The Wrestler press conference at Venice Film Festival 2008: transcript

Key points

• Rourke says he had little respect for wrestling until Aronofsky sent him to wrestling school for two months, where he learned the sport really hurts.
• Aronofsky says he wanted a serious film about wrestling and set it in the independent wrestling world, which led to an older wrestler past his prime.
• He chose a handheld, cinema verite style with a cinematographer so Rourke could improvise freely, and he did not introduce Wood to Rourke before their first scene.
• The Bruce Springsteen song at the end came from his friendship with Rourke, and he wrote it before the film was finished cutting.
• Rourke praises Wood's acting, and Wood says the father-daughter scenes hit close to home after she reconciled with her own father.
• Rourke compares the character's shame and lost years to his own career, saying he threw his career away 15 years ago.

Chapters

1. 0:00Rourke on wrestling school and respect for the sport
2. 2:53Casting Rourke and the handheld visual style
3. 5:38Rourke and Wood on working together
4. 6:50Bruce Springsteen writes the closing song
5. 9:08Rourke and Wood on acting and family
6. 11:42Aging athletes and the independent wrestling world
7. 13:57Hope in Aronofsky's films and Rourke's motivations
8. 16:41Cinema influences and Rourke's parallels with the Ram

Full transcript

0:00I'm not really a wrestling fan. As a matter of fact, when I first started, I had very little respect for the sport because I have a background in another sport. And I looked at the wrestling more like entertainment and I looked down on it until Darren made me go to wrestling school for like two months and really broke my ass. And then I slowly gained respect for these guys because even though it's choreographed and it's entertainment, When you have someone who's 265 pounds throwing you across the room, you get hurt.

0:37So, as far as, you mentioned the wrestler's name, you know, before, and we did a lot of research looking at different wrestlers from the 60s all the way up to present day. And there's a lot of people who, in the wrestling business, that are very famous, but they're not necessarily very good wrestlers with it's like in the acting business they're very good politicians so they become famous so there's a lot of wrestlers that are very good that don't even have a name That you wouldn't even know, and I won't remember, but there were some guys from, I think, the 70s that I really liked a lot. Steamboat somebody. What was Steamboat's name? Ricky Steamboat. There was, I just wanted to say, by the end of the two months of him training, actually by the end of the movie, his teachers said that he was a better worker than 80% of the wrestlers out there.

1:38so like Mickey completely I mean you know as we know Mickey was a boxer at one point and for him originally we were gonna train him in a boxing gym and it was just humiliating he couldn't be in a boxing gym because I didn't want to see anybody box he didn't want any boxers to see him wrestling but I think when you get to know these guys and you realize there's this history that comes out of you know carnivals and freak shows and that they actually a lot of their language is actually carny language it's an ancient ancient art and uh and then also the athleticism of of the sport is just very impressive and so by the end i think uh i think mickey had a lot of respect for the old timers well you know people a lot of people recently they use the word comeback which you know if you look it up in the dictionary and you define it it can mean many different things um come back come back from you can come back from war with no legs you can come back from Dinner, having just eaten a ham sandwich or wiping your ass, come back to me. I can't, there's defining its real heart because where I came back from, only, only my little dogs would know.

2:53I think Mickey's had a very long trip but you know there's 15 years of a long trip away but I mean the thing that's amazing is that it's it's just always been there and it's never gone anywhere and from the first meeting I met Mickey which he'll have a different version of it I remember just seeing that impish smile of his and being like realizing that you know underneath all that all all that armor was this fragile eggshell and i was almost like a kid in a candy store just thrilled by how many different flavors there were and i just couldn't wait to to explore with him what we could do so you know at the beginning of it everyone was like how are you going to make mickey rourke sympathetic and i was like well you've never met mickey rourke he's the most empathetic person I've ever met. And so that was a big part of it.

3:49He uses these big words, I don't even know what they mean. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Play the dumb guy. I think, you know, for me, Pi, Requiem, and The Fountain were definitely a body of work, and they were very related to each other, even though I think, I hope they all had very different visual languages, but I do perceive them as a trilogy. And if Madonna taught us anything, it's that you need to reinvent yourself. and I guess you know so I just that I was looking to try and do something new and when I first started studying filmmaking I came from a cinema verite place and a lot of my early work was documentary so that was in my head and then I met Mickey and I think the visual style always needs to come out of the material and in this case it was it was different because I could have shot the wrestler in a lot of different ways and I think the visual style came out of Mickey Rourke in the sense that between action and cut I'm

4:53not really sure Mickey knows exactly what's gonna happen and I don't know if that's completely accurate but it's kind of anything can happen and that's the excitement and I wanted to create a playground for Mickey that was that he They could do anything. So, I hired a cinematographer, Marisa Alberti, who could create a 360 atmosphere where we could shoot anywhere, and we created a handheld style so that we could really basically freeform with Mickey. And then I found other actors, Marisa Tomei and Evan, who both were excited by that style that we were just going to go out and shoot it. And, I mean, Evan will tell you a great story about the first thing we shot with her, you know.

