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Foxcatcher (2014) Review - Ep 4 - Archaic Wrestling
64 Plays1 year ago
Sasha and Evan chose Foxcatcher for their first film review! The boys talk about rich wrestling funders, Mark Shultz, and cocaine.
Music by Josh Kasen
Twitter @ArchaicWrestle
archaicwrestling@gmail.com
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Transcript
Sasha's Pond Project
00:00:16
Speaker
What up, folks? It's Archaic Wrestling again, and we are officially on Pond Watch. Sasha. Sasha is building a pond. It's something that all men truly desire to do deep down on their bones. They watch YouTube videos about it all the time, even if they don't admit it to other people. And Sasha is living the dream, though. You want to give us an update on the pond, Sasha? Men want one thing, and it's a big pond. It's a hole with...
00:00:45
Speaker
plastic inside of it that you hide. I dug a big hole in my backyard. I put a liner on it, and then I filled it up with a bunch of water. Pond. That's what ponds are. We got a pump in there. We got all the things. We got a pump. We got water lilies. We got water poppies. We got water hives. And hopefully in the next couple weeks, I'll be getting some fish in there too. Very nice. And about how big is it? It's hard to...
00:01:15
Speaker
We're about 350 gallons. Okay. Yeah, that'll be a good size. About 350 gallons. So about five feet in diameter and two feet tall. Nice. It's a big old circle. So you'll get fish, man, you could put like snails in there. You could get a whole little ecosystem going. Are you creating like a little? Yeah, are you creating like a little waterfall or anything? This is the this is the deal. You know, the pond is is it's really your domain. So
00:01:45
Speaker
It's really your kingdom. Yeah, yeah, you get to play creator of this world a little bit. We'll have a waterfall. I read a YouTube comment that a guy put freshwater clams in his and that he didn't need to use a filter because he had these clams. So I think I'm gonna try to get some clams. But I got, yeah, I got a pump set up. We're gonna do it over a waterfall. Gotta go buy a bunch of big ass rocks. So that'll be something. Nice. Yeah, that'll be awesome, dude.
00:02:13
Speaker
We want some goldfish, maybe a couple of koi. We'll see.
Introduction to Foxcatcher Review
00:02:16
Speaker
My family, when we were growing up, we put a pond in the backyard with the waterfall and all that stuff. And yeah, it was interesting watching it grow as an ecosystem, because we put turtles in there and fish in there and stuff. But then wild frogs would come out from out in the hills and would lay eggs in our pond and everything.
00:02:39
Speaker
Yeah, a whole bunch of different animals would come by and just like chill in the pond. So yeah, good times. That's cool though, man. So we decided that we were going to do our first episode where we do a little bit of a film review. And we decided to go with the film Foxcatcher. I want to be the best in the world. I want to go to worlds. I want to go.
00:03:16
Speaker
I had a good time rewatching this. I hadn't seen it since it came out, um, in 2014. Um, and for folks that don't know, this is the story of, uh, John DuPont and the, um, the Schultz brothers, uh, a wrestling family, well, wrestling brothers.
00:03:39
Speaker
and the murder of Dave Schultz by John DuPont. Based off a true story, although there is quite a bit that's been changed for this film, it's a fictional film technically, and that mostly revolves around timing of events, who was what and where at different times throughout the story.
00:04:05
Speaker
And, you know, for instance, like the Schultz brothers were never at Foxcatcher Farms at the same time.
Themes and Portrayals in Foxcatcher
00:04:10
Speaker
So that's kind of something that was invented for the film. Yeah. But overall, it tells the basic story that before this film came out, like I had heard about it, the story of of Schultz being killed by Yupant. And Schultz was definitely someone who
00:04:29
Speaker
you know, my, my coach gave me tons of video on and said, I want you to wrestle like this guy, right? He's always in really good positions talking about Dave Schultz specifically, right? And he's, and both of them are, are really well regarded, especially in the California wrestling community where they came out of. Um, and so I thought this would be interesting to check out. Um, cause I know there's like some people like it, some people don't, I think there's some pros and cons. Um,
00:04:56
Speaker
But before we jump into kind of going scene by scene, is there anything you want to say about it off of your viewing just now? I think I really enjoyed Mark Ruffalo as Dave Scholz. I think he did a pretty good job. He had that really good, he had a really nice dorky physique going on. He looked really good in all those t-shirts under his singlet, under the old school. Yeah. Very showy singlet.
00:05:26
Speaker
he definitely stood out and we'll talk about it. But like, I guess like real quick, I think some of the themes that really jump out, right? You got class consciousness themes, right? A lot of ideas about class are being thrown around, like living in the shadow of someone that you care about, right? And a lot of like American exceptionalism and like American heritage kind of all mixed into it.
00:05:54
Speaker
But coming from a very cynical place, right? I think it's very critical of some of those themes, right? Yeah. Early on in the movie, when Mark Schultz, played by Channing Tatum, tries to convince his brother to move to Foxcatcher, he's like, I talked to this guy. He's got all this money. It's crazy. He said he'd give us $25,000 to live there. He's like, I just threw out the biggest number I could think of.
00:06:21
Speaker
And you know, it's, I looked at it, adjusted for inflation for about that year. It's about like $75,000. It's not incredible. It's not incredible, but I mean, imagine getting paid $75,000, you know, just to wrestle, um, back then, right? Yeah. When it didn't have nearly that support. But anyway, before we get into it, um, I want to kind of take it, uh, kind of chronologically, I've kind of, uh, create an outline of all the scenes. We'll go through them.
00:06:48
Speaker
And the film opens up with a lot of old footage of Foxcatcher Farms, right? And it shows a lot of, like, their hunting sports, you know, they're chasing Foxcatcher, right? You know, they go fox hunting with, you know, 20 dogs and they will find the fox and, you know, rip them up and that's how they hunt them, right? And a lot of it, and so I was looking at all these, like, old images that they're showing, I'm thinking, okay, what's the film trying to say to me here, right?
00:07:19
Speaker
And they're trying to draw parallels, right, with what we're about to see in which John DuPont brings on these wrestlers and creates a wrestling facility. And it's creating, it's likening the wrestlers to these dogs, right? That are used for sport, but are also kind of treated as pets, right? Treated as, not subhuman really, but like, but not treating animals, right? Yeah, servile. Yeah, great word for it.
00:07:48
Speaker
Um, and so I thought that really, uh, uh, set a hard tone, um, right at the very beginning. Yeah. And it really goes over that kind of like American heritage aspect and kind of the most insane, I mean, it still is like, I dunno, it's kind of a memory hold. It's like only, only like some, you know, wrestlers really ever bring this up. But like,
00:08:14
Speaker
one of the, uh, kids, like, you know, new magnate of this enormous chemical dynasty fucking killed somebody. Like it's, it's kind of insane that it's, um, maybe it's just cause it's old or, you know, I'm too young to have like when it happened. Um, but it's kind of crazy how, uh, a little emphasis has ever put on it. It's just kind of like, I dunno, this crazy guy did this once. It's like, you know, these people are a huge part of our economy.
00:08:44
Speaker
I mean, it is a guy just did this. Yeah, I remember like my coach was my high school coach was, you know, he was very active, like when the Schultz brothers were active. Right. So he had a lot of closer connections with a lot of stuff that was going on during that time.
00:09:01
Speaker
And I remember him telling me stories of like, when he was telling us what happened to Dave Schultz, like about DuPont coming like right, right around in tanks and stuff. And when us hearing that, you know, sitting in rest, you know, after practice, everyone just kind of hanging out, talking. And you start hearing this stuff from coach, like we were going, wait, what happened?
