Today, January 27, 2009, World Wrestling Entertainment released another fantastic DVD set, this one entitled “Legends of Wrestling.”
The 3-disc boxed set features a series of roundtable discussions from long-time wrestling personalities and Hall of Famers in their own right, talking about other legends and important moments in wrestling history. The format features a moderator and four long-time wrestling personalities sitting roundtable style giving their uncensored thoughts on the subjects at hand. The discussion is truly unscripted and unfiltered, as these panelists have known and worked with these discussion subjects for a long time, and all have their own unique thoughts, whether good or bad. It’s a good thing there is a moderator to keep the subject on task or else the charismatic panel would take the discussion somewhere completely off subject.
The first disc features a panel discussion on former World Heavyweight Champions Sgt. Slaughter and “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair. In addition to the discussion a series of matches from both men’s careers are included as extras on the disc.
The second disc follows the same format with a roundtable discussion on Jerry “The King” Lawler and Junkyard Dog, two men who were big stars in their own right in World Wrestling Entertainment, but were also very successful in the “old days” of the territory system.
The third disc is the most interesting of the boxed set, as the roundtable discusses “Heatseekers” in wrestling, which essentially was a talk about controversial or unpopular people and characters in wrestling history. The extras features matches from a variety of “heatseekers,” including the Fabulous Freebirds, Scott Hall, Vince Russo, Buff Bagwell and others. The roundtable talk is definitely the most entertaining of the three discs.
As an extra bonus, Best Buy is also selling three separate DVDs with more roundtable discussions and match extras. One highlights former WWE Champions Andre the Giant & the Iron Sheik, a second is about another pair of former WWE Champions in Hulk Hogan & Bob Backlund and the third and final disc discusses the always wild and controversial characters of Rowdy Roddy Piper and Terry Funk.
These roundtable discussions are absolutely fascinating for a wrestling history nerd like myself. It’s great to be able to “pull back the curtain” and see what these industry greats think of their peers good or bad. And much like having a conversation with any “old-timer,” a lot of funny stories come out the discussion. A lot of the panelists are good friends and you can see that camaraderie come out while they talk with each other.
The match extras are an absolutely great bonus for the DVDs, but the discussions are definitely the highlight of the discs. This is only six of the Legends roundtables as more have been recorded and distributed via WWE 24/7, and I’m sure if this set does well we can be sure to see more released on DVD in the near future.
For a fan old-school wrestling or just wants to learn about wrestling from those who lived it this is right up your alley. The actual quality of the match extras are hit or miss, but the roundtable discussions are absolutely fantastic and worth the “price of admission.” (Credit: Pro Wrestling Examiner)
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Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
Access Exclusive: Mickey Rourke To Get In The Ring With WWE For ‘Wrestlemania' - 25th January 2009
LOS ANGELES, Calif.
Mickey Rourke has received critical acclaim for his comeback role in “The Wrestler,” where he plays a former pro wrestling legend who falls on hard times.
And on the red carpet at the 15th Annual SAG Awards on Sunday night in Hollywood, the actor revealed he’s about to get in the ring in real life.
Rourke will be participating in WWE’s “Wrestlemania 25” in Houston on April 5.
“The boys from the WWE called me and asked me to do it,” Rourke told Access Hollywood. “I said, ‘I want to.’ I’m talking with [WWE legend] Rowdy Roddy Piper about it.”
In fact, Rourke, whose role in “The Wrestler” earned him a SAG nomination for Best Actor (as well as an Academy Award nomination and a win at the Golden Globes earlier this month), said the professional wrestling industry has been extremely supportive of his portrayal of the sport.
“The nicest thing has been the whole wrestling community embracing us,” Rourke said on the red carpet. “The movie was about their world.”
And when he does jump into the ring with WWE, it appears the actor may already have his sights set on an opponent.
“Chris Jericho, you better get in shape,” Rourke added. “Because I’m coming after your a**.” (Credit: Access Hollywood)
Media Man Australia Profiles
The Wrestler
Roddy Piper
WrestleMania
WWE
Wrestling
Mickey Rourke has received critical acclaim for his comeback role in “The Wrestler,” where he plays a former pro wrestling legend who falls on hard times.
And on the red carpet at the 15th Annual SAG Awards on Sunday night in Hollywood, the actor revealed he’s about to get in the ring in real life.
Rourke will be participating in WWE’s “Wrestlemania 25” in Houston on April 5.
“The boys from the WWE called me and asked me to do it,” Rourke told Access Hollywood. “I said, ‘I want to.’ I’m talking with [WWE legend] Rowdy Roddy Piper about it.”
In fact, Rourke, whose role in “The Wrestler” earned him a SAG nomination for Best Actor (as well as an Academy Award nomination and a win at the Golden Globes earlier this month), said the professional wrestling industry has been extremely supportive of his portrayal of the sport.
“The nicest thing has been the whole wrestling community embracing us,” Rourke said on the red carpet. “The movie was about their world.”
And when he does jump into the ring with WWE, it appears the actor may already have his sights set on an opponent.
“Chris Jericho, you better get in shape,” Rourke added. “Because I’m coming after your a**.” (Credit: Access Hollywood)
Media Man Australia Profiles
The Wrestler
Roddy Piper
WrestleMania
WWE
Wrestling
Monday, January 12, 2009
The great contender, by Stephanie Bunbury - The Age - 11th January 2009
Once considered down for the final count, Hollywood maverick Mickey Rourke is back in the ring and how, writes Stephanie Bunbury.
Couldabeen a contender. Nobody fits that phrase better than Mickey Rourke. Remember how he started out? Hailed as the new Marlon Brando in his breakthrough film Diner (1982), Rourke was then an actor of subtlety and can't-take-your-eyes-off-him presence who was also, just by the way, a smouldering sex god. It took just a few years, however, before he managed to squander those gifts through sheer craziness. Mid-'90s, Mickey Rourke was living on hand-outs from a mate, trying to be a pro boxer even though he was middle-aged. Every now and then he would do a day or two on films that hardly anyone saw or would want to see. Even his psychiatrist told him that out of all the hot talent in Hollywood of the time, only he could fall that far.
But now, quite miraculously, Mickey Rourke has been reborn as not simply a contender, but a hot tip for this year's best actor Oscar. In The Wrestler, the new film from Darren Aronofsky, Rourke plays washed-up Randy the Ram, a man who has lived only for the tinny glory of playing the good guy in the spit-and-sawdust theatrics of wrestling shows. Like Rourke himself, Randy is a clanking wreck after too many crashes on the ropes and cheap steroids; like Rourke, he chose hell-raising over child-raising and is paying for it in loneliness and a grey sense of general regret. Even as a member of the audience, it is painful seeing these parallels played out. Rourke, meanwhile, gives the performance of a lifetime. A Golden Globe nomination is already in the bag.
I met Mickey Rourke for the first time when Sin City premiered in Cannes in 2005. That was his real comeback; even though he was unrecognisable under a comic-book facial prosthetic. The part of Marvin, crazed avenger, was only one of the film's several leads, but everyone was talking about him. Mickey was talking about himself too; in fact, he would tell anyone anything. This was partly a habit born of therapy - at one stage in his chequered life, Rourke was going three times a week - but it was also born of gratitude. "You know," he told the Observer recently, "many years have gone by when no one wanted me to sit in a room and ask me questions ... so I'm thankful for it. It's been a long, long time."
Of course, he had quite a story to tell and, as a showman, he knew it. Young Mickey, he says, grew up tough in a dangerous, almost entirely black neighbourhood in Miami, shielding himself and his little brother, Joey, from an abusive stepfather. He started boxing in his teens, fighting the likes of Luis Rodriguez (who was soon to win the world middleweight title) until a bad concussion brought his time in gloves to an abrupt halt. So he worked his way into the Actors' Studio in New York - he liked the idea, he says, of becoming someone else - and became the Mickey Rourke we know from films such as Coppola's Rumble Fish, Alan Parker's Angel Heart and Barbet Schroeder's Barfly, in which he seemingly channelled the Beat writer Charles Bukowski.
But even after he became feted, famous and, briefly, fabulously rich, Rourke was still a fighter. "Working with Mickey Rourke is a nightmare," said Parker after they made Angel Heart. "He is very dangerous on the set because you never know what he's going to do." There were fights in nightclubs and tantrums on sets; there was the gang of Cuban heavies who went everywhere with him; in 1994, he was charged with assaulting his then wife, Carre Otis. By that time, he was virtually unemployable. "Of course, the drinking and the drugs ... did it," he says. "But the real problem was that I was nuts and angry and ashamed, too, and that shame turned into anger." During his worst period, however, he believes boxing was his salvation. That was when he was training seriously. "It was like a cleansing period. It was the point where I was the most out of control and it was almost the saving grace, because I could go into something and be an animal, which is what I was." But nobody in the film business will ever share that view, because fighting men at least a decade younger than him left him with a face that needed several reconstructions. His nose was rebuilt with cartilage from his ear. Rourke had become a wreck.
Then, in 1996, he failed his memory test and had to stop boxing altogether. That really was the nadir of his life. "I was heartbroken." Otis, "the woman I loved so f---ing much and still love", divorced him in 1998. He had nothing and nobody. He thought about killing himself; only the dependence of his pack of chihuahuas, whose various descendants remain his only companions, kept him here. He likes small dogs, he says, because you can cuddle them and feel their hearts beating. Their tiny lives were his responsibility.
