In the 1980s, Mickey Rourke was among the handful of hottest actors on the planet.After his BODY HEAT cameo and explosive work in DINER, he was perhaps more in-demand than any of his mid-Baby Boomer peers. A series of interesting if not always successful choices followed: RUMBLE FISH, THE POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE, and YEAR OF THE DRAGON all featured him in challenging roles with ambitious directors.What followed was even more adventurous for the still 20-something actor: NINE ½ WEEKS, ANGEL HEART and BARFLY were all bold choices for this unconventional leading man who obviously valued art over commerce in what were the gluttonous 80s – a decade far more known for the latter.
With the world at his fingertips, Rourke ended that garish decade with the somewhat more conspicuous selections of HOMEBOY, JOHNNY HANDSOME and WILD ORCHID, which ultimately served as parodies of his best previous work.And then, after teaming with one of his favorite directors again in Michael Cimino for the remake of DESPERATE HOURS, Rourke seemed to drop off of the face of the earth for the better part of the 1990s as he pursued his dream of a professional boxing career.By mid-decade, he had gone from has-been to being totally forgotten.When he reappeared for a bit part in friend Francis Ford Coppola’s 1997 courtroom drama THE RAINMAKER, it was if Rourke had vanished for decades. He had reached his 40s and boxing plus hard living had taken a toll, and Rourke was nearly unrecognizable.A series of dismissible roles and films followed him into the 21st century, with a few exceptions, such as his dominant presence in the crystal meth addiction vehicle, SPUN.
Then, a funny thing happened on the way to the ring:Rourke, visibly aging and a shadow of his former self, was “re-discovered” in Travolta-esque proportions by Robert Rodriguez who cast him in the seminal role as Marv in 2005’s breathtaking SINCITY.Not only did Rourke give the best performance in that star-laded movie, he was firmly back in the eyes of the moviegoing public, almost as if he had never left or ruined his career with a combination of poor planning and inattention to his métier.
Though to date he has failed to fully capitalize on his re-emergence in SIN CITY, Rourke is back this season with a new film and role which might finally cement him, not only as the poster child for the prototypical forgotten man, but also as one of his generation’s finest actors.In Darren Aronofsky’s THE WRESTLER, Rourke gives what might be his best career screen performance in a part he was born to play.
Drawing several parallels to his own life and career in the new film, as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, Rourke is a glamorous 1980s star wrestler living 20 years past his prime in the present day.Living in a trailer park with unpaid bills and failing health, his heyday is long behind him, he forges on, playing in rooms a fraction of the size of the arenas he once graced.With a handheld camera following his every move, the action is set up pseudo-documentary style, with sparse realistic settings and able co-stars surrounding Rourke.In the best of these parts, Marisa Tomei (in the midst of her own comeback after her welcome appearance in BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD) plays a stripper named Cassidy who has a dedicated home life and refuses to get close to her clients, Rourke among them, even though she feels obvious affection for the bighearted ex-hero.
Director Darren Aronofsky understands how fully Rourke inhabits The Ram, and he fills his frame with Rourke’s performing abilities in nearly every shot.To say that Rourke is effortlessly watchable is an understatement.And while the original screenplay – which might mirror the real life of wrestler Terry Funk – hits some predictable notes, you are completely with Rourke on his journey.Just as we are urged to feel for Rourke himself, we root for The Ram in his attempts to hang in the game long after he should have quit.We also cringe at the multiple moments where Rourke’s character, due to the effects of bad decisions and a life of overdose, tries to desperately re-create the glory days of the 80s.
In the end, we can also hope that, unlike The Ram, Mickey Rourke is really back to stay and is able to realize the considerable potential that he has exhibited of late.If THE WRESTLER is any indication of that, we in the cinema audience - along with Rourke himself - should be treated to the abilities of an actor who was absent from view for far too long.
There has been appropriate Oscar buzz about Rourke’s turn in THE WRESTLER, and while it’s well-deserved, one wishes that instead of bestowing awards on the beleaguered actor, Hollywood can instead offer him the parts that he should have been accepting for the past 20 years.As the new film surely reveals, Mickey Rourke is a unique talent with much left in the tank.
