Ain't that the fake stuff on TV?
I watch pro wrestling.
I know admitting that is akin to admitting I have an IQ of 9, but I don’t really care. And as a disclaimer for those who ask…yes, I do know it's not real. Last time I checked, Star Wars, Romeo & Juliet and Desperate Housewives weren’t documentaries either. I do stop short of calling it fake, though. It is definitely not fake. It may be predetermined and more show than competitive sport, but these are athletes who risk their bodies every night they are in the ring. Make no mistake about that. Ask Darren Drozdov, sitting in a wheelchair after being paralyzed from a routine move that went wrong, how fake it is. I’m sure he would have a different perspective from you.
I started watching when I was 9 years old. I would buy magazines like Pro Wrestling Illustrated (with stories as worked as the ones told in the ring) and read about wrestlers and territories that I couldn’t see on TV. They all seemed so much more exotic and exciting than my boring suburban neighborhood in Woburn, MA. I remember going to my first matches with my Mom and Dad and being terrified for weeks beforehand that Hulk Hogan was going to lose his title to Big John Studd and I would have to be there to witness it. The horror!
(Side note: Since that initial time going and realizing my fears were completely unfounded…Hogan wasn’t going anywhere…I then started becoming a fan of the heels, the bad guys. Lets face it, they could talk trash and were usually a hell of a lot more exciting. I never got into the big muscleheads…I enjoyeded the smaller, athletic guys like Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels, Ricky Steamboat…guys who could hold a crowd in the palm of their hand with their matches. But I digress…)
When my parents got divorced my Dad would take me and my sister to the Boston Garden once a month to see the matches. He was never a big fan, but it was a weekend out for us. We would stay at his apartment and it was something we looked forward to every month. We would sit in the first row balcony, hanging over the ring, and could see everything. Every month, right before the main event, the ring announcer would talk about the matches just signed for next month (as if the championship committee were in that very locker room at the Garden, mulling over blockbuster title matches) and I would tug on my Dad’s arm, "Can we go? Dad, come on it’s Roddy Piper!!" He would always answer 'we’ll see' and the next Monday would be at the box office picking up the tickets. He worked for the MBTA (subway system) for my entire life and was stationed right across from the Garden. It was our thing.
As I started my own career in stand-up comedy, I would still watch. Now having been exposed to the behind the scenes stuff in newsletters and dirt sheets such as the Wrestling Observer and Pro Wrestling Torch, I was hooked all over again. I found the similarities between my new career in comedy and the world of wrestling fascinating. The long road trips for little to no money just to “pay your dues”. The hierarchy of the performers on the show and the politics that didn’t always mean the best performer would headline the show. The camaraderie of the guys you worked with.
And the stories.
I don’t think it would have always been worth it, but for the stories you told and heard and experienced. The road stories are what keep you going and keep you doing it.
And that’s where 60 Minute Broadway comes in. It’s a screenplay (and soon to be a comic book mini series) I wrote about pro wrestling and it’s something that hasn’t been seen on the big screen or in comic books before. Every time pro wrestling is depicted, it’s shown as wacky and goofy. It’s never shown as real people doing something that, for their own reason, they love. And why does someone put their bodies and relationships through this? And what do they get out of it? That’s what I wanted to explore and hopefully did. I always refer to 60 as “Bull Durham set in pro wrestling”. And I hope that’s what it can be someday.
I’ll talk more about that script tomorrow…
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