And, as it turned out, he still had acting. After Otis left him, Rourke had a moment in front of the mirror when he saw what others saw - "You know, the armour; it scared the f--- out of me" - and resolved to change his life. It was a long road back, personally and professionally, but old stalwarts helped: Francis Ford Coppola gave him a part in The Rainmaker in 1997; Steve Buscemi had him for Animal Factory the next year and people began to notice that, yes, crazy Mickey Rourke was good again. Now it seems he is making up for lost time. Just this year, he has made The Informers, directed by Australian Gregor Jordan - in which he is reunited with 9 1/2 Weeks co-star Kim Basinger - and an Elmore Leonard adaptation, The Killshot, for John Madden. Another ensemble piece, 13, with Jason Statham, Sam Riley and Ray Winstone, all of whom he greatly admires, is now in post-production. And The Wrestler, of course, is doing its triumphant rounds. Mickey may have been crushed to a pulp back there, but he's back in the ring.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist, Rourke says soberly, to see why Darren Aronofsky wanted him to play Randy the Ram. He is no rocket scientist - he often observes how much smarter, "so Jewish and intelligent" Aronofsky is - but he knew that his own past was about to be exploited. "Working with a guy like Darren ..." he says, trailing off into a heavy sigh. "I knew he was going to want me to revisit some dark places I didn't want to revisit. Because I work a certain way, where I make it all very personal - I'll use things from my life, from my ex-wife to my childhood, so it's real - I thought, 'God, I don't know if I want to work that hard and give that much'." He also knew that Aronofsky would be able to push all his buttons, whether he wanted to work that hard or not. When most of the film's financiers refused to back The Wrestler, originally planned as a blockbuster, if Rourke played the lead, he says he was the only person who wasn't disappointed.
Aronofsky, however, was determined to have him. He wasn't worried that he would be difficult. "You know, he's done so many characters in so many films and somehow he's got through them. So I knew I could get through it with him. It was just a matter of what it would take." So he rewrote The Wrestler as a low-budget film; one remaining financier was prepared to put up $US6 million for a film with Rourke in it, so he cut his cloth accordingly.
Rourke, meanwhile, found that he really did want to do those hard yards. He had recognised that it was important to push himself artistically if he wasn't going to slip into straight-to-video misery again. Besides, he adds with that old edge of menace, he is relentlessly competitive. "I used to love playing football in high school; I don't want to lose a game by one touchdown or one point. And I don't want to lose when I'm acting. Darren's going to challenge me to bring it and to be the best actor I can be, and I'm going to give him every f---ing thing. I'm going to give him my f---ing blood. I got no problem with that at all. People go 'it isn't competitive'. But it is competitive."
Making the film was tough physically, of course; Rourke, now 56 (although he admits only to 52), trained with real wrestlers for three months, trying to learn what they might learn in five years about how to fall and get shaken around. Having been a boxer, he started out with no respect for the choreographed entertainment that is wrestling. He soon changed his opinion. "You still make sacrifices. You still get hurt. When a guy who weighs 230 pounds picks you up and throws you, f---! You feel it in every bone in your body. I'm not a kid any more. Here still hurts. And here. And here," he says, pointing to various bits of his frame.
The mood changed, however, once they started filming and he discovered that his hardest scenes were not the fights but those with Evan Rachel Wood, who plays Randy's estranged daughter, Stephanie. Rourke and Wood did not meet until they did their first scene together; Aronofsky kept them apart, wanting to keep their onscreen relationship "awkward and uncomfortable". For him, Rourke says, that first encounter immediately brought back his reunion with his own father in his mid-20s, wanting to know why he had abandoned his children. It was harrowing. "I didn't even know her name," he says. "We just did it. We introduced ourselves like a week or two later. I couldn't remember her name anyway." By the end of the shoot, he was completely wrung out. "I ended up not being able to get out of bed for four days, crying hysterically. I thought I was dying."
Fragility was always one of Rourke's many attractions; he may not have been boxing when he was at his acting peak, but he still seemed authentically, appealingly bruised. The Wrestler screened for the first time at the Venice Film Festival, accompanied by the usual intensive round of press promotion. Rourke disappeared just before our interview; someone, apparently, had upset him. Had he snapped? The publicist assured us he would return, but was visibly afraid he wouldn't. Twenty minutes went by.
He did come back, genial but clearly tired, the face around the dark glasses even more pouched, battered and puffy than it was when boxing and plastic surgery first put paid to his youthful beauty. He said, quite recently, that he felt more at peace than ever before. "But there's always going to be a war going on inside of me. That's just, I think, my make-up ... I've just got to keep a lid on it." And with the lid back on, the stories start, each one sounding like a script written for Sterling Hayden or Stallone or, indeed, Mickey Rourke himself.
According to a recent feature in the New York Times magazine, in which the writer doggedly chased up Rourke's stepfather and someone who knew him from his teen boxing years, it seems that many of these stories may not be exactly true. None of the amateur boxing officials and trainers he interviewed believed Rourke had been involved with the Golden Gloves competitions, as he claims. His stepfather, Eugene Addis, is now 81; he not only denies abusing his stepsons, which is hardly surprising, but says they didn't even live in the tough part of town where Rourke says he learned to defend himself. And while Mickey was "a helluva athlete", it was his stepfather who marched him down to the boxing gym because he thought he needed toughening up. "The trainer worked with him for six months and said, 'I can't get him into the ring to fight'." When there was a fight after school, he claims, the supposedly streetwise Mickey fetched the man he now called Daddy, too scared to have a go.
But none of this counts for much. A Mickey Rourke who wants to delude himself that he was hard is just as poignant, in his own way, as a Mickey who was hard because he was beaten. At the very least, he grew up with a stepfather who still believes that a bloody nose after school could have been the making of him. Perhaps that later stuff - "the anger and the armour and the toughness and all that macho shit and the craziness and the being unaccountable and not worried about consequences", as he puts it - compensated for his failure to measure up. Whatever, his behaviour was genuinely hair-raising. That we know for sure. Whether or not he fought in the Golden Gloves, he's a real contender now.
Perhaps, come March, someone holding a golden statuette on a Hollywood stage will say his name. I hope so. Because even if he is a fabulist and a fantasist, everyone loves a loser who bounces back to land that killer punch. Anyway, fable has a very honourable history. And as good a film as The Wrestler is, it is Mickey Rourke himself who is the stuff of myth. M
The Wrestler screens from Thursday. (Credit: The Age)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Movie Reviews
Couldabeen a contender. Nobody fits that phrase better than Mickey Rourke. Remember how he started out? Hailed as the new Marlon Brando in his breakthrough film Diner (1982), Rourke was then an actor of subtlety and can't-take-your-eyes-off-him presence who was also, just by the way, a smouldering sex god. It took just a few years, however, before he managed to squander those gifts through sheer craziness. Mid-'90s, Mickey Rourke was living on hand-outs from a mate, trying to be a pro boxer even though he was middle-aged. Every now and then he would do a day or two on films that hardly anyone saw or would want to see. Even his psychiatrist told him that out of all the hot talent in Hollywood of the time, only he could fall that far.
But now, quite miraculously, Mickey Rourke has been reborn as not simply a contender, but a hot tip for this year's best actor Oscar. In The Wrestler, the new film from Darren Aronofsky, Rourke plays washed-up Randy the Ram, a man who has lived only for the tinny glory of playing the good guy in the spit-and-sawdust theatrics of wrestling shows. Like Rourke himself, Randy is a clanking wreck after too many crashes on the ropes and cheap steroids; like Rourke, he chose hell-raising over child-raising and is paying for it in loneliness and a grey sense of general regret. Even as a member of the audience, it is painful seeing these parallels played out. Rourke, meanwhile, gives the performance of a lifetime. A Golden Globe nomination is already in the bag.
I met Mickey Rourke for the first time when Sin City premiered in Cannes in 2005. That was his real comeback; even though he was unrecognisable under a comic-book facial prosthetic. The part of Marvin, crazed avenger, was only one of the film's several leads, but everyone was talking about him. Mickey was talking about himself too; in fact, he would tell anyone anything. This was partly a habit born of therapy - at one stage in his chequered life, Rourke was going three times a week - but it was also born of gratitude. "You know," he told the Observer recently, "many years have gone by when no one wanted me to sit in a room and ask me questions ... so I'm thankful for it. It's been a long, long time."
Of course, he had quite a story to tell and, as a showman, he knew it. Young Mickey, he says, grew up tough in a dangerous, almost entirely black neighbourhood in Miami, shielding himself and his little brother, Joey, from an abusive stepfather. He started boxing in his teens, fighting the likes of Luis Rodriguez (who was soon to win the world middleweight title) until a bad concussion brought his time in gloves to an abrupt halt. So he worked his way into the Actors' Studio in New York - he liked the idea, he says, of becoming someone else - and became the Mickey Rourke we know from films such as Coppola's Rumble Fish, Alan Parker's Angel Heart and Barbet Schroeder's Barfly, in which he seemingly channelled the Beat writer Charles Bukowski.
But even after he became feted, famous and, briefly, fabulously rich, Rourke was still a fighter. "Working with Mickey Rourke is a nightmare," said Parker after they made Angel Heart. "He is very dangerous on the set because you never know what he's going to do." There were fights in nightclubs and tantrums on sets; there was the gang of Cuban heavies who went everywhere with him; in 1994, he was charged with assaulting his then wife, Carre Otis. By that time, he was virtually unemployable. "Of course, the drinking and the drugs ... did it," he says. "But the real problem was that I was nuts and angry and ashamed, too, and that shame turned into anger." During his worst period, however, he believes boxing was his salvation. That was when he was training seriously. "It was like a cleansing period. It was the point where I was the most out of control and it was almost the saving grace, because I could go into something and be an animal, which is what I was." But nobody in the film business will ever share that view, because fighting men at least a decade younger than him left him with a face that needed several reconstructions. His nose was rebuilt with cartilage from his ear. Rourke had become a wreck.
Then, in 1996, he failed his memory test and had to stop boxing altogether. That really was the nadir of his life. "I was heartbroken." Otis, "the woman I loved so f---ing much and still love", divorced him in 1998. He had nothing and nobody. He thought about killing himself; only the dependence of his pack of chihuahuas, whose various descendants remain his only companions, kept him here. He likes small dogs, he says, because you can cuddle them and feel their hearts beating. Their tiny lives were his responsibility.
