(Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky, on the set of The Wrestler, above) Into the Ring with Aronofsky
By Terry Keefe
[Note: This interview will appear in the February issue of Venice Magazine.]
As someone who has spent quite a bit of time researching the backstage goings-on of professional wrestling for two different screenplays (most notably a script called Mat Wars, which was a biopic of wrestling super-promoter Vince McMahon), I can say that director Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler captures the lives of professional wrestlers with an authenticity that has never been seen before in a fiction film. It is also, somewhat incredibly, the first major fiction film in recent memory to really begin mining the pure narrative gold inherent in this strange showbiz netherworld where sport and spectacle collide. Although there have now been a number of landmark documentaries on the subject of wrestling, of which Barry Blaustein’s Beyond the Mat and Paul Jay’s Wrestling with Shadows are my two favorites, studio fiction films about professional wrestling, such as 2000’s Ready to Rumble, have either played the wresling world using broad, and largely unfunny, comedy; or as a real sport, such as in the 1989 Hulk Hogan-starrer No Holds Barred, where the wrestling matches are presented as a genuine athletic contest. But, the “real” world of professional wrestling contains all the drama, and dark comedy, that any single story needs, without having to gild the lilly in any significant way, and it is in depicting that world in a straightforward, almost neorealistic, style that Aronofsky finds the strength of The Wrestler. That, and the performance of Mickey Rourke as Randy "The Ram" Robinson, which is a case of a performer meeting material that fits him perfectly for where he is in his actual life and career. The film is partially about the attempted comeback of the Ram, but it’s impossible to totally separate the Ram’s comeback story from the real-life arc of Rourke himself. That’s not to call this stunt casting on Aronofsky’s part, as that would cheapen a performance which will be admired for years, long after audience awareness of Rourke’s career path has diminished; but both the Ram and Rourke are former big stars from 20 years prior, pretty in their youth and pretty ragged-looking at times today. The Ram longs for his heyday of the 80s, and when the well-chosen soundtrack of hair metal tunes from that period plays throughout the film, it is far more related to character than the typical soundtrack assemblage. The songs of Quiet Riot and Ratt play constantly in the Ram’s head anyway; we the audience are just privy to it during this part of his life. And similarly, you can certainly imagine Rourke himself pining for the days when he was Harry Angel of Angel Heart. Lost youth. Lost promise. But with the chance of redemption.
One of the most heartbreaking things for me when researching my own wrestling projects was the discovery that many of the wrestlers who I watched, and idolized, as a child had met tragic ends before ever getting out of middle age. To call the wrestling lifestyle tough defines understatement when you know some of the elements that it entails. Wrestlers for the big companies are on the road for a large number of days each year. Inevitably, that seems to take a toll on their home life and personal relationships. Although wrestling is staged, this isn’t like being a movie stuntman, because performing before a live audience requires that the moves look real without any special effects. When you see a wrestler being dropped from the ring to the concrete, he often is really hitting the concrete. Night after night. A famous professional wrestler (I believe Terry Funk) was once quoted as saying the reason his punches looked so real is because he was really hitting his opponents. Pain killer addiction is common, as is steroid addiction. When we meet Randy the Ram 20 years after his peak, he is wrestling on the small indie show circuit, where wrestlers often get paid $100 per performance, if that, for a crowd that demands they continue to take big and bloody risks with their already-broken bodies. The Old-Timers Day of professional wrestlers, as depicted at the autograph-signing show that the Ram attends, is a sad affair, with many of the former stars crippled or on their way. But the Ram can’t let go of his glory days, and although he suffers a heart attack after a match, he is determined to have at least one last big payday in the ring, a rematch against his former rival from the 80s, an Iranian villain called the Ayatollah but played by an African-American in the film (wrestler Ernest “The Cat” Miller). Although the Ram makes his ring entrance to Guns ‘n Roses “Sweet Child ‘o Mine,” Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” was also playing in my head. The Wrestler is a reinvention for both Rourke and Aronofsky himself, who has taken on a much more objective style with this film. It’s gritty and fly-on-the-wall, and it suits the story well.
