Alternate Takes 01.03.09: The Wrestler

Posted by Shawn S. Lealos on 01.03.2009

As The Wrestler is slowly released across America, Alternate Takes looks at its influences from Pi to Beyond the Mat.



Welcome to Week 33 of Alternate Takes.

I hope everyone had a great Holiday season and your New Year is off to a great start. I know most of you made New Year Resolutions and I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of those have already fallen by the wayside, but here at Alternate Takes I have a resolution of my own. You will notice this week's Alternate Takes sports a different look than the previous 32 and that is because I have a strong desire to make this column better than what I have provided up to now.

Previously on Alternate Takes...

This was a list column. I struggled early on deciding if I wanted the column to be a listing of alternative movies to watch instead of that specific week's alleged disappointment. I figured I could list movies that were of a similar genre, better efforts from the director or stars in the movie, or rediscover classical gems that you might not have heard of. For a while I chose to use the column to list a group of movies you could see based solely on the specific genre, whether it was cult classics, vigilante flicks or slasher films. Regardless of my choice of alternate takes, the column still ended up being a list column and those can get both boring and predictable after awhile.

Starting with the first week of this New Year, I am writing Alternate Takes as a walk through the actual movie coming out that week. Because this week the release schedule is complete crap, I am going to talk about a movie that is still being released across the country. Each week throughout the next month, The Wrestler is being released in different sections of the U.S. Unfortunately for me Oklahoma is not on the release calendar until the final week of the film's wide release, which means I have about another month to wait to see it. But because nothing of note is being released this week, the first film I look at in the new Alternate Takes is...

THE WRESTLER


"Up until now, the only fictional efforts fans could anticipate were those in the vein of No Holds Barred or Ready to Rumble, exaggerated and ridiculous. Aronofsky changes that trend with one swoop of his masterful hand. His handheld camera techniques capture aspects of wrestling some never knew existed, and it results in one of the best, most vivid and exhilarating films of 2008." - Chad Webb, 411mania.com

There have not been many shining examples of professional wrestling displayed in movies over the course of history. The "sport" has never been accepted outside of its core base of fans as anything more than a joke and Hollywood has usually treated it as such. Even when the industry was hidden in the layers of its own kayfabe (which the urban dictionary defines as "top secret," referring to the practice of maintaining the illusion that wrestling is 100% genuine), it was still a spectacle held to no higher regard than a travelling circus. Look at the audience of a classical wrestling show and you will learn all that is needed to be known about the respectability of this form of entertainment.

In the current incarnation of the product, promoters such as Vince McMahan choose to distance themselves from the kayfabe approach of the "sport" and instead focus on the entertainment aspects of the soap opera styled storylines. Linda McMahan announced in a recent press conference that the WWE chooses to compete with Hollywood and other television shows instead of rival wrestling promotions. While this attitude displays a large scale outlook on professional wrestling as an entertainment enterprise it also demeans the actual wrestling aspects of the industry to a sideshow, no more stepping out of the shadows of its carnival backgrounds then the kayfabe promotions of the past.

THE DIRECTOR



Pi is a lesson to aspiring film makers everywhere: perfect your skills, be original, be bold. It's a pity young British directors aren't making films as unique and imaginative as this. Startlingly good cinema. - Martyn Glanville, BBC Films

That makes the choice of current Hollywood wunderkind Darren Aronofsky to make a movie about professional wrestling a shock to those following his career. Aronofsky studied film at Harvard University where he worked on several films in both the realm of live action and animation. He won several awards for his senior thesis film, Supermarket Sweep, which went on to become a National Student Academy Award Finalist. He followed up this success with a stint at the American Film Institute where he created his next short film Protozoa. Unlike many film students, Aronofsky was able to use his immense talent and promise to secure solid talent for this film including future star Lucy Liu.

The success of Protozoa made it possible for Aronofsky to gain the trust of financial backers and he went on to make his breakout hit Pi. Receiving $100 donations from a number of people, Aronofsky completed Pi for an astonishing low sum of $60,000 and earned enough praise from critics and film-buffs to receive the directing award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. The film itself was a finalist for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and the screenplay won the award for Best First Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards. It would seem Darren Aronofsky had arrived.

However, it was his second film that would make him a true breakout sensation. Requiem for a Dream is one of the darkest movies made in recent memory. There are no happy endings in this film and no character escapes unscathed. "Hollywood has sort of killed the tragedy," Aronofsky once said. "It doesn't really exist in cinema anymore. Even in so-called darker films – especially in a lot of drug movies – so many people recover and get out alive. And anyone who has been on the planet for 15 or 20 years generally knows that that's not going to happen."

