Grappling for Respect
A
new documentary shows why wrestling isn't as fake as
it may seem.
It's
okay. You can say it. Just five little words. Don't be
shy. "I...am...a...wrestling fan." You certainly wouldn't be alone if
you said it. Recent surveys show that as many as one in four Americans watch
professional wrestling, and the World Wrestling
Federation (WWF) routinely has the number-one rated program on the UPN network
and on cable. And yet many fans would echo the sentiments of Nutty Professor
screenwriter Barry Blaustein when he says, "I still watch wrestling. I
just don't tell a lot of people about it. Can you blame me?"
As any wrestling fan knows, it's
still an uphill battle for respect from nonfans. Which is one
of the reasons why Blaustein set out to make Beyond the Mat, a movie
that proves that while wrestling is not a competition and is most definitely
staged, "it's not as fake as you think." Blaustein traveled
with wrestlers for over two years, learning the business from the inside. He
focuses his lens on three principals: 32-year veteran Terry Funk, former '80s
superstar Jake "The Snake" Roberts, and Mick Foley (a.k.a. Mankind,
Cactus Jack, and Dude Love), a top draw in today's WWF and a best-selling
author to boot (his autobiography, Have a Nice Day!, reached number one
on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list). If you wonder why
the movie focuses primarily on WWF stars, it's because Eric Bischoff, the then
president of Ted Turner's World Championship Wrestling (which features Hulk
Hogan and Ric Flair, among other big names), refused to give Blaustein access.
WWF head Vince McMahon would ultimately make a similar decision, but more on
that later.
Wrestling programming in recent
years has gotten more and more like a soap opera, to the point where Larry
Sanders-style, staged behind-the-scenes politics are at least as important
to the show as the actual grappling, but truth proves to be even stranger than
fiction. Witness Terry Funk being told by his doctor that, after years of
action, his good knee has degenerative arthritis, and that "you
oughta get by with it just hurting all the time." When the other knee is
described as needing an immediate replacement, Funk asks the doctor if he'll be
able to get around comfortably later in life without a replacement, to which
the doctor responds, "You shouldn't be able to get around comfortably
now." And yet Funk still carries on, jumping off ladders, into barbed
wire, and so forth. While he does announce his retirement shortly afterward,
the film's closing sequence tells us that it lasted about three months, and in
fact Funk still wrestles today for WCW.
On the other hand, witness Jake
Roberts, a man who probably should retire but hasn't, as he needs the money to
fuel his crack addiction. When Blaustein interviews him shortly after he gets
high, the results are chilling to someone who grew up idolizing this man in the
'80s. His drug habit is understandable, however, given his history: Jake was
conceived when his father raped the 13-year-old daughter of a woman he was
dating; his sister was murdered by the ex-wife of her elderly husband, the body
never found; and his favorite stepdad was accidentally electrocuted. And the
cycle continues: Jake's relationship with his own daughter is every bit as
dysfunctional as his own uncomfortable parental communications. Think VH-1's Behind
the Music without the requisite redemption at the end.
Mick Foley has a happy and
loving family, but there's one problem: his tendency to take drastic physical
risks with his body for the sake of entertainment. Over the years, Foley has
lost an ear and four front teeth to the mat wars, and suffered numerous scars
and concussions, most famously when he was thrown off the top of a 15-foot
steel cage into a table. He tries to convince his children that none of it's
real, but when they see him getting stitches, the deceit becomes impossible.
During a main-event match in which Foley takes 12 chair-shots to the head,
Blaustein's camera captures Foley's family in tears in the audience, and when
Foley himself is finally confronted with the footage, it hits him harder than a
fall through a table. "I don't feel like such a good dad any more,"
he says, and in fact, Foley recently announced his retirement from active competition,
following yet another fall from a cage.
Beyond the Mat is successful on two fronts. First, by
showing the men behind the larger-than-life personas and the hard work that
they do, it makes a case for why nonfans should respect the business. Second,
for those who already respect the business, there's all kinds of trivia and
backstage stuff you've never seen before: Jim Ross during his bout with facial
paralysis feeding Jerry Lawler lines from backstage, head writer Vince Russo
giving Sable some last-minute stage directions, Ross and Jim Cornette
critiquing a rookie bout from backstage at Raw Is War (WWF's weekly
number-one rated cable show), and Vince McMahon giving encouragement as Darren
"Puke" Drozdov demonstrates the foul ability that earned him his
nickname. Fans can also play "before they were famous" with the
background shots of the likes of Tazz and the Dudley Boyz during their ECW
days, and a backstage look at Stephanie McMahon before she became an on-camera
personality. And just in case you were wondering, we do indeed get to see
perhaps the most well-known ex-wrestler in America today, Governor Jesse
Ventura of Minnesota, who stresses the importance of knowing when to move on.
Wider in scope than the recent
Canadian documentary Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows, Beyond the
Mat is a must-see for both fans and skeptics, but it's facing an uphill
battle. In a twist worthy of a wrestling story line, Vince McMahon has decided
that since he's not making any money from the film, none of his stars, Foley
included, are to promote the movie. He even used his clout to get TV spots
yanked from the