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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 20 minute roundtable interview with Mickey Rourke, who plays the leading role in the movie 'The Wrestler'. You can listen to the full audio by clicking HERE.
Roundtable: How did you approach this (role)? You never went over the top. It was very personal and I think it could have been easy to play it that way (over the top).
Mickey Rourke: Well, I think the main thing that attracted me to the piece was the fact that I had the opportunity to work with a really special director (Darren Aronofsky). In the years I've been working, I can count them on maybe 4 or 5 fingers and I can put him right there at the top of the list with (Francis Ford) Coppola and the rest of them, (Michael) Cimino, Adrian Lyne. I think guys like him come around every 30 years and I think he's going to have a long, very distinguished career and break some new ground with the way he shoots films. What I like about him right now is that's he's not making movies to become rich. He lets his wife (actress Rachel Weisz) do that (chuckle). He's very uncompromising. He has a lot of integrity. And he's smarter than the rest of us. I knew why he wanted me to do the part.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. He really fought for me to do this role. He had a lot of resistance and he kept fighting for me to do it and then finally I lost the part. And I guess even when I lost it he kept fighting for me. It worked out, and the thing I think I was most afraid of was when I met him, he's very much an authority kind of figure. He's very direct, very uncompromising with everything in his life, I think. He likes to think of himself as this liberal, open-minded kind of person, but he's the captain. He runs the ship. That's just the way it is and he points his finger at you. He doesn't understand that somebody may break it. He didn't meet me 15 years ago, thank God. Somebody said to me, "Do you think you could've given the same performance 15 years ago?" and I went, "(expletive) yeah." Then I thought about it and said "No." I would've told him to ______, or I would've kicked him in the ass. He just was smart enough and instinctive enough that when we had to do really hard scenes or important scenes, emotional scenes like the one with Evan (Evan Rachel Wood, who plays his estranged daughter), he brought the best out of me in a certain kind of way when he spoke to me and I had already made, let's say , as an actor, an inner choice in what I was using and he didn't disturb that at all. But he would say little things to me to just raise the bar each take. And, he said the right things and he just surprised me because I had thought I had already delivered two takes that were gold. Then he'd come over and he would just talk to me in a way that like, Vince Lombardi would talk to a player when he needed - when he just needed two more yards. Just give me two more yards...and an inch. I really enjoyed that way. It was competitive in a way. He challenged me in a way.
I remember one time I was in a boxing match and I was getting the (expletive) kicked out of me. I went back to the corner and (trainer) Freddie Roach said something to me. He slapped me in the face and I was able to go back in and take care of business, because I had to. With Darren it's the same way. I've gotta keep moving forward. You can only do that with a director if you trust him and you respect him. He just earned more and more trust and respect each day. I think he felt that way about me and I felt that way about him. Let's say when I was working with Evan it just rubbed off. She was already talented enough in her own right. To me, she's the best actress I ever worked with. Under the circumstances of - her and I - I didn't even know her name, we just did it. We introduced ourselves, I think, a week or two later. I couldn't remember her name anyway. But the hardest part, really was about getting myself physically ready, to pull off looking (like these guys), because these guys are (expletive) huge. I walk around at 192 pounds and to get up to 235 in just over a six month period was a lot of work. It started there. I remember when it was like, "Oh, we're going to work." It felt like I had just done three movies in the gym. There weren't even chairs to sit in. The extras were like, half of Darren's family from Brooklyn. It was that kind of shoot. Everybody was sweating and working 17 hours a day. I remember waking up in the morning getting like 4 and a half, 5 hours sleep because we were pushing, doing double turnarounds. I remember cursing getting out of bed. I couldn't get out of bed until the trainer would pick me up because everything just, didn't work. You know, the knees and the back and getting out of bed feeling like I just got INTO bed. It was grueling, really hard. It was hard, just not for me but for the camera operator all the way down to Darren. Nobody really slept. Nobody really rested. EVerybody just worked their ass off for this guy.
RT: Mickey, it's been a long journey for you. You've had a lot of personal obstacles in your life. How does it feel to be back on top. People are talking about your getting an Oscar nomination and you've already won a few critic's awards as well.
MR: Yeah. (Expletive) started to happen for us in Venice. We didn't even have a distributor, you know? But I knew and felt that we had something after about six days, but I didn't know it would go this far. Then we went to Toronto and people were really receptive. Then some reviews came out that were really (positive). I wasn't really surprised at that. I think the thing that's kinda unreal was for, like, after ten years went by and I wasn't working, I thought I really didn't want to be in this business anymore if I'm going to come in to work a day or two. You know, that kind of career? If I can't be the man, I'd rather just go back to Miami and do whatever the (expletive) falls into my lap. After "Sin City", that kinda opened the door a little bit, and then this thing kicked the door down. I'm really lucky to have a second chance because I really misbehaved for fifteen years really (expletive) badly. I regret it. I just didn't have the tools to change at the time. I had to really work and change myself and work with someone to get the information of why I misbehaved and destroyed everything I worked so hard to do. I worked really hard to be the best actor I could be whe I was at the Actor's Studio. I think early on, with the early success, that brought old rules up and I questioned my life and what happened in my life. Instead of feeling good about it, I was really angry about it.
RT: Were there moments, playing Randy, where it got uncomfortable?
