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Overview
The myth of an epic, public life—its triumphs and tragedies—is a particularly American obsession. ROAR is a metafictional exploration of such a life and attendant fame of an extraordinary, and completely made up, man.
Born in Nashville in 1940 and adopted by a wealthy San Francisco couple, Roger Orr—“Roar”—became an underground stand-up comedian with a cult following while still in his teens, segueing to an acclaimed songwriter in the Sixties. In the decades that followed, his talent spanned the worlds of entertainment, from film directing and books to fine art (paintings, sculpture). His promethean energies expanded to the world of medicine; he became a dermatologist, the first to patent cadaver skin for burn victims. A spiritual seeker who returned to India throughout his life, Roar was also a voracious lover of both men and women.
The journey of Roger Orr was a premonition of the cultural earthquakes to come. It wasn’t until his 40s that Roar learned his birth mother was black and it wasn't until his early 60s when he began the hormonal treatment and surgeries that chipped away at the armor covering what he always knew was his true identity: that of a woman.
Roar’s saga is best told by a cacophony of voices—family members, critics, historians, and the famous (Meryl Streep, Amanda Gorman, Dave Chappelle, Andy Warhol)—including some heard from the grave. In ROAR, Wagner brilliantly paints a vivid picture of one man, our times, and our culture's enduring obsession with fame.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781648211003 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Arcade |
| Publication date: | 02/04/2025 |
| Pages: | 504 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
FIRST LOOK
VINCE GILLIGAN (showrunner) He was more than once-in-a-generation, he was that thousand-year storm.
GWYNETH PALTROW (actress, entrepreneur) You couldn’t have invented him: a film and theater director of genius, an Academy Award-winning actor, a legendary stand-up, and celebrated songwriter, playwright, novelist, sculptor, and dermatologist.
A dermatologist! Most people don’t know that.
JOHN LAHR (writer) In terms of multiplicity, one thinks of Chaplin, whom of course Roar knew. He knew everyone on earth. But Chaplin never wrote a novel, and if he did, one doubts it would be the masterwork of The Jungle Book. And Chaplin certainly wasn’t a dermatologist.
CHARLIE CHAPLIN (actor, filmmaker) We met in 1971. A puzzle piece, but the most adorably charming one I’d ever met. He laughed when I started calling him “the Enigma Variations”—after Elgar—but it was true.
STEVE ALLEN (comedian, entertainer) He used to say he was a riddle wrapped in an enigma. But he’d always add, “a Nelson riddle.”
JASPER JOHNS (artist) Easy to know—yet hard. Erudite, with a virginal, rapacious intelligence. One of the rare souls one feels instantly comfortable with. At first blush, you had the sense of having known him forever. You knew nothing about him, of course, nor ever would.
DENZEL WASHINGTON (actor) A white man raised in great privilege who learns in midlife that his biological mother was Black—and his biological father a violent racist. He’d say, “It don’t get any better than that, Denz.”
MERYL STREEP (actress) I have a photo on the piano of him with Sinatra, Streisand, and Muhammad Ali—but your eyes go only to Roar. The rest are just staring at him, wanting his love and attention. And laughing, you know, glamorous big-laughing, larger than life, like that famous photo of Gable, Cooper and Stewart at Romanoff’s. I don’t know where they were, what party or event, but everyone was in a tux, even Barbra. Roar’s looking straight at the camera with that sly little trademark smile but you have the sense he’s alone. That sadness . . . oh! I get tears.
DICK GREGORY (comedian) We used to gig together. At the hungry i . . . and in Reno. This was a long time before Roar knew where he came from. Before Bird and all that jazz. The boy was white as a sheet of paper! We were friendly competitors—you know, always telling each other our shit wasn’t funny. He’d hear me do my act on a good night and just shake his head. Click his tongue and look real, real sad. “Only connect,” he’d say. “Only connect, Sandman.” He called me Sandman ’cause he said my act put people to sleep! We fucked with each other like that. He called me Sandman so I started calling him Sad Man ’cause he had that thing in his eyes. The cat was wounded. You’re born with that look. Can’t be taught.
WOODY ALLEN (actor, filmmaker) He was the inspiration for Zelig but in reverse—he was Zelig in the center, not the fringe. Everyone else, regardless of their fame, was reduced to being Zelig just by standing next to him.
