The Big Picture - Pro Wrestling Goes to the Movies, Plus Stephen Merchant on ‘Fighting With My Family’ | Interview (Ep. 130)

Episode Date: February 22, 2019

Sean sits down with ‘Masked Man’ host David Shoemaker to discuss the evolution of pro wrestling on the big screen (0:31). Then Stephen Merchant joins to talk about his relationship to wrestling, working with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and turning Florence Pugh into a believable professional wrestler (21:28). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Stephen Merchant, David Shoemaker Wrestling film recommendations: The Big Show Off Night and the City The Foul King Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelley, and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. This Sunday night, after the final episode of True Detective, we'll be going live for our last flat circle after show with Jason Concepcion and Chris Ryan. You can stream that live on YouTube, Facebook, and Periscope. And while you're there, make sure to subscribe to our channel at youtube.com slash The Ringer as we near 100,000 subscribers. I'm Sean Fantasy, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show with some of the greatest sports entertainers in the world. I am joined today by two guests in the back half of this conversation.

I'll be chatting with writer, director, erstwhile podcaster, TV show creator, all around entertainment wonderkind, Stephen Merchant, who has a new movie coming out called Fighting With My Family that he wrote and directed that is about the WWE professional wrestler Paige and her life and her journey to the big stage. But before we get to Stephen, I'm joined by my ringer colleague, the chief design mind behind the site, a podcaster extraordinaire himself, and of course, the masked man, David Shoemaker. What's up, David? Hey, man. I'm so happy to be here. And before we get too far into this, I just want to say this will be the second time in my life that Steven Merchant has stole my seat. He took my chair at WrestleMania a couple couple years ago and i will never forgive him for that

what when did i was actually sitting in his chair to be totally honest like i came around to say hi to you know bill and some other folks and there was an empty seat and i was just hanging out and then he showed up like halfway through wrestlemania and i happened to be in his chair so he actually told me the story of going to wrestlemania he did not share the fact that he had to accost one of my colleagues. That's a real shame. He goes to a lot of shows. It wasn't just like a one-off thing for him. He's a real fan.

He is a fan. He has become a fan, clearly. And he talked about going to WrestleMania, though. So I would suspect that it was the same WrestleMania. David, you're here because, of course, you are the master of professional wrestling history in many ways. And since there's a movie about professional wrestling, and also we got this news break this week that Todd Phillips and Chris Hemsworth are going to be making a movie about the life of Hulk Hogan. Movies and wrestling

just seem to be in the air. So it seemed like a good time to kind of chat about what makes a good wrestling movie. And I'm curious what your sort of top five in the moment professional wrestling movies are oh man that's really hard um first of all i want to say that the the best rest pro wrestling movies are documentaries and i'm not going to talk about documentaries right now uh i wrote a piece for grantland back in the day um that's a you know easily easy to find on the internet called pro wrestling for our tour is where I talked about my favorite wrestling documentaries because I think that in a lot of ways, there's a much more interesting interplay between the sort of reality and unreality of pro wrestling

and then how it's captured in documentary form. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of, they're all sort of different in the way that they take that on. But I think it's really intriguing. I think that movies, just fiction movies about pro wrestling in some of them can be really deeply intriguing and like and just like mind altering. But for the most part, they end up being pretty silly because you don't it's it's it's really hard to treat a fake sport in a in an utterly fake world to be honest i mean if if you know i know we're talking about movies not tv shows glow the netflix

series has done done it just about as well as anything else yeah i agree i'm a huge fan of that show it's interesting so like what we're talking about here is not necessarily john cena's performance in train wreck or i don't know dave Bautista appearing in the Guardians of the Galaxy. We're talking about movies that are about wrestling. About wrestling. And they have been around for a long time, but I feel like there's something tricky. And it's interesting. It was interesting to talk to Steven about what went into making a credible WWE movie because there's such a, you know, that's obviously in partnership with WWE.

And so there's this sort of expectations that come with working with a promotion like that. But then there's this whole other side of professional wrestling that is a little bit grittier and a little bit between your teeth. And I think a lot of people think of a movie like The Wrestler as something that is about sort of what it's like to work on the independent circuit, especially when you're past your prime. What are good examples to you of kind of showing the real life version of wrestling? And then what is something that maybe gives you a little bit of the pizzazz of the sport well the wrestler is definitely i mean the first one that you you come to on the list and i'm talking about the amazing darren aronofsky movie and not the uh 1974 movie by the same name starring minnesota wrestling legend verne gania that's a very different movie can't say i've seen worth

checking out for the wrestling for the wrestling movie completist, but it will not be discussed in depth on this podcast. Another story from my past, years and years ago, before David Shoemaker or the Masked Man had ever put pen to paper to write a single article about wrestling, dead or otherwise,

I went with Brian Curtis of TheRinger.com put pen to paper to write a single article about wrestling dead or otherwise uh i went to i went with brian curtis of the ringer.com to uh a one-man show being put on in in lower manhattan by former wrestling manager johnny valentine of course and we were sitting there and he did it was the first it was before any wrestler had ever done stand-up comedy or you know any any kind of anything like this it was a real trailblazing thing considering where like the wrestling world has gone since then. And he told all these backstage stories and all this kind of stuff. And it was fantastic.

But before he started, he introduced all the celebrities who were there and one, and he did introduce Brian Curtis, who was writing for, I believe slate at that point in time, which was embarrassing. He introduced a couple of pro wrestlers. I think it was Ted DiBiase there,

like some big dudes who were in the front row. And then he introduced Darren Aronofsky, the great director who was sitting immediately behind me and Brian. And we were like, what in the hell is Darren Aronofsky doing here? And then of course, like six months later, we found out that the wrestler was in production and that, you know, kind of changed the way everybody thought of the sport. That is amazing. That must've been some time ago, right? Yeah, it was. This is 2005, 2006, something like that.

