USA TODAY has a great feature with Mickey Rourke talking
about "The Wrestler," which you can read in its entirety
HERE
How much does director Darren Aronofsky love Mickey
Rourke?
Enough to rush off to a festival gift
lounge to grab some doggie duds for Loki, the actor's adored Chihuahua-terrier
mix.
Not that the filmmaker hasn't already
given the Hollywood bad boy of the '80s, who devolved into a casualty of fame in
the '90s, something better than canine couture. Namely, a comeback role of a
lifetime in The Wrestler, one that could easily lead to Rourke's first
Oscar bid in a nearly 30-year career.
"I'm blown away," says Rourke about
the reception that the film, opening in December, has received so far. That
includes the top prize at the Venice festival and a studio bidding war resolved
at Toronto.
He gives due credit to his director.
"I don't know if I would have done this movie if it wasn't a project with
Darren. This material, in the average filmmaker's hands, could have been 'seen
it, done it, been there before.' But from what I know of his work, I knew it
would not be a cliché or glamorized, like a Rocky
movie."
Aronofsky, whose output has tended
toward the esoteric (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain), is
equally astonished by how audiences and critics have embraced the stripped-down
story of Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a broken-down, steroid-pumped hulk of a
lonely man, 20 years past his prime yet willing to sacrifice his body after a
heart attack for another go in the ring.
"Six days ago, we were just trying to
get the film done," he says of his low-budget underdog.
Rourke, who has boxed professionally,
dedicated himself to learning the sport. "Boxing and wrestling are like
ping-pong and rugby," he says. "They are so different. In fighting, people are
out to really hurt the other person. With wrestling, you work with the other
person. Wrestling is entertainment. Yet these guys get injured because they feed
off the adrenaline of the fans."
Rourke worked out every day, twice a
day, for nearly six months, packing on about 30 pounds of muscle. He was able to
do most of his stunts, save for one involving glass. "The hardest films I ever
made were 9½ Weeks, Year of the Dragon and Angel Heart. You
could put all those into one and they weren't half as tough as
this."
Payback came on the last day of
filming. Says Aronofsky: "Mickey is like, 'OK, you're not leaving until you jump
over the ropes,' " a move Rourke pulls off in the movie. "Everyone in the crew
had to try it. I say, 'I'll go first.' I run. I leap. I get all the way over
except my toe catches the top of the rope."
The result, as Rourke says:
"Boom!"
"I got an MRI three weeks later,"
Aronofsky says. "He got his revenge."
Wrestling News 
