The Wrestler

w/o horse · December 16, 2008, 02:19:13 PM

Remember when a couple of you traveled out to the Billy Wilder for the Lynch/Inland Empire thing, that I got into, and I was callous about how you didn't get in? Well you were vindicated by fate, because I went to the Billy Wilder and waited two hours for the screening/appearances for this film and didn't get in.

Sucked. We were 95, 96 in line for a movie in a theater of 280 seats. Good, right? Except 200 members with priority seating showed up in the last 30 minutes before the screening and swooped up all the seats.

I saw Wendy and Lucy instead.

MacGuffin · December 16, 2008, 08:17:46 PM

From metal to ambience: Clint Mansell taps Slash for 'The Wrestler'
Source: Los Angeles Times

At midpoint in "The Wrestler," Marisa Tomei's Cassidy sums up the general feeling the film's characters have toward pop music. Enjoying an afternoon beer at a dive bar with some metal on the jukebox, she dismisses everything released from 1991 to the present with a swipe at Nirvana's Kurt Cobain: "And then that Cobain ... had to come and ruin it all."

One can only wonder how she'd rate the delicate atmospheric score from Clint Mansell. In a film loaded with '80s metal -- Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" and Quiet Riot's "Bang Your Head" are prominently featured -- Mansell is the one who has to bring everyone back to the film's stark reality.

But one thing is probably certain. Tomei's Cassidy and Mickey Rourke's fading wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson couldn't fault Mansell's choice of a guitarist: former Guns N' Roses slinger Slash.

"We just thought it would be interesting, given that the character's favorite music is rock -- metal -- music," Mansell tells Pop & Hiss. "We wanted that sensibility and wanted to bridge the gap between score and source. Slash is one of the world's great guitar players, and he was up for trying something different than what he's known for, but he could also bring his sensibility to what I was trying to do."

Mansell's score fills in the blanks between the film's vintage metal and the original Bruce Springsteen track that brings "The Wrestler" to a close. With minimal guitar notes, the score flirts with a melody, but instead drifts toward more dreamy, atmospheric sounds. But the music doesn't lead the viewer, as the slight guitar pickings veer more toward something resembling a lullaby than anything overly emotional.

"We knew there was no way we could judge the character," Mansell says. "He sleeps in the back of a van after a wrestling match, and that might be a really horrendous way of living for some of us. But for him, he's just doing what he wants to do. So we didn't want to make the music maudlin or schmaltzy or anything that judges the character."

Oddly enough, some of the music that inspired Mansell was by Springsteen, who composed the Golden Globe-nominated song in the film's namesake -- a cut that contrasts a plaintive melody with some street-tough imagery. Before the Springsteen song had been secured, Mansell had been trying to capture the stark, paired-down feel of the artist's 1982 album "Nebraska."

"I had talked to Darren [Aronofsky] about Springsteen's 'Nebraska' album," Mansell says referring to the film's director. "It's an emotional record, but it's quite restrained -- it keeps the emotion at a distance. I thought that this was the character that Randy Robinson was. That led me towards the guitar."

The fact that the film is set in New Jersey didn't hurt either. Mansell wanted an instrument that could reflect the grittiness of the setting and the character, even if the ultimate sound was soft. "He loves his metal music, and he lives in New Jersey, and all those things started pushing me toward the fact that the guitar might be the instrument that represents this character's voice."

Mansell is the go-to composer Aronofsky. The two first worked together on Aronofsky's first feature-length film, "Pi." Typically, Mansell and Aronofsky begin plotting the music before shooting begins. In the case of "The Wrestler," the idea of using a simple guitar score wasn't easily arrived at.

"We started thinking about what Darren called clown music, which was essentially New Orleans funeral dirges," Mansell says. "That led to an idea of a sort of ragtag of instruments that were broken down, like a wheezy accordion. Those felt too stylized for the location and the story. It felt like we were just being clever. So that's when we started stripping things back."

Mansell, a former lead of English band Pop Will Eat Itself, is currently scoring "The Rebound," a romantic comedy starring Catherine Zeta-Jones.