I can’t write an article about Aronofsky without mentioning his landmark 1998 film Pi, which for me at least, was one of the Top 5 indies of the 90s. For those who have never seen it, the story is about a computer and mathematics genius named Max (Sean Gullette) who has possibly stumbled onto the name of God, causing a bunch of different posses to pursue him for it, including the intelligence community and a group of Kabbalah-obsessed Orthodox Jews. Pi doesn’t actually provide the answers to the universe, but it does manage the deft trick of making you feel as if you touched the spiritual yourself during the lead character’s journey. And it also serves as a launching pad for the discussion of some mighty big ideas. That the plot is structured as a thriller gives its metaphysical tangents a framework to play in, so that the film never becomes so esoteric that it loses sight of entertaining the audience. It’s a marvel of independent filmmaking and one worth seeing in a theater if possible. The grainy, but high-contrast black and white photography by Matthew Libatique is exquisite at times.
Aronofsky and I met for shrimp burritos at the famous Tortilla Grill on Abbot Kinney in Venice, on a very rainy, cold day in mid-December of 2008.
What were the origins of the idea for The Wrestler?
Darren Aronofsky: I had the idea when I graduated from film school. I made a list of ideas for films, and The Wrestler was one of them. It just came out of an observation that no one has ever done a serious picture on wrestling, so that's where it all began.
At the time, were you thinking of presenting wrestling as a real contest in the story? Because until the mid-90s or so, there was very little information available as to what really happens behind-the-scenes.
That’s true. I wasn't sure at first. But I think, the more research I did on it, and the more I got to meet the world, and the more access I got backstage...I realized how real it all was.
What I always say is that professional wrestling is staged, but not exactly what you would call “fake.”
Yeah, that’s exactly right.
Did the screenwriter Robert Siegel have a script that he brought to you and then was developed further, or did you commission him for the original work?
We commissioned him. We gave him a few ideas, and we gave him the aesthetic of the world, and then we just let him loose.
How long was the development process on the script?
Well, we developed it all the way up to the day we shot. And even on set, we were working on it. Rob Siegel was on strike (during the Writers Strike), but we did a lot of improvisation and stuff.
Had you been a fan of wrestling when you were growing up?
Not really. I think I had, like, an eight-month romance with it.
That's about what I had. But because I was a kid, it seemed like forever.
Right [laughs]. I went to one match at Madison Square Garden. This was before Wrestlemania even began. In fact, Hulk Hogan was a bad guy at the time.
I remember that. That's when I was watching in the early 80s.
You remember Tony Garea and Rick Martel?
Sure, yeah! The tag team champions. I loved those guys.
They were my favorite. Tony Garea would get beat up forever, and then Rick Martel would come in and save the match.
Yeah, he would come in after what they call the “hot tag.”
Is that what that was called?
Yeah, the guy who comes in after being tagged and rescues the guy who is getting beaten up.
Right, that was always how it happened [laughs]. And the Moondogs, I was a fan of theirs also. It was funny, because, you'll appreciate this…Mickey was trained by one of the Wild Samoans. Afa [Anoa’i].
Yeah, I read that!
Afa was the sweetest guy in the world. Just a sweetheart. But he was always a bad guy on the shows, wasn't he?
The Wild Samoans were always bad guys, yeah. The worst of the bad guys, actually.
It's fun to meet a lot of these guys, like we also got to meet Nikolai Volkoff. He’s also a sweet guy. And Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka. It's just wild to see these guys who were heroes, you know, but also… seeing where their lives have taken them, from where they once were, these legends. It's just so…a fascinating story, I thought.
(Afa Anoa'i, the former professional wrestling star, and a bloody Mickey Rourke, who Afa trained for The Wrestler. Below is a promotional pic of Afa in his 80s heyday, as part of the tag team The Wild Samoans, with his partner Sika.)
I know that Mickey was your first choice for the role, and then there was some point where Nicolas Cage came along and was attached. But ultimately you went back to Mickey.
Yeah, it was a small window [with Nicolas Cage]. It took a really long time to get the money to make it with Mickey. In fact, for many, many, many months, we didn't think it would be possible. No one believed in him, and no one wanted to make the film. But then, as soon as we had a movie star, it became a movie, and overnight, or within two weeks, we had the funding, and the green light. It was a lot more money, but it just didn't work as well, so…you know, eventually, we went back to Mickey, and took a lot less money, but we were able to make it.