I mean, it was a long time ago. I was 12 years old to be here. So we would agree that The Wrestler is the pinnacle of a certain kind of professional wrestling movie, right? It is far and away the best wrestling movie that's ever been made, but it's not the movie that I would show my kids to explain to them what pro wrestling is. What would you show your kids? Well, I mean, I think it depends on how old the kids are.

But you want something that captures the magic of the sport a little bit. Or there's a bunch of different wrestlers that have little windows into what it is have little windows into what it is um i mean obviously if i wanted to show my kids a wrestling movie is you know they'd probably show them nacho libre or something but i don't know that really that doesn't make it onto my list i'll tell you what i love i love if you want a silly movie i mean obviously no holds barred with hulk hogan is is just absolutely cocaine riddled and insane and just deeply wonderful in its way. I would say that's the first one I've seen. I feel like that was my introduction to wrestlers in movies,

maybe barring Hogan in the Rocky series, maybe barring Thugger Lips. Well, I was going to ask whether or not Rocky III actually counted as a wrestling movie, because if so, that's obviously like, that might be up there with the wrestler as the best wrestling ever made. If you can shoehorn that one in, there are a couple of movies like ready to rumble, like the sort of like real life. I mean, like just just backstage in the wrestling world movies. But Body Slam with Roddy Piper and Dirk Benedict is is just sort of

the classic of the genre to me. Dirk Benedict sort of playing a smarmy Vince McMahon character and Roddy Piper playing just the sort of big name wrestler I I love that movie I mean it's just dumb and but it sort of like has a really unimpeachable tone which is very very hard to find um there's some uh there's a movie that that's it's kind of speaking Rocky three, it's a shockingly few people even know exists called paradise alley. Um, that Stallone made after Rocky, he basically used like all of his, all of his like political capital.

He just put up in a ball and decided to make a movie about pro wrestling and the Lower East side of New York city in like the thirties or four. I don't even know when it was set. It is a weird, weird weird movie but it is awesome there are some amazing figures from the pro wrestling world in this movie isn't terry funk in that movie yeah terry funk is one of the is like a stock wrestler i mean he's he was hanging around hollywood a lot in those days um it's a really really cool period piece even without the wrestling the the biggest problem with it is that it takes wrestling it doesn't it doesn do kayfabe really. It's just sort of like my brother is going to become

a wrestler and he's a real wrestler. And, and, uh, you know, I guess that was in the era where that could have been a little bit on the borderline or whatever, but, um, it's a, it's a cool movie, man. And it shows a little bit of, you know, what like Sylvester Stallone completely left up to his own directorial and authorial devices will get you. But it was like, it's a really good movie. I really enjoy it. And I, on the one hand, it shows you what happens

when, I mean, it explains why Stallone's career was heavily Rocky and Rambo going forward, but it's also just like, I mean, it feels like, I mean, it's a real, it's a proper movie. And it's really, I mean, I wholeheartedly endorse it. I recommend it to all the wrestling fans I talked to about this stuff because none of them have ever seen it. That's so fascinating to think of Stallone in the aftermath of Rocky, basically two years later, saying,

what I need to do is make a pro wrestling movie now. Yeah. You know, imagine Michael B. Jordan signing up for, you know, the Junkyard Dog biopic right now. Wouldn't that be bizarre? It would be great.

Would it be good? Yeah, it would be fantastic. There are a lot of bizarre, like weird wrestling movies. I mean, if you want to just like google any list of pro wrestling movies and just find the things that you like try to find those things on youtube or whatever there's a lot of cool stuff i mean and none of this like goes into any like you know canon of great films but there's a korean movie called the foul king which actually does the best job of capturing my lifelong nightmare

of becoming a pro wrestler and showing up for the match only to realize that it was real. I highly recommend that one. There's a wacky movie from the 60s called Goldface the Fantastic Superman. What are the other? Oh, okay, if you want to like, okay, oh, there's a 19, I scribbled this one down, 1945 movie called The Big Show Off with Arthur Lake and Dale Evans. I don't know if you're familiar with this one.

I'm not. The premise is that like Arthur Lake is trying to get Dale Evans and she's obsessed with pro wrestling. But it's like, you know, you're the film buff. I'd love to hear what you thought about it because to me it's like, this is a really good, like every time I see a movie from the 40s, this is basically what it feels like. I'm not sure there's a great,

there's a, there's a, there's a great drop in quality from anything else, but sticking with old movies, there's a fifth, there's a movie from the 50s called Night in the City. This is an amazing movie.

By Jules Dassen and who directed it and it's really, really good and has one of the best, it's not a one shot, but one of the best like prolonged wrestling scenes in any movie with Stanislaus Abisko of all people. it's not a one shot, but one of the best like prolonged wrestling scenes in any movie.

With Stanislaus Abisko of all people. I mean, I guess he did a bunch of several films back in the day too. But that's top five. I mean, that's definitely in the canon. And that's worth watching for wrestling fans or not. I mean, it's just a really cool movie. I mean, again, you're the expert, but the director was kind of set the tone for a lot of film noir and crime tropes through his career. And it's just a really cool vibe for a pro wrestling product.

Yeah, it's basically the movie that Jules Dastin, for people who aren't familiar with him, made between The Naked City and Rafifi, which is kind of what made him known as a great crime caper noir director. But Night in the City, I would hugely recommend that to people. Even though the pro wrestling stuff is vital to the plot, you would never define it as a pure pro wrestling movie. It's just a crime movie in a lot of ways, but it's got great performances, Richard Widmark and Gene Tierney. I had totally forgotten that that had a huge pro wrestling aspect to it, so that's a great call. go to like some sort of seedy underbelly of New York in the 40s or 50s or whatever. I mean, that wrestling was sort of an easy backdrop,

but it's more central in Night in the City than most of those movies. Yeah, I was always fascinated in the late 90s and early 2000s when they attempted to integrate the movie promotion, Ready to Rumble being obviously the biggest example of that, and David Arquette's famous reign as WCW champion, I believe. Yes, correct.