And, as it turned out, he still had acting. After Otis left him, Rourke had a moment in front of the mirror when he saw what others saw - "You know, the armour; it scared the f--- out of me" - and resolved to change his life. It was a long road back, personally and professionally, but old stalwarts helped: Francis Ford Coppola gave him a part in The Rainmaker in 1997; Steve Buscemi had him for Animal Factory the next year and people began to notice that, yes, crazy Mickey Rourke was good again. Now it seems he is making up for lost time. Just this year, he has made The Informers, directed by Australian Gregor Jordan - in which he is reunited with 9 1/2 Weeks co-star Kim Basinger - and an Elmore Leonard adaptation, The Killshot, for John Madden. Another ensemble piece, 13, with Jason Statham, Sam Riley and Ray Winstone, all of whom he greatly admires, is now in post-production. And The Wrestler, of course, is doing its triumphant rounds. Mickey may have been crushed to a pulp back there, but he's back in the ring.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist, Rourke says soberly, to see why Darren Aronofsky wanted him to play Randy the Ram. He is no rocket scientist - he often observes how much smarter, "so Jewish and intelligent" Aronofsky is - but he knew that his own past was about to be exploited. "Working with a guy like Darren ..." he says, trailing off into a heavy sigh. "I knew he was going to want me to revisit some dark places I didn't want to revisit. Because I work a certain way, where I make it all very personal - I'll use things from my life, from my ex-wife to my childhood, so it's real - I thought, 'God, I don't know if I want to work that hard and give that much'." He also knew that Aronofsky would be able to push all his buttons, whether he wanted to work that hard or not. When most of the film's financiers refused to back The Wrestler, originally planned as a blockbuster, if Rourke played the lead, he says he was the only person who wasn't disappointed.
Aronofsky, however, was determined to have him. He wasn't worried that he would be difficult. "You know, he's done so many characters in so many films and somehow he's got through them. So I knew I could get through it with him. It was just a matter of what it would take." So he rewrote The Wrestler as a low-budget film; one remaining financier was prepared to put up $US6 million for a film with Rourke in it, so he cut his cloth accordingly.
Rourke, meanwhile, found that he really did want to do those hard yards. He had recognised that it was important to push himself artistically if he wasn't going to slip into straight-to-video misery again. Besides, he adds with that old edge of menace, he is relentlessly competitive. "I used to love playing football in high school; I don't want to lose a game by one touchdown or one point. And I don't want to lose when I'm acting. Darren's going to challenge me to bring it and to be the best actor I can be, and I'm going to give him every f---ing thing. I'm going to give him my f---ing blood. I got no problem with that at all. People go 'it isn't competitive'. But it is competitive."
Making the film was tough physically, of course; Rourke, now 56 (although he admits only to 52), trained with real wrestlers for three months, trying to learn what they might learn in five years about how to fall and get shaken around. Having been a boxer, he started out with no respect for the choreographed entertainment that is wrestling. He soon changed his opinion. "You still make sacrifices. You still get hurt. When a guy who weighs 230 pounds picks you up and throws you, f---! You feel it in every bone in your body. I'm not a kid any more. Here still hurts. And here. And here," he says, pointing to various bits of his frame.
The mood changed, however, once they started filming and he discovered that his hardest scenes were not the fights but those with Evan Rachel Wood, who plays Randy's estranged daughter, Stephanie. Rourke and Wood did not meet until they did their first scene together; Aronofsky kept them apart, wanting to keep their onscreen relationship "awkward and uncomfortable". For him, Rourke says, that first encounter immediately brought back his reunion with his own father in his mid-20s, wanting to know why he had abandoned his children. It was harrowing. "I didn't even know her name," he says. "We just did it. We introduced ourselves like a week or two later. I couldn't remember her name anyway." By the end of the shoot, he was completely wrung out. "I ended up not being able to get out of bed for four days, crying hysterically. I thought I was dying."
Fragility was always one of Rourke's many attractions; he may not have been boxing when he was at his acting peak, but he still seemed authentically, appealingly bruised. The Wrestler screened for the first time at the Venice Film Festival, accompanied by the usual intensive round of press promotion. Rourke disappeared just before our interview; someone, apparently, had upset him. Had he snapped? The publicist assured us he would return, but was visibly afraid he wouldn't. Twenty minutes went by.
He did come back, genial but clearly tired, the face around the dark glasses even more pouched, battered and puffy than it was when boxing and plastic surgery first put paid to his youthful beauty. He said, quite recently, that he felt more at peace than ever before. "But there's always going to be a war going on inside of me. That's just, I think, my make-up ... I've just got to keep a lid on it." And with the lid back on, the stories start, each one sounding like a script written for Sterling Hayden or Stallone or, indeed, Mickey Rourke himself.
According to a recent feature in the New York Times magazine, in which the writer doggedly chased up Rourke's stepfather and someone who knew him from his teen boxing years, it seems that many of these stories may not be exactly true. None of the amateur boxing officials and trainers he interviewed believed Rourke had been involved with the Golden Gloves competitions, as he claims. His stepfather, Eugene Addis, is now 81; he not only denies abusing his stepsons, which is hardly surprising, but says they didn't even live in the tough part of town where Rourke says he learned to defend himself. And while Mickey was "a helluva athlete", it was his stepfather who marched him down to the boxing gym because he thought he needed toughening up. "The trainer worked with him for six months and said, 'I can't get him into the ring to fight'." When there was a fight after school, he claims, the supposedly streetwise Mickey fetched the man he now called Daddy, too scared to have a go.
But none of this counts for much. A Mickey Rourke who wants to delude himself that he was hard is just as poignant, in his own way, as a Mickey who was hard because he was beaten. At the very least, he grew up with a stepfather who still believes that a bloody nose after school could have been the making of him. Perhaps that later stuff - "the anger and the armour and the toughness and all that macho shit and the craziness and the being unaccountable and not worried about consequences", as he puts it - compensated for his failure to measure up. Whatever, his behaviour was genuinely hair-raising. That we know for sure. Whether or not he fought in the Golden Gloves, he's a real contender now.
Perhaps, come March, someone holding a golden statuette on a Hollywood stage will say his name. I hope so. Because even if he is a fabulist and a fantasist, everyone loves a loser who bounces back to land that killer punch. Anyway, fable has a very honourable history. And as good a film as The Wrestler is, it is Mickey Rourke himself who is the stuff of myth. M
The Wrestler screens from Thursday. (Credit: The Age)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Movie Reviews
Rourke rebounds with wrestler - 8th January 2009
Mickey Rourke thought his career was over.
The 56-year-old Nine 1/2 Weeks actor believed his acting career was finished, before landing the role of an ageing grappler in new movie The Wrestler.
Now he has been nominated for a Golden Globe and is one of the favourites for a Best Actor Oscar nod for his role as Randy 'The Ram' Robinson, and he can't believe the comeback he has made after 15 years in the wilderness.
The twice-divorced actor said: Randy has been in the twilight of his career for several years. He thinks he has one more game in him - one more shot. He wants to come back again.
I know what that feels like. Randy was somebody 20 years ago and so was Mickey Rourke. When you used to be a somebody and you aren't anybody anymore, you live in what my doctor calls a state of shame. Hollywood is a very unforgiving place, but I took a nosedive all by myself, no one pushed me.
Mickey - who was one of the biggest stars of the 80s before his wild partying and difficult behaviour made him a Hollywood outcast - accepts he only has himself to blame for his enormous fall from grace.
He added to Britain's The Sun newspaper: I was on the bench for 13 years.
Time goes by and you start to think, 'Man, is it really over like everyone says it is?' I would be buying cigarettes and some jerk would say to me, 'Hey, didn't you used to be in the movies?'
Before I got to the top of the mountain I jumped off headfirst. I had a lot of lessons to learn the hard way. I thought I would get back in after a year or two but the struggle to come back has been over 15 years.
BANG! Showbiz (Credit: Fairfax)
The 56-year-old Nine 1/2 Weeks actor believed his acting career was finished, before landing the role of an ageing grappler in new movie The Wrestler.
Now he has been nominated for a Golden Globe and is one of the favourites for a Best Actor Oscar nod for his role as Randy 'The Ram' Robinson, and he can't believe the comeback he has made after 15 years in the wilderness.
The twice-divorced actor said: Randy has been in the twilight of his career for several years. He thinks he has one more game in him - one more shot. He wants to come back again.
I know what that feels like. Randy was somebody 20 years ago and so was Mickey Rourke. When you used to be a somebody and you aren't anybody anymore, you live in what my doctor calls a state of shame. Hollywood is a very unforgiving place, but I took a nosedive all by myself, no one pushed me.
Mickey - who was one of the biggest stars of the 80s before his wild partying and difficult behaviour made him a Hollywood outcast - accepts he only has himself to blame for his enormous fall from grace.
He added to Britain's The Sun newspaper: I was on the bench for 13 years.
Time goes by and you start to think, 'Man, is it really over like everyone says it is?' I would be buying cigarettes and some jerk would say to me, 'Hey, didn't you used to be in the movies?'
Before I got to the top of the mountain I jumped off headfirst. I had a lot of lessons to learn the hard way. I thought I would get back in after a year or two but the struggle to come back has been over 15 years.
BANG! Showbiz (Credit: Fairfax)
Sunday, January 11, 2009
The comeback king, by Joe Queenan - The Sydney Morning Herald - 10th January 2009
A few weeks ago, I was cantering towards the marvellous Joan Miro exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York when I heard one of the snooty, condescending senior citizens at the information desk ask her companion: "Have you seen that new Mickey O'Rourke movie?" Her interlocutor, the classic Gotham culture-vulture who has read every uplifting book and watched every heartbreaking film without seeming to have benefited from the experiences, replied: "Not yet. But it's on my list for the holidays."