Even with Mickey’s role in Sin City, it was hard to get financing on this. That's surprising.
Yeah, and all we wanted was six million dollars. It was tough.
So how much training did Mickey do for the role?
He did six months of bodybuilding.
He is big in this.
Yeah, he put on thirty-five pounds of muscle. And then he did three months of wrestling training.
The press isn't picking up on that enough. I wish they would give him a little more credit for how good his wrestling looks. How polished it looks.
Yeah, when we finished the film, some wrestlers came up and said, “There's not a wrestler in the world that won't believe you're not a wrestler.” And he did some great moves, and if you look at it, it's all him. Mickey did it all.
Did you stop in a bit while he was training with Afa, or did you just see Mickey when he was a fully-formed wrestler?
Oh no, it was a little scary at first. It took a long time. I thought that the fact that he was a boxer would make things easier, but actually, I think it made things twice as hard, because he had to sort of unlearn how to move like a boxer. They move so much differently than wrestlers, so that took a long time for him to let go…to learn how to just basically move in the ring and ham it up. So that part was tough.
There was always the serious possibility that he could get injured during that training, too.
True. Well, he did. I don’t know…it was somewhere between actually getting hurt, and…he's a bit lazy, Mickey [laughs]. He's so talented, but for years he's been able to just walk through roles, sort of put his feet up on the desk. When I kind of talked to him about going out there and doing the wrestling, I think he was up for it, but didn't realize how much energy it would take. So I had to push him a little bit.
(Rourke wrestling Ernest Miller, in his role of the Ayatollah, in the final match of the film.)How much of the “extreme wrestling” stuff, such as the razor blading and the weapons, did you guys do for real, and how much of it was, for lack of a better word, staged?
Well, there's movie magic happening. There's a lot of make-up, of course. I mean, Mickey's not bleeding, but that guy Necro Butcher (Editor’s Note: Mickey’s opponent in the bloody extreme match and a real-life wrestler), he's a real dude. He's a cult American hero.
That's a great way to put it.
He is. He's the top-billing guy. You go to any of these matches, he's the last match always. And the crowd loves him, they go crazy for him. And so a lot of stuff he did was real. Because it's what he does every day. But we did it in a very safe way. There's movie magic, but there are also real stunts happening, but nothing very, very dangerous.
You shot the wrestling matches at actual shows with a live crowd, in between the regular wrestling cards that they were there for. What was that experience like?
The wrestling fans, you know, well…the hardcore wrestling fans are a different breed than the other wrestling fans. That was the Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW) promotion, and they, and the other two promotions [which included the promotion Ring of Honor], they were all great. The fans, they get the theatrics of it, so they knew what to scream when different things happened, they just really played with it. CZW was the Philly crowd, and they were a tougher crowd [laughs]. They were pretty brutal and aggressive, but we did our best to sort of keep them entertained, and to keep it going, and we got it done.
How much time did you have to shoot with these live crowds? Were you able to do multiple takes, or did you have to use a couple of cameras at once because of time constraints?
We had to shoot with one camera. At CZW, we really limited how much stuff we had to actually do in front of a live crowd. There's a lot of stuff that we were able to cheat when the crowd wasn't there. You can see in those scenes that there are a few angles into the mat, and a few other things we played around with, to make it do-able. But in the other matches, we did shoot a lot of it in front of a crowd: the slapping contest, the coming out to the ring, entering the ring, the exiting the ring, you know. It was a lot of difficult things to get, but I think the crowds were all psyched, in general.
(Above: Aronofsky directs Rourke in the ring.)Did you go out of your way not to use very recognizable wrestlers in the supporting roles? I recognized Ernest “The Cat” Miller, but that was about it.
That’s exactly right. The Ayatollah was a hard role to fill, so I had to get someone….how big of a star was Ernest? Was he that big?
He was popular in the WCW wrestling promotion , but more of a mid-card guy.
Yeah, that's what I thought. But yeah, I totally wanted to avoid using the big stars on purpose, because I thought, if you saw some legends show up, it almost pulls you out of the movie. We never mention Hulk Hogan, nor any of the other [real-life] wrestlers. We just wanted to keep the fiction alive, and not pull people out of it.