MR: Many, many. Yeah. It was one of the reasons than, when I was replaced early on, everyone was upset about it but me. Because when I sat across from Darren, I was looking at him and listening to that monotone voice he has. The way he looks at you, you can see how smart the guy is, just hearing him. I knew he'd want his pound of flesh, and I knew why he wanted me. I thought, "I'm going to have to revisit some dark, painful places." I wasn't so much worried about the physical stuff because I was that, and not getting paid to work so hard. I think I was relieved when I was replaced I thought, "Oh let me just go do some half-assed movie" where you get paid ten times what they were offering me on this. But there was the other side of my brain then went, "Man this is a chance to work with someone really good." And there was a lot in the character in the movie that I...I kinda didn't really want to go there. I resisted the closeness of it. It was kind of a guy's desperate,
hopeless situation that he's in. I remember when the movie was over, during my "lost years", Springsteen and I were close friends for twenty years and I didn't even talk to him for thirteen years. I wrote him this letter, this long letter about how I had been lucky because I hit bottom and then I was able to find someone to give me information why and why these things happened to me. Why the anger and the armor and the toughness and all that macho (expletive) and the craziness and the being unaccountable not being worried about the consequences and why all that surfaced again. There were issues I had that weren't really about those. It was more about shame and abandonment that I was hiding with the other things, and I think the success made me just short-circuit and hate being, I don't know. I hated stuff. I think I wanted to be taken care of when I was little, not when I was an adult.
RT: Would you say you're lucky to be alive now, having been through all of that?
MR: Oh yeah! Due to natural circumstances, or my own, (expletive) yeah! (laughs) Yeah, I mean, thank God. But when I wrote Bruce this letter, I said in the letter to him that I'm lucky that I was able to meet a few good men to help me change my ways and the change took place over a long period of time. I wrote to him how Randy doesn't have this available and so I think when you hear the song, he got it. He got it all. And I think that's one of the reasons why he wrote the song for us. And we couldn't afford to pay him, and we could afford to pay Axl (Rose), so those guys stepped up to the plate for us. In a big way.
RT: Was "Sweet Child Of Mine" a meaningful song for you?
MR: Yeah. When I used to fight I used to come out to that song. There was one day where I was getting ready to come out in front of this live arena because we were shooting in-between live shows, I was standing backstage and I started going like this (shadow boxing), and went "Whoa! It's not a boxing match" but it brought up, "Let's (expletive) bring it!" Because in the dressing room, you're nervous and scared, but when your music comes on, that's when you come out and you're not supposed to be afraid anymore. That's when the fun stuff starts.
RT: Is acting kind of 'the ring' for you?
MR: Sure. I see it. Man, I love competition. I loved playing football in high school. I played with the same guys for ten years. We played as a team and it was competitive. You know, nobody want to come and...I don't wanna lose a game by one touchdown or one point. I don't wanna (expletive) lose at all. I don't wanna lose when I'm playing sports and I don't wanna lose when I'm acting. Darren's going to challenge me to bring it, to be the best actor I can be. I'm going to give him everything I've (expletive) got. I'm going to give him my (expletive) blood. I got no problem with that. At all. People say it's not competitive, but it IS competitive. I've worked with actors that competitively can raise you to another level, because they're working off you. And you can get some (expletive) in there that wants to do something different, and then I'll just roll him up and smoke him like a cheap cigarette. Either you can work together and bring each other up to another level, or you can do that other thing, and then I'm going to make toast out of your ass. So, it's up to the other person, you know?
RT: Have you spoken to some of the wrestlers who've seen the movie? What were their reactions?
MR: That was one of the big hoorahs we got. We went out to the Valley to do one of those BAFTA Q and A's and Darren and his big mouth says "I hear we've got Rowdy Roddy Piper in the audience. Are you there?" Then we hear a few seconds later, "Yeah, I'm here." He looks at me and goes, "Whew." So he (Darren) goes, "Well we'd like know...This is your world. We hope we made a movie that depicts you in a way that you...did you like it? Did you hate it? Do you have anything to say?" And there was a long pause. Darren looked at me and he did that thing with his eyebrows (arches eyebrows), and I go, "Darren's nervous." Like when I took him to see Springsteen, he (expletive) himself. 85,000 people in Giants Stadium and we go backstage to meet him and Darren goes, "I'm nervous. I never get nervous." I said, "Shut up and come with me." And then (Roddy) Piper gave us the highest compliments that anyone could give. I mean, it's like, man we made this movie and these are the guys we wanted to pay homage to...So Roddy Piper and Darren and I met backstage and he was very emotional about it. And he said some things about being at the other end of your career. You know, he's not in Madison Square Garden right now. And these were really hard things to hear.
RT: Did you base it (the character) from any wrestler you did research on?
MR: Only the hearing aid thing. It was from a wrestler that I knew that my brother was friends with. We'd be at Gold's Gym pumping iron, I'm talking 15, 16 years ago and I'd say "Magic, his name was Magic, can I tell you a joke?" My brother would say, "Bro, he ain't got his (expletive) hearing aids in!" I'd say something to him and I'd walk over and I'd see Magic go (turning up hearing aid). But he did it in both ears because he had one in both ears.
RT: Can you talk a little about when you were first in the ring and you had a crowd of people watching you?
MR: Yeah I was (expletive) myself. I was (expletive), all 234 pounds of muscle and I had to do this one scene where I flip over and do the scissors, and I hadn't nailed it in rehearsals. We got real close. And I wanted to do it because it was hard to do. And I remember because my hands are pretty busted up from boxing and they lock on me. So I remember for that scene I put extra tape on my hands and I took my kneepads out so I'd be a little lighter because I thought if I nail it, I'm going to nail it on the first take or, in front of these people, I'm going to be falling down worse and worse and worse. And I hit it on the first (take), and it's a real hard maneuver, especially being 30 pounds heavier. I remember going, "I've got to press down. I've got to jump." And I did it, and I'm prouder of that than anything in the movie really. I looked over at Darren and I had a big smile on my face and so did I go, "That's it. One take. Let's go. Move! I can't do that again."
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