MacGuffin · December 16, 2008, 10:52:31 PM

A director falls in love with acting
Darren Aronofsky was Mr. Visual Effects. But with 'The Wrestler,' he has given the screen to the actors.
By Mark Olsen; Los Angeles Times

Much has already been made of "The Wrestler" as a comeback vehicle for its star, actor Mickey Rourke. But for director Darren Aronofsky, the film also represents a form of creative rebirth.

Having first come to the attention of audiences with his visually audacious films -- 1998's "Pi" and 2000's "Requiem for a Dream" -- Aronofsky seemed poised for a broader crossover with 2006's "The Fountain," an ambitious time-travel story about love and loss.

"The Fountain" had an infamously long and tortured production history -- including an abrupt shutdown, a change in its lead actor (Hugh Jackman replaced Brad Pitt) and a drastic reduction in financing -- which could easily have stopped Aronofsky's career in its tracks.

According to Aronofsky, "The Wrestler" symbolizes a break from his past and a new start. "My producer and I broke up as a team, and [for 'The Wrestler'] I used a different director of photography, new production designer, editor, and so it became a new chapter in my filmmaking life," explained the 39-year-old director. "I just really wanted to do something different."

"The Wrestler" follows Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Rourke), an aging wrestler who once filled arenas and now scrapes it out in local gymnasiums and small-time shows. Following a heart attack, he tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) and romantically pursues a friendly stripper (Marisa Tomei), but finds himself draw back into the ring.

Aronofsky recalled with astonishment the whirlwind weekend that introduced "The Wrestler" to the world. Just days before its premiere last September at the Venice Film Festival, Aronofsky was finishing the film. Then it screened for the first time on a Friday night. Festival organizers told him to stick around for the awards ceremony the next night. The film picked up the main prize, the Golden Lion. Sunday morning, he boarded a plane for the Toronto International Film Festival, where the film screened to a rapturous audience that evening. The film was sold to distributor Fox Searchlight Pictures after an all-night negotiating session.

Since then, the narrative of Rourke's comeback has taken a powerful hold of the media and has been building steam with the public. The actor has been doing a lot of interviews , telling his personal story with a bracing earnestness. Aronofsky has had to accept that Rourke may exaggerate aspects of their working relationship -- "Mickey's a storyteller, if you haven't figured that out," he said -- but the director also believes that "the ends justify the means" for all it took to get the performance from Rourke.

"I think the reality about Mickey is, he's so talented, he can coast through a film and actually be pretty good, and he's done that way too much," said Aronofsky. "I just had to push him every day. I had to, honestly, get him out of bed and fight to keep him on set to do the work. But . . . there was no one more natural and more giving. Just getting him to the starting line was probably the most difficult thing I've ever done in my career."

Aronofsky refers to the process of working with Rourke as both a "battle" and a "collaboration." He explained how, despite an initial hesitation, he allowed Rourke to have his character wear hearing aids, but noted with pride how he thwarted Rourke from indulging in perhaps his most notorious on-screen trademark.

"If there's any accomplishment that's my greatest accomplishment in this movie," he said, "it's the fact he never wears sunglasses in this film. I fought him every day about the sunglasses, because he wants to hide. I guarantee you, there aren't many movies where he doesn't wear sunglasses.

"One thing Mickey does, he tries to protect himself from people looking into his eyes. You look into his eyes and he's an open wound, there's so much pain, there's so much struggle, so much wisdom, love and soul, but he hides it."

Aronofsky is married to the actress Rachel Weisz, who appeared in "The Fountain," and he credits her in part with the impulse to make a film minus the visual filigrees of his earlier work, focusing instead on the performances. Leaving behind his earlier emphasis on visual effects, Aronofsky creates the world of "The Wrestler" with a spare, pared-down style of hard-bitten, hand-held realism he calls "pro-active documentary."

"Living with an actor," he said, "watching her really work on her craft, has been inspiring. And I realized I love working with actors, and as a director, the only time you get to be in the moment, really connected with the art, is between 'Action' and 'Cut,' when you're watching these other people and you're sort of surfing along with them. You're just feeling, trying to be really present. Yet most of the time as a director, you're worrying about the future, regretting the past, and you rarely get that type of expression.

"So when I was finishing up 'The Fountain,' all I wanted to do was work with actors. I kept telling my agent, 'I've got to get an actor's piece; find me a play or something.' I think when I first went to Mickey and Marisa, that's kind of what I pitched them; this is their film."

