When Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” was first announced, we were in absolute disbelief. We thought it was almost a practical joke because the concept seemed ridiculous. In fact, we semi-seriously assumed it was a comedy and probably based off the ‘what if?’ life of ’80s WWF star Randy “Macho Man” Savage (given that the name of the character in the film is Randy “The Ram” Robinson, and Mickey Rourke’s and his striking resemblance, we still think there’s something to this).
The other element that had us convinced the film was a comedy was the fact that it was written by former The Onion, Editor-In-Chief, Rob Siegel. He wrote “The Onion” movie which we’ve never seen, but it went straight to video and is reportedly pretty bad.
Called a “seriocomic, existentialist wrestling drama,” by the New York Film Festival folks, “The Wrestler” is funny and a lot funnier on the screen that it is on the page, but it’s heartfelt nature and brutal wrestling scenes make it something far beyond a drama. And it’s a well-written script.
So much so that it’s got a very strong shot at a Best Screenwriting Nomination this year (Charlie Kaufman wrote himself out of the category this year with ‘Synecdoche,’ frankly, or at least with what’s on screen – but actually the screenplay to that is great, we digress…)
So we posit: Will screenwriter Rob Siegel, be the first Onion alumni member to be nominated for an Academy Award? Yeah, we’d bet on it.