It's interesting. I feel like we're in a phase now where that might start happening again. And fighting with my family feels like the first stroke of maybe a slightly more refined vision of how movies and the pro wrestling world intersect. Does that seem reasonable to you? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's a very, very delicate dance. And there's a reason why the ready to rumble David Arquette thing was a failure. Because you have to strike the exact right tone. The really interesting side note to that, as I think a lot of people probably know from various other media,

but David Arquette is like, in his, how old is he now? Late 40s, early 50s has actually has actually become a professional wrestler like not just showing up to play one on camera but like he has gotten into this the best shape of his life and is going around wrestling and indie wrestling shows just getting literally bloodied up and broken uh just for the love of the game and uh this is what makes pro wrestling endlessly entertaining to me and and like just you know galaxy brain like ready to rumble was a terrible movie and him being wcw champion is just a laughable and at best forgettable moment of pro wrestling history

but the real story is the one that starts with him being a wrestling fan and doing all that stuff and now as like an old man just destroying himself as a wrestler to like redeem everything that happened before that's like the greatest wrestling story maybe that's ever been told yeah it seems fake he's like turned himself into new jack you know the things that he's doing i mean he's basically been in these sort of bloody death matches recently right and just just to look at him is i mean obviously like we're in the year 2019 like hollywood stars have incredible bodies well into their 50s or whatever but like this is david arquette we're talking like seeing him in spandex pants and no shirt on is about as unsettling like it's about as like unbelievable as seeing the guy with the gorilla body and umbrella academy

like it's like it doesn't make any sense at all but it's but it's true and he's out there just like like busting his ass all the time it's really amazing you mentioned that you didn't want to insert documentaries into this list because it probably would ultimately be five documentaries in your top five wrestling movies um i you know i i noticed recently that we're about to reach the 20th anniversary of Beyond the Mat. And I remember being such a hardcore WWE fan when that came out. And what a mind-blowing movie that was for me to see.

Just sort of setting aside your top five-isms, are there a couple of docs that you feel like anybody that is interested in the subject should see no matter what? Yeah, I mean, Beyond it i mean a legitimate one the one that i mean the one that i'm a little bit that i'm you know loudly a proponent of but obviously biased is this is a movie is a documentary called fake it so real that was made back in 2012 only because i'm friends with the director i didn't know him before i saw the movie but i've been and i loved the film before i met him but i know you know i'm buddies with now, but the director is Robert Green, who's gone on to make some of, certainly the most intellectually, like, interesting documentaries in the world since then.

Very daring and fascinating approach to making docs. He's made, like, Actress, Kate Plakes Christine. Yes. Yeah. And then most recently he made a movie called Bisbee 17, which is about the reenactment of like a very dark moment in, in American history. But I mean, Robert can speak for himself and you can Google him to find him say this in a million interviews, but he's, but what drew would,

what, what invigorates him for much of his career in the documentary field is, is the concept of kayfabe. He came to documentary through wrestling, and he just thought it was wild that people talked about documentary as if it was capturing some ultimate absolute truth, when in fact, there's no truth when there's a camera in your face. And that tension that exists in pro wrestling at its best uh can also exist in in uh in in the documentary form anyway he one of his early documentaries was called fake it so real it's about a tiny wrestling promotion in a tiny town in north carolina uh and

it is one of the most compelling you know 90 minutes you'll ever spend watching tv i mean watching documentaries. I'm from Hollywood, the quintessential Andy Kaufman documentary. That's right. And also you could put Breakfast with Andre. What's his Andre movie? The Freddie Blassie movie?

Sorry, My Breakfast with Blassie. Andre's movie. It was based on... That's a good movie if you want to put that in the other category. You mentioned Beyond the Mat. based on um that's that's a that's a good movie if you want to put that in the other category um you meant did you mention beyond the mat that's one of the the best of all time and then if you want to talk about just like cinema like high level like you know interesting stuff there's a documentary that i believe is still available online for free from like the canadian government called laloute that was made by two uh filmmakers

from quebec in 1960 that is basically an art film about uh the professional wrestling and the scene in in canada at the time and it was deeply influenced by uh by roland bart and his like obsession with wrestling. It's worth checking out. It's not like the greatest movie you've ever seen, but it's such a different movie than Wrestling with Shadows or Beyond the Mat

or these things that are just so gritty they're plain sort of wrestling documentaries. I haven't seen La Lute. That's a new one to me. Yeah, I'll send you the link to that. It's definitely interesting. And then the other one that I think

if anybody has ever seen a wrestling documentary, it's probably Lipstick and Dynamite. Yes. That's just an incredible movie about the early days of women's wrestling in the United States and all the shit that they went through. And the highlights too.

And I think that's never been more relevant to what's going on in the wrestling world probably than right now where women's wrestling is finally getting its, its, its moment. Let me ask you a question. So obviously wrestling with my family is a pages story page. Of course, I had a really interesting life.

She comes from this almost like carnival family of, of wrestling performers. Is there another active or historical WWE superstar that you'd want to see get this kind of a treatment? Are we going to talk about Hulk Hogan? I mean, it sounds like we're getting that, right? It sounds like we're probably getting Hemsworth and Todd Phillips. Well, you made the joke earlier, but Junkyard Dog in Memphis I

mean sorry in uh in in Mississippi in Louisiana in the in the 70s is one of the most interesting stories of all time I've heard you talk about that before I mean honestly Brian Coogler and Michael B Jordan doing that would be really cool yeah that could be I mean it could be really great I mean it's one of the I mean there's there's so many levels to it um let me, I mean, it could be really great. I mean, it's one of the, I mean, there's, there's so many levels to it. Um, let me say, I mean, there, there, a lot of the, a lot of the great wrestling stories are sort of like exist in my brain and grainy black and white. And I think then there's some, you know, times that would be really cool. I mean, I would, you know, my, one of my personal icons is, is Sputnik Monroe who wrestled in Memphis and, and legend, the legend has it had a hand in desegregating the wrestling arena down there and everything.

