The Wrestler

[©brad]

10 Things You Need to Know About The Wrestler

The first wave of stories about Mickey Rourke in Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, which closes the New York film Festival in two weeks, mostly ask: "What in the hell happened to Mickey's face?" But once everyone sees the movie — which is like The Champ if Jon Voight listened to Motley Crue, had his own action figure, and occasionally let another man in tights shoot him in the chest with a staple gun (it is to the movie's endless credit that this scene is actually moving) — that'll change fast. We have a sneaking suspicion that, come December, everyone's going to be talking about this movie. But who wants to wait that long? Here is your guide to the Ten Things You Need to Know About The Wrestler, so you can be ahead of the curve. And don't worry — no spoilers!

1. They get the wrestling right.
The movie isn't really about wrestling (so don't be scared), but it's not like one of those awful baseball movies in which Anthony Perkins pretends to know how to throw a baseball. The movie is populated with real wrestlers, and it makes sure to nail all the little details. As in real life, when someone does a particularly dangerous move, the crowd all yells, "Holy shit! Holy shit!" and "You're so dead! You're so dead!" This will seem strange to non–wrestling fans, but this is really what they do at WWE matches. The hard-core fans will notice, and appreciate.

2. Kurt Cobain is a pussy.
Rourke's Randy "the Ram" Robinson was a star wrestler in the eighties, which means the whole movie is soundtracked by glorious, awesome hair metal, his preferred genre. Haven't heard Accept's "Balls to the Wall" in a long time? You're in luck: The Ram rocks out, HARD. One particularly amusing exchange between the Ram and Marisa Tomei's stripper, Cassidy, features the line, "The eighties fuckin' ruled, man, till that pussy Cobain came and fucked it all up." Expect to hear the soundtrack played ironically at Christmas parties on the Lower East Side.

3. Marisa Tomei is lookin' good.
You know how, in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Marisa Tomei is naked, like, four times? She was clearly preparing for this film, in which she plays a stripper with a heart of talc and is topless and grinding pretty much the whole time. One shot, filmed from her point of view while she's working, will make you never, ever want to enter a strip club again.

4. Nintendo!
The Ram lives alone in a New Jersey trailer and, to pass the time, occasionally invites teenagers to play a wrestling game (as his character) on the ancient, original console, while the condescending teen talks about his PS3. This scene is even more heartbreaking than it sounds.

5. Wrestlers can act.
Anyone who knows anything about professional wrestling knows that it's about as "fake" as a razor blade to the head. (Which we see.) But who knew these guys were so natural on film? Ernest "the Cat" Miller is a former WWF wrestler who, in this movie, plays "the Ayatollah," a faux-Arab wrestler from the eighties. The character now sells used cars and is fat and happy in retirement. Miller has three scenes, two of which involve no wrestling at all, and he's funny, quiet, and dead-on perfect. We had no idea he was a wrestler in real life until we checked IMDb.

6. BRUUUUUUCE.
Expect to see the Boss on Oscar night. Bruce Springsteen's song "The Wrestler," written exclusively for the film, plays over the closing credits, and it's straight from The Ghost of Tom Joad — aching, sad, gorgeous. The song's so good, you almost expect Sean Penn to write another movie based off it, like with The Indian Runner and Bruce's "Highway Patrolman."

7. Don't worry: There are no orgies.
We all know people who were scarred by the artsy intensity of Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream and are too terrified to go see another of his movies. (Others had the same reaction to The Fountain, for different reasons altogether.) Worry not: Aronofsky's in back-to-basics mode, telling a straight story simply and plainly. It's still expertly put together, but, for the first time, Aronofsky moves out of the way and lets the story tell itself. It's a daring decision, actually.

8. God, Nicolas Cage would have been terrible.
When Rourke shows up for the Oscars, imagine, for a moment, what would have happened if Nicolas Cage had taken the role, as was originally planned. One shudders to think of the wig he would have worn for this. It's a career capper for Rourke, and it's virtually impossible to imagine anyone else playing the part.

9. You'll never believe who the movie is dedicated to.
Well, maybe not "dedicated to," but the last line of the credits? "The producers and filmmakers would like to extend their sincerest thanks to Axl Rose."

10. Seriously, you're totally going to cry.
You've been warned.

[modage]

i would never, in a million years, have known this was an Aronofsky movie if i didn't know it was an Aronofsky movie.  i can see the need to reinvent himself after the commercial failure of The Fountain (which i rewatched the day before) but it's sad you can tell he's just not as invested in this film as he was in that one and yet this will bring him acclaim.  but, still good for him.  the film is good, really good maybe?  SPOILERS never have i spent more of a film looking at the back of someone's head END SPOILERS it's built on a mountain of cliche but the acting is great so it almost makes up for it.  i spent the whole movie cringing for the characters (physically and emotionally).  5 months of hype from now i wont understand the hype but, good for Aronofsky and Rourke.

also: Rachel Weisz looked at me.

