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Taped at 'The Wrestler' Press Day in Los Angeles, CA., on 12/10/2008
Audio recording and transcription by Wrestling-Online.com correspondent Joseph Palreiro
The below transcription is just a part of the 21 minute roundtable interview with 'The Wrestler' director Darren Aronofsky. You can listen to the full audio by clicking HERE.
Roundtable: We were just talking a few minutes ago about the photography from behind him (Rourke) for part of the film, for a lot of the film, actually, literally following him. I'm just wondering, can you talk a little about your choice in doing that?
Darren Aronofsky: It just sort of came, and a lot of this film, the first time I kinda went in....I did a lot of preparation, but I didn't come to the set with a shot list, and I just sort of waited for the actors to create what they were going to do on set. And I just really wanted to be open to what they were doing and then figure out how to photograph it. So, there's really no way to do it, if you're doing naturalism, to walk backwards with an actor (shooting) on their face because, first of all to move the camera backwards that quick, it's a pain in the butt, but also the actor has to sort of block it out because it's right there, so it's much more easy to go right behind them and this whole documentary approach it just sort of made sense....you're going to be with Mickey's character for 100 minutes and I think people are curious about Mickey and what he looks like.I wanted to give it a slow introduction....the way he uses his physicality is so unique. He's such a full-body actor. He's not just a face so....I think that I wanted to emphasize that.
RT: Why was this an important film for you to make? What made you want to do this project?
DA: That's always the hardest question, because it's not something that you're really conscious of. It's something that you feel in your belly and, if you make a film,
you've gotta live with these characters for two years and you've got to listen to many, many people say no to you, so you've got to feel it down there. You never know why it happens. It just kind of percolates up.
RT: Did you have a particular interest in wrestling?
DA: No. I mean, when I graduated film school in 1990-something, 3 or 4 or something, I made a list of ideas for films, and one was called "The Wrestler". I came up with the observation that no one had ever taken a serious look at this yet. It's such a major phenomenon in the United States. It has such a long history, and it's such a huge, popular sport. I mean, I think that's mostly because people think it's fake, and they think it's a joke. But to me, the whole line about what's real and what's fake is. If you're 250 pounds jumping off the top rope, no matter who you are, you're going to feel that. So it's not really fake. There's a whole real reality happening.
RT: A friend of mine told me that a lot of professional wrestlers from the 80's have begun dying because of the stuff they're done, the hardships that they've put into their bodies. Did you reseach any of that?
DA: The ones who have made it this far are few and far in-between. These guys have lived a really hard life and when you meet someone who, 10, 15 years ago was playing in front of 50,000 people and now they're suddenly in front of 200 people, and they're not just doing it for the money. They're doing it also to hold onto their craft, to hold onto the glory. It's really dramatic. We're going to do a premiere and we've got some legends coming down, and one of them is in a wheelchair, and it's very, very sad. They've got no protection, no pension and no worker's comp. Nothing. They work 350 days a year and by the time their bodies are used up, their real lives were basically in shambles. So, it's a story that hasn't been told, and we wanted to tell it.
RT: Did you spend much time going to the matches? And were their specific things you picked up if you did, going to those matches that wound up in the movie?
DA: Oh, everything. I mean, first of all everything you see, every wrestler in the movie is a real wrestler. All the fans are real fans. We put on real live wrestling promotions and put on the matches, and when the match was over, me, Mickey and the camerawoman would run out into the ring and shoot a piece of a match, then we'd leave a match would be put on and we'd kind of leapfrog through the night. My co-producer became a wrestling promoter to get it done. So, they're all real moments. Mickey's speech at the end, we witnessed someone from the Hart family, one of the young Hart offspring, that made the speech and we looked at each other, me and the writer and said "We've got to use this, this is great." Mickey, actually, 2 days before he did that, rewrote it, made it a little bit of his own.
RT: Tell us a little about the tone. I was so impressed that, it could have been so over the top, in kind of a phony way because some of those matches do come out like that. Even when they're onstage I didn't feel that. Was that a hard tone to find?
DA: Yeah. We were just being realistic. It was very tough because you're doing something...it was an interesting sound issue because....the hits are fake in one way,
but they're real as well in the sense that Mickey was actually getting hit, but he wasn't getting hit full-force. Neither do real wrestlers. They're holding their punches. They're still hitting each other and making huge noises, so when we got in sound design, because those noises were underneath crowd and camera noise and all that other noise, the question was what type of sound effect to put in because you want to put a sound effect in that's real, but not "John Wayne real"...or "John Wayne" fake. This whole line between fake and real was a real challenge as a filmmaker because you're showing something that's scripted and you're showing something where these athletes are taking care of each other, but they're also putting on a show and they are actually hurting themselves and each other. So, that line was a really big challenge of how to get that right. But once again, we were going for something that was naturalistic and realistic.
RT: I was particularly speaking more of the performances when they're onstage, like a Hulk Hogan, who (is) just so over the top, and I didn't feel you did that in this, which I really liked. Did you feel that when they were onstage that they were 3 times bigger than life?
DA: Hulk Hogan happens to be the biggest of the biggest performance, and that's why he's the biggest star. There are wrestlers that were definitely at the level of "Randy 'The Ram'". I mean, Randy was never supposed to be Hulk Hogan-style fame. He was supposed to be like a middle-ranged star. He was never supposed to be that famous. None of these names will mean anything to you (the non-wrestling press), but like a Brutus Beefcake, Greg "The Hammer" Valentine. It's not the super-duper level but anyone - Have you heard of Greg "The Hammer" Valentine? I'll bet you haven't, but all the people who maybe were into wrestling have heard of him. So he was famous in that world, but he never really broke out of it. I think Hulk started this whole other type of wrestling where it became as much about the performance as about the athletics. But there were a lot of guys who were just more about the athletics and on the same type of level of performance as The Ram.