00:09:22
Speaker
This guy did what, right? And it is, it is, it makes sense that it was made into a movie, right? That it was, it's such a ridiculous story and fantastical, just wild. But, you know, we'll get into some of the details of it. And I think the film does a good job really of kind of grounding a lot of that. And, you know, it can kind of feel comical at times, but also like scary, right?
00:09:52
Speaker
Yeah, I was going to talk about Steve Carell's performance as John DuPont. It really kind of set the tone for his attempt to be taken seriously subsequent to that. And you know what? I think he did great, especially when you see real footage of John DuPont. You could tell he really tried to embody him. And I thought he did a pretty good job of that.
00:10:21
Speaker
Um, and his physical acting was, was incredibly good. Um, I thought he, like a lot of subtle things he did were, were really impressive. Um, but after that scene of, of the, of the opening credits where they're just kind of showing the old footage, the first thing we see is Tatum, um, and he's working, uh, with a dummy, like with a practice dummy. And he's, I think he's doing snaps and clubs, snaps and clubs, and he's hitting it really hard. Um,
00:10:48
Speaker
And this was actually something, I remember the first time I watched the movie, I really liked seeing that because I think that to people that aren't close to wrestling and see wrestling, they don't quite understand the physicality of what's happening in the tieups and things like that, right? It's not always obvious to people that have just seen wrestling here or there, right? And the first thing that they're showing is this very hard physicality in wrestling, especially at the higher levels where clubs are coming hard, right?
00:11:18
Speaker
Um, and, uh, yeah, I liked it. That's how they set the tone to make it a little bit more than, uh, you know, uh, like normally everyone wants to show throws right away. Right. That's what they want to see. They want to see throws and things like that. And we do get into that in this movie. Oh, they do. But like the way, the way they started was something very, um, um, visceral and, and, and, and, uh, grounded, I think. Yeah. Non-wrestlers don't, don't think they understand the extent to which, uh,
00:11:49
Speaker
You know, a hard glove could give you a concussion or something. Yeah. Well, and also he's, he's by himself working out alone here. Um, I don't know how much, uh, like, you know, we, I talk about the, I like the filmmaking of it, but in terms of the training aspect, I don't know how much, uh, he's getting out of this workout necessarily where it's just like club. It's like, you know, maybe he's, you know, just, uh, getting a little bit of a workout in, but.
00:12:16
Speaker
You know, it wasn't exactly the most intellectually stimulating workout, I would say. Yeah. And then, you know, this is taking place at a fake college at Wexler University. It's not real. And I think that one of the reasons they went with this was because it's actually taken the place of Stanford University, right? Yeah. The Schultz brothers were in Palo Alto. They both coached at Stanford.
00:12:46
Speaker
You know Schultz was fired at one point, but uh, uh, excuse me, uh, Mark was fired at one point, but Dave stayed on. Um, and, uh, yeah, on the, uh, on the wall, it just says division champions. Yes. I kept, I kept looking at every time we were in there, you know, had like a number of years and then it was just like,
00:13:07
Speaker
division champions like which that was like at every second I'm like seems like a really easy to mistake to correct. So maybe this is a thing and then yeah, then I was like maybe like oh, maybe this is one of like I was like, oh, it's a blast from the past. Yeah, this maybe this university used to be a prominent in wrestling.
00:13:29
Speaker
And then no, it's just a fake university. Right. Well, and I
Character Analysis in Foxcatcher
00:13:32
Speaker
think I see why they did that too. Um, I mean, they could have, they could have just said Stanford, but if you're going to be making this class commentary in your film and the people that are supposed to kind of represent like the lower class, if they're growing up in Palo Alto and working at Stanford, it's harder to sell that I feel like, you know? Um, so I, I think it makes more sense, uh, for them to change that.
00:13:58
Speaker
So I understand that change. And yeah. And then from here, it cuts to that, that school presentation that he's doing, right? He's going to the elementary school with his medal and he's, and he holds it up and just kind of like very awkwardly, like just looks at them. Look at my medal. Just showing some different kids in the audience, just standing up there like, yup, this is a gold medal. This is awesome. Right. Um,
00:14:23
Speaker
And, uh, and he kind of like evokes a little bit of that, like his, his pride and pride connected to being American. Right. It's very, very nationalistic pride. Um, but then right after that, uh, he's there writing him as check for showing up. You know, it's not very much. It's it's, yeah. Oh, this is, this is how wrestlers are treated in the United States. Right. I think it was like 20 bucks. Yeah. Something like that.
00:14:48
Speaker
And the woman writing the check asks, Oh, was it Dave or David? You know, like he's Oh, no, that's my brother, right? So it's not only is he trying to live up and feeling pride in this American ideal, that is not being like socially reciprocated to him, you know, he's not getting the the attention or the respect that he deserves, right.
00:15:09
Speaker
in that sense, but he's also not getting it in the sense that he's living in his brother's shadow. People are thinking, oh, the really good wrestler by the last name of Schultz that, oh yeah, Dave Schultz. And it's like, well, no, I'm Mark Schultz and I'm just as good, you know?
00:15:23
Speaker
And so yeah really setting up those themes really hardcore Any's and you know, there's there's a picture the Washington crossing the Delaware picture in this apartment, too, right? So if I'm thinking like what what is that supposed to be symbolizing here right this this crossing into opportunistically into a
00:15:47
Speaker
you know, with when you're down on your luck, right, and you're, and you're, you know, you're demoralized and you're, and you're, you know, doing one last, you know, one last shot at the enemy kind of thing, right. And I think that's kind of where Mark is supposed to be, right. He's, he's really down and out. He's, you know, this accomplished well-known person, but he's just, you know, hasn't been succeeding in the way that he needs to, right. What, you know, regardless of if he's winning on the match or not,
00:16:14
Speaker
He's in a bad place. Yeah, he lives in this just awful apartment. And then it's just that picture. It's like it's like it's like Polly's apartment in the Sopranos where he's got the picture of Tony as the general with the horse. Like it looks almost exactly like that. Yeah, it's it's it's a very like pathetic look. Right. And like, you know, he's like, you know, eating, eating a burger in his car while it's raining and it's just a very
00:16:44
Speaker
Depressive atmosphere that they're bringing in right? He is and it's just showing you that mark not a happy camper right now Things aren't going well but it cuts back, you know to Wexler University and we've got the the USA wrestling coming in to talk to Dave to try to get him to come coach in in a it sounds like the training and become coach in Colorado Springs and we get good old Brucie B and
00:17:12
Speaker
Um, our first, uh, real wrestler, um, what's that? Yeah. The first, the first one you instantly recognize. Yes. I mean, you, everyone, he's had the same haircut for 50 years. The same mustache. Yep. Same guy. Very good to see him. Um, I think he, uh, he, you know what, he's utilized. Well, he jumps in and out. We're not asking him to do much. He's pretty much just playing himself.
00:17:37
Speaker
And I love it. And this is also our first scene where we get to take a look at some of the wrestling. And before they do any wrestling, they start off with some weird stretching that we used to do those. I used to do some of those. Some of them. But I don't know. They the way they were doing it just it felt like this very like more of a massage, like this very gentleness going on with it. Yeah, it looks very old school. It looks very like.
00:18:07
Speaker
Yes, Mark Ruffalo as the kind of like half jacked half pudgy kind of the look it works really well. He's just kind of, you know, we used to do one, you know, where you put your hands behind your head and then someone basically full Nelson's you behind you and like opens up your like pectoral muscles. I still like that one. I felt good. Like do they just do a lot of partner stretches like that. Yeah, I remember doing like
00:18:34
Speaker
preparing for gut wrenches. I remember doing more of this stuff in, uh, in freestyle, right? Where, you know, you get down, they, they wouldn't gut you, but they like, you know, crank on your ribs a little bit, let you feel it. Right. Like, Oh, I got to warm up my ribs. I got my toward cartilage and I got to get it going. Um, but you know, just kind of like a weird, like little introduction to the wrestling. Um, and this is where Ruffalo's performance of date, like really like jumps out right away. Right.