Here in a nutshell was everything that is wrong with the wave of Mickey Rourke hysteria that began sweeping the US after The Wrestler was released last month. One, it's Mickey Rourke, not Mickey O'Rourke, ladies. Two, smartly dressed culture-vultures don't belong at a wrestling movie; there's nothing in it for you; it isn't aimed at your demographic. And three, all of you Johnny-come-latelies now on the Mickey Rourke bandwagon - where have you been all these years? Where were you when he sucked?
How many of you saw Harley Davidson And The Marlboro Man? Where were you when Mickey was scuffling for nickels and dimes in Masked And Anonymous? How many of you parvenus paid to see The Pledge, Domino, Desperate Hours, or Homeboy? I did.
I raise these questions as someone who has viewed Mickey Rourke as a fixture in his life for the past 27 years, ever since Diner was released. Spellbound, like so many other filmgoers, by Rourke's performance as the mischievous but charming Boogie, I watched in mounting dismay as his once-promising career stalled, then unravelled, then imploded.
His weird, self-destructive behaviour - he briefly retired to take up prize-fighting; he was arrested for assaulting his wife, Carre Otis; he became obsessed with dogs; he started terrifying directors by bringing his own bodyguards to film sets - inspired a 1992 Movieline article entitled "Mickey Rourke for a Day", in which I acted out scenes from the actor's life and films as varied as 9½ Weeks, Wild Orchid, Barfly and A Prayer For The Dying. The article was turned into a film by Gary Johnstone that can be seen on the internet at any hour of the day or night.
The premise of both the film and the article was that Rourke had miraculously abolished the distinction between his personal life and the repellent characters he played, engendering a "cosmic Mickey Rourkeanism". In the television film, I rolled around in the gutter, induced perfectly innocent women to swallow hot peppers, climbed into the ring and duked it out with a professional boxer, barged into editors' offices and threatened to punch out their lights and just generally behaved like a pig.
The film ended up being a paean of sorts to the actor, a backhanded homage, as I was forced to admit that what at first seemed like a walk in the park was anything but. Sure, a determined journalist could keep up the abhorrent Mickey Rourke act for 24 hours or so. But Rourke had to do it every single day of his life. My hat was off to him.
For the next 13 years, I monitored Rourke's strange, perplexing career. Most people I knew were unaware that he was still breathing, much less working. Not me.
Whenever a Mickey Rourke movie was released, I saw it, no matter how bad, no matter how obscure. It was a hobby of mine; one I enjoyed. It was like collecting Spandau Ballet bootlegs. Then, after Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler began drawing critical raves at film festivals in Europe and Canada last year, I started to feel a certain proprietary resentment towards all the swine jumping on the Mickey Rourke bandwagon.
Yes, Mickey was back. But the cognoscenti and hipsters huddling in the fashionably murky arthouse cinemas didn't even know where he was back from. They didn't know about films like Animal Factory, Thicker Than Blood, They Crawl or Shergar. They didn't know about Out In Fifty, Shades or the horrendous remake of Get Carter. And none of them knew that Mickey had once played St Francis of Assisi in a film entitled Francesco.
I did. I owned it.
The unvarnished truth is this: Mickey Rourke's overnight comeback is neither as surprising nor as precipitate as people would like to believe. Yes, he is the prodigal son returning from the fleshpots but while he was down there he was not merely cavorting. He was working, trying to get his career back on track. In 1997, Francis Ford Coppola (who helped launch Rourke's career with the 1983 film Rumble Fish) gave him a small part in The Rainmaker. It was the first movie of any consequence that Rourke had made since Angel Heart in 1987 and reminded at least some people that beneath all that sociopathic behaviour lurked genuine talent.
For the next 10 years, Rourke laboriously worked his way back into Hollywood's consciousness, if not the public's. He made a lot of bad movies but he also made a few good ones. Today, there is a suggestion afoot that director Darren Aronofsky tracked down the actor in a cave or a homeless shelter and personally lifted him out of the slime to cast him in The Wrestler. But this is not true.
Rourke has been working steadily, admittedly in obscurity, for years. He wasn't simply handed his chance for a comeback. In a roundabout way, he earned it. And when the opportunity arose, he seized it. He answered the bell.
What's more, The Wrestler would not be much of a film without Mickey Rourke. Written by Robert Siegel, formerly an editor at the satirical newspaper The Onion, The Wrestler is essentially Rocky in tights, a Cuisinart collection of hoary cliches that have been seen in films as varied as Requiem For A Heavyweight, The Wild Bunch, Fat City, Raging Bull and not one but six Sylvester Stallone films. The washed-up jock trying to win the affection of his child has been a Hollywood standby since King Vidor made The Champ in 1931. Nor is this the first time we have seen the stripper with the heart of gold (Marisa Tomei; if you're pushing 40 from the wrong side and trying to scare up an Academy Award nomination, this is where you go).
At various junctures, most particularly when a gimpy, bespectacled wrestler assaults Rourke's character with a staple gun, the film verges on farce.
What saves The Wrestler is that it is a film with a heart, and the heart is Mickey Rourke's. The Wrestler recounts the saga of Robin Ramzinski, a burned-out fiftysomething who was once one of the top draws in the professional wrestling circuit but is now a has-been living in a North Jersey trailer park. Busted up and broken down, "the Ram" is trying to pull his personal life back together as his career winds towards its end.
This in itself is a bitter-sweet set-up, since professional wrestling is viewed by the general public as a white-trash sham; in effect, the Ram is trying to recapture the glory of a profession that has no claim to true glory. But while it is true wrestling is staged and choreographed, the stunts themselves are dangerous and people get hurt in the ring, just like acrobats, lion tamers and circus clowns. The violence may be simulated but the pain of simulating violence is real.
Rourke, for the first time in decades, radiates the sweetness and innocence that he first displayed in Diner, the film that made him famous. Diner vaulted Kevin Bacon and Ellen Barkin to fame but it is also the film that gave us the appalling Daniel Stern and the oafish Steve Guttenberg. That hams like Stern and Guttenberg should have enjoyed far greater box-office success than the truly gifted Rourke is one of the bitter-sweet ironies of his comeback in The Wrestler.
The saga of Mickey Rourke is one of the saddest in the history of motion pictures. Some men have failure thrust upon them but Rourke went out and seized it by the throat. At a very early point in his career, Rourke made a fatal decision to turn down roles where he would play the man in the white hat and to instead appear in an interminable series of films lionising slimeballs.
The movie business is not hard to figure out. The public wants to see actors they admire playing characters they like. Henry Fonda played a villain exactly once in his career, as did Harrison Ford. Tom Cruise was a superb villain in Michael Mann's Collateral but he then went back to his day job, playing a slew of perfectly capital fellows.
For whatever the reason, Rourke either never figured out how the movie industry works or simply rejected its ground rules. Now, all these years later, the bulb has lit up. Where he goes from here is unclear; his face is a wreck; his leading-man days are over.
But in an era of creampuffs like Josh Hartnett and Orlando Bloom, it's great to have him back.
The Guardian
The Wrestler is out on Thursday. (Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Movie Reviews
Here in a nutshell was everything that is wrong with the wave of Mickey Rourke hysteria that began sweeping the US after The Wrestler was released last month. One, it's Mickey Rourke, not Mickey O'Rourke, ladies. Two, smartly dressed culture-vultures don't belong at a wrestling movie; there's nothing in it for you; it isn't aimed at your demographic. And three, all of you Johnny-come-latelies now on the Mickey Rourke bandwagon - where have you been all these years? Where were you when he sucked?
How many of you saw Harley Davidson And The Marlboro Man? Where were you when Mickey was scuffling for nickels and dimes in Masked And Anonymous? How many of you parvenus paid to see The Pledge, Domino, Desperate Hours, or Homeboy? I did.
I raise these questions as someone who has viewed Mickey Rourke as a fixture in his life for the past 27 years, ever since Diner was released. Spellbound, like so many other filmgoers, by Rourke's performance as the mischievous but charming Boogie, I watched in mounting dismay as his once-promising career stalled, then unravelled, then imploded.
His weird, self-destructive behaviour - he briefly retired to take up prize-fighting; he was arrested for assaulting his wife, Carre Otis; he became obsessed with dogs; he started terrifying directors by bringing his own bodyguards to film sets - inspired a 1992 Movieline article entitled "Mickey Rourke for a Day", in which I acted out scenes from the actor's life and films as varied as 9½ Weeks, Wild Orchid, Barfly and A Prayer For The Dying. The article was turned into a film by Gary Johnstone that can be seen on the internet at any hour of the day or night.
The premise of both the film and the article was that Rourke had miraculously abolished the distinction between his personal life and the repellent characters he played, engendering a "cosmic Mickey Rourkeanism". In the television film, I rolled around in the gutter, induced perfectly innocent women to swallow hot peppers, climbed into the ring and duked it out with a professional boxer, barged into editors' offices and threatened to punch out their lights and just generally behaved like a pig.
The film ended up being a paean of sorts to the actor, a backhanded homage, as I was forced to admit that what at first seemed like a walk in the park was anything but. Sure, a determined journalist could keep up the abhorrent Mickey Rourke act for 24 hours or so. But Rourke had to do it every single day of his life. My hat was off to him.
For the next 13 years, I monitored Rourke's strange, perplexing career. Most people I knew were unaware that he was still breathing, much less working. Not me.
Whenever a Mickey Rourke movie was released, I saw it, no matter how bad, no matter how obscure. It was a hobby of mine; one I enjoyed. It was like collecting Spandau Ballet bootlegs. Then, after Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler began drawing critical raves at film festivals in Europe and Canada last year, I started to feel a certain proprietary resentment towards all the swine jumping on the Mickey Rourke bandwagon.