RT: Can you talk about why Mickey was your best choice?
DA: Well, in retrospect it seems obvious, but you never really know that when you're casting. It's very hard to put your finger on it. It was a very hard role to cast, because there was the emotional end of the role. Someone had to pull off the humor as well as the sadness and tragedy, and to find an actor that's surprising, it's hard. But when you meet Mickey, he's got all his armor and he's got all these flashy colors on him, basically to distract you from looking in his eyes, which are just alive with so much soul and a lot of pain and as a director when you look in them, you just seen the fire burning. And you just gotta - it gets exciting. You want to capture that when you see that. And then there was the physicality. It was tough. Now it seems obvious, but normally he's about 195. He's a big guy, but nowhere near the size of these wrestlers and he had to put on 35 pounds of muscle. When I first met him, I didn't know if he could do something like that, but 6 months of lifting and 5,000 calories (a day). He did it.
RT: How movie would the movie have been with Nic Cage?
DA: If I were a painter, it would about color. The actor's the color. It would be a completely different film. Who knows what it would be?
RT: The first match that we see Randy in, where he actually cuts himself. That match seemed to have a kind of grittier, more underground feel than the other fights that we see...
DA: Grittier than the hardcore match?
RT: Yeah. It had this underground sort of feel.
DA: Well, I think it had to do with the room. It was the room. The room was a dance hall in Jersey. It's a place where they actually hold wrestling events and the lights never really come down. There are no big spots, and that's how they do it there so I think it feels less of a stadium. The next 2 matches were bigger arenas, more traditional wrestling places and I think that's what gave it that feel. You could see really deep into the stands and stuff. (In the) CZW and Ring Of Honor fights where you could see 4 or 5 rows into the fans and that was it, that's what gave it that feel. It just feels very low-rent, but it IS low-rent.
RT: You know what really complements the tone of the film is what you show backstage, the camaraderie that exists between these guys that if you don't know anything about the profession you might think it's (the show) real and yet they're choreographing everything. Is that intentional to show that?
DA: Oh, absolutely. I wanted to show as much of the world as possible. A lot of that was improvised and it just sort of happened. We were backstage with the wrestlers and I said, "Hey guys. Just talk about your matches" and we just shot it. The scene with Necro Butcher, the guy with the staple gun. That was just an improvised scene. We were waiting to go onstage and I said, "Oh, we've got some time, let's just shoot the two of you talking." I said, "Mickey, as him where he's from, where he got his name. Ask him what you're going to do tonight." Necro just made up those lines and he came alive.
RT: Is he a real guy and is that his act?
DA: Oh yeah. He's the Necro Butcher. He's kind of this underground cult American Hero.
RT (W-O): He was really tame in the movie.
DA: Exactly. Go to Youtube and look up "Necro Butcher". (pause) If you want to, if you want more gore. (pause) If you dare. He's kind of this top-billing marquee name. He comes out, he's always the last match. And the crowd goes crazy when he comes out because they know they're going to get blood. But he's the sweetest guy in the world. He's actually changed his name. CZW now calls him "Hollywood" Dylan Summers. Dylan Summers is his real name. And he's got a manager named Aaron Aronofsky. I've already been mocked!
RT: The parallels in the story between Randy and Pam are central to the story. Can you talk a little bit about developing Marisa's character because I thought that was another interesting aspect of the story in that she's going through a very similar situation.
DA: When you're doing an independent film and a stripper shows up, a lot of red flags go (up). But the similarities between a stripper and a wrestler, first of all, the truth of the matter is that when real wrestlers are done with their matches, they usually take their gate and they go to the strip club. So, that's where part of the idea started. Then the more we thought about it, an aging stripper and an aging wrestler have a lot of similarities. They're both onstage, using their bodies.
They both have stage names. They both create a fantasy for the audience. They're both endangered by time. So it just became very interesting. For us, as much as she is a romantic interest, she's a mentor for him because she's got a better sense of what's real and fake. Well, his own sense of real and fake, he kind of ignores it.
RT: Can you talk about the casting of Marisa for this role?
DA: I think she's...always talented, often underused and brings a lot of complexity. I thought it would bring a surprise performance from her because she's cast as being very sweet and I like the fact that she played against it.
RT (W-O): There's a lot of parallel to the (wrestling) character of Jake "The Snake" Roberts. I don't know if you or (writer) Rob Siegel went back the documentary "Beyond The Mat" because Jake and Randy's stories parallel greatly, especially the estranged daughter angle, the drug use. Did you look into that and pull anything from that?
DA: Well, we were working on the film for a long time before that came out. When that documentary came out, we were a little concerned because we saw the parallels. Then again, I was relieved because it meant a lot of people would see that documentary and would be introduced into that world, so it wouldn't be so alien. Unfortunately, a lot of these old-timers that we met, a lot of these legends...Jake's story isn't that original. There are many, many guys out there with the same story. It's almost a cliche. They work 350 days a year and by the time, as I said, their bodies are done, their home lives are destroyed. Then they're just driving on fumes. Rowdy Roddy Piper came to a screening the other night, and he was the first legend to see it. He said, "It's not my story, but it IS my story." So, I think a lot of legends will relate to it.
RT (W-O): He's seen the story over and over again.
DA: Exactly.
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