But there's stories like that that you could tell that would be a lot of fun. You know, it's hard now in the modern era because everybody's lives are just, we know everything about them. You know, there's not a lot of backstory or anything else and intrigue is sort of told on internet message boards and stuff like that.

But I think that, you know, there's a lot of stuff from the olden days. I mean, I would love to see, I mean, my dream is to go all the way back to the beginning when wrestling became fake with the Gold Dust Trio. I wrote about it in my book. I've written about it online, but just, you know, the sort of smoke-filled rooms of the 20s and the mob scene all around pro wrestling and those are the those that's the that's the if i could go back in time with a video camera that's where i would go well we're we're in the modern era right now with fighting with my family dave thanks for talking about this man thank you so much for having me thanks again to the masked man david shoemaker for his thoughts and now let's go to my conversation with the writer-director Stephen Merchant. I'm delighted to be joined by filmmaker

and writer and actor and erstwhile podcaster and creative mind Stephen Merchant. Stephen, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Stephen, you made a movie about wrestling, and so my first question is, are you a fan of professional wrestling? I am now. Had you asked that question before I began this project, I would have said no. I didn't know anything about wrestling. I had never watched it, really. I watched a little bit of British wrestling in the 70s and early 80s, which my granddad used to watch. British wrestling, if you've never seen it at that period, was not the lithe, athletic, dynamic people like The Rock that you would associate now.

It was really heavy set men that would sort of thwap their bellies against one another. They had names like Big Daddy. There was a guy called Giant Haystacks. Because if there's one thing that strikes fear into people, it's hay. And so that was my sort of only exposure to wrestling really and i never understood it even as a kid i didn't understand the artificiality of it it was also weird to me and then um duane my dear friend duane the rock johnson sent me this documentary

about a family of british wrestlers and sat down thinking, oh, I'm not really interested in this. And was just completely won over by them and their story and their journey. And to cut a long answer marginally shorter, I've become a wrestling fan. So I'm interested in how one does that. Yes. When you're thinking about making a movie, I assume that character and actors and humanity comes first. But there is a significant technical

craft around making professional wrestling happen, and especially in making a movie about professional wrestling happen. So what are the first things you do when you hear about the story? Is it you get to writing, you get to research? What comes first? It began, as I say, as a documentary that was on British TV, which I did not see on British TV. That was seen by Dwayne Johnson. I know Dwayne from back in the days when he was still in shape. He did a film called Tooth Fairy and we'd stayed in touch over the years. And he was in England. He was filming one of his Fast and Furious films. He saw this documentary and it's about this family of wrestlers, a mom, dad, three kids. They all wrestle.

They talk about it like a religion, like it saved their lives. They've had dark and tough times in the past. The dad had been in jail and wrestling is their salvation. And the dream, the family dream is to get these two teenage kids into WWE, which was, you know, it's just the big leagues for wrestlers. Only the daughter Paige got signed. Brother Zach got left behind. She had to go off to America and she was alone and she had to struggle and try and make it carrying the burden of the family dream with her. And even though I had no interest in wrestling, I just was so engaged by this story. I was so engaged by this, the fact that they cared so much about this esoteric thing called wrestling, that there was a real family connection. There was humor, there was heart, there was a sort family connection there was humor there was heart

there was a sort of rocky style underdog story at the core of it and that was the thing that i related to and like you say the characters and the emotion of it is what i related to but needed to research wrestling in order to better understand their world spent time with the family went with duane did i mention i'm friends with Dwayne Johnson? Are you? Yeah. I normally lead with that. He's fat now. You're saying he's not in shape. He's in terrible shape. I went with him to WrestleMania in Dallas and that I think was where it clicked for me. I saw it. I saw the crowd. I saw the physicality, the joy that the fans have, the unlikely mix of athleticism and showmanship and stunt work and choreography. And I sort of was, I got it. It suddenly made sense to me. Someone described it as soap opera in spandex. And that is when it finally twigged. And the thing I was trying to

capture in the film was there's something very kinetic and alive and exhilarating about live wrestling that's very, very entertaining. And I thought, well, if we could capture some of that, the noise of it, the crack of the mat and the kind of spring of the ropes and the buzz of the crowd, that's the sort of energy that will give something cinematic and big scale and kind of a fizz to this otherwise very intimate, emotional family story. The film is very knowing about some of the conventions of professional wrestling. But I'm curious, especially when you're working with a company like WWE, in a story that more or less raises the curtain on how at least the development of a young wrestler happens.

Yes. What is that relationship like? How do you get to say the things that are true to the experience? And how do you let them have the sort of mythology that is very important to the business that they have? I think they've been increasingly open over recent years about the levels of reality and fiction. Publicly, at least, I think they're a little bit more welcoming. That didn't mean that they invited me in and just laid everything out for me. It was a little bit like I imagine if you spend time with magicians, you had to sort of win their trust a little bit that i wasn't there to kind of

blow it wide open or to or to mock um but i never had any restrictions or parameters set by wwe they they were fairly hands-off in that way they had sort of strange uh rules like apparently you should refer to it as wwe and not the wwe yes kind of very specific things like that but in terms of sort of how much i could give away about the mechanics of how it worked um they were fairly they were fairly um honest and sort of fairly free with that stuff um the thing that i thought was sort of amazing and what I was impressed by is, you know, thousands of people apply to do that and very few people get chosen. And it is, it's a real kind of, it's a very tough thing to succeed at. And even with all of its artifice, there is, there's a lot of athleticism to it.