00:19:01
Speaker
He's got the arms, the little T-Rex arms kind of going that Dave would do. And his hips are turned in. He's kind of like doing a little bit of a pigeon toe thing that they would do. You can tell they both spent a lot of, everyone, all the three main actors really spent a lot of time studying movement with these people, which I thought was great. What I did not think was great was Mark Ruffalo spitting on the mat
00:19:33
Speaker
Yeah, he gets, um, they, they said this thing up where, you know, it's, I, I get it. But although, I mean, the movie is like two hours and 15 minutes long and they're, you know, who, maybe they could have done this a bit better or, you know, some editing, but, uh, they have it where they, they do like a couple stretches. They kind of go, you know, and then they just start like basically wrestling live immediately, which is a, it's a very funny, uh, I don't know how much they got out of this war up. They just, they go, they start wrestling live immediately.
00:20:02
Speaker
You know, and Dave's like, Hey, like, you gotta, you know, keep your hips in and he, you know, he throws him. Uh, and then, you know, Mark had butts him, becomes this whole thing. He's bleeding out. He just spits it on the mat. Yeah. It's, it was weird. You know, it's like, we're not even going to work up a sweat before we get going, you know, and some stuff like, you know, Hey, maybe that's just how they were. I don't know. Maybe they're just into that sort of thing. Um, but it's, uh,
00:20:28
Speaker
I don't know. It was just it was if they do stuff where it's like, oh, they're really like you can tell they're putting a lot of effort into like getting this part of wrestling culture practice. Right. And then they'll do something else where it's like, who did you run that one by anybody, you know? But, you know, no one's going to spit on the mat. We don't do that. At least I don't know what people do. I don't know if you did.
00:20:51
Speaker
No, I would never spin on him. You know, but, you know, hey, he's the coach at Wexler University. He spits where he wants. You know, he can, yeah, he spits where, you know, it's just them on the map. Maybe he comes over, he mops it later. And, you know what, overall, I think it's a fairly effective scene. I think it's fine. You know what, Tatum hitting a 360 double was not what I was expecting. Hey, go for it. I like it. I like it. I like that we're not seeing throws like right away.
00:21:21
Speaker
You know, it's not just like we're we're bombing people and doing head and arms and and it is the effort to make it look real. I know I keep saying that, but I like that. Yeah, you can tell it's it's Tatum and Mark in this because both both of them just got to get their heads up. Yeah. You know, in later scenes, there's somewhere you can definitely tell they're not showing their faces and then there's somewhere, you know, it's on the edge, but I'm like, there's no way Mark.
00:21:47
Speaker
There's no way they had Channing Tatum hit an arm spin that good. It's not possible. But this one you can tell it's them. I know they had them training for like six months or whatever it was. Like they had them train pretty hard. I heard Tatum got some cauliflower for real. So I mean, they put in some effort, you know, for sure. There was a funny story I heard that was just like Tatum and Ruffalo both crying once they filmed their last wrestling scene because they were so happy they didn't have to do any of it anymore.
00:22:17
Speaker
They're just holding each other and just being like, fucking God, that's over. Understandable. Yeah, I remember like an interview with Tatum and he was just like, I'll never be the same. But so they were kind of back into the apartment here after this. Mark is playing the original Game Boy, just so we get an idea of like where we are in place in time here. And Mark, it's a call.
00:22:47
Speaker
And it's the call from John DuPont asking him to come see him in Pennsylvania. So I guess they did a lot set up that Mark is not due in place and maybe he's willing to do this kind of stuff. Hey, no big deal. I don't know. Are you jumping on a plane here, Sasha? Some weird, rich guy as you come to his mansion.
00:23:16
Speaker
Yeah, they have, they set up with, yeah, with Mark is trying to convince Dave and like, he's extremely excited. He's like, this is incredible. We're gonna, it's gonna be amazing. He's gonna pay us $25,000. It's amazing. Like we got this whole thing set up. And this also kind of, they begin where they kind of begin this like, this sort of dynamic between them where, you know, Dave is,
00:23:44
Speaker
you know, partly he's trying to pull Mark in, he's trying to like, keep him apart of his family, he's trying to stay together with him and not let him get so, you know, so away and like, isolate himself. But at the same time, he sets a very hard boundary where he's like, I can't do this, I can't move my family around, not gonna follow you. And it just sets up this dynamic where there's like, especially in the in the wrestling scene where he's
00:24:11
Speaker
You know, he's very like paternal. He's like stretching him. He's giving him some tips, but then he's also, you know, immediately as the wrestling's just beating the shit out of him. So. Well, I'm glad you mentioned like paternal, right? Um, because I think we get to see types of paternalism in this movie. Um, and I remember like there, there he's flying right, uh, to there and the guy comes like, Oh, Mr. DuPont wanted to fly you himself, you know, but he couldn't make it. You know, uh, he had to go meet somebody in Washington.
00:24:41
Speaker
And I could just see that as being something that DuPont is. Just wants someone to say about him. But he's also mentioned that they're flying over Valley Forge. And Valley Forge is where, once again, there's a reference to Washington. Washington, that's where the army retreated and was hiding. And they were losing men. And it was cold and sickness and all. Really bad place kind of deal.
00:25:07
Speaker
So I'm not sure like what they're kind of like referencing there, if it is supposed to be symbolism or if it's just like, that is literally where it was. It was right by Valley Forge. But I think it at least shows like this family wants to be situated in American legend and mythology, right? Yeah, it's extremely important to them. I mean, John DuPont also had, you know, it's obviously not in the movie,
00:25:35
Speaker
I think he had like other Olympic programs set up there. Well, and like swimming and stuff like that.
00:25:42
Speaker
Yeah, well, he was doing like pentathlon stuff too, like the new pentathlon that's a bullshit sport. Yeah. And sorry, if anyone does the pentathlon out there, I didn't mean to offend you, but that's true. If any of our listeners are Olympic pentathletes, we do not respect you. In fact, we would like to fight you. Name your time and place after we fight Brock Lesnar. We'll see you then. We can squeeze in maybe two per day.
00:26:12
Speaker
But well, and the other thing we didn't mention was, you know, the way this went down real life was DuPont asking Mark to come out and coach at Villanova, at Villanova University originally. And like that fell apart right before he eventually brought him into Foxcatcher. So they kind of like, you know, changed that up a little bit, which is fine. We didn't need a whole Villanova side story. But that's also where that's also where the actual Mark Schultz is like, Oh, yeah, I
00:26:39
Speaker
I knew Dave Schultz was a weirdo from the very beginning. I never even wanted to be around him. I thought he was disgusting. I thought he was a loser. He has a lot of bad things to say about DuPont, as you might imagine. Totally understandable. But I also do wonder how much of how he felt about DuPont at the time is reflective in how he talks about DuPont now.
00:27:05
Speaker
Yeah, because you sure did a lot of said he was so taken in that he was so I mean they set it up in this in the movie, you know, they set it up we're like yeah, it's basically like DuPont becomes like his father figure that he always wishes he had like, you know, he loves them
Authenticity vs. Dramatization in Foxcatcher
00:27:20
Speaker
there. It's, it's this very, you know, paternal role where he's like he gives a speech where he's just like, yeah, it's incredible. He's done all these things for me. He's like, you know, father figure I always looked for.