[MacGuffin]

[matt35mm]

Hmm, I didn't know that it wasn't shot by LaBatique.  Might be part of why it doesn't feel like an Aronofsky movie (according to modage).

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

[picolas]

that looked INCREDIBLY spoilerful. my advice is don't watch it.

[©brad]

that looked INCREDIBLY spoilerful wonderful!

can't wait!

[squints]

That looks so good. I felt like tearing up just watching those little bits. What the fuck heck shit balls titty farts is it about aronofsky? His last two movies turned me into a big pile of sobbing mush and this doesn't look to be any different.  (I wouldn't say its too spoilerful, I kinda already know what the story's about).
I didn't know todd barry was in this. That's the big spoiler from the trailer. Comedian Todd Barry is a grocery store manager turned professional wrestler.





Titty farts, pozer. Titty farts.

[Pozer]

fuckin' a, squints.. fuckin' a.

[last days of gerry the elephant]

That trailer sucked... maybe it's just me and I have a general hate for all trailers alike but this one in particular doesn't give you the true essence of the film. It's just generic sappy moments without the overall tone, style, and progression of the film. Perhaps it's that I liked the film so much and think it deserved better.

There's should be more trailers like the first one we saw for "There Will Be Blood". I think that eventually got labeled down as a teaser but those do a better job, creatively, of encapsulating the film in 30 seconds than these generic and boring visual collages on top of some generic and equally boring song.

[Stefen]

I thought it was more of a "The Wrestler in 2 minutes and 30 seconds" than it was a trailer.

I predict he'll have one last hurrah at the end and the crowd and audience will clap in unison for him.

[SiliasRuby]

This is the first trailer in a long time that made me cry.

[MacGuffin]

Mickey Rourke And Darren Aronofsky: Party People
Published by Kurt Loder; MTV

NEW YORK — Fox Searchlight Pictures threw the first big movie-biz holiday party of the season on Wednesday night, in the Library of the Hudson Hotel. (It's a "library" with a bar, a billiard table and giant framed cow portraits thick on the walls.) The company had much to be festive about, two of its latest features being the focus of much, as they say, "Oscar buzz."

Director Danny Boyle was on hand to absorb back pats and congratulatory chatter for "Slumdog Millionaire," his quasi-Bollywood love story/adventure movie, which was shot in Mumbai and features, among several other things, one of the year's great soundtracks (by famed Bollywood composer A.R. Rahman). Also in attendance was the film's cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle, a madly affable Englishman, who attempted to explain the special camera he'd invented for the picture — a sort of mini-Steadicam rig, it sounded like, amid the din — and expressed his great love of India, a country where he's spent a considerable amount of time. Mumbai, especially, he said, is an extraordinarily crowded place ("You open up a cupboard and a family of fifteen comes tumbling out"), and it's a challenge to shoot in, but he'd go back in a minute. Not right this minute, though. First he has to hook up for a new picture with his longtime colleague, the Danish curmudgeon/director Lars Von Trier.

Dodging passing trays of finger foods on the other side of the room was Darren Aronofsky, whose ferocious new movie, "The Wrestler," won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival two months ago, and has just been nominated for Independent Spirit Awards for Best Feature, Best Cinematography and Best Male Lead (the back-to-stay Mickey Rourke). Aronofsky is already mulling his next project, he said - and at some point down the road, he'd like to do a kind of reassembly of his last film, "The Fountain," which has become a sci-fi cult hit on DVD. "It wouldn't be a 'director's cut,'" he said — more like an alternate story told with the addition of unused footage from the first go-round. This would be a complicated project on a couple of levels, though, and it's at least a few years away.

Mickey Rourke himself arrived a little late at the party, having just wrapped another day's shooting on his next picture, "13," an English-language remake of the twisted French Russian-roulette thriller "13 Zameti," in which he's costarring with Jason Statham, Ray Winstone and 50 Cent (a really nice guy, says the Mick).

Peering out from behind a curtain of lightly streaked hair, Rourke appeared to have shed every ounce of the 35-or-so pounds of muscle he'd put on to play the over-the-hill grappler in Aronofsky's movie. Since he's all work-ethic these days, we wondered about the status of "Sin City 2," in which he's supposed to reprise the role of the brutal Marv. The project appears to have been held up by Robert Rodriguez's dispute with the Directors Guild of America. Rodriguez quit the group — a fearless career move for a filmmaker — when it refused to allow him to credit comics auteur Frank Miller as the co-director of the 2005 "Sin City." Once that kerfuffle's cleared up, though, the sequel could get underway pretty quickly. "Frank's ready," said Rourke. "And I'm ready, too."