There's a lot of very real physical effort. There's a lot of very real physical effort. There's a lot of physical danger. There's, uh, on top of that, like I say, the showmanship and the kind of, and the, and the sense of performance that you need. And so to me, this was as much a film about, it was, it was as much like, you know, there's old kind of, um, musical, like 42nd street, right? The kid from the chorus line who gets their chance on Broadway. I mean, it was as much about how you become a star and an entertainer as it was an athlete, you know? And I was thinking as much about films like, you know, like A Star is Born, where it's just kind of the rags to riches story, as much as the sportiness of it, if you like.

Yeah, there's something really interesting. As I was watching the film, I thought a little bit of some of the things you've worked on in the past. And it feels like you find characters or you help develop characters who are simultaneously quite sure of themselves and meant for great things, but also have a level of kind of buffoonish ignorance. And even someone like Paige, who is obviously quite talented and accomplished now as we know her, the way that you've positioned her is not so far from David Brent or your character in Hello Ladies. There is something kind of like there's a presumed sense of accomplishment ahead of time. I'm wondering if that feels like a through line for you, for all the characters that you're drawn to and the projects that you work on. Well, I think she's a little less flawed in the way that those characters are. They are very blinded by,

there's a big gap between how they think the world sees them and how they really are being seen. And that's sort of been a comic element that I've used a lot in the past. I don't think Paige either in real life or in the version I presented is quite the same as that. But what she does have is she's naive in a sense. She's grown up in what in a sense is a little mini cult.

Her family really are, they're wrestling obsessives and she hasn't seen the world beyond that. And she's kind of insulated. And so in a way, she's been convinced by her family that she's destined for great things. She believes that the world is probably as excited and is interested in what she does as her family have led her to believe. And that once she gets beyond her tiny little realm and has to sort of venture out into the world, she comes up against what people really think of her, which is that they either are indifferent or they object to her. They take issue with the way she looks or the way she speaks. So in a sense, I was thinking of it a little bit like Dorothy landing in Oz,

you know, and sort of she leaves the farm and suddenly she's sort of in the big bad world and it's a kind of coming of age story. And in a sense, whether it's The Office or any of the other things I've done, there's always a sort of coming of age element to it. You know, in the original version of The Office and even to some degree in the American version, you know, the series ends when the David Brent Michael Scott character finally grows up a little and finally begins to see, stops trying so hard, you know, and true of my Hello Ladies character. And so to some degree, that's true here of Paige as well. You know, it's a coming of age story

in which she sort of embraces her outsider-ness. And instead of sort of running away from that, she embraces it. And that's the thing which kind of elevates her to the next level. What's it like to make a movie about a real person? And how much is that person present for the making of any of this stuff?

Because Paige exists, you know, she is. And she is not, not only she exists, it's based on a true story, but we know, we know some things about her. We've project. And so I didn't see her as a celebrity or as a public figure, which she is for people who know who she is and who are wrestling fans. She was very much a sort of blank canvas for me. And so I sort of, in a sense, knew her from both meeting her in real life and also from this documentary in which she's not paid her real name is Soraya and that's who I got to know and understand and and so because of that I wasn't burdened with this sense of dealing with if you know imagine if you're making the Marilyn Monroe story or the or the you know any kind of celebrity biopic in that way you're you're sort of dealing you're navigating that that very famous public image. Whereas I was just thinking of it as this young woman who leaves a small town in England and pursues this dream. And so that was sort of,

that made it slightly easier, but you're right. I had, I felt an obligation to the family to treat them respectfully, but also not to simply make a version of a movie, which is from their perspective. I tried to do my due diligence and kind of get the other perspectives on the story, you know, dig around, find out the darker parts of their lives so that it wasn't just, I think the fancy word is a hagiography, right? I wasn't just blowing smoke up their ass the whole time. And I was trying to represent them um sort of warts and all really um i decided where the movie ended and there is a lot there are a lot of other chapters to page's life since then and sort of where the movie resolves itself but um for instance

she had presented uh the version of events to me in which she'd gone to america and she felt very bullied by the other girls and by the other trainers. And I went to Florida, I spoke with those other girls and I spoke with other trainers and they were like, yeah, sometimes she was the bully. And it kind of opened my mind about, oh, right. Yeah. She saw it from a very specific perspective, but there are other angles. And that kind of helped me, you know, in the writing of it and kind of trying to frame it, you know, a little bit more objectively than perhaps she would have done if she had simply authored this herself. It's interesting. I mean, you definitely get the sense that there's empathy for

all of the characters and not just for Paige. There does seem to be maybe another master in this equation, for lack of a better phrase, which is WWE fans are very consumed by concepts of fidelity and, you know, the truth around the characters and what they have invested their time in. And since you were not a fan ahead of time, I wonder if you thought about making sure that you were also sort of serving their hopes and dreams for what a page movie would be like, or if that just doesn't come into the equation for you. I always wanted to be respectful of them. I wanted this to be a film that works

for both wrestling and non-wrestling fans. That was very important to me. I kept thinking about movies like Billy Elliot. He wants to be a ballet dancer. I have no interest in ballet, but I'm rooting for this kid to succeed. And I felt that it was the same to me. Here's a girl, she wants to be a wrestler.