00:27:33
Speaker
So, I mean, Mark would probably tell you that never happened. Yeah. Well, and it's moment one in the film too, right? Where he arrives. He's got this like duck out of the water situation where he's like, Oh, I'm in this big, fancy house and mansion. And this is weird. This is different. And, and DuPont is immediately paternalistic with him, right? And just wants to be like, you know, where, where are you? And just like kind of acting like he's been there. He's done this. And it's like, it's all based on nothing. It's all performative, right?
00:28:01
Speaker
And he wants to talk about like the Soviets versus USA. You know, he's bringing that we got to beat the Soviets, right? And yeah, he's he just really lays it on thick there. And they he really starts to when he brings him into his office and wants to talk to him, right? He really taps into the wrestler's sense of underappreciation that, you know, I think a lot of wrestlers relate to, right? And they really
00:28:29
Speaker
uh, got in on that. But also, um, he connects that under appreciation with nationalism, right? And he go, he says, I want to see this country soar again, right? So we're like an Eagle, right? Well, that's, and that's the nickname he gave himself. Yeah. Golden Eagle. Right. Like DuPont really wants to appeal to this like fictitious past, right?
00:28:56
Speaker
And he wants to equate equate like the athletic success that American athletes have with American freedom as though Athletes are soldiers, you know, there's a lot of these parallels going on like athletes and their glory counts as like Nationalistic glory in in you know in terms of war in terms of defending something Rather than just I'm going out to to just I'm just going out to wrestle here. I'm not defending any but any like
00:29:24
Speaker
anything else, apart from that. But that appeal to that fictional past, that's fascism, right? This idea of we were once strong, and now we have been brought down by the people that do not appreciate us, by the communists, by the whoever, right? And we have to rise above these things. And you're the person that's going to do it. I'm the one that's going to make it happen. I'm the coach. I am the lifelong whatever.
00:29:53
Speaker
And yeah, I think that's the first time it's like DuPont is kind of showing his, his, uh, his rich guy attitude, but not quite showing his schizophrenia yet. Yeah. And then he, he, you know, gives Mark a tour of the facility and he gets to go see the wrestling facility right away. And Mark jumps around to the mat and tests it as if he's never been on a wrestling mat before. That's kind of weird to me. I mean, it's cool, you know, you walk into a nice big facility that's dedicated to wrestling. It's always cool, but.
00:30:22
Speaker
I have to think that Mark would have played it cooler than just jump immediately getting into stance and motion on the mat in front of this weirdo. But hey, you know, at the same time, it's real cool to have a whole facility and someone tell you that they're gonna pay ya, right, to do this stuff. We get the first, like, real good look of Steve Carell, you know, where he's around a lot.
00:30:49
Speaker
And his whole, like, he like gives him a, he's like, he's like, I'm an ornithologist. He like shows up to his house unannounced. He gives him like, here's a field guide for looking at the birds. Here's some like, binoculars so you can check them out better. Or just like, okay, sure. In like the middle line too. Yeah. He's just like, I mean, we get the first look at his performance and it's like, it's just very, it's just very strange. I mean,
00:31:20
Speaker
It's, if you were around Steve Curl's John DuPont, you'd be like, yeah, he's a fucking weird guy. Yeah. But you know, the way it reads on camera is like, it's, it's fairly like out of probably on it, I would imagine it's unintentional. I mean, Steve Pearl's trying to be taken very seriously at this point, but it's a bit unintentionally funny. I mean, all of his, just the manner is just the way he talks, like he'll end a sentence. You don't think it's the end. He walks out of the room.
00:31:46
Speaker
like things like that where like, you know, it gives them the burning, it's like, what the fuck? It's so I mean, it's hard not to laugh a little bit. Yeah, like I think it is intentional in some sense, because DuPont was hilarious, like not in like, ha ha, he's so clever, but in like, yeah, to be around him, the shit he would say, and people would be like, what did he just say? Like, who is this guy, right? It was comical in a lot of ways, right? And I think that was probably
00:32:10
Speaker
why some red flags that, you know, got got ignored a lot of times, like, especially if you watch Team Foxcatcher, Nancy Schultz documentary on all this that, you know, kind of goes into the real, like, what happened, maybe we'll cover that at some point. But there was a lot of red flags that people ignored with DuPont. Oh, yeah, I mean, especially, especially the police and like, they don't they don't get into it. But you know, probably would have been
00:32:38
Speaker
You know, if they were more focused, probably would have been a good thing to get into is, uh, the, his close relationship with the police, um, that were around Fox catch and just the way that like, they pretty much ignored everything anyone said before, uh, the shooting happened. Yeah. Um, but you know, and through this, uh, at least in the conceit of the film, uh, DuPont wants Dave, DuPont wants Dave to be there. He wants both the golden boys, right?
00:33:08
Speaker
And mark he wants Mark to get Dave to come and marks, you know immediately tries to kind of go into DuPont mode with Dave, right? He's wants to be like, oh the country is lost Like we got to do this for United States kind of thing and Dave Dave sees through this stuff without even meeting DuPont, right? He's like, what does he get out of all this? Right? Like what's yeah and Mark's only response like oh
00:33:32
Speaker
America winning, you know, America wins, you know, when it is what, what it boils down to is, is DuPont's ego. And I do think this kind of gets into, for me, it makes me reflect on modern funding for wrestlers, right?
00:33:53
Speaker
And, and I think a lot of people have been, you know, rightly so, like kind of skeptical when, uh, individual, uh, you know, rich guys kind of want to fund something. Um, because it is, I think a lot of folks, you know, they fund things because it's, you know, they're, they're, you know, it's them wanting to give back, you know, kind of think, cause they really like wrestling. If I had a ton of money, I would love to just sponsor an athlete. How cool would that be? Right?
00:34:20
Speaker
Um, I want to build a wrestling facility, right? That sounds so awesome. Like I'm so envious of DuPont in this to have like all this money. Yeah. And then, and then you've got your name on the wall and then you got your pictures and you're taking your pictures with your athletes. Right. Exactly. Uh, and, and that, that sort of thing where it's like, I'm like, how can you not at that point? It's like buddy Garrity in a, in Friday night lights, it's like, you know, not, not DuPont, but I imagine like,
00:34:48
Speaker
Just the way that that show just satirized all the boosters and the people who hang around athletic programs. Well, and to really dial that in, he takes Mark to the little chalet where he's going to be staying. And it's awesome. I wish I could stay there. Really cool. But he's also the guy who plays John's assistant, gives him a VHS to watch. And it's the history of the family, right? It's like, oh, we got to start with.
00:35:18
Speaker
you know, supplying ammunition for the for the US government and, you know, chemicals and, you know, DuPont is everywhere, even today, DuPont is everywhere. But the video specifically in the title of the video, it mentions wealth and power, right? And that's what this is. It's, it's, it's
00:35:40
Speaker
that's what DuPont's whole deal is, is he has a lot of wealth, and he has a lot of power, but he doesn't have other things. And he uses wealth and power to gain those things in illegitimate ways, right? And yeah, you mentioned, you know, he comes to like his thing and to visit him middle of the night at one point. I mean, he's like, Oh, it's two months till worlds. He mentions that that worlds is in two months. And I'm like,
00:36:06
Speaker
Mark, you don't have a training partner. But apparently it's not a big deal because they cut to the next scene and it's like a whole team and they're training and and it's going. So, hey, they they put it together pretty quickly, which is which is great. I mean, it's it's cool to see like this little team that, you know, just gets to hang out and train there. And I know that in reality, there's a lot of wrestlers that would they would visit for a while and leave and you know, there's a lot of coming and going.