Was there anyone from the wrestling in particular that you were thinking of in regards to who Randy the Ram was? He’s got a little bit of Hulk Hogan to him, but not quite completely.
Not quite. He was never that big. We always saw him more as an Intercontinental-level Champion type of guy (Editor’s Note: The Intercontinental Championship was the second-level championship belt for years in the WWF, after the World Championship), or a tag-team champion guy. Never the biggest star, more in the middle-range. Like a Ricky Steamboat, or a Brutus Beefcake type of level guy, was the idea. That's how we always pictured him in our heads. Also, because he just didn't have the [physical] immensity of what some of those other guys would've been like. I mean, Mickey got big, but he didn't get big like Lex Luger, who was probably like 280, 290, something like that.
It was such a great nod to the 80s wrestling world that you had the ring nemesis be the Ayatollah. Wrestling in the 80s, in particular, was filled with Middle Eastern villains like the Iron Sheik, and it also would've been completely true to the history of wrestling that they have someone who isn’t even the same race as the character, in this case an African-American, playing the Ayatollah, and the crowd just goes with it.
Yeah, yeah. I always love that. I don't know if you heard, but Iran has condemned the movie.
I did. Did you want to speak about that?
I mean, it's upsetting to me, because it's not in any way…it's not meant to be disrespecting Iran or its people in any way. I mean, this is pro wrestling, and Arabic-slash-Iranian characters are kind of stock in the trade, and so we're not in any way, you know, lauding it and saying, “This is great.” We're just sort of making a comment: “Hey, look, we've got a black guy playing an Iranian guy. Don't you realize this is all like a joke, and a sham?” And it plays into America's….how guys like George Bush oversimplify things into good versus evil.
Right, mainly you're making a comment on how ridiculous it is.
Yeah, yeah, so, anyway, I think they missed the whole charm of it. All right. A little extra press for us, I guess.
Were you inspired at all by the real-life story of wrestler Jake “The Snake” Roberts as it was portrayed in Barry Blaustein’s documentary Beyond the Mat?
We were deep into our development when that film came out, and I didn't see it until much later. I didn't even know about it until much later, many years later, but I think I saw it on DVD. We were deep into the development of the character at that point, but the sad thing about a lot of these guys is…Jake's story is kind of cliché.
It's unfortunately very common, yeah.
Yeah, so, there are a lot of guys like that. You know, all these guys were on the road three hundred days a year, and their home lives, by the time their careers were over, were just shot, so they came back to nothing.
(Above: Rourke performing his off-the-top-rope finishing manuever.)I’m going to guess that, as an actor, Mickey works pretty loose?
That's where a lot of the whole visual style of the film came out of from. I thought that we should just let this guy be free, and just try to be in the moment with him, and surrender to that.
Does he give you, typically, takes very different from each other?
Absolutely. Yeah. He's pretty free, and between “Action” and “Cut,” he's really open to exploring.
In terms of the choreography of the wrestling, how specific were you in plotting it out, or were you able to sort of capture it on the fly?
No, we spent a lot of time on that, actually, even though, in general they're kind of improvising when they're in the ring…we couldn't really do that, because, you know, Mickey wasn't really a wrestler. These guys train for years, so we choreographed a very simple match, and that's what we trained and taught Mickey. And then we brought the opponent in, right at the end. With Ernest Miller, I forget where Ernest lives, but he wasn't living in New York, so we brought him in a couple of weeks before. Ernest, of course, learned it in a day, you know, because any professional wrestler could pick it up, and then they rehearsed a bit. We were very well rehearsed before we went into the ring, but still, even when we were in the ring, Mickey had to be reminded of which piece it was, and how to do the hits, and so, during a live promotion, we'd run out there, and the crowd would watch us. We'd work through it pretty quickly, and then I'd figure out where to put the camera, and then we would shoot. That’s basically how it worked.
I just re-read the interview you did with the late, great screenwriting magazine Scenario, back when Pi was released. You spoke a lot about the very specific “film grammar” you set up during the preproduction stages. In Pi, you kept to a very subjective point of view, in part, by only shooting over the lead character Max’s shoulder when he was in conversation with another character, never over the shoulder of that other character. The Wrestler has a much looser feel to it, but there’s definitely a consistent grammar here as well. What were some of the rules you set up with your Director of Photography?
