Whether you’re a hero or villain is a matter of perspective. There are assholes who think Hitler was a hero. To me, the guy who chased me down of 57th Avenue, pulled me off my bike and punched me until I had his high school class ring imprinted in my forehead is a villain. To others, he’s a hero because they think someone finally caught the culprit making doodies in the planters by the library, and Arvada’s long, shitty nightmare is over. The thing is, maybe sure they caught me in the act, pants down, face purple and strained, but I’m not the only one doing it. All they’d need to do is study the size, consistency and texture of the turds in the planters to see that. No matter how many stretching exercises I do I simply don’t have an asshole large and glorious enough to 3D print some of those monuments. In fact, the real hero might be whoever catches the God damn bear that’s obviously loose in our community and unloading in the planter, and making us average citizens feel inadequate.
From my perspective and that of the plants, I’m the hero of this story. Plants live in planters. Those little marigolds need fertilizer to grow. That’s just science. I pooped and I asked nothing for my effort. The flowers didn’t complain. I tried to do it when nobody would see me, like an anonymous donor. I didn’t do it for myself. I did it to help, and because the library isn’t open late and there is nowhere else to go and Mrs. Filthy said she would not clean my clothes anymore if I shit myself again, and I’m running out of clean clothes.
So, really, who is the hero? (It’s Me.)
Tread is about the perception of heroism. It’s a uniquely Colorado story maybe only playing in theaters around here. It’s a documentary about Marv Heemeyer, the guy who built an armored bulldozer in secret and then plowed through the mountain town of Granby because he thought they town elders were treating him unfairly. The fucker did a shitload of damage, and nobody could figure out how to stop him until he plowed through a hardware store and his 85-ton monstrosity got stuck in its basement.
Heemeyer was a welder who owned a muffler shop in Granby, but what he really liked to do was snowmobile and act like a rebel. Rebels need shit to rebel against, and when nothing comes easily to hand, they make shit up. Heemeyer did things like shit in a can and dump it in an irrigation ditch rather than pay a fee to hook up to the city’s sewer. So, he strikes me as the kind of guy who creates his own challenges by telling himself that everyone’s against him, and his successes are purely through his own cunning ability to outsmart dark forces. Tell the guy he has to go around a cone in the road and he’ll tell you he always went straight and sees no reason to change now. He’d rather argue a half hour about the cone than spend ten seconds extra going around. It’s the God damn principle of the thing!!!
In a small town like Granby, the obvious things to rebel against are the petty rules and the petty people who enforce them. You know, city council busybodies, the sorts of assholes in small towns who get involved in local government because there are no HOAs. They get off on that sort of dumb power. Heemeyer got him all crosswise with the town’s elder statesmen over zoning, property rights, money, and he balled himself all up believing these people were scheming against him, going to so far as to “snicker” at him in public.
They probably weren’t. Or, if they were, they were incompetent enough that it didn’t really stop Heemeyer from being successful in his work and his property deals. His biggest obstacle was his impulse to feel persecuted. And Heemeyer was a lonely guy who spent a shitload of time alone. And rebels alone burnish and embellish all the fights going on in their head. They say to themselves, “They’ll be sorry, they’ll all be sorry.” Most of these loners keep it in their heads.
Heemeyer didn’t. Instead, he squirreled himself away for months with a used bulldozer, concrete and steel plate, and built an armored attack vehicle, complete with gun ports and such heavy plating that the only way to see out was through video cameras covered with Lexan. Rather than come to his senses over that time, he grew more determined to make his perceived enemies pay, and more convinced that God himself had told him to exact revenge. The nutjob reasoned that it was a sign from his lord that the bulldozer was one inch narrower than the garage door to his shop. It was also a sign that God didn’t tell him not to tear down the city.
That makes sense. I think it is in Paul’s letters to the Ephesians where he said, “Let us not seek compromise, but rather to demolish thine own enemies with a big fucking dozer. Thus, the Lord said, would be sweet.”
Tread does a decent job telling the story of Heemeyer’s rampage. He destroyed City Hall, the library, a house, the concrete plant, a hardware store. He fired indiscriminately at people, but since he couldn’t see didn’t hit anyone. Nobody died, but that’s because a dozer moves slow, not because Heemeyer wasn’t trying. He crushed cop cars and heavy equipment the city tried to stop him with. They couldn’t. A sheriff climbed atop the armored bulldozer and rode it around town, but could never get inside. The movie’s footage is old home video and news footage and it’s somewhat limited. In 2004, nobody had an HD camera in their pocket at all times. Still, the footage and audacity of what Heemeyer did is mindboggling and somewhat surreal in that he held an entire town hostage with his plodding revenge.
Where Tread fails is in being somewhat lopsided. The only person really sticking up for Heemeyer is the man himself in some rambling tapes he left behind. The movie talks to his enemies, but really only gets their side, and they’re all like, “Gee whillikers, we’re nice people. We don’t know why he was mad.” It feels a bit fake and simple.
Granted, Heemeyer was fucking bananas. It still would have been nice for the movie to be more honest that he was spurred by real grievances, even if he might have overreacted just a tad. Or if it had spent more time talking about how he has been turned into a folk hero in the aftermath. Some people think that anyone who fights the man with violence, no matter absurd or wrong, must be right. It’s because that guy lived out their fantasy, the one they are thankfully too inept or weak to ever do themselves. All those Internet tough guys and assholes with concealed guns they barely know how to use. They think Heemeyer’s story is one of the little man finally winning.
Which Heemeyer didn’t. He’s dead. Shot himself through the mouth when his dozer got stuck. And he didn’t change anything about the plight of the little guy. He wasn’t a hero but he wasn’t a villain, either. He was just a fucking lonely nutjob with nothing to live for but revenge fantasies.
That’s the last angle of perspective. There are times when you don’t have to pick sides. You don’t have to root for anyone, no heroes and no villains. Everyone can be wrong to varying degrees. Hell, that’s most of real life. Except in my case. I’m a hero. And I will keep shitting in planters to prove it. You’ll all thank me, one day. You’ll see. You’ll thank me.
Three Fingers for Tread.