MICKEY Rourke may not actually take home the Best Actor statue for his performance as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, the washed-up and washed-out wrestler from the aptly-titled film “The Wrestler,” but Rourke has done something that future generations of people like myself surely will appreciate:
He has saved his best for a sports movie.
Now, maybe this wasn’t what he was trying to do as he was wandering aimlessly through the past 15 or so years. Maybe he wasn’t trying to personally cater to people like me, a sizable demographic whose two principal affinities, all things being equal, are sports and movies, and who spend a disproportionate amount of time wondering why sports and movies can’t have a more agreeable marriage.
I have trod this territory before, because it fascinates me, and the simple truth is this: For some reason, for whatever reason, we have somehow allowed even the greatest film stars to take a pass when it comes to sports movies. Sports fans are detail people. We absorb statistics. We have absurd memories. Years ago, when Billy Crystal was promoting “61*” for HBO, I asked him about how carefully he and his f/x people had recreated Yankee Stadium in the movie, and this is what he told me:
“If I was watching the movie and I’m a sports fan and I saw that the director had gotten the wrong measurements for right field at the Stadium, I would change the channel immediately,” he said. “At HBO, they don’t really want a lot of viewers to change the channel.”
Actors never seem to bear the same responsibility. There are exceptions, sure: Robert De Niro in “Raging Bull” looked as if he could walk right off the film and win the middleweight championship of the world. Same deal with Will Smith and “Ali.” And Hilary Swank in “Million Dollar Baby.”
We’re probably on to something, of course. Boxing is hard to fake. You strip down to your altogethers, you start throwing punches, you start sticking and moving and jabbing and upper-cutting, you’re not going to be terribly convincing if you look like, say, Kevin James. As a rule, mall cops and pugs are never supposed to be interchangeable.
It may explain why, of all sports, boxing always has seemed to get the best treatment from Hollywood, whether it’s “Somebody up There Likes Me,” or “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” or the first three “Rocky” movies, or “Cinderella Man.”
Whatever weird path Rourke took to getting the body he has now and the face he has now, it has paid off because he not only seems to play the Ram, he seems to be the Ram. It isn’t likely that Rourke could have stepped right out of character as Boogie in “Diner,” for instance, and taken on the Ram. Boogie was cool, but he was a hairdresser, for crying out loud. As Charlie in “The Pope of Greenwich Village,” he did work over a heavy bag pretty good, but in that I’m-playing-a-tough-guy-so-here’s-a-real-tough-guy-thing-to-do kind of way. And in “91⁄2 Weeks” he had other exercise on his mind than getting ready for a steel cage.
Whatever, this works. This worked. Wrestling and boxing are close cousins, after all. The surprise is that someone hadn’t thought the subject would make a good movie before Darren Aronofsky and Robert Siegel did.
It also begs these questions. Why would De Niro care so much about nailing the role of Jake LaMotta in “Raging Bull,” and seemingly care so little that he looked like someone who missed the junior varsity cut as Bruce Pearson, an allegedly major league catcher, in “Bang the Drum Slowly” (even before we know he’s dying)? Why would it matter to Paul Newman to be so convincing as Rocky Graziano and look worse than Rocky Balboa on skates in “Slap Shot?”
Baseball always gets brutalized, of course. Whether it is John Goodman and William Bendix tag-teaming the legend of Babe Ruth five decades apart, or Gary Cooper looking completely overmatched as Lou Gehrig (if Marshal Will Kane had been as inept in “High Noon” Will Kane would have had big, big problems). Or it is Tim Robbins’ Nuke LaLoosh’s improbable pitching delivery to Ray Liotta’s playing Joe Jackson as a right-hander (that alone should have given Jimmy the Gent reason enough to whack him a few years later in “Goodfellas”).
Only Kevin Costner, in both “Bull Durham” and “For Love of the Game,” allows you to suspend your disbelief even temporarily.
And let’s just leave football alone. Outside of Paul Crews (and you had better believe that refers to Burt Reynolds’ Crews, not Adam Sandler’s) I defy you to name one football player in one football movie who doesn’t make you cringe. Keep trying.
And even if anybody wanted to, it is going to be hard for anyone to top Rourke now, anyway. The Ram is now residing in Cy Young territory. Unapproachable. Give him the trophy. And retire it.
VAC’S WHACKS
You have to figure that if the senatorial nomination were the NFL Draft, Jets fans would have booed Kirsten Gillibrand, especially with Andrew Cuomo and Tom Suozzi still on Mel Kiper’s board.
Braylon Edwards is quoted in Sports Illustrated this week talking about how much he dislikes the Jumbotron at Cleveland Browns Stadium for not being “fun” enough, and all I can think about is just how well the receiver and Mr. Fun, Coach Mangini (left), are going to hit it off.
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I could listen to Bob Knight talk basketball on ESPN all night.
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The best part of PT Walkley’s new CD, “Mr. Macy Wakes Alone” – which will be released Tuesday – is that it’s a reminder of just how great an “album” of music still can be. Especially when the music is this good.
