60 Minute Broadway: Reprise
I was just looking back through some posts (I pretty much type stream of conscious as the thoughts come to me and rarely go back and refine or check anything...so I like to go back and at least fix any typos here and there) and I realized that I said I would come back to the subject of 60 Minute Broadway a few days ago and then never did. I loves me some tangents.
The story revolves around this journeyman pro wrestler who is stuck working the independent circuit. No money, working in high school gyms in front of 40 people...that sort of things. His dream is to main event Madison Square Garden...just once. Basically, if you ever watched Saturday morning wrestling growing up there was always Hulk Hogan vs. some no name guy that didn't stand a chance...this is a story about THAT guy.
I wrote 60 about a year or so ago and was fortunate enough to get it read by some of the studios without having a lit agent (there are agents for every aspect of the business...one handles commercial auditions, another for film/tv, one for written properties...even producers, makeup people, directors, effects people...they can all have agents). The response to it was incredibly positive. To a fault, everyone loved the story, loved the characters and loved the world that was set up as it was something that hadn't been seen in movies before.
But no one wanted to make it.
Virtually across the board I would get what I like to call the "Ready to Rumble Defense" (RTRD). "Ready to Rumble really underperformed and we just don't think a wrestling movie is something we want to do."
This totally ignores one important fact...that movie was bad. Really bad. Oliver Platt was playing a championship level wrestler. And I love Oliver Platt but it was just not a good movie. I mean, there were funny parts and all but overall it turned off both hardcore fans of wrestling as well as mainstream audiences. So if you go by the RTRD, yes, a wrestling movie will not do well. But all movies that have portrayed pro wrestling (with the exception of documentaries such as Beyond the Mat and Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows) have done so in the same exact way and there is a reason audiences don't go to them. Two very specific reasons:
1) They treat wrestling as "wacky" and "goofy". Hey, I'll be the first to admit...pro wrestling ain't Shakespeare. It's a very simplified morality play. People like to use the "male soap opera" analogy and it can be very appropriate. It just seems like every time it's portrayed in movies, it's by someone who hasn't watched it since they were kids.
For example: Based on a producer reading 60, I got hired to write a screenplay based on an idea he had set in the world of pro wrestling. It was to be the story of an estranged family that grew up in the business with the youngest too small to follow his father's dreams for a family legacy, thus suffering the cold shoulder his entire life. Not the usual storyline associated with pro wrestling. He wanted to call it Wrasslin' That title conjures up every negative stereotype I mentioned above. Wacky, zany, rednecks, people who believe it's real...in sum, idiots. Not only are you going to just reaffirm what most people already think about wrestling and it's fanbase, but you are insulting and turning off the actual wrestling fans who would be the first ones to go see something like this. And the movie wasn't a comedy. It had funny moments, but it was a pretty straight forward drama with a sad ending. We ended up with the title Dream Champion which fit better, but the movie never got made. It's a shame as I really liked the story and think it would have been decent (and part of the deal was I got a supporting role and that character was a blast). I felt really bad for the producer as he believed in it with all his heart but it came down to the RTRD when final financing was coming about.
2) Wrestling is treated as a "real sport". This seems to be the biggest problem in these types of movies. William Goldman even mentions that in his Adventures in the Screen Trade when talking about the old Peter Falk movie All The Marbles. We all know it's not a real, competitive sport in the vein of baseball or basketball and trying to force that down people's throat just throws it back to the first bullet point mentioned above. It can't be about "winning that championship match", it has to be about the characters. Because while the outcomes of the matches are not "real", the pain the wrestlers go through and lives they live are very much so. These are real people really getting hurt, really going through divorces, really dedicating their life to something because they have a passion for it. That's the part that is very real, but no one ever takes a look at that. Well, I did, but that's the whole point of this post, isn't it?
In 60, I address this right away and then move on. No need to beat people over the head with it either, because that's not what is important. I know David Copperfield didn't really make the Statue of Liberty disappear. But I suspended my disbelief and enjoyed. Just like any novel or movie or TV show...if you give me an "in" to buy the characters, I'll go along for the ride.
So after hearing the RTRD so many times, I conferred with my buddy Jeff Schuetze (please check out his blog on my recommended links) and we came up with the idea of doing 60 Minute Broadway as a four issue mini series comic book. Partly to showcase it and hope it gets picked up, but mainly because it's a really good story and I adore the characters. I think anyone that reads it, wrestling fan or not, is going to feel the same way. It's written so you don't have to be a fan to dig it. We hope to have the proposal done by this summer and then we'll try to pitch it to some indie comic companies.
Apparently, Jack Black just signed on to do a movie (true story) about a Mexican priest who dons a mask and wrestles at night to earn money for his orphanage. It's going to be done by the same people who did the fantastic School of Rock. So here's hoping that the movie is a huge hit and the RTRD gets changed to: "That Jack Black movie went through the roof...do we have any scripts about wrestling?"
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