00:36:36
Speaker
Um, but, uh, it's cool to, uh, uh, I guess it's, I guess in two months you can get going pretty quickly. Um, I just feel like it went from zero to 60 really quickly from scene to scene. Yeah. I mean, they really, they kind of, they, they gloss over, uh, basically every character that isn't John, Dave, or Mark there. It's just kind of like, uh, they have like maybe like two scenes where.
00:37:04
Speaker
Yeah, like the whole, the team is hanging out and, you know, they're together. Um, but yeah, no, no one except really, yeah, Dave, Mark, John, like none of the other wrestlers are, are characters in any sense. They're just, they're, they're kind of around. They're like set dressing. I mean, you couldn't afford any other actors, except for like, uh, uh, Angela what's her face who plays the mother.
00:37:27
Speaker
I mean, the budget for this film was $24 million. So all of that went to these three actors, essentially, to make that happen, I'm sure. So this was a project of love. It definitely was not setting out to make money. This was an award. They wanted awards for this one. That's what they were going for.
00:37:51
Speaker
But yeah, you know, and, and, and, you know, Dave doesn't want to come and, uh, DuPont continues to be like, Hey, when's Dave coming? Uh, how much money does he want? And Mark's like, Oh, you can't buy Dave, which was interesting to me because it's like Mark should then think, Oh, does that mean that I can be bought because I'm here. I'm getting paid. Right. Um, but I don't know if he fully has that, that realization. Um, but then we get the, we're at the 87 worlds and we're wrestling.
00:38:20
Speaker
Um, and, uh, real nice, some, some decent wrestling footage here. We see, uh, we see a real good, uh, boot scoot from, from possibly Channing Tatum or stunt double, whoever, but it looks real good. Um, look like good wrestling. I'd like seeing that. Um, but that's also where we see, uh, um, DuPont watching, uh, Dave coach Mark. And, uh, we get the first kind of hints of his jealousy. Yeah. And then we also see, I mean, it's kind of like where the film picks up. It gets a little bit.
00:38:51
Speaker
It's a little bit more fun at this point, like this where like, uh, yeah, like Channing Tatum is really convincing. I do wonder, um, so like, what's, what are the funny parts of that? Like, yeah, there's, there's, uh, Mark Schultz is wrestling, you know, he hits like a really big arm spin, comes out the back, looks really good. It all, it doesn't look like Channing Tatum's face after it, but I'm like, there's, I can, I don't believe you know, there's so much stuff. Crazy trick. It's so good.
00:39:18
Speaker
put stuff on there. But if you're going to enjoy that much, you might as well do the real stuff. But I mean, like Ruffalo gets a good Russian tie in there at one point. I noticed he has like this opposite Russian tie. And then he like it's the it's kind of the opposite side. Like he's like over on the left, he's grabbing this right arm, doesn't really have head position. And then he like just gets under and puts it on his shoulder.
00:39:39
Speaker
And does, you know, not like an arm spin, but he just kind of does a big arm throw. He just kind of picks him up and like slams him down. Yeah. Um, and then one of the, one of the great parts is after they're done wrestling, you know, the wrestling looks pretty nice. Um, and Mark Schultz takes, uh, takes DuPont into like talk to Dave and his wife, like Dave's in there with his wife and his kids and he's got this big family. Yeah. He's so, he's doing so great. And, you know, Mark comes in, he's like, Hey, this is John DuPont. Like, please say hi. And then.
00:40:07
Speaker
You know, like Mark shakes his hand or Dave shakes his hand like once. His wife doesn't. And Dave's kids are literally literally like the visual symbolism. Right. Dave, kids are pulling him back,
Complex Relationships in Foxcatcher
00:40:18
Speaker
trying to pull him. Yeah. Right. Back away from him. Good visual storytelling there. Right. And then so Mark gets really he gets really mad about, you know, like he's like, you didn't give him enough respect. But the thing I find really funny is that he's like, he's like, we got to, you know, pop in this. We've got to watch this.
00:40:36
Speaker
this videotape. He's like, we need to watch. We need to check out Nenev's arm spin. And then I'm just like, how many is this? I mean, we're doing all the rest in this section. It's like there's like three arm spins. It's like, do they hit any other moves in arms? There's a lot of that. Yeah, I think they learned like here are the main like these are like these really common wrestling moves that you teach like right away. And they're like, OK, this we're going to focus on. We're not going to like branch out too much from there, which, you know,
00:41:04
Speaker
You can tell it's it's it's a writer who doesn't necessarily know wrestling, who's doing their best to respect like what it should look like. Right. Yeah. But yeah, like the after the two arm throws. Yeah. But yeah, they're not showing DuPont like the respect that Mark thinks that he deserves. Oh, another funny thing from this scene that I thought was interesting. Like they do catch like those little details like they have a scene with
00:41:31
Speaker
Dave showing his blood rag, right? And putting his blood rag in a singlet, which we don't do anymore. But just kind of interesting, they were paying enough attention to include that, to show some wrestling authenticity, which is, you know, not too bad. But they'll do that. But then in another scene, we see a brick throne.
00:41:54
Speaker
Did you notice that they threw a brick? No, I didn't. I didn't notice the brick. It's like, okay, I'm pretty sure they didn't throw bricks back then. We didn't have video review. Like, what is this? So they'll have the blood rag. They'll get that right. But then they'll throw a brick. It's not too big of a deal. I just, they probably just filmed it, you know? But yeah, Mark wins, right? He does his classic backflip. They replicated the video of it pretty well.
00:42:19
Speaker
Um, and Gene Mills is playing the referee of that. I was going to ask if you noticed that. Yeah. I mean, I saw that they killed Gavin as as, uh, Nenev, as is like world's final opponent. Like, that's pretty clear. And all of a sudden it's like, it's like, oh, you don't look at it. It's like, oh my God. It's like Gene Mills is the rep. Yeah. And there's tons of people like that show up like Brock Lesnar does show up in the background at one point. He's uncredited. You've got, uh, uh, who Zach Ray's in there.
00:42:49
Speaker
You've got Jake Herbert. Well, we see Jake Herbert wrestle Mark and lose. He's all sad at one point. Who else do we see? Oh, Lee Kemp is there. He's weighing people in. Mark himself, the real Mark Schultz is in the movie weighing people in. Oh, Reese Humphries is there at some point. So there's they, you know, they got some guys involved. It was a lot. Yeah. It's hard. It's hard to catch them all.
00:43:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I had to like, obviously, some of them I had to look up later. But you know, the tournament ends, you know, they worlds, they get two medals coming back for Team Foxcatcher. They're having their their post tourney party, you know, their celebration. And this is where my favorite line in the movie, DuPont takes down all the horse racing trophies so that he can make room for horses are stupid.
00:43:48
Speaker
Yeah, horses are stupid. Horses just eat and shit. Horses eat and shit. That's all they do. And you know what? Yeah, I'm glad that he at least finds the human beings more interesting than horses. His human pets are a little bit better, at least. But John just really wants to be one of the guys here. You know, he's obviously like been very repressed by his mother, which is it's more insinuated here.
00:44:17
Speaker
But it's very explicitly like was the case for him growing up. And you know, he just wants to be one of the guys. This is the scene where a lot of people thought that there was a lot of like homoerotic undertones in this movie.
