Diving Off the Top Rope: The Wrestler (2008)

Title: Diving Off the Top Rope: The Wrestler (2008)

Description: Steve is joined again by frequent contributor and guest host, Chris to talk about the 2008 film The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke and Marissa Tomei. This movie is surprisingly rich in themes and asks many interesting questions. It sheds light on fame, success and the limits of the human body and psyche.

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Begin Transcript:

Thank you again for listening to Beyond the Big Screen podcast. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast network. Of course, a big thanks goes out to our frequent guest and co-host Chris.
A great way to support Beyond the big screen is to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. These reviews really help me know what you think of the show and help other people learn about Beyond the Big screen. More about the Parthenon Podcast Network can be found at Parthenonpodcast.com. You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen, great movies and stories so great they should be movies on Facebook and Twitter by searching for A to z history, you can also find us at atozhistorypage.com. You can contact me there or just send an email to steve at a to z history page dot com. Links to all this and more can be found at beyond the big screen dot com. I thank you for joining me again, Beyond the big Screen.
[00:00:00] Thanks for joining us again today, we are going to talk with our good friend, Chris, about the 2008 movie, the wrestler starring Nikki Rourke as a washed up wrestler, trying to get back into the big times Mickey work stars as Robin Randy, the Ram Ram’s Sinsky and Merissa Tomay as a stripper in Northern New Jersey.
So this is going to be a really fun and exciting episode. I know you’re excited about this one. But I grew up with wrestling in my life. Watching it, uh, going to a lot of the indie shows that are in this movie and knowing a lot of wrestlers, I actually trained a bit, not much, my brother trained a lot more than I did.
And yeah, wrestling has always been a huge part of my life path. Passion in my life. I’m going to start off with a really short overview of this movie. And then we’re going to really dive into a lot of the history and the context and the background of wrestling because this movie really [00:01:00] captures something about the indie circuit of wrestling and really the narrative arc of history of wrestling from the eighties until 2000, the early 2000 when this movie was produced.
But, and now as usual, we feature plenty of spoilers. That’s really what we’re all about here on beyond the big screen, you can listen to this episode and learn a lot about the movie. Having never watched it. She’ll definitely want to watch this movie and listen to this episode several times. You’ll love it.
We would definitely to hear what you have to say too. So reach out on social media or send an email, but really. The movie is about it. This character, Robin Randy, the Ram Ram Zinsky and he’s a washed up pro wrestler. He was huge several decades ago, but now he’s found himself on hard times. He works.
Part-time at a grocery store and wrestles on the weekends and small semi-pro wrestling events and he [00:02:00] pushes it really hard to the, really, to the max that every year. Uh, he has a chance for a major comeback by participating in an event and celebration of the 20th anniversary of his most important match.
After a grueling hardcore wrestling event, he suffered a heart attack. Now this movie really tackles a ton of really larger than life characters in a larger than life industry. So I think we’re going to touch on a little bit of the industry and really the. Character study of an amazingly created character, Randy, the Ram.
And I would also suggest that, uh, go back and listen, because Chris and I recorded a rest, a history of wrestling episodes. They provide even more context to professional wrestling, but really as a 10,000 foot view, what’s some of the background on wrestling that this movie captures. Yeah. So [00:03:00] when Randy was a.
Big mega star. There was a huge wrestling boom in the eighties, uh, in particular, the WWF, uh, it’s never said what promotion he wrestled for, but you would assume that he was either wrestling with Jim Crockett promotions or he was wrestling in the WWF and he was putting on these big shows and it was just , wrestling’s a weird sport.
It goes through booms and busts. So you’ll have a boom and then a bust and then a boom. So he was. And the boom using headlining, uh, shows that where thousands of people who are in attendance, uh, on paper views, um, with, I said, they’re selling out sports stadiums, and it’s all over the news, it’s in newspapers. But by the time the nineties hit wrestling starts going into one of those busts. And. Um, either it’s part of it is talents, retiring. People are losing interests or, and wrestling in general was true. Still doing the same stuff [00:04:00] that they were doing in the eighties.
And it just wasn’t working in the nineties. And this is where I, it doesn’t say for sure what happens, but we, I assume this is where Randy’s career starts taking a downturn and. He’s unable to secure work with any of the bigger promotions. So he’s left working in the NDC scene, which is, um, basically a it’s a wrestling scene.
That’s, it’s, it’s much smaller. And you see in the movie he’s wrestling in bingo halls and, um, rec centers, uh, once in awhile you’ll see that he, he has contact with our O H, which is a modern wrestling promotions, part of the indie circuit. Uh, And it’s one of the bigger ones. He also wrestles in the hardcore scene and C, Z w which is a particular brand of wrestling that’s extreme and hardcore.
And it’s for a very niche audience. Yeah. So that’s the general [00:05:00] picture that you see, he was part of the boom and he’s been part of the bus and I, everybody always says, oh, well wrestling’s fake. And yeah, it is bake as it in it. Isn’t sports. They’re not actually biting each other to win a match in a fair situation.
It’s entertainment. Maybe you could explain a little bit more about how that whole works, because I think people kind of do the throw of. Uh, way line that yes, it is fake, but in a lot of ways, as far as how it impacts their bodies, it’s much more strenuous than a lot of sports. Yeah. But that’s, that’s the thing that, uh, when people say, look, all wrestling is fake.
It’s well, yeah, it’s fake. It’s it’s predetermined, but this movie does it bring me a jaw that’s really stressed. The toll that doing professional wrestling takes on your body. It’s speaking from personal experience, you don’t really understand how hard that mat is until you fall on it. It’s, it’s, it’s falling on piece of [00:06:00] wood pretty much.
And the ropes you don’t think oh, all those ropes hurt, ? When they’re bouncing back and forth, those ropes are super tight. So you can spring off them and you get bruises underneath your arms. On your shoulder is everywhere. And especially the guys I jumping off the top rope and just even basic things, just having to get up and down, up and down super quick on it’s extremely hard on your knees.
And then once you add in people taking chair shots, um, And, uh, the hardcore matches, which became popular in the later nineties, people think oh, whatever. It’s oh, it’s it’s pre, it’s all fake. It’s not fake. They’re using real fun tags. They’re using real staple guns.
You’re using real glass. They’re using real wood. You’re using real Barb wire. And the toll that takes on these guys’ bodies is it’s hard to describe it. We’re in football, you have an off season. And hockey, you have an off season and you have medical doctors available to you. All the time, these wrestlers don’t have, [00:07:00] especially if you’re working for these smaller promotions, they don’t have that available to you.
They’ll have a medic onsite to deal with cuts and, if, uh, some serious injury until they can get you to the hospital. But a lot of these indie guys, they don’t have access to any of this stuff. And it’s a job that. Uh, Randy does it on the weekends, but if you’re doing it full time, there’s no break, and then you have to get on the road to get to the next show.
Uh, and usually you have to provide your own transportation on top of it, too. Um, it’s extremely taxing on your body. I don’t think people truly get how hard. It is on your body to be a professional wrestler. And so that really leads into that’s Randy’s life, Mickey Rourke as Randy Rams. Sinskey that’s his life as that he works kind of a menial job at, I believe some sort of grocery store where he’s just, again, he said, what would you say Randy is probably at this point, maybe in his fifties, in this movie.
I don’t know if they say exactly. [00:08:00] Yeah. I’d say about his, he seems, yeah. I’d say about his fifties. If he was big in the eighties, usually wrestlers don’t get super big until their thirties. So yeah, he’d be about, yeah, probably in his fifties at this point or close to it. So, Randy, he’s living this life where he’s basically he’s working.