Wrestling with reinvention

The Wrestler, director Darren Aronofsky's latest film, opens in a flurry of 1980s nostalgia. We are assaulted with Quiet Riot's blaring anthem "Bang Your Head (Metal Health)" accompanying a seemingly endless stream of colorful show bills and periodical headlines touting the success of pro-wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke, Stormbreaker).

After the flashy credit sequence, Aronofsky and screenwriter Robert Siegel, former editor-in-chief of The Onion, take us to The Ram's present reality: He sits hunched over in the corner of a school playroom - his impromptu dressing room - with a hacking cough, awaiting a match.

All of the glamour hinted at in the credits has disappeared in the unseen 20 years passed, quickly stripped away by the current-day northern Jersey winter and grainy, documentary-style cinematography. The Ram wears reading glasses, uses a hearing aid and lives in a trailer park. But he still has his pride, and his night life, in the ring.

It's a sobering tale of personal redemption, the likes of which few would have believed could be extracted from the premise or - at this point in his career - the lead actor.

"I really wanted to do something different," Aronofsky said in an interview with The Diamondback. "I felt it was time for a change. I wanted to reinvent myself."

Ever the creative risk taker - the director's ambitious, but ultimately flawed, previous film, The Fountain, was torn apart by critics - Aronofsky faced a rough start to the picture, losing his original lead actor, Nicholas Cage. When he settled on Rourke, an actor whose fall from Hollywood grace loosely parallels Randy's fictional plights, Aronofsky said "every financier in the business said, 'No.'

"Everyone was like, 'What are you doing?" Aronofsky added. "'You're making a wrestling picture with Mickey Rourke? You're out of your mind.'"

French production shop Wild Bunch ("Leave it to the French" to come through, Aronofsky quipped) eventually fronted a modest budget for a 35-day shoot, allowing Aronofsky to finally film a concept he had been eyeing since leaving film school. The attraction for the 39-year-old director/writer, whose adaptation of Requiem For A Dream broke down narrative film convention and entered the public conscious, was to do something audience had not seen before.

"No one had ever made a wrestling picture," Aronofsky said. "I think that's because most people think it's a joke, and they write it off. But the more research I did into it, the more dramatic I found it."

The early reception has been astounding. The Wrestler took the top prize of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival - only the fourth American film to do so - and has left critics gushing about Rourke's celluloid resurrection. According to Aronofsky, at a recent screening of the film, wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, the first pro-wrestler not involved with the film to see it, broke down crying in Rourke's arms.

"It was the first time [Piper's] story was being told," the director said. "It wasn't necessarily his story, but a story he could really relate to."

Actress Marisa Tomei (War, Inc.) said in a separate interview with The Diamondback that she did not directly identify with her character, Cassidy, though she did relate to the idea of being in a transition period. As the stripper with a heart of gold, Cassidy battles aging in a less-than-sympathetic industry while, as Tomei put it, "desperately holding on to the idea that she's a mother."

To get through the intense shoot and generally depressing material, Tomei said she found herself focusing on the dancing. For about a month she trained with a friend who taught pole dancing classes and went to strip clubs to better absorb the different pole styles.

"[The dancing] is actually tangible," Tomei said. "It's generating energy, and I just use that as a renewal. And I wanted her to be doing it on some levels for self. Because I found the people who were the best dancers, they were connected to themselves."

For Rourke, who once left film to pursue a boxing career, the physical burden was even greater. Before going through two to three months of wrestling training, Aronofsky said the actor packed on 35 pounds of muscle.

Though Aronofsky was initially unsure if Rourke could handle the physicality, he said once he met the actor, he knew he was The Ram.

"He still had all that passion bubbling in him, and there was all this armor," Aronofsky said. "But if you looked into his eyes, he was a soft little guy."

The Wrestler opens in Washington on Dec. 25.

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