MacGuffin · December 20, 2008, 01:02:05 AM

PODCAST: Darren Aronofsky to screen 'The Wrestler' for Vince McMahon
Source: Los Angeles Times

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to chat with "The Wrestler" director Darren Aronofsky, the 39-year-old Harvard grad who has acquired something of a cult following since making his directorial debut a decade ago.

Aronofsky broke a little news at one point, reporting that he would be in Connecticut today to host a private screening of "The Wrestler" for Vince McMahon, who is the controversial chairman of the former World Wrestling Federation (now known as World Wrestling Entertainment) and is in many ways the most enduring face of the sport.

It will be interesting to learn whether McMahon, whose personal finances are directly linked to the public's feelings about wrestling, received it as graciously as many of the former professional wrestlers who have already seen it at various screenings that. One, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, became emotional as he told the filmmakers, "It's not my story... but it is my story."

"Wrestler" stars Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei are generating plenty of Oscar buzz. And even if Aronofsky, the rather low-profile man who made it all possible, is not at the center of much awards chatter himself, he seemed quite content during our conversation — which you can hear for yourself by clicking

— just to be able to tell a good story and help an actor whom he has long admired get back on his feet to fight another day.

Aronofsky first broke onto the scene with "Pi" (1998), an intriguing sci-fi thriller, which was followed shortly thereafter by "Requiem for a Dream" (2000), a gritty drama about drug abuse that earned star Ellen Burstyn an Oscar nomination for best actress. When his passion project, "The Fountain" (2006), bombed, some wondered if he might have been knocked down and out altogether. As it turns out, it took him only two years to get back up, and his latest effort might be his best yet.

"The Wrestler," which follows a past-his-prime professional wrestler who is forced to finally confront self-inflicted ailments of the body and soul, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in early September, took critics and festivalgoers by surprise and was awarded its Golden Lion Award for best picture. It was quickly picked up by distributor Fox Searchlight, put on the festival and award circuit, and finally opened nationwide on Wednesday.

SiliasRuby · December 20, 2008, 12:08:23 PM

This is the first movie that made me emotional in two years. I've never been a fan of wrestling but this movie moved my soul. Some scenes were extremely hard to watch and I found quite sleazy and overdone...but this is the best performance by an actor this year. I hope Mickey Rourke gets at least a nomination.

MacGuffin · December 22, 2008, 10:18:51 AM

Danny Boyle interviewing Aronofsky:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1125869268/bctid5214319001

bonanzataz · December 23, 2008, 04:43:32 AM

so, you know how kal is over in the slumdog millionaire thread being like, it doesn't matter how cliched a story is as long as it's told well and blah blah blah whatever? well this movie is a big ball of cliche and melodrama. i've seen it a thousand times before. difference between this and slumdog is that this film is INCREDIBLY moving, the characters are so well-defined and likable, the acting is top notch, everything just feels so right in this film. whereas whenever i was watching the melodrama in slumdog i felt like i was watching some (albeit higher ranking) made-for-tv movie, some sort of a hyperreality that exists only in the land of melodrama, in the wrestler, the melodrama never felt overly done and it always felt like it was grounded in some sort of reality. the performances and direction were so naturalistic that i was never taken out of the film. i was always fully engrossed.

with characters in a movie like this, it's so easy for a director or writer to use the material in a way that talks down to them, that makes the audience in the film superior to the characters being portrayed. the film tries to avoid stooping to this level. when you hear the lines from the trailer with rourke's character calling kurt cobain a pussy and the reason for music becoming less fun, sure you laugh, but you're laughing WITH him. he really believes what he's saying, so you really believe what he's saying. there's no pandering here because by that point in the film, you know what this guy is all about.
SPOILER:

Spoiler: Show

i feel the same way about aronofsky as i do paul thomas anderson. with every film they make, they get more and more mature. more assured of themselves to let their films speak for themselves instead of infusing them with flashy gimmickry (which, granted, is why we fell in love with them in the first place i guess). i was very pleased with this movie and hope all of you go see it once it opens wide(r).

picolas · January 01, 2009, 02:57:27 PM

this movie made me remember why i worshipped aronofsky and my faith in him is totally restored. it's hard to write about this right now.. it's so big. it's a simple story, yes. but there are so many sub-themes and stories hiding inside it, too.. i can't go beyond just summarizing my favourite things about it today. just know that this is an astoundingly amazing movie.

picolas · January 02, 2009, 03:41:47 AM

spoils!

re: bonz/passion of the c. i saw that moment not so much as stupifying tomei's character but showing the perspective of someone who exploits their body for money talking to another person who does the same.. she sees the movie as basically another form of body-as-entertainment/spectacle etc and wants to share it with him..

