MOOLAH RAM

The Wrestler is on the money

Much like pro-wrestling itself, the appeal of THE WRESTLER will vary from viewer to viewer.

Some will observe it as a freakshow, or through the kinds of eyes that would stare at an aging wild animal in captivity; its depiction of over-the-hill wrestler Robin Ramzinski (Mickey Rourke), a.k.a. Randy “The Ram” Robinson, as the caged and aged king of beasts, no longer able to rule.

Others – many movie critics among them, I suspect – will marvel at what, to them, will be a revelatory look at how the wrestling business actually works. Those of us who’ve been paying attention as fans for all these years will either respond with an “I told you so!” or astonishment that any of this comes as news.

The fanboys, and I definitely include myself in this group, can be well-pleased that finally, FINALLY, a movie has come along that depicts the business as it is, recognizing that the potential for drama comes not from the pretense of competition, but in the lives of those who work toward that pretense. The best pro-wrestling movies to date have all been documentaries – HITMAN HART: WRESTLING WITH SHADOWS, BEYOND THE MAT, and THE BACKYARD – and Darren Aronofsky has clearly watched them all. Better yet, he doesn’t try to dumb things down for the casual viewer: insider lingo like “take it home,” “getting over,” “heel,” “face,” and so on is used but not expressly defined.

There may well be hardcore fans disappointed that the entire movie does not revolve around the squared circle, as practically the entire second act is devoted to Randy’s everyday life after wrestling. What we have here may, indeed, not be the definitive wrestling movie, but it certainly lays the groundwork and throws down the gauntlet to any and all comers who would step up to the plate (I realize that’s an arguably out-of-place baseball metaphor, but if I said “step up to the Gorilla position,” only insiders would know what the hell I meant. Besides, Pete Rose is in the WWE Hall of Fame. Really, he is).

That said, fans may also enjoy playing spot the reference. Randy has the hairdo of Kevin Nash, the dysfunctional daddy-daughter dynamic of Jake “The Snake” Roberts, the scars of Roddy Piper, and the steroid-enlarged heart of many who left us too soon, from Rick Rude to Davey Boy Smith. He hides blades in his wrist tape, fixes cuts with superglue, and trades in illicit drugs – prescription and otherwise – to maintain his physique and eliminate “bitch tits.” The movie’s opening sequence presents a convincing array of old-school fliers and articles from Pro Wrestling Illustrated and the G.C. London family of wrestling magazines, all of which used to simply make up articles to further the illusory storylines of ‘80s ring rivalries.

Conveniently, a close perusal of these indicates that “The Ram” was a big star in Verne Gagne’s now-defunct AWA, the promotion that first introduced the world to the likes of Hulk Hogan and the Road Warriors. The elephant in the room is of course World Wrestling Entertainment – there’s no way to mention them in the movie without getting sued, and creating a fictional version wouldn’t do when every other promotion depicted in the movie is a real one (“Wild Samoan” Afa Anaoi’s WXW, the ultra-violent Combat Zone Wrestling, and Ring of Honor provide the settings for the movie’s three big matches). The AWA, however, lasted enough into the ‘80s that it’s still believable as having provided a heyday, and in fact the notion that Randy is an alumnus from a rival promotion also helps to explain why, as a legend, he wouldn’t be so well off today, when retired WWE stars are actually doing better than the old boys used to, what with the company’s “Legends” program that merchandises the heck out of history. Gagne made it into the WWE Hall of Fame as part of a deal that gave Vince McMahon the rights to all the old AWA footage, but Vinnie Mac has never been high on stars he himself didn’t create or at least seriously modify.

The only reference to Vince in this movie is a subtle one – Randy’s estranged daughter is named Stephanie, which cannot be pure coincidence in a film so savvy with its subject matter. Current Smackdown superstar Ron “R-Truth” Killings shows up, playing a bad influence who induces Randy to fall off the wagon, but he was not yet signed to WWE at the time of production, and this unfortunate quirk of scheduling may put him in Vince’s doghouse; my guess is that Vince won’t be a fan of this movie for the same reasons he didn’t like BEYOND THE MAT, i.e. it shows the whole story of the business, including the bad stuff. I would be very surprised if, when the flick goes into general release, WWE.com doesn’t put out some sort of statement reaffirming the company’s commitment to drug testing and cardio screening. I’ve never bought into the idea that a movie which shows the pitfalls of something is necessarily negative (war movies that show people dying violently, for example, can and do still affirm the heroism of soldiers) and judging by all the professionals who contributed to the movie, a large number of wrestlers agree. (Rob Van Dam is the most notable exception so far, having said online that he thinks Aronofsky made a joke of his life’s goals.)

