see yourself conquering the dramatic action of whatever you're trying to do so that when you do get to crisis, you know how to deal with it. You should be able to do that. There are people that come in and help you with your story, but you have to be the person who deals with the conflicts that are in place. Even if you pray to God, God expects you to do some things.

That's from Chadwick Boseman when he was on The Daily Show. So in the wake of Boseman's passing too early, how can we be our own heroes? How can we get ourselves out of the bed as we've been home for months and months? How can we be a little more healthy? How can we check on our coworker? How can we understand that we're going to have days that aren't great? And then we're going to have days that are. And we're going to work together to get back to the new normal. I think if we each focus on making ourselves our own heroes, then when we go to interact with all the other heroes,

and we want to work together, like so many of the comic book heroes that I've read about, like so many of the characters we've all seen in the movies, and like Chad Bozeman prompts us to with his example I wish you all the best out there I wish the best to Chadwick Boseman his family all those that were really close to him

thank him for all that he's done thank you all for all that you've done listening and in keeping with this comic book theme and superhero theme for big show 50 i'm going to parallel some key avengers characters and how they correlate with key project team members and so we'll get into that in episode 50 please come back for that in the meantime though please stay safe out there wash your hands and godspeed