Requiem for a Dream is a movie that could be shown in high school classes to deter many kids from drugs for the rest of their lives. While it can be argued the film is a nihilistic view of the world that offers no redeeming qualities, Aronofsky disagrees with the statement. He stated he hoped the movie would "be about the catharsis the audience will have when they realize their lives are not as fucked up as these peoples."

The characters in the movie are played to perfection by a cast including Jennifer Connelly, Jared Leto, Marlon Wayans and Ellen Burstyn. While Burstyn would receive an Oscar nomination for her role as the pill popping mother intent on recapturing the look of her youth, all four actors are spectacular in their roles as individuals who allow drugs to control the entire basis of their lives. While Connelly and Burstyn continue to enjoy successful careers, neither Leto nor Wayans have ever matched the intensity of their roles in this film.

When looking at both Pi and Requiem for a Dream, it is clear that Aronofsky walks a different path than the normal Hollywood director. "I don't make a distinction between independent and Hollywood anymore," Aronofsky once stated. "Being John Malkovich and Boys Don't Cry are independent films in every sense of the word, yet Hollywood embraced them. Then you have mainstream directors whose films have a totally independent attitude - the Wachowski brothers with Matrix or David Fincher with Fight Club. Tim Burton used to be the only model we had for bringing that spirit into the mainstream, but now there's Spike Jonze, Paul Thomas Anderson and even M. Night Shyamalan, whose films are considered very commercial but they are completely his own. It's an exciting time to be a filmmaker because audiences have a very wide range of tastes and the line between independent and mainstream is blurring with each day."

So what led Aronofsky to the strange world of professional wrestling? "The idea of doing a movie about a wrestler has been floating around in my head for six or seven years," he explained in a recent interview. "I started to develop some of the ideas with producer Scott Franklin and discovered he was a bigger wrestling fan as a kid than I was and knew something about it. And the more we looked into that world, the more interesting it became."

THE ACTOR



I cared as deeply about Randy the Ram as any movie character I've seen this year. I cared about Mickey Rourke, too. The way this role and this film unfold, that almost amounts to the same thing. Rourke may not win the Oscar for best actor. But it would make me feel good to see him up there. It really would. - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

When searching for the man who would portray his protagonist, Randy "The Ram" Robinson, Aronofsky could not have made a better choice than that of veteran actor Mickey Rourke. "It was a very hard role to cast because there was the emotional end of the role, which someone had to pull off the humor as well as the sadness and the tragedy," Aronofsky said. "And to find an actor that surprising, it's hard, you know? When you meet Mickey, he's got all this armor, you know, and he's got all these flashy colors on him and they're basically all to distract you from looking in his eyes, which are just alive with so much soul and a lot of pain. And, as a director, when you look in them, you just see the fire burning and you've just got to… it gets exciting. You want to capture that when you see that."

Mickey Rourke was raised in Miami and, when he decided to try his hand at acting, moved to New York City where he appeared in some off-Broadway productions. He tried his hand in Los Angeles where he began to earn small roles in films such as Steven Spielberg's 1941 and Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate. He earned critical respect following prominent roles in Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat and Barry Levinson's Diner. He became a sex symbol thanks to his roles in Rumble Fish and 9 ½ Weeks and critical acclaim for his award nominated role in the 1997 independent sensation Barfly.

Unfortunately, the world will never know what heights Rourke could have reached thanks to his self destruction. He created controversy when he donated part of his salary from the film Francesco to the IRA and began to brag about personal friendships with members of the mafia. Finally, he quit acting and began a boxing career. He has claimed to have been a Golden Gloves boxer in the early 70s, however with this claim disputed by his stepfather in an interview with the New York Times Magazine and no records existing of these alleged fights, it is unclear whether his early career was real or a figment of Rourke's vivid imagination.

Before this abrupt retirement, Rourke appeared in a movie that has become quite a cult classic in recent years. There are a number of people who talk very highly of Rourke but director Alan Parker is not one of them. Parker, who wrote and directed the film Angel Heart, talks on the Special Edition DVD about how proud he is of the film but to he avoids any talk of working with Rourke. In an interview Parker once stated "working with Mickey is a nightmare. He is very dangerous on the set because you never know what he is going to do."