We first meet Randy in what appears to be an elementary school, prepping in a classroom for the match he’s about to take on in the gymnasium. For a moment, he’s a hero, both to the up-and-comers who share the locker room, and the small-but-adoring crowd. But mere moments later, he’s headed back to the trailer park where he lives, locked out by the landlord, and forced to spend the night in his van, washing down pain pills with a beer. As with many a faded star, we can assume he never quite got the concept of saving money when he was on top.

Of course, spending money on strippers doesn’t exactly balance the ol’ ledger much, but when one of them is Marisa Tomei, hell, anybody’d be tempted. Named Cassidy in the club and Pam when off-duty, she is in many ways a funhouse mirror version of Randy, a performer who puts her body on the line every night in a display more athletic and demanding than many people realize, and rapidly approaching the middle-age mark where she can no longer compete with the younger, faster models. She and Randy are kindred spirits, but separated by professional boundaries – she can’t allow herself to feel for a client. But when he suffers a heart attack after a particularly brutal hardcore match against indie fave Necro Butcher (playing himself, wonderfully, in one of the best onscreen performances by a wrestler ever), things change, and the seams of Randy’s world, like so many deep wounds held together only by glue, come busting open as everything really falls apart. In a bid for closure, he tries to reconcile with his estranged lesbian daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), and increases his hours at the grocery-store day job he holds down, trying to turn life at the deli counter into something vaguely entertaining and crowd-pleasing. But real life isn’t something he’s good at; like many an entertainer, he’s unable to leave the stage, and certainly can’t handle being forcibly pushed off of it.

Some are calling this Mickey Rourke’s big comeback, but I dunno; I’ve got an 18” talking Sin City Marv action figure that says he already came back in full force two years ago. Marv, like a wrestling superstar, inhabited a hyper-stylized world and could always come back after taking a beating; in the real world, he would have become like Randy the Ram had he lived long enough. Can’t imagine Nicolas Cage, who was originally cast in the role, pulling it off. Unless he played the Honky Tonk Man.

My two problems with the film are really quite minor in the grand scheme of things. First, the Bruce Springsteen song. Bruce is one of those guys everybody is supposed to like no matter what, but this is a movie about pro-wrestling, with a lead character who expresses that even Kurt Cobain was too much of a pussy for his tastes. Slash contributes to the score, and many glam-rock hits of the ‘80s are peppered throughout. So why, over the end credits, do we get mopey Bruce singing about how wrestlers are one-trick ponies? It may win over the newcomers, but it plays as an insult to the athletes. Ask Mickey if he thought his character was a one-trick pony. Better yet, have Bruce sing the song in front of Rowdy Roddy Piper.

And then there’s Marisa Tomei’s back tattoo. It’s big, it looks fresh, and I can tell it isn’t real, unlike those on Mickey, which look naturally faded and may or may not be fake. I don’t care that I don’t believe Marisa is really inked like that – that isn’t the issue. The issue is that a tat like that would run around $500, and this is a woman who is stripping in order to save money to buy a house. The counterargument might be well, but don’t the tattoos make her sexier and help her get more money? Not so much. I like ‘em, but the majority of people I’ve talked to who attend strip clubs regularly and are into porn don’t care for the really big designs. Most prefer no tattoos at all. It’s not impossible that Cassidy wouldn’t have big ink like that, but it is pretty unlikely, if one were to play the odds.

(It wouldn’t have been my choice to cast Ernest “The Cat” Miller as Ram’s archrival, either – Miller, who only got into wrestling because WCW president Eric Bischoff knew him from karate training, was never particularly good at the craft, and would certainly never have been given an evil Arab gimmick by any rational promoter. But he works okay here. Coulda been better.)

Minor points, those – and they stand out only because Aronofsky got everything else so right. THE WRESTLER opens on the heels of aspiring wrestler Mike Bell – featured in the documentary BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER – dying just on the cusp of middle age, like so many before him. And many who did make it into their later years, men like Jake Roberts, stumble around in drug-induced stupors wrestling newcomers for a handful of bucks to replace the ones they pissed away. Others, like Terry Funk, continue to break their bodies because their line of work never included a pension.

But it’s the deaths that haunt, and THE WRESTLER leaves you to imagine whether or not The Ram will be just another statistic, like Curt Hennig, Rick Rude, the British Bulldog, Road Warrior Hawk, the Von Erichs, Crush, Bam Bam Bigelow, Eddie Guerrero, Renegade, and so many more. This is a movie for them, and for those who cheered them, and those who miss them. Like Jesse the Body used to say, it tells it like it is.