5:38I don't know, I've heard you talk about it, I didn't even introduce her to Mickey, I just sort of put her there and I said, okay, someone's gonna knock on the door in a second and then we're just gonna go. Yeah, that was my favorite, that's just how on the spot everything was. I didn't say one word to Mickey before we were shooting our first scene. The first thing I ever said to you I think was, you're an asshole. I've heard that from women before. But it was great, and I mean, we rarely even spoke unless we were doing a scene.

6:09Yeah, we were working, and I think it helped the characters, too, because there was supposed to be that distance and that longing between the two, so I loved the style, I loved that way of working. Well, I never did a movie where I had a daughter or anything like that, so that was very strange to me, to have such a pretty daughter. And that was so fucked up. I mean, you know, I had to try to make it personal because I guess I abandoned her or whatever because I was busy trying to fit into my tights. And she became like a kind of a drug addict lesbian, something strange, I guess. Like me.

6:50take after my father yeah well I can take no credit for the Bruce Springsteen song the reason there is a Bruce Springsteen song at the end of the film called the wrestler is because of Bruce's love for Mickey period the end Bruce and Mickey are old friends they met at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park when Mickey was shooting there years ago 20 years ago 20 years ago and Mickey I mean I did you know I still you know Bruce called me on the phone and I talked to him and he basically always you know just believed in Mickey and has been waiting like a lot of fans out there for Mickey to have a shot and he just he read the screenplay and he felt like It really fit well for Mickey, and it could really show Mickey's shine, so he went for it, and he actually wrote it before we finished cutting the film, so he saw it without seeing the movie, but I mean, it just, me and Mickey completely teared up when we heard it, because he really captured the spirit of it.

7:52No, you teared up. I teared up, sorry, I didn't tear up. You didn't? No, but he wrote it. Bruce was very busy. He wrote it. He was on a European tour. He took the time. You know, we corresponded by letter and he took the time to say, yeah, okay, if I have time, Mick, you know, I'll do what I can, if I can. And, you know, it was also, he responded to me the week that he lost a member of his band that's been with him for 30 years. And then several months before that, he'd lost another band member that he had for 30 years.

8:25So he had a lot on his plate, and he was just, you know, for somebody that didn't have the easiest year in the world, he did something very generous and really, really special. I actually got stage fright when I first met him. Literal stage fright. Not you, but Bruce. I was just sort of like, oh, gosh. Here I am with the boss. The deep loneliness of my character, yeah, I didn't have a problem with that. I've been like that ever since, ever since, for a long time. As far as, what was the first part of your question before?

9:08no the other thing is i was very unfortunate because um i'm real funny about working with actors and i was very fortunate that you know um to work with evan because i had a lot of scenes that were really strong and um it's very rare that you come across somebody who's 20 years old that i i found like her her scenes that she had in the movie were very difficult on an emotional scale level where she had to reach and the first take I thought she was really fucking good then we do another one she was better and then I went wow this bitch can really act and I would see her over in the corner I was thinking who the fuck did she study with because you don't see people these days I don't give a fuck 20 30 40 that have her ability and also her focus and concentration for me was like really something special to look at because you

10:09to see to observe Some really fine acting, and I'm going, shit, I couldn't do that when I was 20, you know? Well, that means so much. I mean, I've, I had, my parents were actors and film geeks, so, you know, I grew up watching Mickey and, you know, always thought that he was just incredible and was so excited for the opportunity to get to work with him and excited for him.

10:39And, I mean, if you hadn't seen the end of Angel Heart and you were an actor, it was sacrilegious, you know, like, you would get smacked on the forehead. Who was the boy? I don't remember that one. And we, I mean, the whole experience was really special to me. I was separated from my father for most of my life, and we just reconciled after I filmed the movie.

11:09Actually, we have a great relationship now. But so, you know, while doing it, it was extremely difficult for me to really, you know, have to go there and to do those scenes. It hit very close to home. So I was so happy to be with somebody like Darren who was taking care of me every second and was completely there for me, while still, you know, not being afraid to push me. And I really appreciated it. And, you know, Mickey and I really. I've shared something very special, so the film will always mean a great deal to me.