[MacGuffin]

Chatting With Darren Aronofsky on 'The Wrestler' and So Much More
Some people you wish you had a whole hell of a lot more time with...
BY: Brad Brevet | Ropes of Sillicon

I interviewed Darren Aronofsky for The Fountain back in November 2006 and while he was actually here in Seattle I was not able to meet him so I had to do it over the phone, which was frustrating considering I found The Fountain to be one of the most fascinating films as evidenced by my commentary just over a year ago when Darren had to release his own commentary for the film independently because Warner Bros. didn't include it on the DVD release. So, that's a roundabout way of saying, I didn't get a chance to meet him face-to-face. Well, that has all changed.

In Seattle to promote his extremely impressive film The Wrestler Darren and I had a 15 minute sit down and I can't tell you how flattering it was to hear him recognize the site and my work and have him say, "I know you're site, I've got you bookmarked." Very flattering indeed and a great way to start off an interview session, which bounces around to damn near every single topic I could come up with from The Wrestler to RoboCop and from Wrestlemania to "Grand Theft Auto". We covered the gamut and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did putting it all together.

Enjoy!

This is the first time you've really worked with a script you didn't have a hand in.

Darren Aronofsky (DA): Well actually it was an original idea that I had...

Oh really?

DA: Yeah, when I graduated from film school I made a list of ideas for films — for feature films — and one of them was called The Wrestler and it was just an observation on how no one has ever looked into that world. Then in '02 when The Fountain fell apart the first time I started developing some ideas to figure out what to do next before I went back to The Fountain and that was when I started working with a producer friend, Scott Franklin, and we started to come up with ideas, doing research and going to some of these shows - went to Wrestlemania. Then about two years later we hired Rob Siegel who was the editor of The Onion for seven years and I read a script of his and then we did a lot of drafts with him and he was very open to rewriting and we kept rewriting over and over again until we got it to a place where it was filmable.

So I guess you did have a pretty big hand in the creation of it all then.

DA: I think as a director if you are going to do something you didn't write you still almost have to think about it as a writer because you still have to understand what the material is all about. You have to break it down and figure it out.

I'm sure you would agree this is much different than everything else you have made.

DA: Yeah.

And looking at your upcoming slate — the Noah project, The Fighter, RoboCop — I have to wonder, is this a conscious attempt not to delve into the same kind of genre and perhaps branch out of the cerebral? Because The Wrestler is far more emotional than it is cerebra,l which your other films have been.

DA: I don't know, you just got to keep a lot of balls in the air. It's very hard to make a movie so you try and push as many things as you can forward. Part of the reason it's hard to make a movie is because it's hard to get a good enough script that's worth making. That's the first step, getting a script you believe in, and then it takes a long time to raise the money — at least for me it's always a hard time. The Wrestler took about two years and that was mostly because of Mickey. No one really believed in him and no one thought he could be sympathetic so it was a tough road to get the money to do it.

You really pulled a lot out of him.

DA: It wasn't pulling. Pushed, I pushed it out of him. It was all in there I had to push him.

The scene between him and Evan Rachel Wood is phenomenal. Just seeing a small glimpse of it in the trailer takes you back to the moment. It's really powerful.

DA: Mickey did it. Mickey came prepared. He was up the whole night before working on it. It was very emotional for him because he had to go to a place — he explained to me where he went — and it was a very, very dark place. He had that conversation, but in reverse, with his own dad so he had to go back there, because he's a method actor, and that's what he pulled on and it kind of haunted him and stayed with him for about two/three days afterwards. It was tough on him.

Speaking of Mickey, he talked about the sit down you two had.

DA: Well, it's his version. [laughing]

That's what I was going to ask about. He said you made him feel two inches tall and made it sound like you actually set out to do that...

DA: Well, I was just straight with him. I knew it was going to be a tough road with him because of how films get made in today's world. A studio would never touch this film and so you have to go to the international market and how that works is it is all based on pre-sales for movie stars and the reality is Mickey is worth nothing, and the reality is he may be worth negative amounts of money, at least that is what some people told me. I was like, 'I believe in you, but no one else believes in you and if I am going to do this I want to make sure you are up for it because I am going to put myself through hell so I want to make sure you are going to take the trip with me.'

I was just very straight and maybe I was a little too direct, but why waste fucking time? If he's not going to go, 'Yes, I'm going to do that,' then it's like, 'Okay, then I'm not going to do the film with you in this way. I will figure another way to do it.' I'm pretty brash, but I'm from Brooklyn and I'm just very direct. I'm very direct.

In your industry I wouldn't think there is a lot of time to really pussy-foot around things and I would assume, considering it is your vision, there is hardly room for a lot of compromise.