INTERVIEW WITH DARREN ARONOFSKY
How complicated was the casting of The Wrestler?
It was always going to be Mickey.When I first met him, there was such fire in his eyes.I was inspired by that.We spent a long time researching the character and making the script better.It took a long time to make it work - a lot of research and meeting people that made the character more rich.We started working on it in 2002 and we really kicked in in 2005 when Rob Segal the writer came on.That’s when things took off.
Did the subject matter inform your shooting style?
It was always about doing something really basic and very documentary style and very reactive to the actors.Everything was shot handheld.I really wanted Mickey Rourke to do what he does and be as free as he could be and give it that energy.I wanted to be able to follow him.That was the spirit.
Did you shoot this all on location?
Yes - we shot all over Jersey.He worked in Bayonne and had a trailer in Rahway.He takes his daughter to Asbury Park.We were in tons of towns.
How much of being a New Yorker informs you as a filmmaker?
It’s the city I love and was born in and raised in – it’s part of my DNA.I absolutely have stories to tell.I love the energy on the streets.I love it all.
Was Ram based on any real wrestler?
Unfortunately, I lot of these guys lives are very clichéd.You meet one, you meet a lot of them.They all have similar tragic stories.It was an amalgamation of different guys during our research trips.We spent five years researching it.We did lots of cities and towns – big events and small events.Everything from big halls to veteran’s halls.
Do you have an agenda for your directing career?
You can’t think about the big picture – you got to keep moving forward.You got to keep pushing stuff forward.
What is your favorite part of directing?
Working with actors – that’s the main reason I did the Wrestler.
What did the shooting and editing process consist of?
We shot November-December-January [of 2007-2008] and a little bit of February.We edited very quickly – not to get bogged down in it too much. We edited from March to August.It was very quick.We did five months prep – the casting was very complicated.I was there eight months solid.We got it ready very quickly.
How did the locals react to your company shooting there?
I got to know some of them very well and gave them a responsibility.Although they are superficially polite, they are not very impressed with Western filmmakers working there.But they are very welcoming.Bombay is very open, like New York, as a gateway to welcome to dreamers and people coming in.There’s no problem with people going to make a film there.They do keep an eye on Hollywood.They are slightly intimidated by it.It was very interesting talking to them about the films that are made there. The cows are wandering around everywhere.They saw that we were trying to do the film in the right way.I was trying to respond to everything I learned there, with as objective a point-of-view as is possible.They liked TRAINSPOTTING and 28 DAYS LATER.
All of your films are very cleverly and atypically cast – what’s your secret to casting?
You need a very good casting director.I’m mentoring a young director. You look for a very close relationship with someone.I’m very fortunate in that I lived with one.She cast my films.
Regarding 28 Days Later, it’s still amazing that you cleared the streets of London to shoot the film – it almost seemed like visual effects, but you really did it.
We were very lucky because we shot just before 9/11 – in July.When we were shooting the main part, 9/11 happened.We used these little cameras which allowed us to shoot multiple angles on a particular corner or street.In London, you are not allowed to stop traffic.You can ask drivers to wait extra time.What we did is we shot at 5AM for an hour each day.We hired students to be traffic marshals for us – quite attractive girls. People who were out that early are delivery drivers. That works.
Scott Essman is publisher of DIRECTED BY MAGAZINE.
Danny Boyle
After just a quick glance at his wildly diverse credits, one might easily describe director Danny Boyle’s career as eclectic.After debuting with the 1995 indie sensation Shallow Grave, he quickly segued into another critical darling, Trainspotting.Although his next movies were curious choices – A Life Less Ordinary and The Beach – he rebounded with the sci-fi horror hit 28 Days Later.Boyle next directed Millions, a little-seen indie feature about an innocent boy who finds a proverbial bag of money.Switching tracks again, his 2007 film Sunshine was a legitimate sci-fi tale about a spaceship crew attempting to reboot a failing sun.Now, with his eighth feature, Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle again moves away from whatever métier he previously forged with a story set in India’s ghettoes, concerning a youngster who becomes a national game show celebrity.In this candid interview, the well-spoken Boyle reflects on Slumdog, his divergent body of work, and what lies ahead for him as a prominent film director.