Yes, Mickey was back. But the cognoscenti and hipsters huddling in the fashionably murky arthouse cinemas didn't even know where he was back from. They didn't know about films like Animal Factory, Thicker Than Blood, They Crawl or Shergar. They didn't know about Out In Fifty, Shades or the horrendous remake of Get Carter. And none of them knew that Mickey had once played St Francis of Assisi in a film entitled Francesco.
I did. I owned it.
The unvarnished truth is this: Mickey Rourke's overnight comeback is neither as surprising nor as precipitate as people would like to believe. Yes, he is the prodigal son returning from the fleshpots but while he was down there he was not merely cavorting. He was working, trying to get his career back on track. In 1997, Francis Ford Coppola (who helped launch Rourke's career with the 1983 film Rumble Fish) gave him a small part in The Rainmaker. It was the first movie of any consequence that Rourke had made since Angel Heart in 1987 and reminded at least some people that beneath all that sociopathic behaviour lurked genuine talent.
For the next 10 years, Rourke laboriously worked his way back into Hollywood's consciousness, if not the public's. He made a lot of bad movies but he also made a few good ones. Today, there is a suggestion afoot that director Darren Aronofsky tracked down the actor in a cave or a homeless shelter and personally lifted him out of the slime to cast him in The Wrestler. But this is not true.
Rourke has been working steadily, admittedly in obscurity, for years. He wasn't simply handed his chance for a comeback. In a roundabout way, he earned it. And when the opportunity arose, he seized it. He answered the bell.
What's more, The Wrestler would not be much of a film without Mickey Rourke. Written by Robert Siegel, formerly an editor at the satirical newspaper The Onion, The Wrestler is essentially Rocky in tights, a Cuisinart collection of hoary cliches that have been seen in films as varied as Requiem For A Heavyweight, The Wild Bunch, Fat City, Raging Bull and not one but six Sylvester Stallone films. The washed-up jock trying to win the affection of his child has been a Hollywood standby since King Vidor made The Champ in 1931. Nor is this the first time we have seen the stripper with the heart of gold (Marisa Tomei; if you're pushing 40 from the wrong side and trying to scare up an Academy Award nomination, this is where you go).
At various junctures, most particularly when a gimpy, bespectacled wrestler assaults Rourke's character with a staple gun, the film verges on farce.
What saves The Wrestler is that it is a film with a heart, and the heart is Mickey Rourke's. The Wrestler recounts the saga of Robin Ramzinski, a burned-out fiftysomething who was once one of the top draws in the professional wrestling circuit but is now a has-been living in a North Jersey trailer park. Busted up and broken down, "the Ram" is trying to pull his personal life back together as his career winds towards its end.
This in itself is a bitter-sweet set-up, since professional wrestling is viewed by the general public as a white-trash sham; in effect, the Ram is trying to recapture the glory of a profession that has no claim to true glory. But while it is true wrestling is staged and choreographed, the stunts themselves are dangerous and people get hurt in the ring, just like acrobats, lion tamers and circus clowns. The violence may be simulated but the pain of simulating violence is real.
Rourke, for the first time in decades, radiates the sweetness and innocence that he first displayed in Diner, the film that made him famous. Diner vaulted Kevin Bacon and Ellen Barkin to fame but it is also the film that gave us the appalling Daniel Stern and the oafish Steve Guttenberg. That hams like Stern and Guttenberg should have enjoyed far greater box-office success than the truly gifted Rourke is one of the bitter-sweet ironies of his comeback in The Wrestler.
The saga of Mickey Rourke is one of the saddest in the history of motion pictures. Some men have failure thrust upon them but Rourke went out and seized it by the throat. At a very early point in his career, Rourke made a fatal decision to turn down roles where he would play the man in the white hat and to instead appear in an interminable series of films lionising slimeballs.
The movie business is not hard to figure out. The public wants to see actors they admire playing characters they like. Henry Fonda played a villain exactly once in his career, as did Harrison Ford. Tom Cruise was a superb villain in Michael Mann's Collateral but he then went back to his day job, playing a slew of perfectly capital fellows.
For whatever the reason, Rourke either never figured out how the movie industry works or simply rejected its ground rules. Now, all these years later, the bulb has lit up. Where he goes from here is unclear; his face is a wreck; his leading-man days are over.
But in an era of creampuffs like Josh Hartnett and Orlando Bloom, it's great to have him back.
The Guardian
The Wrestler is out on Thursday. (Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Movie Reviews
Saturday, January 10, 2009
The Wrestler (2008 film) - Wikipedia
The Wrestler is a film directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Mickey Rourke, Ernest Miller, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood. Production began in January 2008. The film premiered at the 2008 Venice Film Festival, winning the Golden Lion Award. Fox Searchlight acquired rights to distribute the film in the U.S.; it was released in a limited capacity on December 17, 2008, and will be released nationwide on January 16, 2009.
Plot
Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke) is a professional wrestler from the 1980s, twenty years past his prime, wrestling on the weekends in independent and semi-pro matches in the Elizabeth, New Jersey area, for extra money. After a show, a promoter proposes a 20th anniversary rematch with his most notable opponent, the Ayatollah, which sold out Madison Square Garden the first time around. Randy agrees, hoping this high-profile match could help him get back to the top.
Randy goes home and is locked out of his trailer for not paying the rent. He takes pain medication and falls asleep in the back of his Dodge van. The next day he goes to work, loading boxes at a supermarket. At night he visits a strip club where he has taken a liking to an older stripper named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei). He continues the training rituals for his wrestling appearance, including steroid usage. The next show is a particularly brutal "hardcore" match, in which Randy and his opponent (real life wrestler Dylan Summers, a.k.a. Necro Butcher) use various weapons on each other including thumbtacks, staple guns, barbed wire and glass. Randy suffers numerous gashes, including a deep cut on his chest from the barbed wire. Post-match, Randy is treated by a doctor backstage, but has a heart attack soon after and collapses.
The heart attack necessitates a bypass operation and Randy is told by the doctor that his weak heart cannot support steroids or even wrestling anymore. Randy cancels all his upcoming matches. Faced with his mortality, he tells Cassidy about his heart attack and tries to woo her. She warms to him at first (explaining that she has a son and plans of a move to Trenton) but quickly diverts back to her rule of not dating customers, leaving Randy alone in a bar. Randy visits his estranged daughter, Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), but she curses him out for being a bad father. On his second visit to Stephanie's place, Randy brings a thoughtful gift and blunt words about how he messed up as a dad. They agree to meet for dinner.
After watching a wrestling match, Randy gets drunk and has sex with a woman, sleeping the entire next day from exhaustion - and, thereby, missing his dinner date with Stephanie. He goes to her house in the middle of the night, where she angrily tells him he has never been and never will be a father to her. Randy goes to work, where he deliberately cuts himself in the deli meat slicer, screams at his boss, and quits his job. He calls up the promoter to say the Ayatollah match is back on. Before the match, Cassidy unexpectedly arrives (having quit her job to be with him) and apologizes, urging him not to wrestle for the sake of his health. Randy explains that the real world doesn't care about him, and the only place he belongs is in the ring - the fans being his true family.
Randy gives an emotional speech to the crowd. During the match, his heart strains, but he continues despite the Ayatollah's concern. Randy fights through the pain, and slowly climbs to the top rope to deliver his signature "Ram Jam" finisher. In the final shot he salutes the fans, leaps from the ropes, and the screen fades to black.
Cast
Mickey Rourke as Randy "The Ram" Robinson
Ernest Miller as Bob/"The Ayatollah"
Marisa Tomei as Cassidy / Pam
Evan Rachel Wood as Stephanie Robinson
Todd Barry as Wayne
Also appearing in the film are actual professional wrestlers: Necro Butcher, Nick Berk, DJ Hyde, Johnny Mangus, Whacks, Kid USA, Ron Killings, Claudio Castagnoli, Romeo Roselli, John Zandig and Nigel McGuinness. In addition, several local New Jersey wrestlers from Bodyslam Wrestling Organization and NWA Liberty States appear in the crowd during Randy's match against Tommy Rotten.
Production
The Wrestler was scripted by former The Onion writer Robert Siegel and entered development at director Darren Aronofsky's Protozoa Pictures. Actor Nicolas Cage entered negotiations in October 2007 to star in the film's lead role as Randy "Ram" Robinson, a former wrestler. The following month, Cage left the project after attending a Ring of Honor show in New York City, and Mickey Rourke replaced the actor in the lead role. According to Aronofsky, Cage pulled out of the movie because Aronofsky wanted Rourke as the lead character. Aronofsky stated that Cage was "a complete gentleman, and he understood that my heart was with Mickey and he stepped aside. I have so much respect for Nic Cage as an actor and I think it really could have worked with Nic but… you know, Nic was incredibly supportive of Mickey and he is old friends with Mickey and really wanted to help with this opportunity, so he pulled himself out of the race." Production began in January 2008, with filming taking place in Elizabeth, NJ, Linden, NJ, Rahway, NJ and New York.. Scenes were also shot at Alhambra Arena in Philadelphia. Afa Anoa'i, a former professional wrestler, was hired to train Rourke for his role. Anoai brought his two main trainers, Jon Trosky and Tom Farra to work with Rourke for eight weeks. Both trainers also have parts in the movie.
Music
Clint Mansell, the composer for Aronofsky's previous films, π, Requiem for a Dream, and The Fountain, reprised his role as composer for The Wrestler. A new Bruce Springsteen song, also titled "The Wrestler", plays over the film's closing credits.
Awards and nominations
The film won the Golden Lion Award at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. On December 11, 2008, it was nominated for three Golden Globes: Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama for Rourke, Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture Drama for Marisa Tomei, and Best Original Song for "The Wrestler".
Reception
The Wrestler has received overwhelmingly strong critical acclaim.
