BY MIKE THOMAS Staff Reporter/mthomas@suntimes.com October 12, 2011 7:14PM
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Chris Sader has a shrine to Hulk Hogan in his Edison Park bungalow, which includes action figures of many of Hogan’s wrestling rivals.
John H. White~Sun-Times PHOTOS
‘SADERMANIA’
Chris Sader is a religious guy. He attends mass weekly. He prays fervently. He even wears a turquoise-beaded rosary around his neck, its small metal Crucifix dangling above a girthful midsection. He also honors his parents and does unto others as he’d have them do unto him.
But venture (carefully) down into the small basement of Sader’s well-kept Edison Park bungalow, where the nursing home nurse’s assistant lives with his Polish-speaking and warmly hospitable mother, Angela, and you might conclude (though falsely) that one of God’s biggest fans is playing fast and loose with His commandments. One of them, anyway. This one: “You shall have no other gods before me.”
For the cramped subterranean nook — its tiny main room, its doorless closets, its bathroom and washer room — is dizzyingly cluttered with what may well be the largest collection of Hulk Hogan pro-wrestling memorabilia ever amassed by a private citizen. In more spiritual terms, a shrine.
Framed glossies abound of the superstar grappler solo, of Hogan and Sader campily facing off and posing shoulder-to-shoulder, of Hogan and his most famous WWF and WWE nemeses. Many of the images, which vary in size and resolution, are autographed by the Man Himself. Such as this one: “To Chris, Friends 4 Life.”
Together with banners, posters, magazine covers and newspaper articles, they’re hung on walls, resting against walls, lying flat on the linoleum-tiled floor. In the slivers of space between are scores of wrestling action figures (many in their original packaging), Hogan-worn apparel (including a pair of oddly dinky tights), an almost life-size Hogan mannequin and countless other wrestling-themed odds and ends. The most cherished artifact, a pair of Hogan’s first wrestling boots, are preserved like holy relics under glass.
When the Hulkster dropped by Sader’s home several years back, he toured the temple with dropped jaw. Afterward he devoured Mama Sader’s Polish stuffed cabbage. She packed him a container of leftovers as a parting gift.
Before Sader, 31, and Hogan, 58, formed the close friendship they’ve enjoyed since 2000 and Sader became part of the wrestling legend’s tight inner circle, he sometimes thought about curbing his intense fanboy ways so as not to alienate his idol.
“When I would go after him, I sometimes thought that maybe I shouldn’t go see him because I just saw him a month ago — that he might get mad or whatever,” Sader says. “But he always embraced me. He always loved seeing me.”
Their unlikely story is the subject of a documentary called “Sadermania: From Fanship to Friendship.” It opens Saturday as part of the Chicago International Film Festival.
Directed by Adam Gacka, “Sadermania” was done on a meager budget and executive produced by honchos at Chicago’s Tribeca-Flashpoint Media Arts Academy. Gacka and a fellow producer, Paul Matian, both work at the Loop-based institution and were allowed to use its state-of the art filmmaking equipment free of charge. Present and former members of the school’s student body toiled (for pay) on the project, which was funded by private investors.
Sader’s Hogan obsession began 28 years ago, when his older sister Mary introduced him to World Wrestling Federation bouts on television. At the time Hogan’s celebrity was just beginning to burgeon.
“[Chris] had such an obsession for wrestling,” Angela Sader says in the film, her cringed expression and closed eyes speaking volumes. “Jesus, Mary…I don’t even know. We couldn’t pull him away.”
As he got older, Sader made it his earthly mission to seek out (with the help of parental shuttling at first) Hogan in the flesh wherever and whenever possible — at matches, at promotional appearances, in hotel lobbies — always armed with a ready-to-ink load of photos and other keepsakes.
Whereas many of his fellow fans hawked their Hogan-blessed booty for profit, Sader always kept his for himself. Soon he began venturing beyond Chicago, by car and plane, to track down his hero.
So far, Sader estimates, he’s amassed 6,000 autographs, logged 750,000 miles and spent $1 million dollars to satiate his Hulkamania — which runs wild not only on him but through him, like raging rapids. Dude even had Hogan’s face tattooed on his left upper arm, near the shoulder.
“When I first saw it, it blew my mind because it was so good,” Hogan says in “Sadermania.” “And my second thought was, like, ‘Oh my god, I hope everybody doesn’t think we’re gay. Because we’re not gay.”
At age 18, two years after almost getting arrested for tailing a limo-ferried Hogan and his “Rocky III” co-star Mr. T. to Lake Forest (where T. lived), Sader journeyed to Hogan’s hometown of Clearwater, Florida, and camped out at a restaurant run by the wrestler’s then-wife Linda. When Hogan stopped in later on with his family in tow, he was floored by Sader’s presence. That’s when their fan-idol relationship began to change.
“It kind of caught me off-guard to see him there, but you could just see in his eyes,” Hogan says on camera. “The eyes are the windows to the soul. And you could see in his eyes that his love was pure and he was honest and I felt very comfortable bringing him into my home.”
These days the physically mismatched but philosophically simpatico pals talk on the phone frequently. Hogan also flies Sader to Florida on a regular basis. In the past Sader has enjoyed numerous limo rides, VIP travel by Lear jet and Hogan-funded stays at pricey hotels (complete with $20 jars of macadamia nuts from the mini bar). Not that any of it much matters.
“I think that’s what he liked about me, is that I never asked him for anything no matter what,” says Sader. “Or when we first became friends, he saw that I wasn’t into all his cars, his big house. He saw that it meant nothing, that all I wanted to see was his wrestling stuff.”
In the case of Sader’s sick father John, however, Hogan’s wealth was a godsend. In 2006, after the Sader patriarch went into a coma and his medical insurance coverage lapsed for a couple of crucial weeks while he remained on expensive life support, Hogan helped out with mortgage payments. Following John’s death from chronic lymphatic leukemia, Hogan helped Sader emerge from a months-long funk — partly by reading to him, for six hours straight, from Eckhart Tolle’s bestselling book The Power of Now. Five years prior Sader had been the rock — in person and by phone — when Hogan lost his own dad.
More than mere entertainment in Sader’s eyes, wrestling has long helped him stay energized and upbeat. Never mopey or morose, he accentuates the positive at every turn and implores others to do likewise.
His Facebook page, which boasts nearly 2,000 “friends,” brims with inspiring quotes on the subject. He doesn’t drink or do drugs. Tattooed in blue cursive on his inner left wrist is the word “Grateful.” In the ring, where Sader has lately begun to venture, his shades-and-boa-wearing character touts “Sadermania” (the phenomenon) as “the most positive force in the universe.”
And every day, without fail, he records reasons to be grateful in a “grateful book.” His new documentary is one of those reasons.
“I always put myself last, because I don’t need to put myself first,” Sader says. “I like to see other people rise. And that’s what I’m hoping with happen with this movie. The higher I rise, the higher my family will rise and everybody around me.”
Mike Thomas has in the past been compensated for appearances at Tribeca Flashpoint.