00:44:32
Speaker
And this is like where people like point to I never felt that way as like as often as I hear that I never really felt that way. I know Mark Schultz has not enjoyed that because you know, it was um This one. Yeah, this one. He's just like he's joshing around He just wants to be one of the boy like he's just yeah He like falls on the ground and he feigns and they go up and he like tries to wrestle them but he's like, ah He's just trying to like
00:44:59
Speaker
You know, he clearly so I mean, a lot of the hugest, one of the biggest themes in this movie is just like loneliness and what it does to people. And he's just so lonely. He just wants friends. No, but it's the it's the scene. It's a scene a little bit later where he's like he comes to Mark's like room. This is kind of before things start, you know, falling off and getting really bad. But he comes to Mark's house, he comes to his room at night and he
00:45:28
Speaker
He's like, we got practice in the, in the gallery room. And he takes him into this like mat room. And then, um, yeah, this is the one where it's a little bit ambiguous because it's the, it's a, it's a really short scene of John DuPont. Basically Mark Schultz is down on all fours, you know, he's basically defending a gut wrench. Um, and they're, and they're both fully clothed in the scene, but it's just, it's just John DuPont trying to, you know, gut wrench Mark Schultz, and he's just sitting there.
00:45:57
Speaker
Defending it and it's just kind of they're not really doing a gut wrench. He's just kind of Smashing it. He's just kind of like grunting on him and it is it's uh, it's an ambiguous, you know I they probably left it ambiguous because they don't know but that's that's definitely the one where it gets very It's very much like yeah. Yeah, there's an implied that Dupont had you know some sort of
00:46:26
Speaker
you know, some sort of homoerotic, you know, feeling towards Mark Schultz. Yeah, I mean, who knows? But just I don't think it was it was such a thing in the film, like, like, to where John, excuse me, Mark Schultz, like, came out was like, I never touched Dave, he never, excuse me, I never touched John, John never touched me. You know, I can't believe they portrayed it that way. It's like, calm down, man.
00:46:54
Speaker
Well, there's that one. And there's also the scene, it's a little bit later where he's, uh, yeah, like Mark's like hanging out with his like dyed blonde hair and he's hanging out with his underwear and John DuPont's like sitting in the rocks, like cutting his hair. Yeah. So there's a little bit of, you know, but it's, it's not that crazy because, um, I mean, there's like, who knows, but, uh, John DuPont did, there was like a lawsuit with, uh, you probably know about this with Villanova where,
00:47:22
Speaker
In 1987 he tried to get like Villanova or 1888 tried to get fund and start a wrestling program at Villanova And then yeah, he made like a sexual pass at Andre Metzger and then there was a Yeah, so they were in 1980. Yeah, Andre Metzger was gonna be like the assistant or head coach there and then yeah, apparently he made like a sexual pass at him and it was a lawsuit and
00:47:48
Speaker
John made a pass at Metzger. Yeah. And then there was a lawsuit and it got settled. Yeah. I hadn't heard who it was. I just heard like, Oh, he had done that. So yeah, possibly. I don't know. Maybe that's where it's coming from. But this is at the point of the movie where like guns kind of become more of a thing, right? They're starting to introduce that. You can see John shooting with police.
00:48:12
Speaker
real problematic relationship going on there that no one should be supporting. If you have enough money, you should not ever speak to police officers unless they are arresting you. But, and it's also that iconic shot that you see in the trailer where John walks in to the dressing room with a gun, shoots it off, like more in like a celebratory way, like, woo, you know, whatever's coming up worlds, or I can't remember what it was.
00:48:40
Speaker
But, and like, apparently he never shot the gun in the restroom, but he just had guns around a lot. But either way, red flag guys, like this is like big red flag. You should leave. Right. Um, not a good luck. Uh, but you know, it's, it's, it's one of those things where it's like, that's, you know, the desperation of the, of the, of the athlete at that point. You know, this is what they're having to, to put up with because they just don't have other ways to support it and keep going. Yeah. There's definitely.
00:49:10
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, he like when you look at some of the stories, it's kind of insane how toned down it was. Yes. Yes. Like it. Yes. It's very toned down like in. I mean, and you know, they could have included this. It would have been a little bit more of a it would have been more wacky. You know, it wouldn't have been such a clean narrative. But, you know, apparently like 90 like because they show, you know, they're taking he's taken Mark in a helicopter to go do a speech about how John DuPont's the best.
00:49:41
Speaker
Well, even before that, before that, he gives Mark the bonus, right? You get like ten thousand dollar bonus or whatever. And that's where he really tries to drive that wedge between Mark and Dave. And he's like, you know, you're more than than Dave's little brother. He will never let you be all you can be. And and this is also when he says, this is also when he says most of my friends call me Eagle. Yeah, so he's
00:50:11
Speaker
His middle name is like Eruthair. It's something that it's like, it's a very, uh, you know, DuPont, like it's so, like the way they, his, his mother and the way they portray her is just this like horrible wasp, just this awful, just awful wasp, just so unpleasant. Um, and then just, yeah, his middle name is Eruthair and he basically, he goes by like John Eagle DuPont.
00:50:38
Speaker
Because he's like, no, no one can pronounce it. It's equal dupont. Yeah.
00:50:42
Speaker
So yeah, you're, you're talking about the helicopter ride. Right before that, he buys the tank and isn't happy that the 50 cal isn't there. And you know what? It's the principle of the thing. It's not, it's not, you know, it's the principle. You got, you show it in the advertising, you've got to send the 50 cal. But yeah, he's on the helicopter, gives a mark, the speech that's supposed to announce also that John is going to be wrestling in masters now.
00:51:09
Speaker
Um, but it seems to be like some sort of gala or something, probably Republican fundraiser would be my guess. Um, and John is like showing Mark off like at this thing as a pet, right? He's like, Oh, have you ever, have you met my, my gold medalist? Uh, you know, like petting him, you know, like, like as if he's a lap dog kind of deal. Um, yeah, not great. Uh, but he introduces, um, Mark to give his speech, right? To,
00:51:38
Speaker
Well, no, excuse me, Mark gives a speech to introduce John, saying that, oh, he's like a father figure to me and all this stuff, right? Oh, and this is also where they did coke, right? Yes. They did coke on the helicopters. He's just like, Mark, it's just cocaine. It's not going to kill you. This is where it's kind of interesting for me because Mark Schultz, after the fact, has been very vocal, like,
00:52:04
Speaker
I did not have a very close relationship with him, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then he's also said, oh, but I did like, uh, do cocaine with him a few times. That's true. And I did it before I met him too. It's like, okay, it sounds like you hung out a little bit. Sounds like you were hanging out railing lines. Yeah. With John DuPont. Right. But you know, whatever.
00:52:24
Speaker
But you know, so Mark does the introduction and then DuPont gets up and says thank you son to him, calls him son and then immediately says hello mother. So it's this jump from I am like this paternal instinct that he wants to have over somebody, you know, and also this very demasculating
00:52:47
Speaker
presence in his life that he wants to stand up to like so just with those those five words. Thank you, son. Hello, mother. It kind of expresses that relationship with them, right? And then and then from here, Mark gets his frosted tips. Yes. Yeah, he just starts. He's just drinking and this is the worst thing. This is like so dumb. They did not need to do this. I mean, I get it.
00:53:15
Speaker
I guess it's supposed to represent like, oh, this is him letting himself go a little bit, not being serious about stuff. He's not training with Dave. And he's doing cocaine with his boss and cutting his hair. And the guys are all sitting around watching UFC and smoking some weed and taking practice off this morning. So it's supposed to be a slacker surfer time is what I'm kind of getting from here.
00:53:46
Speaker
John is making him. This is when John's making him practice in the middle of the night. But this is apparently something John did. He just like went to people like in the middle of the night because he feels entitled to people whenever he wants to talk to them, right? Well, he was probably up on fucking he was probably snorting cocaine. Exactly. Why do we like? I'm sure that he'll be up. I need I need to train for the Masters. Mark, I wanted I showed up to practice this morning, but you guys took it off. Now we have to do the night.