Why do you have so many different types of films in your canon?
I have this provocative theory – the best film is your first film.Not technically best or most successful, but it’s your best in that you don’t know what you’re doing.If you can survive the crisis that accompanies that, there’s something wonderful.You should always try to get back to that, rather than rely on what you’ve learned.I’ve tried to do that- what you’re looking for is something to stimulate you, which is often something different to freshen things up for you a bit, and a challenge for yourself.
What attracted you to the story in Slumdog Millionaire?
With this film, I had never been to India.[My previous] sci-fi films required the precision control of a brain surgeon – everything had to be perfect for it to work.India was a wonderful change.I read the script and thought it was fantastic – I love the story of the kid hijacking the show – he doesn’t do it for the cash.I like people where everything is stacked against them, and it had this poetry of Mumbai.
The recent terrorist attack there makes the setting of your film all the more provocative.
It’s an extraordinary place, and it will survive the terrorism.There are many great cities that survive terrible things and come back twice and strong.Cities are the sum of all the people who live there.It will fight back and be back.It’s a sad place at the moment, but it will be back.
What about doing this “smaller” type of film draws you in?
I learned a lot from The Beach because I took a huge crew to Thailand.A big film crew is like an invading army.It creates a cultural vibration that is wrong.India has a fantastic history of making films.I only took ten people – cameraman, designer, etc.All of the cast and other crew came from there.That’s the way to do it.It stops you imposing yourself on a place – it benefits yourself in the long run.
Do you take any methodologies from earlier other films into your current project?
I try to make every single one as different as possible from the ones before it.There are awful moments when you see yourself it in.You try to follow a strong narrative, the drive of the story I love.They attempt to appeal to as many people as possible.They are a bit like mainstream movies but a bit of art movies too.I love both, but I don’t want to particularly make one or other of them.I hate exclusivity.
That said, would you make a film with the size of The Beach again?
I learned with The Beach is that I work better with budgets I can completely control – about 6 million pounds.Slumdog was $13 million in the end.I can sort of do what you want with that amount.I am better at that kind of stuff.[Hollywood] isn’t built to keep me operating at that level.If you have a success at $13 million, your next one can be $100 million.I try to specialize in making $13 million films look like $100 million.
Do you always devise a new style to suit the type of film that you are making?
That’s one of your jobs as a director – you are absolutely in charge of.You can get great performances from actors without you.The rest of it has to do with finding a style to tell a story.People are demanding.You try and make too many films exactly the same, they soon tire of it.You have to find a style that’s fresh but fits the story.
What was the style chosen to tell the story in Slumdog Millionaire?
The kid comes out of the lowest part of the city and reaches the height of the city.The prize that’s offered on that show has never been won.It’s an extraordinary extreme.It’s such a dynamic city— the ceaseless motion of the maximum city.[Traditional film equipment] is too cumbersome, particularly there.It’s not a documentary style – it’s a heightened reality style.So we used these small flexible cameras.People thought it was a documentary rather than a proper movie.It allows you to move with flexibility in very crowded places.You can’t control the city.You cannot capture it properly.It’s infinitely changeable.
What did the shooting and editing process consist of?
We shot November-December-January [of 2007-2008] and a little bit of February.We edited very quickly – not to get bogged down in it too much. We edited from March to August.It was very quick.We did five months prep – the casting was very complicated.I was there eight months solid.We got it ready very quickly.
How did the locals react to your company shooting there?
I got to know some of them very well and gave them a responsibility.Although they are superficially polite, they are not very impressed with Western filmmakers working there.But they are very welcoming.Bombay is very open, like New York, as a gateway to welcome to dreamers and people coming in.There’s no problem with people going to make a film there.They do keep an eye on Hollywood.They are slightly intimidated by it.It was very interesting talking to them about the films that are made there. The cows are wandering around everywhere.They saw that we were trying to do the film in the right way.I was trying to respond to everything I learned there, with as objective a point-of-view as is possible.They liked TRAINSPOTTING and 28 DAYS LATER.
All of your films are very cleverly and atypically cast – what’s your secret to casting?