Rourke said he could never have taken a role such as the one in The Wrestler at that time in his life. "Somebody said to me, ‘Do you think you could have given the same performance 15 years ago?' and I went, ‘Fuck yeah,' Rourke said in a recent interview. "And then when I thought about it, I went, ‘No. I would have told him to [fuck off], or kicked him in the ass,' you know?" The difference between Rourke then and now is light and day. The character of Randy the Ram is one that Rourke felt he related to because he is at the point in his career where, if not for some good luck that came his way, no one knows where he would have ended up.

Thanks to directors such as Robert Rodriguez (Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Sin City) and Tony Scott (Domino, Man on Fire), Rourke is once again an actor to be reckoned with. Thanks to the trust and faith of Darren Aronofsky, he is now an actor with the opportunity to win critical awards this year. "I'm psyched for him, you know," Aronofsky said, "and I'm more excited as a fan because I'm really curious to see how other directors use him."

THE HISTORY



Barry Blaustein has made a fantastic documentary with quite a bit of wit and charm. An emotional journey that isn't a bunch of posing and insanity. It is a must for all wrestling fans... whether they be idle fans or rabid fans... - Harry Knowles, AICN.COM

The character Rourke portrays in The Wrestler is a down-on-his-luck man who at one time was a superstar in his profession. Now, like many old time wrestlers, he is left with nothing but the memories of what he once was. It is clear in the world of professional wrestling fans only care about what you have done for them lately. Unless you are a legend like Ric Flair, fans don't want to see you on their television. It seems wrestling fans are always looking for the next big thing and a star from twenty years ago is looked at as a washed up has-been better off not seen outside vintage highlight reels.

That makes the life of a professional wrestler a tragedy equal to that of Greek or Shakespearian classics. "These guys have lived a really hard life," Aronofsky said, "and, you know, when you meet someone who 10-15 years ago was playing in front of 50,000 people and now they're suddenly in front of 200 people, they're not just doing it for the money. They're doing it also to hold onto their craft and hold onto the glory. It's really dramatic."

Wrestlers put their lives in their own hands when putting on a show for their legions of fans. Look at the number of men who died before reaching their fortieth birthday. Whether it's the excess of alcohol and drugs or the stress put on their bodies through years of performing, these young men's life expectancies are tragically low. This movie takes a look at the men who have lived through all the tragedies and what their lives must be like at this late stage in their career.

Barry W. Blaustein made his name by writing such films as Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment, Coming to America, Boomerang and The Nutty Professor. With those credentials you wouldn't peg him as the person to direct a documentary about the underbelly of professional wrestling. While some of the footage in Beyond the Mat is considered controversial and unreliable, and Blaustein has been accused of sabotage interview techniques on Jake Roberts, the reliability of Roberts' character makes you question whether the ambush of the man only indicates how the man truly lives.

The real meat and bones of the documentary is the look into the lives of Terry Funk and Mick Foley. I find it ironic that a Sports Illustrated writer recently attacked Foley following a media viewing of The Wrestler, comparing him to the character of Randy "The Ram." It is not Foley's story in Beyond the Mat that bears comparison to The Wrestler, but that of Terry Funk. In the documentary, Funk is portrayed as a man who has trouble getting out of bed in the morning. His body has been beaten and bruised by years of abuse in the ring and his family fears the fact he cannot leave his occupation behind. At the age of 64, Funk is still willing to take beatings and get thrown around by men over forty years his junior. The documentary paints a sad picture of a man who may one day find he can no longer walk, care for his family and may one day find he can no longer even take care of himself.

In an interview after the release of the movie Funk called "wrestling ... worse than a drug, it is a love." He compared wrestling to drugs by saying that "both are hard to quit, but with drugs you spend money while you make money with wrestling." I don't know if it is the money or the addiction to the squared circle, but there is something that keeps Terry Funk coming back for more and it is not a healthy addiction as this documentary proves.

Mick Foley, a close friend of Funk as well as a participant in Beyond the Mat, reviewed The Wrestler for Slant.com. In the review he mentioned he had heard comparisons of the film and Beyond the Mat, but reserved judgment for the final product. He specifically points out Randy the Ram's "dwindling number of nostalgic wrestling fans—is a theme that many a wrestler will grudgingly admit to connecting with. The scene depicting a poorly attended "Legends Convention" where Randy, a man so proud of his past, is forced not only to accept his present but to take a glimpse at the future, will strike an uncomfortable yet legitimate chord with every wrestling star whose personal appearances have ever been met with a symphony of silence."