00:54:18
Speaker
Let's see here. Yes, that's a drug use. Oh, this is also where the story of John telling about how his mother paid off his childhood friend to hang out with them. You know, it's very sad. I don't know why rich people do this. It always backfires, right?
Climax and Conclusion of Foxcatcher
00:54:36
Speaker
And then this also leads into, well, and I think this is where, oh no, this is even before I think he calls him like, he hits him, right?
00:54:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think first before that, like we see the john john's fixed matches, right? Where he's getting paid off to beat whoever at master. So we do have john DuPont is like a world champion, everyone just so you know, john DuPont is a world champion.
00:55:06
Speaker
in the Masters Wrestling, even though he doesn't know anything about wrestling or anything, because he paid off people. It most certainly is the case. So once again, just like how wrestling is today. And we also get the conversation with John and his mother, right? And he like portrays like his coaching of wrestler coaching, you know, quotation marks. I'm leading men and I'm giving America hope.
00:55:34
Speaker
And he's like showing her the medal that he won. Right. He won from his master's tournament. And I'll just say is like, I don't like wrestling. It's a low sport. And at the time, maybe it was. And I've had this argue with with people before. And wrestling is fairly blue collar. It still is. But the very best wrestlers, the amount of people that are coming from poverty and like rising up just because they're hardworking wrestler.
00:56:03
Speaker
It's mostly rich kids who it's very rare. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's a lot of rich people at the top, right? I mean, I mean, come on, like these kids are in private schools. They're like flying. They're like they're moving. They're basing their hair. You know, like the Bo Bassett's of the world. They're like basing their entire kids life. Yeah. They're moving them around based on what wrestling program they want to. Like, yeah, they have money. They can afford to move around. Like they're not.
00:56:28
Speaker
they're not hurting for anything. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, like Aaron, who's paying for the creative people, right? Who's, you know, like, there's all that, all the extra little things that, you know, add up to greater success cost money. You know, it is not just work hard and, you know, get lucky, right? There's very few people that do that. It doesn't mean they can't. It just means money is a big deal, right? But this is where they have the scene where, you know, John,
00:56:57
Speaker
after talking to his mom I think is still just like we're not good enough kind of deal and he's like I want your brother Dave to come you know I want Dave and he's like oh Dave's not gonna do that and that's where John hits him and calls him an ungrateful ape because that's that's what he views his wrestlers as just animals that he controls right and and this is a good time for Mark to cut his hair he immediately cuts it so we have this frosted tip face that was very silly we did not need the hair
00:57:24
Speaker
It needed to just let him have his regular hair. It was not necessary. We get the subtext. We don't need the visual metaphor, the bad visual metaphor as well. Well, it's funny because he's got the frosted tips and he's like in his underwear, like bouncing around, presumably like high on cocaine and then DuPont sitting there and he like kneels and he like grabs DuPont's leg and he's like, what's up? What's going on? So, I mean, I do see-
00:57:51
Speaker
Mark is covered from they were they were getting there was like yeah, probably these like two two or three things they sort of you know insinuate something Yeah And then I think I think at this point they do get Dave to come he offers him enough money essentially. Yeah And this in real life is where Mark is already left but for the film they have them both there at the same time and Mark has a chip on his shoulder about all this, you know, he
00:58:21
Speaker
He doesn't need Dave there, you know, he doesn't want to live in Dave's shadow, right? He's got his own thing going on. So John is like watching Dave coach, he's coaching all the wrestlers and Mark is off doing the leg press over there. You know, he doesn't want Dave's help. And John sees this as an opportunity kind of like exert control or like to portray his own competency. And so he does this thing where he just goes over and he like does a show of
00:58:50
Speaker
of like he's actually doing something. He's like, Oh yeah, Bush, you know, keep it tight. And he like, you know, he gets his hands slapped away by Mark and, and he plays it off. He's like, yeah, great. Good set. Great job. And that cracks me up because I've also like known coaches like that, right? Who are, who are very much about like, Oh, coaching is about yelling at different volumes and encouraging people with different platitudes.
00:59:18
Speaker
rather than actually coaching. But you also get a really good shot of Zachary here as Dave Schultz is coaching them. And I think right after this is also when the mother comes to visit too. And John really wants to show her that he knows what he's doing.
00:59:38
Speaker
And so it's, it's the most awkward scene, especially. And I don't know if this is fully, this fully gets like trance translated to people. And maybe this is, you know, scores points in terms of, you know, authenticity of wrestling. Um, because the film understands that what John is doing is making him look very silly. I don't know if a viewer who doesn't wrestle, doesn't wrestle, uh, notices that, right? Like John, like wants to do is like, uh, he does like a little motivational speech, right?
01:00:06
Speaker
And he's like, oh, and they're filming him at this point too, right? He's got the documentary crew going around. Yeah, that's right. Which is like another red flag, guys. This guy might have a little bit of an ego, right? And he starts to teach the arm drag. And he's like, this is the way I do it. This works for me. And like, if you don't know wrestling, you might be going like, well, I wonder if that works or not. I don't know.
01:00:30
Speaker
And Dave really sees what's going on here, right? Look on Mark Ruffalo's face. He's like looking back and forth to John and his mother. And he's like, yeah, he fucking he gets it. He knows exactly what's what's going on. It's it's it's really good editing and directing in the scene. Yeah, then he like that he goes to keep looking back at his mom and then he goes to show like the gut wrench, but he can't do it. So he's like, well, you get on top of me and then you gut wrench me. And then he like, you know, and it I mean,
01:01:01
Speaker
Yeah, it looks funny to be gut-wrenching. Especially, I'm sure, to, you know, some 80-year-old wasp lady, like, probably looks very funny to be on the ground doing a gut-wrench, and especially him, where he's just like, can't really show it, and he looks back, and she's gone, and then he's like, okay, whatever, we're done. Go do that. It's funny, because it's a room full of people that can tell that DuPont is full of shit, and the wrestlers can tell he's full of shit because he doesn't know anything about wrestling.
01:01:29
Speaker
And his mother can tell he's full of shit, even though she doesn't know anything about her son. Right. And it's it's it's where it's like it does come off very funny, but also just cringe, right? Yeah. Well, because that's also the thing in this scene with the where he's like showing her
01:01:47
Speaker
his medals, she's like, oh, like she, this is your name, like John Eagle DuPont. Yeah. That's me. And then she's just like, you paid for this, right? Like you, like, it's just, it's part of this thing where it's like, she, you know, it's heartbreak. It's like, gave him all this money, basically like trapped him with all this wealth and like gave him all this money. And then, you know, like the same thing, like constantly lords it over him that like,
01:02:13
Speaker
Well, you can't do anything without the money that I gave you that was never really an option. It's part of this horrible relationship they have where she's like, well, I guess you must have paid for that, right? Nothing you do is important. Yeah, I really like the way the film is edited. I think they put the scenes in the right places to really kind of bring that out, right?
01:02:38
Speaker
Um, but so the next big thing is the, uh, 1988, uh, team trials, really the Olympic team trials. Um, and this is where Mark loses one of his matches, um, and absolutely falls apart and throws a fit. Um, and, uh, goes on a big food binge. Um, and the scene we see every wrestler can, this is this, this has to earn some points for, uh,
01:03:03
Speaker
Has to hurt some points for a reality. I at least waited I at least waited till after my second loss before I ate 20 pounds of food, right? I mean, yes, absolutely Relate to this everyone knows someone who like has done something similar you know, like yes, like once like it's everyone everyone under like every wrestler knows that like there's There's you know, however, like whatever it is
01:03:34
Speaker
Maybe it only happened one time or like one cut and you know, you still made weight and after like for me when I cut down to 108 from, you know, I was doing 115 all season and cut down to 108 in like, you know, it was like two, three weeks I had to do it after, you know, stay and I lost my matches at the end of the day. I think I probably ballooned all the way back up to like 118, probably like the same weight.