You need a very good casting director.I’m mentoring a young director. You look for a very close relationship with someone.I’m very fortunate in that I lived with one.She cast my films.
Regarding 28 Days Later, it’s still amazing that you cleared the streets of London to shoot the film – it almost seemed like visual effects, but you really did it.
We were very lucky because we shot just before 9/11 – in July.When we were shooting the main part, 9/11 happened.We used these little cameras which allowed us to shoot multiple angles on a particular corner or street.In London, you are not allowed to stop traffic.You can ask drivers to wait extra time.What we did is we shot at 5AM for an hour each day.We hired students to be traffic marshals for us – quite attractive girls. People who were out that early are delivery drivers. That works.
Scott Essman is publisher of DIRECTED BY MAGAZINE.
Richard Nixon, Pound-for-Pound
By Scott Essman
"No holds barred" is how ex-President Richard M. Nixon approached his interviews with David Frost, that is, according to FROST/NIXON, Ron Howard's new film about the 1977 landmark TV events.And we do get a series of unbridled interview sessions between young TV host and grizzled embittered ex-world leader, going toe-to-toe in increasingly tense sessions.Based on Peter Morgan's play, which he adapted for this film, FROST/NIXON posits a Richard Nixon we may have never seen before but for those memorable interviews over 30 years ago.
In what might have at first seemed like miscasting, Frank Langella makes for a more than adequate screen Nixon, even when compared to the stellar job that Anthony Hopkins did in Oliver Stone's 1995 biopic, NIXON.Langella fully inhabits the man who was mocked as Trickie Dickie during his presidency for his maneuverability around controversial subjects.As his foil, Michael Sheen, who perfectly portrayed Tony Blair in THE QUEEN, creates a fully believable David Frost, a playboy TV personality who on a whim decides to produce his own new breed of interview show with Nixon as his initial key subject.
Certainly, there is due drama in both the behind-the-scenes aspects of setting up the interviews and in their ascending narrative tension as Frost begins to sense that he is much overmatched, almost until it is too late to resurrect his chance to give Nixon "the trial that he never had."
One of the key drawbacks in the film, which may not have been as crucial in the play (which likely targeted an informed intelligensia), is in the presumption that the audience knows the particulars of Nixon's politics, especially the vital facts and personalities involved with the Watergate scandal which led to Nixon's 1974 resignation.But even for those in the know, these events of over a quarter-century ago are hardly fresh.In several key research sequences, we instead get a montage and once-over-lightly treatment of those places, dates, and names, so that when we arrive at the last interview, with Blair fully versed in the topic of Watergate, the audience is left to assume that Blair's notes are on target, as opposed to actually knowing the facts themselves.In contrast to, say, the forensic details of Oliver Stone's films such as JFK and NIXON, here we are left with scant information and much left to the imagination.An additional sequence orseries of graphics with a detailed analysis of Watergate particulars would have solved this problem.
What remains is watching Nixon at first get the better of Frost until Frost musters the guts and courage to pick Nixon's story apart beat-by-beat in the climactic moments.Certainly, these final scenes make the entirety worthwhile, and much drama ensues around the pseudo-confession of a man who never seemed to really understand the breadth of his "mistakes" as a leader, statesman, and once politically trusted figure.The film never mentions, for instance, that under five months after the Watergate break-in, Nixon won the 1972 Presidential election in a certain landslide.
Aside from the final title fight between Nixon and Frost, the film's best moments are outside of the actual interview sessions.In what might be somewhat of a fantasy sequence, Nixon calls Frost late at night at the latter's hotel, a conversation Nixon later says that he did not remember.Nixon's rant during the call, during which he goes into a tirade against more privileged people with whom he has had to compete through his life, makes for the most interesting cinema in the film, much like Nixon the president's late-night foray to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC to meet with protestors in Oliver Stone's NIXON.
Like other plays turned into movies, FROST/NIXON suffers from the staginess and confinement of its story to one main setting for the better part of the movie.Unlike, say, A FEW GOOD MEN, which easily translated to film, this subject matter fails to "open up" much beyond being a filmed play for its most important scenes.Thus, with other narrative faults intact, while the film is well made and performed, this time, it might have been best left for the stage.