Rotten Tomatoes reported that 98% of critics gave the film positive write-ups based upon a sample of 111, with an average score of 8.2/10. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 81, based on 27 reviews. Mickey Rourke, in particular, has received considerable critical acclaim for his performance in the film. Alonso Duralde, of MSNBC, said, "Rourke's work transcends mere stunt-casting; his performance is a howl of pain that seems to come from a very real place." The movie currently holds a ranking of 8.7 on IMDB and is #66 on that websites Top 250. Todd McCarthy, of Variety, said, "Rourke creates a galvanizing, humorous, deeply moving portrait that instantly takes its place among the great, iconic screen performances."
Ben Mankiewicz, from At The Movies, said, "To put it simply, this is the best film I've seen this year."
Website
The Wrestler
Plot
Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke) is a professional wrestler from the 1980s, twenty years past his prime, wrestling on the weekends in independent and semi-pro matches in the Elizabeth, New Jersey area, for extra money. After a show, a promoter proposes a 20th anniversary rematch with his most notable opponent, the Ayatollah, which sold out Madison Square Garden the first time around. Randy agrees, hoping this high-profile match could help him get back to the top.
Randy goes home and is locked out of his trailer for not paying the rent. He takes pain medication and falls asleep in the back of his Dodge van. The next day he goes to work, loading boxes at a supermarket. At night he visits a strip club where he has taken a liking to an older stripper named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei). He continues the training rituals for his wrestling appearance, including steroid usage. The next show is a particularly brutal "hardcore" match, in which Randy and his opponent (real life wrestler Dylan Summers, a.k.a. Necro Butcher) use various weapons on each other including thumbtacks, staple guns, barbed wire and glass. Randy suffers numerous gashes, including a deep cut on his chest from the barbed wire. Post-match, Randy is treated by a doctor backstage, but has a heart attack soon after and collapses.
The heart attack necessitates a bypass operation and Randy is told by the doctor that his weak heart cannot support steroids or even wrestling anymore. Randy cancels all his upcoming matches. Faced with his mortality, he tells Cassidy about his heart attack and tries to woo her. She warms to him at first (explaining that she has a son and plans of a move to Trenton) but quickly diverts back to her rule of not dating customers, leaving Randy alone in a bar. Randy visits his estranged daughter, Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), but she curses him out for being a bad father. On his second visit to Stephanie's place, Randy brings a thoughtful gift and blunt words about how he messed up as a dad. They agree to meet for dinner.
After watching a wrestling match, Randy gets drunk and has sex with a woman, sleeping the entire next day from exhaustion - and, thereby, missing his dinner date with Stephanie. He goes to her house in the middle of the night, where she angrily tells him he has never been and never will be a father to her. Randy goes to work, where he deliberately cuts himself in the deli meat slicer, screams at his boss, and quits his job. He calls up the promoter to say the Ayatollah match is back on. Before the match, Cassidy unexpectedly arrives (having quit her job to be with him) and apologizes, urging him not to wrestle for the sake of his health. Randy explains that the real world doesn't care about him, and the only place he belongs is in the ring - the fans being his true family.
Randy gives an emotional speech to the crowd. During the match, his heart strains, but he continues despite the Ayatollah's concern. Randy fights through the pain, and slowly climbs to the top rope to deliver his signature "Ram Jam" finisher. In the final shot he salutes the fans, leaps from the ropes, and the screen fades to black.
Cast
Mickey Rourke as Randy "The Ram" Robinson
Ernest Miller as Bob/"The Ayatollah"
Marisa Tomei as Cassidy / Pam
Evan Rachel Wood as Stephanie Robinson
Todd Barry as Wayne
Also appearing in the film are actual professional wrestlers: Necro Butcher, Nick Berk, DJ Hyde, Johnny Mangus, Whacks, Kid USA, Ron Killings, Claudio Castagnoli, Romeo Roselli, John Zandig and Nigel McGuinness. In addition, several local New Jersey wrestlers from Bodyslam Wrestling Organization and NWA Liberty States appear in the crowd during Randy's match against Tommy Rotten.
Production
The Wrestler was scripted by former The Onion writer Robert Siegel and entered development at director Darren Aronofsky's Protozoa Pictures. Actor Nicolas Cage entered negotiations in October 2007 to star in the film's lead role as Randy "Ram" Robinson, a former wrestler. The following month, Cage left the project after attending a Ring of Honor show in New York City, and Mickey Rourke replaced the actor in the lead role. According to Aronofsky, Cage pulled out of the movie because Aronofsky wanted Rourke as the lead character. Aronofsky stated that Cage was "a complete gentleman, and he understood that my heart was with Mickey and he stepped aside. I have so much respect for Nic Cage as an actor and I think it really could have worked with Nic but… you know, Nic was incredibly supportive of Mickey and he is old friends with Mickey and really wanted to help with this opportunity, so he pulled himself out of the race." Production began in January 2008, with filming taking place in Elizabeth, NJ, Linden, NJ, Rahway, NJ and New York.. Scenes were also shot at Alhambra Arena in Philadelphia. Afa Anoa'i, a former professional wrestler, was hired to train Rourke for his role. Anoai brought his two main trainers, Jon Trosky and Tom Farra to work with Rourke for eight weeks. Both trainers also have parts in the movie.
Music
Clint Mansell, the composer for Aronofsky's previous films, π, Requiem for a Dream, and The Fountain, reprised his role as composer for The Wrestler. A new Bruce Springsteen song, also titled "The Wrestler", plays over the film's closing credits.
Awards and nominations
The film won the Golden Lion Award at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. On December 11, 2008, it was nominated for three Golden Globes: Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama for Rourke, Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture Drama for Marisa Tomei, and Best Original Song for "The Wrestler".
Reception
The Wrestler has received overwhelmingly strong critical acclaim.
Rotten Tomatoes reported that 98% of critics gave the film positive write-ups based upon a sample of 111, with an average score of 8.2/10. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 81, based on 27 reviews. Mickey Rourke, in particular, has received considerable critical acclaim for his performance in the film. Alonso Duralde, of MSNBC, said, "Rourke's work transcends mere stunt-casting; his performance is a howl of pain that seems to come from a very real place." The movie currently holds a ranking of 8.7 on IMDB and is #66 on that websites Top 250. Todd McCarthy, of Variety, said, "Rourke creates a galvanizing, humorous, deeply moving portrait that instantly takes its place among the great, iconic screen performances."
Ben Mankiewicz, from At The Movies, said, "To put it simply, this is the best film I've seen this year."
Website
The Wrestler
TNA iMPACT!, by Greg Miller - 16th September 2008
Rating 3.5 stars
Price $109.95
Summary
TNA iMPACT! had a lot of potential, but it didn't follow through on most of it. Beyond the limited/repetitive moves, lackluster CAW, and scaled back online, my main problem is that iMPACT! doesn't feel like real wrestling. The opponents never stay down long enough, there's an announce table and announcer voices, but no announcer bodies, there are no championship belts to wear or defend, chairs are just sitting around the outside of the ring, there is no rope break, and every match is no count out/no DQ.
IF you wanted to bring the pageantry and bone-crushing moves of professional wrestling to your console of choice, there's pretty much been just one game in town for the last several years. However, that's all about to change. TNA iMPACT! is here to officially end the monopoly on licensed professional wrestling videogames.
If you need a quick primer, Total Nonstop Action was founded in 2002 by former WWE and WCW star Jeff Jarrett along with his father. Since then, the organization has moved to a six-sided ring, landed a Thursday night spot on SpikeTV, and picked up a number of big time professional wrestling stars such as Kurt Angle, Sting, and Kevin Nash. Now, Midway is bringing the high flying moves of the federation to videogame fans across the world.
The first time I got the chance to sit down with the developers behind iMPACT!, they admitted that they couldn't match the competition's feature set their first time out of the gate but were focusing on bringing a brand-new, fun gameplay experience to the market.
In more than a few ways, Midway succeeded.
iMPACT! utilizes a simplified control scheme in an attempt to nail that "pick up and play" experience. The face buttons govern punches, kicks, grabs, and actions, while the shoulder buttons reverse, run, taunt, and modify moves to be stronger. The left stick moves your guy (sorry, gals and guys starved for female contact, there are no lady competitors), and in multi-man battles, the right stick changes targets. When you're pinned, you'll need to rock your joystick side to side to fill a kickout meter.
You take these easy to use/difficult to master controls into seven arenas and nine match types that are all no count out/no DQ as one of about 25 TNA wrestlers in front of several crowds. The results will be impressive at first.
Right off the bat, iMPACT! looks good. The character models are detailed with the shine you'd expect from their real life, sweaty counterparts but more impressive is the animation system iMPACT! deploys. In the game, moves and grapples blend together so you can go from a suplex to an arm bar submission to a couple of stomps without having to stand there for a second while a reaction animation plays out. Anytime you're playing, you can break up a move or deal out an attack.
Now, when you're playing you'll have a three part heads-up display on the screen – a silhouette to manage limb damage, an iMPACT! meter above your name, and a stun meter behind your name. As the match wears on, all the parts will change – the silhouette parts will change from green to red as you take attacks, iMPACT! will slowly fill with yellow as you pull off moves, and the stun meter will slowly fill with red as you get tossed around by your opponent.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Games
Video Games
Price $109.95
Summary
TNA iMPACT! had a lot of potential, but it didn't follow through on most of it. Beyond the limited/repetitive moves, lackluster CAW, and scaled back online, my main problem is that iMPACT! doesn't feel like real wrestling. The opponents never stay down long enough, there's an announce table and announcer voices, but no announcer bodies, there are no championship belts to wear or defend, chairs are just sitting around the outside of the ring, there is no rope break, and every match is no count out/no DQ.
IF you wanted to bring the pageantry and bone-crushing moves of professional wrestling to your console of choice, there's pretty much been just one game in town for the last several years. However, that's all about to change. TNA iMPACT! is here to officially end the monopoly on licensed professional wrestling videogames.