Unlike the subjective direction of Pi, this was all about being objective, so it was all kind of observing and watching and we never cut away to inserts or any of that stuff. Things that I would've done in the past. I just really wanted to change and do something different. Like when Marisa [Tomei] reads the greeting card, normally I would cut to an insert, but there was just no place for it in this one.
I love the opening, where, for the first time, you see Mickey in the present day. He's sitting in the locker room in that long shot, you don't see his face very clearly, but his body language says it all. He’s slumped and then his reaction to getting the money from the promoter, which is clearly disappointing to him…that half-shrug speaks volumes about where he is in life.
Thank you. Mickey did a great job with it, you know.
The scene going into the deli, where you hear the music, where it's like his ring entrance, was that something that was planned from the beginning, or when you guys...
What, the music?
More the walk through the curtain.
That came when we were doing our tech-scout with the entire crew. I just saw the hallway, and I was like, “Oh, we gotta work with this,” and so we did.
I understand that the deli was actually functioning while you were shooting.
Yeah, we didn't have the money to close the supermarket and the meat counter, and people just started coming up, and I just got Mickey to start serving them, and so half those people in the scene are real people, half are actors.
The soundtrack is loads of fun. And I think there's going to be some kind of hair metal revival because of this movie, that you’re responsible for, one way or the other.
I'm sorry [laughs]. I send all apologies to the world. I don’t know, it's fun. It was interesting because this isn't sort of the A-list hair-metal anthems.
Right. That’s something that I loved about it. These were songs that you remember from that period, but not the biggest, overplayed hits.
Yeah, well, we couldn't afford them [laughs]. And it's funny, because it shows you how you can turn your financial limitations into strengths. We couldn't afford the big songs, the Def Leppard and Motley Crue songs, so we had to go to that next level, you know, the Ratt and Cinderella level -- but it was a lot of fun, because they were great bands, and they have a lot of heart and a lot of soul, and a lot of their songs, you can remember them pretty well.
Did Bruce Springsteen see the film and then write the song “The Wrestler” that runs over the end credits?
No. He based it off of the script, and a letter that Mickey wrote to him about it. Mickey wrote him a two-page letter, and told him why he was interested in doing the project. I think the Boss really is a big fan of Mickey's, and heard about this and wanted to help, and that's why he did it. He ended up giving us the song for free. It's coming out on iTunes tomorrow, I think. As a single.
As a big fan of Barton Fink myself, I have to believe that there were a few “wrestling picture” quotes thrown about the set during this production. Yes?
It's funny, when I got into the Venice Film Festival, they ask for a director's statement, and that was my statement….I took a quote from Barton Fink [laughs].
The Wrestler is in a very different genre and style from your previous work. How much of a conscious decision was there, in terms of career, to reinvent yourself somewhat with this movie, or was it not even thought about at all?
It wasn't really a reaction to anything. It was more that the first three films were kind of a chapter, and I had just, a lot had changed in my life, and my filmmaking team kind of got dispersed. My producer moved out here to Venice, actually, and was doing his own thing, and my DP was working on something, so I just decided to put a whole new team together, and it was just time to do something radically different.
What film gauge did you shoot The Wrestler on?
16mm.
That's what I was thinking. Super 16?
Super 16. Widescreen, though. So it's a little bit less of a negative and it gets a lot more grain, but I really like that.
It looked fantastic. I really like the grain. And the colors of Super-16.
Yeah, there's just something about it.
There have also got to be some limitations to working with it, I imagine.
But it's quick. It's quick, you know, and it gives you much more of a real documentary feel, because you can really move with the characters. 35mm is a lot heavier, it's hard to move, and so I was excited about the 16.
Did you have any concerns about working with Mickey yourself, before going into this?
Not really. I had a very, very honest conversation with him. Straight up. I knew he was going to be tough. I knew he wasn't going to be a walk in the park, that he was going to have a lot of opinions, and have a very strong point of view. But, you know, I didn't think there was anything else I could do.
I think you gave him his comeback, which a lot of guys have tried to do in the past, but this is the one.
Thank you.
Let’s talk a bit about what you’re working on next. You’ve been announced as attached to a new version of Robocop.