TREVOR NOAH (comedian) He and Dick Gregory were close but the one nearest to his heart was Richard Pryor. They were born in the same year, 1940. Pryor was raised in a bordello, a far cry from “Parnassus,” the palace in Pacific Heights where Roar was brought up.
DICK GREGORY I was writing my memoirs and he said, “I got a title for you, Sandman: Black Out.” Damn good. But I was a little ambivalent. ’Cause I didn’t want black to be out, I wanted it to be in. “White Out”? Ha! The main thing was, I needed to make the name of the book my own. A few months later, I told him, “Gonna call it Nigger.” His face got all kinda deformed and I thought Oh shit, the motherfucker hates it! Which would have hurt, feel me? ’Cause I respected the fuck out of that man. I got all tense. Then he smiles—remember that smile he had? Big as the sun—and gives me a hug. “Sandman? That’s genius. And that’s why I’ll never be you. I’ll never have those big balls.” He had mad balls, was born with ’em, but was generous to a fault. But it was important to me that he liked it—loved it—because I was still waking up at three a.m. and saying, “Do I really want to call my book that?” I was worried it was too forced-outrageous. Sensational, exhibitionistic, whatever. After he said the title was great, I still had doubts. Called him one morning for a little reassurance, and he said he’d kill me if I backed down.
That’s the gift he gave everyone: the truth. The truth, and an unconditional generosity of heart and spirit. And he was always right, except when it came to himself.
But even when he was wrong about that, he was right.
MARVIN WORTH (producer) [Pryor] was his first choice for Coloring Book, Roar’s version of the Sirk movie, Imitation of Life. He was always going back to that theme. The movie never got made and that’s one of the regrets of my life. Did you know Pryor was arrested in Germany when he was in the Army? In the late Fifties. Richard was watching Imitation of Life and there was a white soldier in the audience, some piece of shit who thought it was funnier than a Road Runner cartoon. He shouted at the screen, you know, mocking the Susan Kohner character—the girl who was “passing”—and generally laughing his cracker ass off. Richard and a bunch of black soldiers beat the shit out of him. Pryor did time for that, two years in the stockade.
So much for joining the Army and seeing the world.
GOLDIE HAWN (actress) We had a house in Point Dume, not far from the place Roar had at the Cove. We threw a little dinner party for him. I was giving him a tour of the house. We were in the bedroom and he said something so insanely funny, I wouldn’t dare try to tell you what it was. Then he did a dancer’s pivot and vanished into the hall. A master of timing, a master of the exit. I laughed so hard I shat myself and blacked out.
ERIC IDLE (author, comedian) He was legendary for being able to do that. He’d drop a bomb and leave, then people would shit or piss themselves and fall unconscious. It’s where we got the idea for the Python sketch, “The Funniest Joke In the World.” The joke that literally kills.
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON (author, activist) I really do think he was a bodhisattva. Late in life, he got recognized as a tulku—a reincarnated master. So was Steven Seagal, because of the donations he made to a monastery. When I told Roar that, he said, “Why, of all the nirvana!”
EDDIE IZZARD (actor, activist) I don’t know if it’s apocryphal but he was in the UK because he was made a KBE, which is quite rare for an American. He spent time alone with the Queen and she roared with laughter—how aptly named he was! Servant scuttlebutt was that a neat rivulet of stool dribbled down her leg but I don’t believe it.
Still, that was the effect he had “on cabbages and kings.”
ELON MUSK (inventor, entrepreneur) People think it was my kids who were responsible for the Tesla fart app. Nope: it was courtesy of Mr. Roger Orr. He said he wanted to be the Dylan, the Kanye, the Sondheim of electric farts. True to his word, the man got involved. He didn’t come up with “Short Shorts Ripper”—but “Gentle Roar” was all his.
AMY SCHUMER (comedian) He was the greatest stand-up, ever—Pryor himself said that. Chappelle’s obsessed with those early performances. We all are. And that he did them when he was a kid was just . . . impossible. Patti Smith said he was the Rimbaud of comedy, but I thought she was talking about Stallone. . . . Those LPs he did had amazingly surreal moments—totally worthy of Perelman. I heard that Spike Milligan lifted some of the bits for The Goon Show but don’t know if that’s true . . . classic vaudeville and hyper-cerebral too. They’re all on YouTube. I don’t know a comic who hasn’t studied them like the Dead Sea scrolls. Scroll down!