If you need a quick primer, Total Nonstop Action was founded in 2002 by former WWE and WCW star Jeff Jarrett along with his father. Since then, the organization has moved to a six-sided ring, landed a Thursday night spot on SpikeTV, and picked up a number of big time professional wrestling stars such as Kurt Angle, Sting, and Kevin Nash. Now, Midway is bringing the high flying moves of the federation to videogame fans across the world.
The first time I got the chance to sit down with the developers behind iMPACT!, they admitted that they couldn't match the competition's feature set their first time out of the gate but were focusing on bringing a brand-new, fun gameplay experience to the market.
In more than a few ways, Midway succeeded.
iMPACT! utilizes a simplified control scheme in an attempt to nail that "pick up and play" experience. The face buttons govern punches, kicks, grabs, and actions, while the shoulder buttons reverse, run, taunt, and modify moves to be stronger. The left stick moves your guy (sorry, gals and guys starved for female contact, there are no lady competitors), and in multi-man battles, the right stick changes targets. When you're pinned, you'll need to rock your joystick side to side to fill a kickout meter.
You take these easy to use/difficult to master controls into seven arenas and nine match types that are all no count out/no DQ as one of about 25 TNA wrestlers in front of several crowds. The results will be impressive at first.
Right off the bat, iMPACT! looks good. The character models are detailed with the shine you'd expect from their real life, sweaty counterparts but more impressive is the animation system iMPACT! deploys. In the game, moves and grapples blend together so you can go from a suplex to an arm bar submission to a couple of stomps without having to stand there for a second while a reaction animation plays out. Anytime you're playing, you can break up a move or deal out an attack.
Now, when you're playing you'll have a three part heads-up display on the screen – a silhouette to manage limb damage, an iMPACT! meter above your name, and a stun meter behind your name. As the match wears on, all the parts will change – the silhouette parts will change from green to red as you take attacks, iMPACT! will slowly fill with yellow as you pull off moves, and the stun meter will slowly fill with red as you get tossed around by your opponent.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Games
Video Games
Rourke off the ropes, by Kerrie Murphy - The Australian - 27th December 2008
With all the buzz surrounding Darren Aronofsky's new film The Wrestler, it's tempting to give tuxedo makers time off and just hand Mickey Rourke the Oscar for best actor now. That Rourke has so quickly been anointed statue-worthy is a little surprising - this is a comeback that would impress Robert Downey Jr - but it's not half as surprising as the fact the movie is about professional wrestling.
The film, which chronicles the decline of Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a headline act of 1980s rock'n'roll wrestling, now trying to reclaim past glories in school halls while working at a local supermarket, may seem an unlikely candidate for acclaim.
Respect and pro wrestling rarely go hand inhand. A combination of spectacle and athleticism, awkwardly dubbed "sports entertainment", it is, to use the parlance of a wrestling commentator, the red-headed step-child of entertainment.
Movies and wrestling have never had a particularly warm relationship. As Aronofsky told Film Journal Magazine: "Most films that deal with wrestling make fun of it ... I think people basically roll it off saying, 'Oh it's fake' and they forget all about it."
It's true that watching World Wrestling Entertainment can stretch credulity. We know the match is predetermined. We can see that the ref is not so distracted by the buxom valet that he can't hear the heel (wrestling slang for bad guy) landing a low blow on the face of the good guy.
But look beyond the garish tights and histrionics and wrestling is not so easy to dismiss.
Unlike movie actors and other entertainers, wrestlers have no stunt doubles, no crash mats. When hardcore wrestling arrived in the '90s, martial arts weapons and bowling balls became standard issue. In one scene in The Wrestler, The Ram and his opponent discuss how a staple gun can be used; a later scene shows a medic removing the staples from his torso and arms. This is not fanciful movie invention.
Just ask Mick Foley, the masked wrestler "Mankind", who had a successful run in the WWE in the late '90s and wrote several best-selling books about his experiences. One of his most famous matches was The Hell in the Cell 1994, where Foley was chokeslammed by "The Undertaker" on top of a cage, falling several metres into the ring and landing on top of a pile of thumbtacks and a steel chair. "I had one and a half teeth knocked out, 15 stitches below my lip, a dislocated jaw, a dislocated left shoulder, a bruised kidney and a couple of cracked ribs," he told me in 1999. "I imagine I had a concussion, although I didn't get that checked." This from a man who was already down half an ear after getting his head caught between the ropes.
Wrestlers can seem quite blase about routine head injuries. "There have been times where I was talking complete Greek and I wouldn't realise it," says WWE chairman Vince McMahon. "All you can do is laugh. Post-concussion syndrome they call it."
Even Rourke, who famously quit acting in 1991 to become a boxer, was surprised at the far greater risk of injury from wrestling. "I got hurt more in the three months doing the wrestling than in 16 years of boxing," he said at a New York press conference. "I think I had three MRIs in two months."
While Aronofsky's film lays bare the real pain experienced by these sportsmen, it also provides a glimpse of the tricks and make-believe that make up their carnival world.
It shows the wrestlers roughly outlining their match beforehand or, if they have particular confidence in each other, calling it on the fly by surreptitiously whispering the moves to each other as they go.
Then there's the matter of blading.
A wrestler will often hide a small piece of razorblade behind the tape on his wristbands. When he's face down on the ground after a "brutal" attack, he will discreetly cut his forehead, an area that can appear to produce a lot of blood, especially when it's mixed with sweat, and not cause too much damage apart from scarring. (That's no stunt blade Rourke uses in the film.)
Then there's the whole notion of play-acting, of being a character. Christian Bale can take off his Batman suit at the end of the day but the best wrestlers don't. As wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson once noted, a wrestling character is an extension of the wrestler's personality "with the volume turned all the way up". There can be a painful disjunction between the superman of the ring and the human being, though: one attracts legions of admiring fans; the other can hardly pay the rent on his trailer.
Which is what makes The Wrestler so heartbreaking. Fame, as we know, is a fickle mistress, but she seems particularly harsh on pro wrestlers. Not only is there the matter of being a has-been, there's the broken body: a combination of all that physical exertion and injury, and the steroids and painkillers that flood the locker rooms (not to mention the recreational drugs that go hand in hand with the party lifestyle of travelling on the road).
Barry W.Blaustein's 1999 documentary Beyond the Mat, with wrestling legend Jake "The Snake" Roberts smoking crack in his motel room and trying to make up with his estranged daughter, shows that The Ram's problems are not far from the truth.
And wrestlers such as The Ram are the lucky ones. They're not like Darren Drozdov, who became a paraplegic at the age of 30 after a pile-driver went wrong in a match. Or one of the 24 well-known wrestlers under 50 who have died since 2000, including WWE headliner Chris Benoit, who tragically killed his wife, son and himself last year.
Even in the bizarre world of sports entertainment, some unpalatable truths about the human condition emerge.
The Wrestler opens on January 15. (Credit: The Australian)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Wrestling
WWE
Movie Reviews
The film, which chronicles the decline of Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a headline act of 1980s rock'n'roll wrestling, now trying to reclaim past glories in school halls while working at a local supermarket, may seem an unlikely candidate for acclaim.
Respect and pro wrestling rarely go hand inhand. A combination of spectacle and athleticism, awkwardly dubbed "sports entertainment", it is, to use the parlance of a wrestling commentator, the red-headed step-child of entertainment.
Movies and wrestling have never had a particularly warm relationship. As Aronofsky told Film Journal Magazine: "Most films that deal with wrestling make fun of it ... I think people basically roll it off saying, 'Oh it's fake' and they forget all about it."
It's true that watching World Wrestling Entertainment can stretch credulity. We know the match is predetermined. We can see that the ref is not so distracted by the buxom valet that he can't hear the heel (wrestling slang for bad guy) landing a low blow on the face of the good guy.
But look beyond the garish tights and histrionics and wrestling is not so easy to dismiss.
Unlike movie actors and other entertainers, wrestlers have no stunt doubles, no crash mats. When hardcore wrestling arrived in the '90s, martial arts weapons and bowling balls became standard issue. In one scene in The Wrestler, The Ram and his opponent discuss how a staple gun can be used; a later scene shows a medic removing the staples from his torso and arms. This is not fanciful movie invention.
Just ask Mick Foley, the masked wrestler "Mankind", who had a successful run in the WWE in the late '90s and wrote several best-selling books about his experiences. One of his most famous matches was The Hell in the Cell 1994, where Foley was chokeslammed by "The Undertaker" on top of a cage, falling several metres into the ring and landing on top of a pile of thumbtacks and a steel chair. "I had one and a half teeth knocked out, 15 stitches below my lip, a dislocated jaw, a dislocated left shoulder, a bruised kidney and a couple of cracked ribs," he told me in 1999. "I imagine I had a concussion, although I didn't get that checked." This from a man who was already down half an ear after getting his head caught between the ropes.
Wrestlers can seem quite blase about routine head injuries. "There have been times where I was talking complete Greek and I wouldn't realise it," says WWE chairman Vince McMahon. "All you can do is laugh. Post-concussion syndrome they call it."
Even Rourke, who famously quit acting in 1991 to become a boxer, was surprised at the far greater risk of injury from wrestling. "I got hurt more in the three months doing the wrestling than in 16 years of boxing," he said at a New York press conference. "I think I had three MRIs in two months."
While Aronofsky's film lays bare the real pain experienced by these sportsmen, it also provides a glimpse of the tricks and make-believe that make up their carnival world.
It shows the wrestlers roughly outlining their match beforehand or, if they have particular confidence in each other, calling it on the fly by surreptitiously whispering the moves to each other as they go.
Then there's the matter of blading.
