Posts Tagged ‘wrestling’

The Wrestler

Sunday, January 18th, 2009

Wrestling is so weird. It’s boxing, circus sideshow, cheesy stage play and soap opera all in one. The big time wrestling leagues try to drown the show in pyrotechnics and flashy computer animation on giant screens but alot of the appeal is still very old fashioned. It’s the circus. I went to a match one time and saw Andre the Giant. It wasn’t so much like seeing a star as like seeing a Greek god. Or maybe a sasquatch. There was a reason they called him “The 8th Wonder of the World.” These guys are not human, they’re super heroes.

Or it seems that way when you see them up close. But actually they are human. Greek gods might be able to toss lightning around all day without spraining anything, but not humans. God or evolution did not equip humans to break metal chairs over their heads every night, or break tables with their ribs. Wrestlers make their living by not following the proper care and maintenance instructions for the human body, and they always pay the price.

Although I’ve been talking up wrestling documentaries like BEYOND THE MAT and HITMAN HART: WRESTLING WITH SHADOWS for years now I’ve barely watched any wrestling since the commercial heyday of the WWF in the ’80s. I guess I’m not that into watching it but I’m obsessed with the idea of it. It’s just such a fascinating world, larger than life entertainment, kind of surreal in its contradictory fakeness and realness (we know it’s an act, but also that it takes a serious physical and mental toll on those poor sonofabitches). And both of those movies showed the sad side of it. Many professional wrestlers struggle with what Roddy Piper calls “The Sickness” in his autobiography. Using painkillers and steroids as part of their daily regimen, drinking and partying almost as often, damaging their bodies every time they work and being away from their families while on the road, living up to an exaggerated persona – this is not a lifestyle that is likely to lead to a happy ending. Online there are lists of professional wrestlers who died young and they are long and heartbreaking. (more…)

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Wrestlemaniac

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

Legend has it that in the 1960s the president of Mexico (whoever that was) was obsessed with wrestling. He was humiliated that his country couldn’t beat Russia in the Olympics, so he began a secret program. Scientists took three of the best lucha libre guys and Frankensteined them into one: El Mascerado, the greatest wrestler who ever lived. But after a while something went wrong. He went insane in the ring, poking people’s eyes out and mangling people (both of which are illegal in Mexican wrestling). So they took him away to some small town to put him down and nobody knows what happened. Now, a vanful of American douchebags have accidentally stopped in a ghost town where El Mascerado secretly resides. And they’re about to learn that he’s not exactly retired yet. He hasn’t switched to ringside commentator, he’s still in the game. And still undefeated.

How can you go wrong with a premise like that? Well, they try their best to go wrong. After a nice lucha libre montage under the credits they introduce the obnoxious lead-trespasser, Alfonse, talking about that stupid concept called “the Dirty Sanchez.” I’m not gonna explain what it is because it doesn’t exist, it’s just some stupid bullshit some prick like this guy made up because he impresses himself by yammering about this type of stupid shit. Basically it’s a made-up sex act that would give no sexual pleasure but would be demeaning, racist and disgusting, so Screech did it in his porno dvd.

Why would it exist? Why would it have a name? And why do I want to watch the adventures of some corny wannabe redneck with stupid facial hair who thinks he’s cool for knowing about this type of bullshit? I know, you’re not supposed to like him. (Other than in SCARFACE if they show a character snorting coke it means you’re not supposed to like them.) But there’s a fine line between funny assholes that are entertaining to watch and stupid assholes that make you regret renting the movie (or turning to the Sci-Fi Channel, which is often the case with a character like this). (more…)

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The Jesse Ventura Story

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

In 1999, after the pro-wrestler and PREDATOR badass Jesse “The Body” Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota, they made this quickie TV movie about his life. My main problem with it is that it kind of sucks.

TV movies don’t have to be bad. There is the obvious DUEL precedent, but I’m not gonna hold anything to that standard. A more fair comparison would be the EVIL KNIEVEL movie starring George Hamilton. That one’s pretty cool, and personally I think a wrestler who becomes governor is an even better biographical subject than a dude who jumps motorcycles over canyons.

At the time I thought a wrestler becoming a governor was a poetic gesture. I thought “See that? People have more faith in a professional wrestler than a politician. His job is fake and they believe he is more real than Democrats and Republicans.” But I also had a predisposition to like him because, to be frankly honest, I watched my share of WWF wrestling in the ’80s. I don’t remember Jesse too much as a wrestler, but I always liked him as the bad guy commentator. It was him and Vince McMahon, who was the whitebread goodie-two-shoes commentator who would be outraged by Jesse’s comments. He was like the Alan Colmes of the WWF – the guy who did a poor job of making you root for the good guy point of view. I didn’t know at the time that McMahon owned the WWF, or that he was a huge prick who would later beef up on steroids and become the supervillain of the league. He was just some dork in a tie. (more…)

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Lipstick and Dynamite

Thursday, August 25th, 2005

Well I should get this out of the way upfront, there is no actual dynamite in this movie, or explosions of any literal kind. What this is is another wrestling documentary. It is not nearly as good as BEYOND THE MAT or my favorite, HITMAN HART: WRESTLING WITH SHADOWS, because it’s done mostly in that tv special kind of way with talking head interviews and Ken Burns style photo montages. (There is not all that much footage of the era they focus on.) But it’s a different and interesting angle on the wrestling topic. This one is all about lady wrestlers, told through interviews with a group of elderly women that used to do the deed back in the golden age.