I don't care about wrestling, but it means a lot to her. And I didn't want to mock it. It wasn't a satire. It wasn't a spoof on wrestling. It was, this just is a thing she happens to want to do. And so I wanted to be authentic in the wrestling and treat it respectfully. But I also didn't want to be so beholden to every little detail because approaching it from the outside, it's very complicated. You know, there are years,

decades of soap opera in spandex storylines that you have to try and get up to speed with. You know, she fits into the narrative of wrestling in a very specific way. There is this other thing called the NXT, which is the sort of training developmental stage. Took me a long time to get my head around that. So that's part of WWE. It it's not when i did early drafts of the script it was incredibly complicated to try and convey all of that and so at some point i decided well i just need to simplify in certain ways i need to sort of just decide what the kind of the major tent poles of this story are and not get so carried away about every little nuance and i was was reminded of when I was growing up, I was a big Batman fan. I would read all the comics. And I remember when the Tim Burton movie

came out in 1988, I was very excited and looking forward to it and obviously went to see it. And in that movie, Burton makes the Joker the person who killed Batman's parents. Anyone who's read the comics knows it was Joe Chill. It was not the Joker. I was furious. And you sort of anticipated movie culture in 2019 in that way. Because I often wondered to myself, would I be a troll if I was, you know, 14 now?

And I was sort of, I had Twitter and everything else. Would I be kind of, would I be tweeting at Tim Burton? How dare you, sir? And so I be kind of, would I be tweeting at Tim Burton? How dare you, sir? And so I was kind of mindful of that frustration I felt at that young age, but as time's gone on and the more I've understood storytelling, the more that Tim Burton's decision to do that makes perfect sense to me. As a 90 minute movie, he has decades of comic books to draw from he's no there's no possible way he can serve every every comic and every fan so he has to sort of choose what he thinks is the is the sort of most the best story he wants to tell and that's how i felt with this i i i've compressed

and constrained things a little but but the broad brushstrokes of this story are as are as truthful as i could make it what was most surprising to you about entering this world that you didn't anticipate because i guess both as somebody who's learning about wrestling but also as a filmmaker i think it was just the the respect that grew for for if you like the performance side of wrestling you know um it was not a surprise to me that they work out very much and they train a lot, but I think it was just the combination of skills, as I've said before, the showmanship and the sense of playing to a 20,000 strong audience. And as someone who comes

from standup and that world, I know how hard it is to, to play to an audience and particularly when an audience gets that big and, you know, they don't have the sort of patient comedy crowd who will sit there and give you five minutes to get into your groove. I mean, that is, you know, that's a kind of bear pit and they want entertainment and they want excitement and adrenaline. And I was really sort of won over and kind of dazzled by that side of it. And it helps when you go to WrestleMania with Dwayne. And that guy came out at WrestleMania with a flamethrower and set foot to a nine-foot sign of his name, The Rock. And he managed to string that out for about seven or eight minutes without saying a word. And that crowd was in the palm of his hand. I was like, wow, this takes some doing.

Yeah, it's a skill and a talent and also something you have to practice that. How did you land on Florence Pugh as your star? Because I think also when you were shooting is a bit before she started to take on some bigger projects. She's quite good in the movie. And I feel like this would be challenging for her too. I saw maybe 60 young actresses either on tape or in person for this role. It was very tough to cast because like you say, she's playing a real person. That real person has been wrestling since they were 13, has enormous charisma, star quality. That's the reason she succeeded. You needed someone who could do all of that, who was willing to jump in the ring, who had the acting chops to carry a movie on their shoulders and could convince as a

working class girl from a small town in England. And as you say, Florence has subsequently, you know, begin to gather real momentum. But at the time I'd only really seen her in this film called Lady Macbeth, which is a much more contained, controlled performance. And I needed someone who could really let loose. And it was a great credit to my casting director, Shaheen, who really kept saying, I really think this woman is your choice. And she came in and she read with me and she read with Jack, who plays her brother, and we kind of workshopped it a bit. And truth be told, there's still part of you when you start filming that's a bit of a gamble, a bit of a roll of the dice because you don't quite know um and

you're putting a lot of faith in someone who is you know she was only about 19 when we started shooting the movie the fourth day of filming was here in la it was at the staple center we had 20,000 fans um the wwe had allowed us one hour to shoot a scene and um and she just went out there in the costume they played pages music she'd maybe wrestled for a week and a half, two weeks of training. And she just was, I went and I saw her backstage and she was just contained and controlled and just really present and just fearless and just went out there and absolutely crushed. And that was like the fourth day of shooting. And I knew we had a great ending for the movie and everything after that as they say was gravy and i was just really impressed by just her her presence of mind and her focus it was really you know someone again who's performed on and off for a long time and feel now just in the last few years i start to

feel like i'm a professional at this and to see someone who's sort of 1920 kind of have that same calm and sense of ease was just kind of breathtaking. That's so interesting, the story that you told about Staples Center. It's very much like A Star is Born, which you mentioned earlier in the way that they shot some of those scenes in those films. Just as a director, what's it like to know you have this incredibly compressed frame of time to do something that is difficult with a fairly unseasoned performer, at least in the respect of being in the ring. What's going through your mind, and how do you strategize and map all that out? Well, because of the nature of the production, we actually didn't have much time to do any strategizing or mapping out of anything.

We only had about five weeks prep. I was prepping in the UK, and then I had to come here and shoot this scene, as I say, fourth day of filming. It helped that Dwayne came down and kind of emceed the event and kind of just played that crowd like an orchestra for us and got them to cheer and boo and everything at the right time. Was this affixed to like a raw taping or something like that? This was a Monday Night Raw finished taping at, let's say, 8 o'clock,

and they gave us one hour afterwards. And there's only so much you can do. I had three of my own cameras and then the WWE themselves were shooting it, which was great. So I had all their experienced and seasoned cameramen as well. I had remembered from that movie, The Fighter, that they very smartly, they were working on a low budget. They used HBO boxing cameramen to shoot a lot of their fight scenes. And they kind of rendered them on screen much as you would see a HBO pay-per-view boxing match. And so it occurred to me that if we did something similar,

that would help us because it would feel like you were watching it on TV and it would have this sort of sheen that you'd associate with a WWE broadcast. And in a sense, I was sort of just dependent on those directors, sorry, on those cameramen, um, to just do their job and film that sequence as they would any other wrestling match and then pick off a few other little bits here and there with my own cameras.