We’re developing a script [on Robocop], but we’ve got a long way to go. We’re also developing a few other ideas. I don't have anything that's set in stone, that's ready to go, but I’m working on a lot of stuff, and I really want to get back to work.
There have also been reports about a new edit of The Fountain.
Oh yeah, that's just a slight...I'm just doing a slightly changed version. That'll hopefully come out at some point. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to put that out there.
Will it be using footage that you already have, or stuff that you're recreating?
There's some new stuff, but, no it's all footage I have. I wouldn't be able to recreate stuff. But we shot it a lot of different ways, and there were a lot of different choices, and I think the version that's out there is definitive, it's the version I wanted out there. But this is another kind of version of it that has sort of haunted me. I don't know if one supersedes the other, but I think fans of the film would appreciate it, so that's why I'll put it out there.
Cool. And you’re also developing something revolving around the story of Noah’s Ark?
Yeah, that's a dream project that we've been working on, and we're probably going to do a graphic novel first. We're getting that off the ground, and hopefully someone will give me the money to do it. We'll see. It's complicated.
I read that you won some type of poetry contest when you were a kid with a Noah’s Ark-related poem?
Yeah, that was a long time ago [laughs]. It was just…it was a contest for the United Nations, and I probably was thirteen or fourteen, and I just wrote it and I won this big contest, and so it's kind of just always been with me, that character, that story. Like a lot of people, you know, but I had a personal thing with it, so at some point, hopefully, I'll get to tackle that one.
Do you still have the poem?
Oh, yeah. I'm sure I could probably dig it out of somewhere, but I don't think anyone will ever see that [laughs].
Just a few quick questions about Pi. I’ve always admired how you were able to examine so many big and rather cosmic ideas, but also keep the film moving by using a thriller structure.
Well, that was, that was always the concept: to have a really good skeleton, some type of genre that pulled you through it, but then to kind of hang on it as many interesting ideas as you could. It was a lot of stuff that me and my friends had been talking about over the years, and stuff I was interested in, and I just researched it all, and it kind of took off.
(Above: The Orthodox Posse that pursues the hero of Pi.)I remember seeing the symbol of Pi all over Los Angeles when the film was being released. It was everywhere, on posterboards and on the sidewalk. And I remember thinking that it was the greatest marketing scheme for an indie film ever. The symbol was everywhere, and so evocative that you had to see the film.
You got it [laughs] ! Yeah, it was fun. I mean, me and, I hired a bunch of guys I knew that did graffiti, and six of 'em….I think I paid them each fifty bucks a can. I gave them the paint, and I said, “Finish this can, I'll give you fifty bucks,” so I got like six guys with all these cans, and we just went all over New York, and I won't forget it, because, you know, I was up all night, doing it, and they were all up all night. But each time, you gotta squat, to get down, so you're doing squats all night, every like ten feet you're squatting. I got home, I got so sick for three days, because I was dehydrated. And I was in bed for three days, and then the phones started to come, the calls started to come: “oh, man, I saw this Pi symbol -- it's all over the place,” so you know, it was great.
They were here in L.A., too. I remember...
Yeah, I think we tried to repeat it here, but we didn't actually do it. I think probably the film company tried to repeat it.
I wanted to ask a little bit of your background. You're from Brooklyn, and your parents were both teachers. Do I have that right?
My dad was a science teacher. He taught geology and earth-science. My mom taught fourth grade, public school.
And then you went to Harvard, followed by the American Film Institute?
I went to public school in Brooklyn for all those years, then I went to Harvard for four years, then I went to AFI for two.
Were you able to start studying film as an undergrad at Harvard?
Yeah, I started. I got into the arts, I think, when I was a sophomore. My freshman year, I didn't know what the hell I wanted to be. And then my sophomore year, I started drawing, and that kind of changed my life, that class. Made me look at the world differently. It was just basic drawing class, but it was a great class. The first day of class, you would draw a self-portrait. That was your homework assignment. And then the last day, the last assignment was that you'd also draw a portrait, and then everyone would hang them up, side by side. And it was radical, how much, in whatever it was, four or five months, people's skills would change. You know, it was a great class. This teacher taught me totally how to look at the world, a three-dimensional world, and interpret it in a two-dimensional way. It was great.
(Below: The official trailer for The Wrestler)
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