11:42You know, one of the concerns that we were all concerned about even coming to Venice was our reception here, because wrestling is not a sport in this country that's extremely popular, but I think what happens with any athlete, whether he be a soccer player, a football player, a basketball player, or a fighter, or a ballet dancer yeah you reach an age where you can no longer perform up to the standard that you used to and when you train your whole life to do a sport there comes a day when somebody usually it's not yourself says it's time to go and usually there's nowhere to go so this is you know it's something that's universal with life and and with sports that um I think every athlete can relate to no matter what sport they're in you got me okay I don't think we would have ever had a chance to work with the mainstream

12:45wrestling world which will remain remain nameless right now it just wasn't an option I don't think they were interested in this type of portrayal of wrestling so I think we were forced to work And one of the earliest decisions of working on the screenplay was to set it in the independent world. I also thought that the independent world was more interesting and more colorful. And so that's where the research went. And I think that in the very early development of the script, that's what led us to a sort of older wrestler who was past his prime, because that would explain why he was wrestling in that world. So it kind of led to that.

13:26I think the whole project started with, I just hadn't, I was just curious why no one had really made a serious film about wrestling. I mean, boxing is basically a genre on itself. There's so many movies that are about boxing, but no one had ever looked at wrestling. And I think it's because they thought it was a joke. But the more you look into it, the more you realize that it's an actual, there is a sport involved. How many people think the film is hopeful? Oh, okay.

13:57That was good. Okay. Wow that's a very deep question you know I think I'm an optimist in general and I think all my films are optimistic I mean even Requiem for a Dream I think why I was attracted to it was because Hubert Selby Jr. just so well painted the darkness that all it could do was reveal the light So, you know, for me, it's all about the humanity of the characters and the humanity of the actors that brought those characters alive. And I guess I look at the human condition as a hopeful one. Even though I'm pretty pessimistic with what's going on in the world right now, I think you have to hold on to the true stories and hope that there's some salvation within ourselves.

14:52My mother grounded me for watching Requiem for a Dream, by the way. Really? Yes. I got in big trouble for that. It also kept you off drugs. Yes. In the beginning, when I met Darren, I very much wanted to work with Darren because I heard a lot of nice things about Darren. I heard he didn't compromise, that he was his own man. He had a very large brain, and he didn't take any shit from anybody. and he didn't want to go out to Hollywood and make a lot of money and really bad movies so I went this is the kind of guy that I want to work with but I didn't necessarily want to play a role that reminded me of There's certain things in athletics or what have you that I can't do anymore.

15:38You know, it's like I'm not going to ever be the kind of guy that's going to sit in a fucking rocking chair. So it's kind of painful to realize that time goes by you can't do what you used to do. I have a lot of problems with that, even still, you know. But, you know, I wish I made this movie 20 years ago because you get, even though wrestling is entertainment, you really get hurt i mean a lot of these professional wrestlers right now that have retired they can't walk they can't do any other kind of jobs because it smashes your joints and your bones and um it just really messes you up and uh that was something that i like with what darren did is he made it close to like a documentary instead of glamorizing it you this was not this was not a Rocky movie this is more about like these guys end up when they're only in their 40s and 50s and you know in rocking chairs or

16:41wheelchairs and I wasn't really aware of that until we did all the research I mean, there was a lot of influences from John Huston's Fat City to all the way up to the Dardenne brothers now. I think it's, you know, that type of verite approach is, you know, something that works. I just found it working, as I said earlier, so well for Mickey's performance in this film. And it was also, I wanted to capture that, the immediacy of the story.

17:11I also wanted to, I mean, for me, the evolution through my last three films was towards a lot of control, where the fountain, everything was perfectly constructed how I wanted it. So I wanted to sort of move the complete opposite away from that. And so anything that gave freedom was what I was looking for. but uh you know the cinema of the 70s was a big influence from barbie schroeder working barfly to john houston to vendors to i mean there's so many uh gods that that helped inspire this film i wouldn't call barbie a god um yeah you asked about the similarities i mean this is a character or a man.

17:59Who's past his prime, that's living in a trailer, whose wife left him, whose daughter is a dyke and a junkie. And he's a dreamer who's living like shit. And he's living in a state of shame. And yeah, I can parallel it to what I did with my career. I threw my career away 15 years ago and didn't work for up until recently.

18:30And it's better if you almost never accomplished anything in your life to be a has-been. Because there's no worse feeling to be feeling shameful all the time. It's like a really small feeling and usually you're the blame for it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Yeah, the Ram is a mess.

Source and licence

Recording: File:The Wrestler- Darren Aronofsky, Mickey Rourke, Evan Rachel Wood.webm by Leo (2011-12-19), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY 3.0.

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.