True Crime, the CIA and Frank Dux, Fabulist
I haven’t written a Silly Little Show-Biz Book Club entry in way too long. I’ve always enjoyed exploring the worst and weirdest the world of literature has to offer, but for the last few months, my autistic hyper-fixation has been E.C. graphic novel collections.
I’ve always loved Tales From the Crypt but didn’t get into the comic books that inspired it until recently. I have now read twenty-one E.C. collections from Dark Horse in a row. That’s a lot! I’ve read every Tales From the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, The Haunt of Fear, Shock Suspenstories, Two Fisted Tales, and Crime Suspenstories collection that’s been released so far along with much of E.C’s science fiction titles, which I enjoy, but not as much as the titles I’ve just listed.
I’ve discovered, much to my surprise, that comic books aren’t just funny animal books for children; some of them appeal to teenagers as well. I’ve had so much fun reading comic books that I plan to graduate to books without pictures or horror hosts soon.
Silly Show-Biz Book Club will return soon with a loving look at Frank Dux’s The Secret Man. It’s a notorious “memoir” from the cult martial artist best known for being the inspiration for Bloodsport and also for being the world’s most shameless and prolific liar.
Dux is such an inveterate fabulist that he makes Donald Trump look like Honest Abe by comparison. Trump, incidentally, is on record as a Bloodsport Superfan. In a 1997 New Yorker profile, Trump plays it on a flight but has one of his sons fast-forward through the boring parts to reduce a two-hour movie to a forty-five-minute collection of badass fight scenes.
That’s right: we gave the nuclear codes to someone who loves Jean-Claude Van Damme but lacks the patience to watch one of his movies in its entirety.
Bloodsport writer Sheldon Lettich described him as a “delusional daydreamer.” That’s one of the nicer things Dux has been called.
Dux makes all manner of crazy claims in The Secret Man, nearly all of which have been roundly and thoroughly debunked though it’s hard to imagine anyone gullible enough to read Dux’s book as a factual account of its author’s real-life exploits rather than the crazed fantasy of a man-child with the world’s most vivid imagination.
The serial fabulist has defended the book against more or less universal condemnation of it as a pack of tall tales and blatant lies by saying that, of course, there was no record of him doing pretty much any of the things he brags about doing because he was in the CIA and the Agency angrily demands total secrecy.
That’s why Dux calls it The Secret Man. The CIA would undoubtedly love to release documents certifying that Dux was their deadliest, sexiest, and most trusted operative, someone skilled not only in warfare and martial arts but also in lovemaking. But they just can’t without risking the lives of agents less unbelievably accomplished and skilled as Dux.
Pretending to be part of the CIA is a common tactic used by grifters, catfishers, and other serial liars. I cannot say how many times I’ve listened to a true crime podcast where an overly trusting woman is blown away by the love bombing and boasts of a sketchy character. When she presses him on his clear-cut lies and fabrications, he attempts to explain it all away by saying that they work for the CIA.
THAT is why there’s no proof that they’ve done all the incredible things they profess to have done: it’s all a government secret. That’s why there’s no paper trail to their ostensible awesomeness.
On a recent season of Dr. Death, a surgeon filled a news producer’s mind with crazy promises, like having the Pope officiate their wedding, and when she called him on his bullshit, he, of course, said that he worked for the CIA, so of course, there was no proof of his incredible accomplishments.
If someone tells you that they work for the CIA after you’ve uncovered a trail of lies, DON’T BELIEVE THEM! They’re lying! They’re cynically professing to be part of a secretive organization to hide their propensity for mistruths.
The Secret Man takes this tendency among the patently, purposefully dishonest to comic extremes. I don’t believe a goddamn word in Dux’s ridiculous ode to self. When Dux says that he’s Jewish and has suffered terrible anti-Semitism, I immediately assumed he must be Mormon.
That’s what makes it perfect for Silly Little Showbiz Book Club. I find people who have no idea how ridiculous they are and how the world actually sees them endlessly fascinating. That’s Dux and The Secret Man in unusually pure form
Nathan needs teeth that work, and his dental plan doesn't cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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