A wrestler will often hide a small piece of razorblade behind the tape on his wristbands. When he's face down on the ground after a "brutal" attack, he will discreetly cut his forehead, an area that can appear to produce a lot of blood, especially when it's mixed with sweat, and not cause too much damage apart from scarring. (That's no stunt blade Rourke uses in the film.)
Then there's the whole notion of play-acting, of being a character. Christian Bale can take off his Batman suit at the end of the day but the best wrestlers don't. As wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson once noted, a wrestling character is an extension of the wrestler's personality "with the volume turned all the way up". There can be a painful disjunction between the superman of the ring and the human being, though: one attracts legions of admiring fans; the other can hardly pay the rent on his trailer.
Which is what makes The Wrestler so heartbreaking. Fame, as we know, is a fickle mistress, but she seems particularly harsh on pro wrestlers. Not only is there the matter of being a has-been, there's the broken body: a combination of all that physical exertion and injury, and the steroids and painkillers that flood the locker rooms (not to mention the recreational drugs that go hand in hand with the party lifestyle of travelling on the road).
Barry W.Blaustein's 1999 documentary Beyond the Mat, with wrestling legend Jake "The Snake" Roberts smoking crack in his motel room and trying to make up with his estranged daughter, shows that The Ram's problems are not far from the truth.
And wrestlers such as The Ram are the lucky ones. They're not like Darren Drozdov, who became a paraplegic at the age of 30 after a pile-driver went wrong in a match. Or one of the 24 well-known wrestlers under 50 who have died since 2000, including WWE headliner Chris Benoit, who tragically killed his wife, son and himself last year.
Even in the bizarre world of sports entertainment, some unpalatable truths about the human condition emerge.
The Wrestler opens on January 15. (Credit: The Australian)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Wrestling
WWE
Movie Reviews
Friday, January 02, 2009
CALDWELL'S Daily Word 1/1: Happy New Year, HBK employee program, McMahon and Torch reader response to "The Wrestler"
-- In a few weeks, we'll know whether "The Wrestler" will have a seat at the table for the prestigious Academy Awards ceremony that recognizes the best in movies for the year. Mickey Rourke is a virtual lock to be nominated for Best Actor, as is Bruce Springsteen's "The Wrestler" track for Best Original Song in a movie.
If WWE's Vince McMahon had a vote, he certainly wouldn't pick "The Wrestler," as we reported yesterday that McMahon believes the movie is below WWE. The thematic material related to wrestling is set in the long-forgotten territory era and under-the-radar independent wrestling scene of today, which gives the movie its gritty feel perfect for Mickey Rourke's character.
WWE wants to distance itself from pro wrestling, as evidenced by corporate-friendly statements from CEO Linda McMahon about the company not being in the wrestling business, but the entertainment genre, competing against the NFL, NBA, and entertainers putting on rock concerts.
McMahon most-likely feels the movie being any way associated with WWE would bring the company down to a level they long-since tried to escape from. WWE's attitude of superiority has been displayed in recent JBL promos and the Shawn Michaels "employee" storyline where HBK is willing to sell his soul to JBL to prevent becoming Randy "the Ram" Robinson.
The real story continues to be wrestlers being gobbled up and spit out if they aren't protective of themselves and the investment they're making with their bodies. Other than the two irreplaceables - John Cena and Triple H - McMahon can always find someone else to slide onto the card.
"The Wrestler" hits too close to home with McMahon, who obviously doesn't want his company associated with low-rent indy wrestling, but also because he's the corporate face of a wrestling business that couldn't generate mainstream interest unless someone died or was blown up in a limo.
Now, the positive accolades are going to a movie that focuses on something outside the WWE machine and not kids dancing in the ring with Finlay or WWE touring Iraq. McMahon simply won't stand for that.
Torch reader stonecoldmark commented on the article we posted yesterday about WWE's official anti-"The Wrestler" position after McMahon picked up his movie screening in December. Here's what scmark had to say:
Ask Jake Roberts or Roddy Piper if any of what is in "The Wrester" pertains to them. The Wrestler is about what happens when the WWE dumps these guys. Guys like Duggan are lucky Vince still keeps them employed. Even HUGE stars like Hogan and Flair can be included. Flair never knew when to call it quits because it's all he's known. Hogan would still give it a try if Vince gave him a chance.
The Wrestler should be a calling card for anyone that wants to get into the biz, not everyone can get a job in the big-time and if you do save that money. This film speaks to not just wrestlers, but can apply to any job where the excitement, fame, and money can fade seemingly overnight. Just ask Mickey Rourke. The movie is his life.
Vince is right it's not the WWE, but does that mean his guys are treated any better? Not on your life with that schedule. I think wrestling five or six days a week is just as bad as taking a stapler to your head for one night on a Saturday in Secaucus.
Greg Tingle comment...
The Wrestler is not the WWE, however parts of do tell part of the story of workers with the WWWE in years gone by. Thank god that The Wrestler is not the WWE, and Vince McMahon and the top brass at the WWE have every right to distance themselves from the film. At least some lessons got learned along the way, and the WWE body count is not as high as it once was. If pro wrestling schools showed The Wrestler to potential students before they signed on I think its likely that the sign up rates for wrestling academy's would decline. One needs to be mindful of what they wish for - they might just get it. The Wrestler is a perfect example of show business not being all it's often cranked up to be, and in my position as a media agent I'm in the position to know this. All respect to Roddy Piper, Greg Valentine and many other legends for supporting The Wrestler and Mickey Rourke's effort. Piper's line about it being "not his story, but it is my story" is classic, but in reality Piper came out of the business in better shape than most, and he still picks up a WWE cheque from time to time. Are we one step closer to a wrestling union? I doubt it, but you never know. The US is cracking down on gambling and other moral and ethics type matters, but will they care enough to ensure professional entertainers, wrestlers and the like don't end up on the scrap heap when promoters are finished getting their slice of meat from them? McMahon has cleaned up his act a hell of a lot over the past 5 years or so, and let's hope other wrestling promoters do the same. The Wrestler gets 5 stars for impact, story telling and acting, and talk about a movie for the times.
(Credit: Pro Wrestling Torch)
If WWE's Vince McMahon had a vote, he certainly wouldn't pick "The Wrestler," as we reported yesterday that McMahon believes the movie is below WWE. The thematic material related to wrestling is set in the long-forgotten territory era and under-the-radar independent wrestling scene of today, which gives the movie its gritty feel perfect for Mickey Rourke's character.
WWE wants to distance itself from pro wrestling, as evidenced by corporate-friendly statements from CEO Linda McMahon about the company not being in the wrestling business, but the entertainment genre, competing against the NFL, NBA, and entertainers putting on rock concerts.
McMahon most-likely feels the movie being any way associated with WWE would bring the company down to a level they long-since tried to escape from. WWE's attitude of superiority has been displayed in recent JBL promos and the Shawn Michaels "employee" storyline where HBK is willing to sell his soul to JBL to prevent becoming Randy "the Ram" Robinson.
The real story continues to be wrestlers being gobbled up and spit out if they aren't protective of themselves and the investment they're making with their bodies. Other than the two irreplaceables - John Cena and Triple H - McMahon can always find someone else to slide onto the card.
"The Wrestler" hits too close to home with McMahon, who obviously doesn't want his company associated with low-rent indy wrestling, but also because he's the corporate face of a wrestling business that couldn't generate mainstream interest unless someone died or was blown up in a limo.
Now, the positive accolades are going to a movie that focuses on something outside the WWE machine and not kids dancing in the ring with Finlay or WWE touring Iraq. McMahon simply won't stand for that.
Torch reader stonecoldmark commented on the article we posted yesterday about WWE's official anti-"The Wrestler" position after McMahon picked up his movie screening in December. Here's what scmark had to say:
Ask Jake Roberts or Roddy Piper if any of what is in "The Wrester" pertains to them. The Wrestler is about what happens when the WWE dumps these guys. Guys like Duggan are lucky Vince still keeps them employed. Even HUGE stars like Hogan and Flair can be included. Flair never knew when to call it quits because it's all he's known. Hogan would still give it a try if Vince gave him a chance.
The Wrestler should be a calling card for anyone that wants to get into the biz, not everyone can get a job in the big-time and if you do save that money. This film speaks to not just wrestlers, but can apply to any job where the excitement, fame, and money can fade seemingly overnight. Just ask Mickey Rourke. The movie is his life.
Vince is right it's not the WWE, but does that mean his guys are treated any better? Not on your life with that schedule. I think wrestling five or six days a week is just as bad as taking a stapler to your head for one night on a Saturday in Secaucus.
Greg Tingle comment...
The Wrestler is not the WWE, however parts of do tell part of the story of workers with the WWWE in years gone by. Thank god that The Wrestler is not the WWE, and Vince McMahon and the top brass at the WWE have every right to distance themselves from the film. At least some lessons got learned along the way, and the WWE body count is not as high as it once was. If pro wrestling schools showed The Wrestler to potential students before they signed on I think its likely that the sign up rates for wrestling academy's would decline. One needs to be mindful of what they wish for - they might just get it. The Wrestler is a perfect example of show business not being all it's often cranked up to be, and in my position as a media agent I'm in the position to know this. All respect to Roddy Piper, Greg Valentine and many other legends for supporting The Wrestler and Mickey Rourke's effort. Piper's line about it being "not his story, but it is my story" is classic, but in reality Piper came out of the business in better shape than most, and he still picks up a WWE cheque from time to time. Are we one step closer to a wrestling union? I doubt it, but you never know. The US is cracking down on gambling and other moral and ethics type matters, but will they care enough to ensure professional entertainers, wrestlers and the like don't end up on the scrap heap when promoters are finished getting their slice of meat from them? McMahon has cleaned up his act a hell of a lot over the past 5 years or so, and let's hope other wrestling promoters do the same. The Wrestler gets 5 stars for impact, story telling and acting, and talk about a movie for the times.
(Credit: Pro Wrestling Torch)
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