Most of these women looked like b movie stars when they were young, but they were tough ladies with names like Gladys “Killem” Gillem, and as we know from the other wrestling documentaries, even if it’s fake, it’s a dangerous sport/artform/opera that destroys the body of pretty much anybody who does it long enough to be successful.

These are real interesting characters and they tell real interesting stories about the old days. They would have one guy in charge who sounds almost like their pimp, who would try to screw them both figuratively and the other figuratively. They talk about the days when it was actually illegal for women to wrestle and what it was like to go out there and do it anyway. Raging against the machine. And there’s a tragic story about a young girl who actually died during a match. Her opponent is still around to be interviewed in the movie and even though it wasn’t her fault, she seems to still feel guilty about it.

One thing they’re frustratingly vague about is the actual workings of a match. They talk about not being able to beat the head of the league’s girlfriend because they would get in trouble – so are they pretending the matches were real? Or were they fake but the outcome was improvised? I mean wouldn’t they already know they were gonna lose the match? It’s not really clear. (more…)

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Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

Not long ago I reviewed a VERY fucking excellent wrestling documentary by the name of Beyond the Mat. That was a picture about the Mick Foley, Jake “The Snake Roberts”, Terry Funk and some other wrestlers, exploring what it is that drives these whacked out motherfuckers to destroy their bodies and endure torturous pain every night for silly entertainment. All of the stars of the movie are fascinating and I almost would’ve liked to see a whole movie focusing on just one of them.

Well little did ol’ Vern know that there already WAS a picture focussing on one wrestler, a Canadian by the name of Bret “The Hitman” Hart, who was WWF tag team champion in the ’80s and world champion for quite a while in the ’90s. Bret doesn’t have the tragic dimension of a Jake “The Snake” or an aging Terry Funk, but what he does have is a great story and I would say that this picture is arguably even better than Beyond the Mat, which is saying alot.

I don’t know if there is an award like this but I think whoever made this picture should get a Lucky Motherfucker Award – Documentary, based on the fact that they set out just to do a story about Bret Hart and by accident happened to be filming him during a time which, as one film critic said, “is like a god damned SHakespeare type tragedy.” As a Film Writer I would have to agree with that. This is the story of a man born into wrestling – his dad is a wrestler, all of his brothers are wrestlers, all of his sisters are married to wrestlers. But Bret was destined to be the brightest star of them all, becoming for many years the most popular wrestler in the world and, according to the documentary, declared the most famous Canadian in the world. Which I guess isn’t saying much but still, give the canadians a chance I guess.

Bret was a dude who loved heroics, and although I remember him being a bad guy in the ’80s, he was known as a straight laced Good Guy when he was champ, and that is one of the themes of the picture – good guys and bad guys. Bret loved being a good guy who beat bad guys, and was distressed when wrestling started to change in the ’90s, and guys like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin – who cheated and sprayed beer around and flipped off the crowd, like bad guys – became crowd favorites. The WWF organizational type folks asked Bret to become a bad guy, and he didn’t want to. So what they worked out was an interesting thing where Bret would be a bad guy by telling the audience what he really believed – that americans are a bunch of jackasses for glorifying characters like Stone Cold. (more…)

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Beyond the Mat

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

Now to be honest I am not usually the type of dude to go to the documentarian type pictures. In fact, I never even seen one before in my life unless you count watching the news on TV. But this Beyond the Mat was playing at one of the multiplexes in my area so I decided to broaden my horizons and what not. Turns out there were a few others trying to broaden their horizons, because this was the type of crowd that yells “YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!” when the Freddy claws pop out of the guy in the X-Man preview, and who randomly yell out little jokes from the south park cartoons, you know, to be funny.

This is a documentary about the real lives of professional wrestlers, and I will tell you straight off the bat this movie is great even for those of us who don’t watch wrestling or south park. I mean I like the Roddy Piper pictures as much as the next guy, I’ve watched a little grapple here and there, but I don’t know what the fuck a mankind is or the rock or whatever. I mean who knows. It doesn’t matter.

Right at the beginning the movie explains yes, wrestling is fake, no, wrestling fans don’t think it’s real. But then it goes on to show just how devastating this “fake” sport is on a man’s body and in some cases his soul. It is a business that even more than football or prostitution chews up your body and when you’re old spits you out like a loogie never to think about you again. Because I mean think about it, how long do you think about a loogie after you spit it out, not very long.

There are about four major storylines in this movie. One is about Mick Foley who I guess wrestles as Mankind, Dude Love and Cactus Jack. But in this movie he’s a normal chubby guy who lives with his wife and adorable daughter and son. He is very nice and even normal and he always dreamed of being a wrestler. But it scares his family to always see him drenched from head to toe in his own blood after a match, saying, “Daddy’s okay, daddy’s okay, don’t worry about daddy.” (more…)

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