Um, it was enormously stressful and very high pressured. I was so anxious that, that Florence actually said to me, please, can you just leave the room? You're making me nervous. I was fine beforehand. Yeah. And you know, that's, I think that's sort of a good example in a way I think of so much of what you might term relatively low budget filmmaking is that so many of the decisions you make are born out of necessity or, or the restrictions you have. And not every creative decision can be the one that you absolutely would have wanted in your heart of hearts or your biggest dreams. You're sort of, in a sense, you're slightly,

you're going with the flow and you're just sort of, you're shooting it kind of on the fly. I'm very curious about where you're at at this stage of your creative life. And I guess I was a little bit surprised to see that you were, in some respects, a for-hire filmmaker on this project. Somebody brought, a producer brought a project to you and you looked at it and thought, how can I do the best possible version of this from my mind? So one, I'm a bit curious about sort of your hopes and expectations as a filmmaker and also kind of what you thought had changed significantly for you since you were directing television however many years ago? And two, will you continue to go in this direction? Is this what you want to be doing now? Well, I've always wanted to do movies and

that was something that has been a dream from a young age. I studied film at university. I was a film critic when I was young before I did anything else, you know, and, and in a sense, uh, comedy and TV was a sort of dual love, but the two things to me were always bound up together. You're right in the sense that the project didn't originate with me at the very core, but I came on board when it really just existed as a documentary and there was nothing else. There wasn't, it wasn't set up anywhere. It wasn't anything else. So, you know, I developed it with Dwayne and with Film 4 and we sort of built it from the ground up.

So I was involved very early on and so I felt a great sense of ownership for it. And, you know, in a way, wherever an idea comes from is irrelevant to me. I mean, I, Hello Ladies, for instance, was a stand-up act and it was HBO who said, have you thought about this as a sitcom? I hadn't considered it as a sitcom.

So, you know, it was their kind of their idea to sort of develop it that way. So, um, you know, it bubbled up relatively organically. And,

um, given that it originated, um, with the biggest film star in the world, I'm sort of now I'm quietly hoping that other giant film stars will just happen to send me ideas or projects. It's not a bad strategy. It would be a pretty good,

but the fact that I wrote it, I met with the family, you know, I built the script up, you know, there was no previous drafts, you know, so I felt, I feel very much like I rolled up my sleeves from the beginning and kind of, and got involved with this one.

And in a way, the very fact that it isn't an obvious fit for me is kind of what made it interesting. You know, I just responded to the story and that was the thing which hooked me. I don't mean to deny you authorship. I just find it interesting that someone called and said, what do you think about making a movie about this? And you're like, okay. Well, I was, but I wasn't, I had to convince myself.

I watched a documentary. I kind of could see, yeah, maybe there's something here, but I went and met the family. I think it was meeting the family and meeting Paige and kind of hearing the second and third acts of their story, which weren't in the documentary, that really convinced me there was something there. And I think also, again, having gone to see, even just seeing them perform in wrestling, I think for a movie, for a cinema experience,

you want something kind of kinetic. You know, you want sort of, um, some dynamism and some color and some, and some movement. And it seemed that the sort of theater of wrestling lent itself to that, you know, that it, that it could feel cinematic in that way. You mentioned, um, Billy Elliot and the fighter. Were there films that you watched before you started making this and said, these are kind of, I'm templatizing or I'm being inspired by X, Y, and Z? Well, you can never, I think, make any kind of sporting movie

without watching Rocky, or indeed all of the Rockies. What is your Rocky of choice? I'm very partial to Rocky II. Really? Yeah, I think Rocky II and III are very short. I mean, the original's good. The original's very much a slow burn.

It's slow. But really, but I think, again, a template in the sense that it really beds in character. So by the time you get to the fight at the end, there's actually very little fighting in Rocky, the original. You're really so on board with that guy. You're so rooting for him. And that seemed like a very important element.

And they did that, I thought, very effectively when they rebooted it with Creed. I think they did the same thing. They really bedded in the character and really kind of made you care and root for him. And there's not an overwhelming amount of wrestling in your film too. So I guess it's fair to say that there's some similarities. Well, I would argue that you don't need to like boxing to like Rocky, you know? I mean, there's a reason why that is so iconic and it's not because every fan who runs up those steps in Philly is because they're a diehard boxing fan, right? There's just something about that story that's so engaging. And I felt very much the same making this. It was very important to me that you didn't have to care

about wrestling to enjoy it the other things i thought about are um eight mile the eminem film yeah um i always think about saturday night fever uh why saturday night fever is one of those films which i think because the what the famous white suit and the pose and the Bee Gees music is such a kind of pop culture touchstone that people forget that the movie itself, or at least the original version of the movie before they PG-13'd it for TV, is a very brutal, tough, working class story of a guy who's sort of going nowhere and just living for the weekends. It's got some very dark scenes in it. It's a very kind of adult film and it sort of going nowhere and just living for the weekends. It's got some very dark scenes in it. It's a very kind of adult film.