HOWIE MANDEL (comedian) He did one of those famous cold calls. I don’t know how he got my number but hey, it’s Roger Orr, he’s got everyone’s number. Right? I thought it was a prank because I talked about him all the time in interviews. He said he wanted to be a judge on AGT[America’s Got Talent]. I burst out laughing and said, “Okay now, seriously—who is this?”
RUPAUL (drag queen, television personality) Growing up, he felt he was a girl trapped in a boy’s body. We talked and talked about that. He came to embody so many things about this contradictory age. That’s always the way it is with visionaries. They don’t come along too often. God gives you a tiny allotment then says, “Th-th-th-that’s all, folks.”
CAITLYN JENNER (activist) He said I was the bravest person he ever met. But without Roar I’d never have had the courage. So, he was being kind. The most fearless soul I’d ever met.
JAN MORRIS (writer) He wanted to do an opera about my life. I loved him but that was something I simply wasn’t interested in. He wrote Swan Song instead. I was the oyster who made that pearl—it makes me smile. Naturally, it’s entered the canon, like everything Roar did.
KATY PERRY (singer) He wrote an opera about a hermaphrodite, a word that’s fallen into disrepute because it’s considered . . . whatever. I have a lot of trans friends who love that word. But the opera was about him. He called it “my schoolboy Madame Butterfly.”
STEVEN SONDHEIM (composer, lyricist) Swan Song was far better than Puccini. Much closer to Mozart than Puccini.
CAITLYN JENNER We talked about everything, including the Pronoun People. Roar’d say, “I don’t mind being called ‘they’ but when I got implants, my tits thought they were being spoken about in third person. They said, ‘How rude!’”
DR. TERRY DUBROW (plastic surgeon, television personality) I was at a party with Brooke Shields, and somehow Roar’s name came up. I was such a fan. Well, of course she knew him and said, “He loves your show.” I was, like, “Huh?” Roger Orr was a fan of Botched! I’d read his book in med school—Orr’s Textbook of Dermatology. So I reached out to ask if he’d do a guest consult on Botched for a patient with vitiligo and rheumatoid arthritis. We do something like that now and then. I was instantly embarrassed—the note was fawning—and worried I’d get an angry call from Brooke, saying, “You idiot. Why did you do that? What were you thinking!”
Months later I got a response. A lovely thank-you, ending with “Sorry—no skin in that game anymore.” It’s framed and on my desk.
GWYNETH PALTROW He was a friend of Dad’s. I was probably about seven years old when he came to the house for dinner. My mom loves scented candles, and they were burning all over the place whenever we had guests. He came back from the bathroom, sniffed the air and smiled. Mom said, “Vanilla rose.” And he very dramatically, you know, very arch, stared into space, and mused. “No. It smells like . . . my vagina.” This was a long time before he had the surgery! My parents fell on the floor. I’m so glad he lived long enough to see the Goop candle—my homage. He asked if he’d be paid a royalty—kind of half-joking?—and I said something stupid like, “Oh c’mon, Roar, you already are royalty.”
He held the candle in his hands, smiled and said, “Gwynnie? Stop making scents.”
KEITH RICHARDS (musician) His chemical intake was . . . Promethean. Drank like Dylan Thomas and drugged like Neal Cassady. Good songwriter too; great songwriter. Very Jacques Brel. Wrote a lotta crap for his movies—“soundtrack songs” I call ’em—but did some amazing ballads that were never recorded. Mystical love songs on par with Leonard Cohen, like “Heaven Can’t Wait.” That’s one I wish I’d done.
FRANCIS BACON (artist) He showed me some sculptures. He called them “doodies,” sardonic doodles, throwaways. The call of doodie was how he referred to the moment inspiration came. I thought they were as good as anything Giacometti had done.
TOM STOPPARD (playwright) A consummate alchemist. Paul Allen rented an entire cruise ship and had it completely redone for a weekend party he threw in Saint Petersburg. (Yes, a weekend party.) I was at a dinner table with Roar, Carrie Fisher, Terry Gilliam, James Watson, Martha Stewart, and Deepak Chopra. I don’t remember a thing anyone said—except for Roar telling me he loved Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and “You should really write something about Shakespeare in love.”
