John Callahan was an "extraordinary" character who "tested the limits of humor". This is how the legendary independent film director, Gus Van Sant, who now releases a biopic about this artist, masterfully interpreted by Joaquin Phoenix in Do not worry, he will not get far on foot remembers him.
Callahan's vignettes, tetraplegic and alcoholic, were published for 27 years in his hometown, Portland, and in more than 200 national and international publications.
The filter of black humor
With them, he ironized about any collective or minority, and took political incorrectness to the extreme.
Paralyzed, religious, the Ku Klux Klan, anyone could receive his stabs of sarcasm. Many drawings laughed at himself and at people with disabilities. Like that vignette that shows a lady who claims she needs a hug in a center for people who suffered the amputation of their two arms.
Or in Callahan's own drawing that inspired the name of the film: a group of cowboys chasing a paralyzed man. The vignette shows the wheelchair lying on the ground, in front of which the cowboys say: "do not worry, he will not get far on foot".