New York Film Festival Dispatch #3: Hey Mickey!

The cast and director of The Wrestler discuss the blood, sweat and tears that went into the making of this unlikely critical hit.

It sounds more like a Saturday Night Live sketch than a feature film.  Darren “Requiem for a Dream” Aronofsky directing Mickey Rourke in a movie about a washed-up pro wrestler?  Who would pay to see that?  As it turns, a lot of people probably will.  Ever since The Wrestler debuted at the Venice Film Festival in September, it’s racked up awards and ecstatic reviews and Rourke is already an early favorite to score an Oscar nod.  Look for a full review of The Wrestler closer to its festival premiere date, but in the meantime, here some excerpts from the press conference with Rourke, Aronofsky and the film’s other star, Marisa Tomei, who plays a stripper that develops a tentative romance with Rourke’s muscleman.

Aronofsky on the origins of the film
“Awhile back, I was writing ideas for feature films and one of them was about a wrestler.  I think it came out of the idea that there have been so many boxing movies yet no one had done a serious film about wrestling.  And there are a lot of reasons for that.  So it started there and just sort of sat on my hard drive for years.  About six years ago, my producer and I started talking about it and he turned out to be a bigger fan of wrestling than I was when he was a kid.  And then the idea of casting Mickey Rourke came up.  At that same time we met with a writer named Robert Siegel, one of the original writers at The Onion.  He started to write the script and the project started to move.”

Rourke on getting into character
“I didn’t know much about wrestling at all, but we had a really extensive rehearsal period.  Darren hired a great stunt co-coordinator who is an actual judge at UFC fights and he brought in a team of pro wrestlers.  So while Darren went away on vacation for two months, he had a ring put up in his office and every day for two hours, he made me go to wrestling practice.  At first I didn’t get it because I was trained in boxing, which made it harder to learn wrestling.  I would have been better off if I’d never had a boxing lesson, because it almost broke every rule that I was ever taught.  Wrestling and boxing are like ping pong and rugby-they’re very different sports.  One sport you go out to cause as much damage as you can on your opponent and you pace yourself to do so and survive.  With the wrestling its all choreographed like a dance.  You work with the other person to pull of something that looks magical.”

Aronofsky on the film’s attention to detail
“The whole attitude was to stick us in real environments.  For the wrestling scenes, we put in real wrestling moves and filmed in front of real fans.  All of the wrestlers Mickey wrestled were real wrestlers; there are no stunt people.  There was a financial aspect to that, but the main motivation was to create as much reality as possible.”

Rourke on the battle scars he received during the film’s shoot
“What I wasn’t prepared for was that you actually get hurt in wrestling.  I got hurt more in the three months doing The Wrestler than I did in 16 years as a boxer.  I think I had three MRIs in two months.  And Darren would screech at me: ‘You’re only giving me 50%!’  I’m like, ‘I can’t fuckin’ move!’  I have to admit, I didn’t have a lot of respect for this sport at first.  Once I got over that hurdle, it gave me a newfound respect for the sport as far as it being entertainment.  These guys really lay their asses on the line and get hurt working off the adrenaline of the audience.  When they’re throwing themselves over the ring or body slamming, they’re putting a lot of stress on their body.  I was so glad when this movie was over.  I can honestly say it’s the best movie I’ve ever made and the hardest movie I’ve ever made and I was so goddman thankful the day we were done with it.”

Tomei on mastering the art of the striptease
“I had a similar experience to Mickey as far as getting ready for the part, although Darren did not put up a stripper pole in his office for me!  At first, I thought ‘Is this really dancing?’  And just like he was saying about wrestling, I learned that you’re really working off the adrenaline of the audience.  You’re entertaining them and there’s a strength to it.  It’s difficult, but I always like to go into things that I’m scared of.  I eventually found it…well, liberating isn’t the right word, but it was fun.  It was scary, but fun.”

Rourk on his training regimen
“I was already working out for something else, so once I knew we were doing this film, I started doing heavy training to put on about 26-40 pounds.  I tried to put it on the right way.  I ate a lot of protein and pumped a lot of iron.  I had a really terrific trainer from Israel whose a professional cage fighter and he was very disciplined with me.  He came over and yanked me out of bed every morning.  Even after we were shooting, we worked out an hour a day after filming was done.”

Rourke on getting his career back on track
“If I knew it would take me 15 years to get back in the saddle and work again because of the way I handled things, I really would have handled things differently.  I just didn’t have the tools. I’m doing things differently this time around understanding what it is to be a professional, be responsible and to be consistent. Those are things that weren’t in my vocabulary back then. Change for me didn’t come easy; I didn’t want to change until I lost everything until I realized that you better change, or, you know, blow your fucking brains out. Either you change and go on with life, or you’re just a piece of shit.”

The Wrestler screens at the NYFF on Sunday, October 12 at 8:30pm and opens theatrically on December 19.