MICKEY ROURKE: THE SECOND COMING...
11/17/08
“The world don’t give a s*** about me. You can lose everything that you love and I’m not as pretty as I used to be, but I’m still standing and I’m the Ram. You people here are my family.” So says Randy “the Ram” Robinson, the character Mickey Rourke plays in his come-back role in Director Darren Aronofsky’s (“The Fountain”) film “The Wrestler.”
When I saw this film at the Chicago Film Festival with Aronofsky doing Q&A following, he became very annoyed at the constant questions about who else had been considered for this role. Internet rumors (Nicolas Cage, Brad Pitt) had buzzed about a higher-budget film approach. Aronofsky warned that he would take no further questions about internet rumors...that he had always wanted Mickey Rourke for the role. That quelled the movie fanatics for a few minutes, and then another question came his way about the “rumors” and Aronofsky removed his microphone and walked off.
Rourke, in an interview with Michael Phillips (Chicago Tribune, October 12, 2008) tells us that he modeled his performance not just on Randy “Macho Man” Savage, but on a character he knew from years before. (Rourke, himself, used to own a gym called Shapiro).
“My younger brother, Joe, back in the day in Venice Beach, we used to go lift weights at Gold’s Gym, which was the Mecca of bodybuilding back then. And there was a guy named Magic. He had long blonde hair. He had two hearing aids and couldn’t hear a (expletive deleted) thing. He was a character, a biker dude who lived in a bus behind the gym. He wrestled on the side, and I based my character on this guy Magic more than on anybody else.”
Whatever the inspiration for his wrestler character in “The Wrestler,” the character’s words ring true in reference to Rourke’s own acting career and life when he speaks lines like, “I just want to tell you: I’m the one who was supposed to make everything okay for everybody, but things didn’t work out. And I left. And now I’m an old broken-down piece of meat, and I’m alone, and I deserve to be alone.” That bit of touching dialogue is from a touching scene with Evan Rachel Wood, playing Rourke’s estranged daughter. Their trip to a deserted, run-down amusement park/arcade they had visited in her youth is symbolic of “The Ram’s” broken-down status in his career and in his life. (Some say Wood, too, may earn a Best Supporting Actress nomination).
Randy “the Ram” is struggling to connect to someone...anyone. He has just learned that his career as a wrestler is over because he has had a heart attack. He attempts to connect with a stripper, (played by Marisa Tomei, largely sans clothing) and with his daughter, who shouts at him, “There is no more fixing this. It is broke. Permanently.” The Ram is even reduced to waiting on customers in a deli wearing a nametag that bears his real name “Robin” and wearing a hairnet. (Customers at the deli are Abraham “Abe” Aronofsky and Charlotte Aronofsky, Darren’s high school teacher parents.)
Most critics are predicting an Oscar nomination for Mickey Rourke in this tour de force performance as a professional wrestler. It is so close to his own life story that he was even allowed to improvise some dialogue and one of those speeches, given to his fans before his last fight. Remember this line?
“The world don’t give a shit about me. You can lose everything that you love, and I’m not as pretty as I used to be, but I’m still standing and I’m the ram. You people here are my family.”
Rourke says he might not be able to watch that scene for a while...it hits too emotionally close to home.
For this latest film, Rourke trained both with professional wrestler “Afa, the Wild Samoan” and with an Israeli cage fighter. Many other professional wrestlers like Brutus Beefcake are given credits at the end of the film. The film has an 80s soundtrack with original music composed by Clint Mansell and guitars by Slash and one of the film’s lines of dialogue (spoken by Rourke to Marisa Tomei in a bar scene) is, “That Cobain pussy hadn’t come around and ruined it (rock and roll) in the eighties.”
The low-budget look of Randy “The Ram” Robinson (born Robin Ramzinsky), with his life in a trailer out back and his failing health and his poor relationship skills---except for his adoring fans---adds to the reality of this gritty, depressing, but ultimately noteworthy film.
Mickey wants it (fame) this time, and he seems determined to do whatever it takes to hang on to it. As another review of Rourke performances being turned in even prior to this year’s standout, “The Wrestler”, “It has been a long slow climb back from the bottom, but Rourke has returned with a spate of fresh, exciting performances that caused Hollywood to take note, and he appears determined not to blow his second chance at a career in front of the cameras.”
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This post guest-blogged by Connie Corcoran Wilson. She is the author of five books and writes for five newspapers.
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