He had a way of planting seeds.
FRANCIS BACON He enjoyed dressing like a girl when we went out. He was beautiful. I was quite in love. This was a bit before he became “Roar,” Renaissance Genius of the World. He was still Rodge, soaking up theater in London and whatever spilled anywhere near. He was rough in bed. I liked it cruel though that’s not what he was about. But he could play cruel. A chameleon, with a cock fatter than Lucien [Freud]’s. With Rodge, you never knew exactly who you were fucking. Wasn’t that the thrill.
VINCE GILLIGAN I met him during The X-Files. A party at Matt Groening’s. Seductive and compulsively gregarious but that winning smile saw right through you. I was expecting him to be “on,” you know, to be Roger Orr. “Entertain me.” That sounds kind of sleazy but it was true—I was in awe. Everyone was. He told some very funny stories then did the laser eye thing. “So, Young Invincible Gilligan, what are you going to do next that isn’t yours?” No affect at all—like asking if I had travel plans for the holidays. That’s why it was so deadly. He added, “What’s your next idea for the Man?” He wasn’t talking about Chris [Carter]. . . . “The Man”—a very Sixties thing to say, but I got it. I was so shaken that I left the party.
I blasted the radio in the car and by the time I got home, Breaking Bad was mapped out in my head, from pilot to final episode.
STEVEN SPIELBERG (director) As if his other talents weren’t enough—if you can politely call them “talents”—he made six films in the top twenty or thirty of the best ever made. I don’t think that’s even arguable. He was like Kubrick in terms of his effortless exploration of genres: comedy, noir, sexual tragedy, war. But Kubrick with a heart. Stanley was cold; Roar was hot.
QUENTIN TARANTINO (director) We met in 1990, before Reservoir. I was working at the video store. People came in wondering what to watch, and I pushed his movies on customers like dope. I was his dealer and his pimp! Then one day the man himself comes in and asks for all the John Fords. The studio would have screened them but he wanted laser discs. . . . I was a pretty big poster collector and gave him one of my own—the Tippi Hedren movie, Roar. He loved that. We became friends and I couldn’t believe it. I showed him the rough cuts of all my films. His was the only opinion that mattered.
MERYL STREEP The day he died—well, the first thing I thought, the first thing anyone thought when you heard something like that was of course COVID. This was before the vaccine, when the other shoe kept dropping. Most people survived but I had friends, and friends of friends—mostly their parents—who didn’t. People with comorbidities, which Roar certainly had. All the heart stuff, all the abuse he’d done to his body. You white-knuckled it whenever there was a surge, and there was always a surge. He was just about eighty and of course vulnerable. I was in complete denial about that because he was one of those people you think will never die. The life force was so damn strong, he was like some kid. My head started racing and I went to was it suicide? Because as much as he was surrounded by light—blinding light!—there was so much darkness. He tried it once before, the suicide thing, maybe more than once . . . but I hated the possibility—taking his own life—so I started thinking, Was he sick? Was it cancer and no one knew? Some of that was selfish because if I knew, I would have gone to see him one last time. I thought, who can I call to find out what happened? I was frantic. There were a lot of people I could call, starting with Laughlin, Leslie, and Ali Berk. We hadn’t spoken since our last film together. . . . I was going to give him the Twain Prize but he canceled, so something was up. Did I talk to him right after that? After he canceled? I must have. I would have had to. Why can’t I remember? I’d given him so many awards! The Special Award from the Academy . . . he’d already gotten the Presidential Medal of Honor, the Kennedy Center Honors, the National Book Award, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement. My God, he was an EGOT! He called that one the “EGO.” Roar hated awards but loved them too. That’s him in a nutshell.
I remember what he said when he took the stage for something or other—oh, he loved “taking the stage.” No matter how depressed he was, it breathed life into him. Loved walking into a party and knowing all heads were just ratcheting toward him. You could hear people’s neck bones! I remember one time before he left the stage clutching whatever glass and gold hardware they’d given him, he told the audience, “See you next year in the memorial montage.”
Big laugh, but not too far off.