Hello Kevheads.
Been a while. So, how are you? Getting older, I know. Tell me about it. Changed jobs a few times, right? Kids grown? Same husband or wife? What are you doing for fun? Still getting high? Still going to concerts? So expensive now, right? Still dreaming of the good old days, the sights and sounds of your carefree youth?
Welcome back, then, to radio’s Kevin Matthews, one of the icons from our collective past, who returns in a new movie that shows him in a surprising way. “Broken Mary: The Kevin Matthews Story” premieres in movie theaters on Oct. 7.
It’s a one-night-only event, but it is a terrific movie, a Fathom Entertainment presentation handsomely produced by locally-based ODB Films and Family Theater Productions in association with Windrider and Dynamic Catholic (tickets at BrokenMaryFilm.com).
The first half of the hourlong film will evoke the most memories, as it details Matthews rise from childhood in Pontiac, Michigan, when he suffered from dyslexia, a quick-tempered father and the discovery that he could “use comedy as a shield”; college and his first brush with radio, which he felt was “an escape … a theater of the mind,” he told me; arrival at Chicago’s WLUP, where he joined Jonathon Brandmeier and Steve Dahl and Garry Meier in a stunningly successful daily lineup; his vocal mimicry of such people as Fred Rogers, Andy Rooney and Pee Wee Herman, and creation of such characters as the irascible sportscaster Jim Shorts; big money, big ratings, wild times.
Kevheads, the term for Matthews’ fans, will notice that many of those wild times are treated with kid gloves in the movie. That’s understandable but know that they were anything but sedate, their antics still talked about in hushed barroom conversations. (Take a deeper dive via “The Loop Files: An Oral History of the Most Outrageous Radio Station Ever,” by Rick Kaempfer),
Former Chicago DJ Kevin Matthews on Feb. 23, 2022. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
When it came to an end, Matthews retreated to Michigan, did a bit of podcasting and brooding and in 2009 was diagnosed with a rare type of multiple sclerosis, the often-debilitating disease of the brain and spinal cord.
And then along comes Mary, in the form of a shattered statue of the Virgin Mary he finds by a garbage dumpster. He keeps it and it gives him — he was raised Catholic — renewed faith. It also led to a 2016 book, “Broken Mary: A Journey of Hope” as well as frequent appearances and talks at churches.
I reconnected with Matthews about four years ago, driving up to his Big Events Studios, a massive 100-year-old facility in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he was running a business that made commercial videos and shot photos for major corporations.
“A lot of people think I died,” he said at the time.
But he was busy, telling me about this film and other ventures.
Talking Sunday on the phone, he told me that the documentary was six years in the making, begun after a church talk on the West Coast six years ago when he was approached by two producers with the idea.
“This has never been about me,” he said Monday. “I just listened to God and allowed the filmmakers to do what they did. And they have been able to capture my message, that we are all broken and we are loved by God.”
One of the documentary’s slight faults, to my mind, is that it barely mentions his wife Debra, daughter Teage and her children or son Trevor Menear, a musician based in Los Angeles.
“Again, this is not about me but we are all fine,” Matthews says.
He is powerfully the film’s center. He looks good and healthy and offers thoughtful, introspective commentary. Last year he published “Mary’s Roadie: My Travels with Mary the Mother of Jesus,” about his spreading his essential message.
The faithful walk down Chicago Avenue from St. John Cantius Church to the Chicago Water Tower, May 31, 2019. Former Chicago radio host Kevin Matthews had a spiritual awakening after finding a broken statue of the Virgin Mary beside a dumpster and it was the centerpiece of the walk. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)
Also featured in the film are former radio colleagues such as his boss at WLUP, Larry Wert, who once famously described called Matthews a man who “had a circus going on in his head”; Mitch Rosen, radio executive and once Matthews’ producer at WLUP; former Chicago Bear and radio voice Tom Thayer and, most intriguingly, radio’s Erich “Mancow” Muller, who refers to his ratings battle with Matthews as a “bloodbath” before happily admitting that they are now friends.
We do see and hear from some from the Broken Mary years, a couple of priests who are quite admiring and a couple of parishioners who were helped — though cancer and alcoholism — by hearing Matthews talk.
So I asked him what he expects from this film, his new book, the future?
“It will be in 1,000 theaters. There is a billboard about it now on Hollywood Boulevard,” he says, adding that he will be at an Orland Park screening on Oct. 7. “I am proud of it. It is a movie about all of us and I just hope that people like it, that’s my modest expectation.”
Now, I have heard a few cynics who think Matthews’ “Broken Mary” endeavor is what one called, “just another in the series of Kevin creations, nothing to take seriously.” Too bad. In this increasingly cynical world such suspicions are not rare. But in the words of an old song, “let it be.” See the movie. Judge for yourself.
rkogan@chicagotribune.com