It is clear that there is an influence of Beyond the Mat on The Wrestler but, as Foley himself argues, it is not his persona that permeates throughout the film. The man I see as the influence on Randy the Ram is that of Terry Funk, the wrestler who loves his sport so much he never wants to give it up and could cripple himself to remain a part of it. There is also a part of the life of Jake Roberts that is sprinkled into the story, although as Aronofsky states, it is all coincidental. "Unfortunately, a lot of these old-timers that we met, a lot of these legends, Jake the Snake's story aren't very original," Aronofsky said in a current interview. "There are many, many guys out there with the same story, so it's almost a cliché, you know? They work 350 days a year and by the time, as I said, their bodies are done, their home lives are destroyed. Then they're just sort of driving on fumes, you know?"

PRESTIGE PICTURES



That Night and the City is as magnificent as it turned out to be is a minor miracle. As Dassin reveals in a new interview included on the Criterion disc, he only had limited consultations over the phone with the postproduction team and composer Franz Waxman who created the film's score. Yet 55 years after its release, it remains a compelling, irresistible drama, and ironically for a film shot in London, a true Hollywood classic. - Pam Grady, REEL.COM

When you talk about films depicting professional wrestling, once you get past the documentary Beyond the Mat, everything else seems like a giant joke. Ready to Rumble, while a giant Hollywood playground to the stars of the now defunct WCW, is still a comedy farce starring David Arquette. Hulk Hogan, one of the greatest stars to ever wrestle, made one of the most embarrassing wrestling movies of all time in No Holds Barred. Once again it was basis for product placement, this time for the WWF, as co-star Tiny Lister was brought into the spotlight thanks to the film. Nacho Libre, Bodyslam and a number of Mexican Luchador horror movies have done nothing to legitimize the industry in the eyes of Hollywood.

In 1950, director Jules Dassin was a man who created a true masterpiece with professional wrestling as the centerpiece. Dassin was one of the greatest filmmakers to be blacklisted during the witch hunt that was Joseph McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee hearings. Prior to his Hollywood blacklisting based on accusations he was a Communist, he had created two of the greatest Film Noirs of all time in Brute Force (1947) and The Naked City (1948). Following his exile to Europe would make one of the most influential caper movies ever made in Rififi (1954).

Before his exile to Europe he made one last American film, albeit filmed in London, and it remains arguably his masterpiece. Night and the City (1950) is a classic Film Noir with a foothold in the world of professional wrestling. On the Criterion release of the DVD, Dassin is interviewed and relates the story that his producers wanted him to find an actor who knew how to wrestle for the movie but he held out and demanded a wrestler who could be taught to act. In today's society that is easy to understand but professional wrestling was a different beast in those days and when Dassin demanded a wrestler from his childhood named Stanislaus Zbyszko star in the film, he had to fight for it. It was a dangerous stance since he was told by producer Darryl Zanuck prior to making the film it would probably be his last opportunity to direct a movie because of the Communist scandal.

His stance would be a brilliant choice as Zbyszko provided the character of wrestler Gregorius with a humanity that surprised everyone except Dassin. Dassin found it humorous when Zbyszko played the scene where the wrestler is dying, the film's star Richard Widmark feared Zbyszko was really dying. Zbyszko was the centerpiece of the film's world of wrestling, surrounded by characters such as Kristo (Herbert Lom), the promoter, and "The Strangler" (Mike Mazurki), a professional wrestler willing to kill to please his bosses. In my eyes, Kristo seems to be very similar to Vince McMahan in the current world of wrestling as he loves his father (Gregorius) but hates his father's style of wrestling, Greco-Roman Wrestling, which places the emphasis of wrestling above the commercial showmanship Kristo prefers. In this way, it was a movie before its time.

Night and the City is an extreme example of Film Noir, emphasizing the nighttime landscapes the genre lives in, painting the picture with visuals as vivid as anything seen since Orson Welles, and a story filled with grim subject matter, extreme violence and a gloomy downbeat ending packed with a heavy noir blow. It is also a movie that pays great respect to the men whose occupation is professional wrestling and paints the world they live in with no disdain or comedy. The Wrestler may have brought audiences a respectable look at the business of professional wrestling but it was not the first to do so and I don't know if it will be the best movie to do so. Jules Dassin did it almost fifty years ago and the movie holds up today as a true classical masterpiece and arguably the best movie about professional wrestling ever brought to celluloid.


Watch the following trailer for The Wrestler and then click on the posters below it to learn more about the DVDs of the movies discussed in this column.