DA: Right — well... everything's a compromise. Filmmaking is compromising, and so there's always people you answer to, but definitely we had creative freedom on this film. I mean, that's the one thing the French gave us. They visited the set once and they paid for the whole movie. They watched one cut at the end and they said it's fine and that was it. It was great. It was a great partner.

One thing I found particularly interesting is that you never go too far into his back-story. As I was watching and getting wrapped up in the story I started to get emotionally involved with his story, but there is still that lingering thought of what exactly has placed him in his current predicament — ruin his marriage, create the friction with his daughter, etc. — was that ever in the story or was there a back-story in your mind?

DA: Sure, we talk back-story and work that out. That stuff's really not important, it's moment-by-moment watching what this guy's going to do with the challenges in front of him, but then you end up with a three hour long film and it's not about that, it's a character study of a brief moment of this guy's life.

If someone asked you what the film is all about at its core how would you answer?

DA: The film's ultimately about a guy who wants to be loved and he gets all this love from his work and then when he can't do it anymore he tries to get love from these two women [his daughter and a stripper played by Marisa Tomei], but it ends up him asking for a little too much a little too late. He ultimately can only get love from one place and that's what he learns.

I think if you take the word "wrestling" and swap it out with pretty much anything from writing to any sport, to whatever your art is, it kind of — you know — how one deals with their own life and what they consider their art or their work and your real world, that's kind of what the film's about.

Looking forward to the projects you have coming up, what is the situation with the Noah project?

DA: We have a script actually, it is a script but there is more work to do. We're actually going to do a graphic novel of it right now, we're just starting it, and we're hiring a writer.

And are you shopping the script around to studios and actors...?

DA: There is an actor attached, but I'm not going to say who, but he's a big movie star.

Steve Carell... [joking]

DA: [With a smile] Yeah, exactly... Eventually we'll set it up, but we're just figuring it out. It's a very difficult film to get made and we're slowly working on it to get it put together.

A lot of folks in the online world are interested in RoboCop and I can only imagine it is because your name is attached. Because RoboCop is very much an '80s film, but you have been quoted saying it's going to be a "real reinvention". Can you talk about what that means?

DA: It's very early days, there's a writer involved and hopefully it can turn into a script I want to make and the studio wants to make. Once again, it's really hard to talk about until there is a green light. The writer's writing so we'll see what happens. It bums me out how much gets picked up on the Internet and stuff because nothing exists until you are in pre-production and then it doesn't really exist until you're shooting.

So you'd say all these projects are pretty much –

DA: Yeah, what I'm making next... Who knows?

Is Pitt still attached to The Fighter by the way?

DA: He was never even attached. Wahlberg was the only one ever attached. There was some flirtation with Pitt, but it didn't really go anywhere and it just got picked up. The whole thing with Nic Cage on The Wrestler was a tiny little blip and it just got picked up when none of it really ever happened. So we're just trying to get the scripts in the right place and hopefully I can get to work soon.

Some people were picking up on your little blurb in the "New York Times" on how much you like "Grand Theft Auto".

DA: [laughing] Yeah.

Are you a big gamer?

DA: I'm a pretty big gamer. I mean I wish I had more time. I mean, I have a two-and-a-half-year-old kid so I cannot wait until he is gaming! I'm so psyched for my kid to start gaming.

Yeah, you sounded pretty excited just in the little blurb talking about how you wish they had games like that when you were a kid. Now were you a big wrestling fan as well?

DA: Not really. I think like most guys my age it was an eight month window where there was a romance with it. That was it.

I had that in college. It was Thursday night WCW and then The Rock's stint on WWF and I was done.

DA: Yeah, it was fun for a little while, but not really. I made it because no one has seen that world and I think it's an original world and it's such a cultural phenomenon in America that it had to be addressed.

Was it modeled after any one specific wrestler?

DA: There were a lot of people, and the sad thing is they are all very similar. The other night Rowdy Roddy Piper came to a screening and afterward he kind of tearfully broke down in Mickey's arms and was like — it wasn't his story, yet his story was finally being told. It just meant a lot so I can't wait to show it to the legends.

I was going to say, after I got out of the screening a friend of mine and I were talking about the wrestlers we remembered and we both had a different one of the windows you were talking about and brought up different names. Is that the only legend that has seen it so far?

DA: Piper is the only one that's seen it, at least that is famous, of the legends. We're trying to get a bunch of them –

A legends screening would be insane.

DA: That's what I am trying to do. I am trying to get Fox — write about it on RopeofSilicon that we're trying to put it together because it will add to the hype, but I'm trying to get it. There's a premiere in L.A. on December 16 and I'm trying to get them to fly in like ten guys from the legends to get them to see it. So it would be great to get them there.

[Stefen]

This interview doesn't start off too well.

This is the first time you've really worked with a script you didn't have a hand in.

Darren Aronofsky (DA): Well actually it was an original idea that I had...

Oh really?

lulz.