Stefen · January 04, 2009, 04:31:17 PM

This was excellent. It just felt very genuine. It's intentions were true/pure and it wasn't trying to do anything else but get you to care for the characters.

Spoils...

The Ram's heart was in the right place, but his head wasn't. He was just a disappointing human being. The relationship he wanted with his daughter was something his heart wanted, but his head prevented. He had nobody else to blame for his fuck-ups but himself, and that was something I found refreshing. Usually in movies there is an outside reason for why someone is going through the troubles they are, be it a handicap, the doing of someone or something else, etc, but in this film, Randy's problems were because of HIMSELF. He was a fuck up and a failure because of his own doing. Aronofsky/Siegel and especially Rourke really did something fantastic in making a character that does things that normally make you mad at them, or fill you with hatred for them, but you're not because of how likeable the character ultimately is. When Randy starts downing shots and snorting lines and ends up missing his dinner date with his daughter, you hate him for it. You're disgusted in him, but as the audience, you give him another chance because you know his intentions are pure and nobody is more disappointed in him than he is in himself.

8.9/10

john · January 11, 2009, 08:01:29 PM

This is Aronofsky's most assured film to date. His films have always excelled on a technical level and, with every film, he's become emotionally closer to his characters. This is the best balance of substance and style he's achieved yet because it's so fucking intimate. The way the camera follows Rourke, right behind him peering over his back - it's more impressive than any device or trickery - camera, editing, or otherwise - he's ever used thus far.

I can only echo the praises everyone else has had in regards to the way the story is treated. The details are so real and emphatic without the slightest hint of pandering. Plus, it's such a treat to watch Rourke for nearly two hours and see him deliver such a beautiful performance. The guy has always been such a treat to watch in anything and it feels like all of it has lead up to this part. Every wrinkle on his face, every bruise he's ever gotten, all add up to something genuine. In publicity for Redbelt, Mamet liked to speak about how a fighter's face conveys more truth and a deeper story than most actor's, or other professions, could ever attempt. Rourke is the embodiment of that theory.

©brad · January 11, 2009, 09:48:57 PM

i'll just say i agree a million % with john, pickles, taz, and stefen. this shook me to the bone. darren's best stuff to date.

also, awesomest title sequence of the year for sure.

New Feeling · January 18, 2009, 11:36:06 PM

Saw this tonight, thought it was pretty great. I had a few complaints about the performance by Evan Rachel Wood (or maybe just the way some of those scenes played out) but otherwise I was totally sold on the whole thing. Was surprised by how low-key the direction was, as well as the story. Just a simple mortality tale told very well. I really liked the way it ended right at the emotional high point

Kal · January 18, 2009, 11:40:36 PM

Quote from: New Feeling on January 18, 2009, 11:36:06 PM
Saw this tonight, thought it was pretty great. I had a few complaints about the performance by Evan Rachel Wood (or maybe just the way some of those scenes played out) but otherwise I was totally sold on the whole thing. Was surprised by how low-key the direction was, as well as the story. Just a simple mortality tale told very well. I really liked the way it ended right at the emotional high point

Just saw it today as well and pretty much agree with that statement.

Best performance of the year by Rourke so he totally deserves the praise he is getting, and I cannot think of anybody else playing the role. I'm also not sure if I can picture him playing any other role.

MacGuffin · January 22, 2009, 07:43:04 PM

You that saying, "I can't picture anyone else playing that part?" Never were a statement truer than with Mickey Rourke and Randy "The Ram." He is this role. And with the scaled down production, from the grainy look, to the handheld, that simplicity completely felt like I was watching a documentary on this character's life and I was so completely taken by every beating he took, in the ring and out. It was a fascinating character study.