And it sort of stops to have these joyous dance sequences, which means that it's sort of remembered as being a long, it's almost people think of it as a musical or like a companion piece to Grease, but it's actually a much tougher, grittier film. And so I was thinking of that with with almost not that my film's quite as tough and gritty as that but nevertheless there's real emotion in my story and real and some dark moments and so i kept thinking about that and the way that the wrestling sequences are almost

little dance numbers and each one is just has some slightly different moves and you know we don't try not to repeat the moves you know and we kind of build to the real spectacle the big finale dance number in the at the end of the movie and so i was kind of thinking about you know musicals as well as i love that that's really good um you evaded my question about whether you're going to be a filmmaker now do you have it's one of those things it's funny because i remember when i first did the office with ricky because i was writing it and i wasn't in it people said um are you going to perform? Are you ever going to act? And I was like, well, I, I always, that was always something I was going to do. I just didn't do it there. Cause I, there was no role for me. And then I started acting

and people were like, Oh, you know, you're quite good at that. You can do more, you can do serious acting. And then, you know, you do some serious. And so to me, it's sort of like, I've always assumed I'm going to do all of these things. You know, I'm hoping that I don't get hit by a bus when I leave today. And so I'm hoping that as long as, you know, I don't annoy people too much or keep burning through, you know, money and become a crazy person, they'll keep letting me do this stuff. And so it's weird. It's like in my mind, I already am a filmmaker. I haven't really made any films. No, but I think the human impulse is to prescribe your role, you know, to say, now you're this.

So please fill that, check that box for me until you die. And a lot of times in Hollywood too, there is an expectation that you can't be six things. You have to be one or two things and that's it. Well, I've already been sent some scripts for other movies about wrestling. Oh, you're the wrestling guy. Something tells me we won't be doing that.

What are you going to do next? Well, in all seriousness, this did kind of come out of left field. And so I've been looking around for other film projects. There's just nothing that's quite hit me yet, either as an idea or as a script or as a book to adapt or anything. I just haven't quite found the thing.

And this was an all-consuming project. And it took a long time. It took a lot of hard work, a lot to adapt or anything. I just haven't quite found the thing. And this was a very, an all-consuming project, you know, and it took a long time and a lot of hard work, a lot of sleepless nights. And I don't want to jump into a project, you know, for the sake of it, you know. And so I'm looking around for something. Maybe, again, a giant movie star will send me something. But...

See, I feel like that's not ultimately necessary though, right? I'm looking at your IMDb page the other day and I look at the number of countries that have adapted the office. And I think you must, you must have a golden ticket. You must be able to do, and I don't know anything about you. I don't know. I have no idea how wealthy you are, how powerful you are. I have no sense of it whatsoever, but I suspect that you could do anything that you wanted

to. So you don't have to necessarily get that call from Dwayne Johnson, right? To make, I don't think that you wanted to. So you don't have to necessarily get that call from Dwayne Johnson, right? To make it- I don't think that's true though. I think it's like you say, if people wanted me to do a sitcom set in an office, I'm their go-to guy and they write a check for me. But to do another kind of comedy,

okay, well, we'll see. And do you want to do a movie? Okay, well, is it set in an office? I think it's sort of, I don't think, like you say, I don't know that sort of success in one thing automatically opens the door for, for anything else. And so I still feel like, um, um, it's necessary to prove myself and, and, and, and as much to myself as to anyone else, you know, is to, you know, although I have those grand ideas of being this, this all-rounder who acts and is a multi-hyphenate, um, you know, I, I, this felt kind of manageable, this project, very tough, but this has taught me a lot and feel like the next one, you know, I'll become,

I'll be even more seasoned again. Um, so no, I don't feel like, you know, anything is kind of an easy ride. Um, um you know hopefully this film succeeds and finds an audience that will help a little but um you know i made a list recently of my favorite 500 movies because you know i got time on my hands oh my god and this is exactly my sort of thing so yeah well this is it's not in any uh order so i don't it's not it's it's only in chronological order from the earliest to the most recent what inspired this this mission i think it was that i'd seen a list egg to write had done and i thought oh that looks um fun that is a very eclectic list that takes in everything from you know felini and michelangelo antonioni kind of

euro art movies from the 60s to you know um predator and uh die hard and so um i'd be happy to be involved with any of the kind of movies on that list. And so I sort of feel... So either Die Hard 8 or a remake of Red Desert. That's what you're saying? Yes, or anything in between. There's a lot of great Seven Is Paranoid thrillers in there. There's, you know, there's rom-coms.

There's, you know, there's Kurosawa's. I mean, so it's sort of, I suppose my point being that um my taste is very broad and and and I sort of feel like I want to try all the different ice cream you know if they'll let me uh Stephen we end every episode by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing that they've seen you of course are a filmmaker what is the last great thing you have seen I thought the film which was cruelly overlooked this awards season was, I thought, an excellent movie I saw called Leave No Trace, which I just thought was absolutely excellent from the director of Winter's Bone. Great performance from Thomasin McKenzie, who's a young actress who I actually had done a – I did a part in a movie called Jojo Rabbit with Taika Waititi.

And she's in that. And I thought, you know, even acting opposite in the few scenes I did, I was like, wow, this, this girl's terrific. And so watch Leave No Trace and was just bowled over by her and by the movie. I just thought such, such a lovely, elegant, small, refined piece of work, really, uh, characterful and moving, beautifully made. And, um, so that was the last piece of anything I've seen where I was just really dazzled. That would make an unlikely but not unreasonable double feature with Fighting With My Family. Two films about family. And a strong daughter and a complicated relationship with her father, perhaps? That's right. I think perhaps, would you perhaps start with Leave No Trace?

Only as ours might be a more refreshing sorbet. There's a heaviness to Leave No Trace that perhaps we could be an antidote. I think it depends on what kind of day you're having. Stephen, I enjoyed talking to you. Thank you for doing this. Thanks for having me. Thank you again to David Shoemaker and of course, Stephen Merchant. And thanks to you for listening to this week's episode of The Big Picture. Please join us again Sunday night. There's a little thing happening

called the Academy Awards. Amanda Dobbins and I will be doing a show almost immediately after that show. So please tune in on YouTube, on Periscope, on any number of streaming devices that you may have or just check out the podcast

wherever you find your podcasts. See you then.