01:04:02
Speaker
And we, we, we went to a diner afterwards and I couldn't like my hunger, the surprise, just my hunger signal never worked. I drank probably like a gallon of chocolate milk. I had a bunch of like macaroni and cheese probably had a bunch of fucking cookies. Like I ate so much and I kept, I eventually, uh, got a bunch of chairs and put them together and then laid on them.
01:04:26
Speaker
Because if I stood up, my stomach hurt. I had to lay down. I mean, my stomach stopped hurting because I ate so much. So I was looking at that. He's like, he's got cake. He's got like everything. Yeah. My senior year, I was cutting about 10 pounds every week to get down to 1.5.
01:04:46
Speaker
And yeah, my thing, as soon as it was over, I think it was like Del Taco or Taco Bell and just like a ton of food. Just got a bunch of stuff. But not a good thing to do when you still have a match left. Oh, and a fun fact about this scene, Channing Tatum, he smashes his head into a mirror.
01:05:05
Speaker
That's a real mirror and he actually did that. So way to commit their Channing. I don't think Channing Tatum is an amazing actor, but I do think that in this particular film, he really tried. He tried really hard and it shows. It's a good performance for him overall.
01:05:24
Speaker
I don't know if he fully nailed Mark Schultz. I think he tries to kind of do this like underbite kind of thing going on, which isn't quite what Mark Schultz has going on. He's kind of has like a protruding lip thing going on more. And he also like kind of walked around in a very trudgy way, which didn't always, which I guess makes sense to Mark Schultz now, because that's how he walks around now. But back in the day, I feel like he was a little bit like lighter on his feet when he moved around. He's such an athlete. So I'm not sure. Yeah, he has this very like, I don't know. I mean, I think Mark Schultz even said it, like his is very much like ape.
01:05:53
Speaker
thing going on. He just has a very like, just portrays it in a very, like, doesn't know how to talk, like stay very quiet, just listening all the time. Yeah. Very like not confident. Portrays it with just like an extreme lack of confidence whenever he's talking. Yes. Well, and we'll get into that. And I'm glad he does that. But so this he throws this fit, he gains a bunch of weight,
01:06:22
Speaker
Dave comes in to pick him back up. In real life, it was one of Mark's buddies that did that, and then Dave helped him cut weight. But Dave comes in, picks him back up, slaps him around, slaps him sense into him a little bit, gets him on the aerodyne bike, and he loses 12 pounds in 90 minutes. That's a real tough weight cut. Luckily, most of it, he was able just to throw up, I'm sure. That's helpful. Yeah, they have that. He's just puking in the toilet, and he's like, he's like, good, good. You're doing great. You got a little bit more. There's more. There's more. Keep going. Yeah.
01:06:52
Speaker
Um, and, uh, and in this scene, like DuPont like wants to come and like talk to him and coach him. And it's like, could you imagine if DuPont came up to you in that moment when you're cutting really hard, you're hungry, you're pissed. You might kill him and Dave like handles DuPont. Like he knows that DuPont's about to be real toxic. Um.
01:07:12
Speaker
and just kind of like moves him off. And in this moment, Mark is actually seeing this happening. Like Mark sees it. There's a shot of him. And I think that's kind of where the switch happens, where Mark kind of goes like, I need to get past this whole, you know, I'm living in Dave's shadow kind of thing, because Dave is there for me, right? I think there's kind of a switch here. But Mark makes the way he goes out. He defeats Jake Herbert. Jake Herbert does sad face. And this is a nice Uchimada at one point. What's that?
01:07:41
Speaker
It's a pretty nice like Uchimada. Yeah, it's like some hits like a nice Gator rolls. It's pretty good. Yeah, it's it's good. I mean, you're getting real wrestlers out there. It makes it a lot easier for sure. But DuPont's mother dies here. And I really like this scene, actually, when John, as soon as she dies, he just goes to the to the to the stable and just releases all the horses, just lets him out.
01:08:09
Speaker
And it's like, you know, this is our villain, but at the same time, and, you know, he was a real villain. But you watch that scene and it's just like, oh, that's, that's some real catharsis. But I feel like we don't get that catharsis, right? Things get worse for John, even though he kind of like has this weight lifted off of him, right? Yeah. Probably because she's not there to protect him. But thankfully, right after this, John does get his 50 caliber machine gun. So he has all the protection he needs. So that's good for him.
01:08:38
Speaker
And yeah, John starts bringing the cameras into practice. They're filming. And he's being really shitty and passive-aggressive about Mark and Dave. And he's trying to create a rift between them. He's in the questions that are being asked, Mark, during the interview, I feel like. I don't remember the actual questions. But it seems like he's just- Well, there is the part where they're interviewing Dave Schultz.
01:09:08
Speaker
like so there's just one there's some guy interviewing Dave Schultz and he's like he's sitting these you know black background they're interviewing him and he's like yeah the good thing about John is that he just kind of lets you do whatever he stays out of your way and the guy's like I don't think you know we're looking like we're looking for something else he's like alright tell me he's like basically a tour yeah you have to say he's your mentor and he's incredible
01:09:32
Speaker
And you know, it takes them a while, but yeah, Dave, Dave debases himself for it. Well, he does success, you know, because right then, like Bruce, Bruce was back. Bruce was in the office and they were saying, Hey, I'm going to give you $500,000 a year to USA wrestling. Um, and I think, and he's like wearing his gold jacket from his like film series that he did. Right. Um, and you know, so now, you know, yeah, that puts Dave in a situation where, where John is.
01:10:01
Speaker
bankrolling everything, we have to give him what he wants, even though it's bullshit, right? And really kind of highlights the danger of like, we're allowing this man's ego to kind of dictate what we're doing because we're reliant on him financially. Yeah, we have big time.
01:10:17
Speaker
And this is also where Mark and Dave talk about, like, maybe leaving. Mark's like, oh, let's go coach at BYU, which he did in real life. When he coached at BYU, he became Mormon at some point. He's since left the church and is very critical of it now, which is very interesting. And Dave doesn't want to go, though. Dave's like, I got to, you know, my kids were here. We're making some. I can't keep moving around. I can't keep doing this, right?
01:10:44
Speaker
But he also negotiates to make sure that Mark continues to receive a salary, even though he's not going to be there anymore. He's leaving to get away from DuPont. Oh, and this is also at some point, I believe, even though he's going to continue to get paid because he's going to continue to get paid. John wants to be in the corner.
01:11:09
Speaker
of Mark's matches now, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, and he wants to be, yeah, during the 88 Olympics, he wants to be in that corner. Um, which God once again, like the, he's becoming a leash, right? And, and the Schultz brothers are just like trying to get away.
01:11:29
Speaker
Uh, but God, can you imagine him in your car? And it looks like he just kept his mouth shut and, and use the towel, which is like, you know what? That's the thing you can do. The top, you know what? Bad towel technique too. He had the straight overhand. Not good. Not good. Didn't, didn't do the thing where he like brings over the shoulder hands together. Then something hard open up, right? You gotta have the right technique. If you're going to be the towel guy. And I'm just saying someone should have shown, shown John how to do it properly.
01:11:57
Speaker
But yeah, they're in their Olympics in Seoul and Mark loses things aren't going well because you've got a weirdo in his corner probably But right after this is kind of like where the film is starting to show that DuPont is has this spiral going down, you know, they have new security at the gate It's like really showing signs of John's paranoia And mark mark is leaving Dave staying and
01:12:23
Speaker
And John considers that he's like, he's losing his friend, right? Because Mark was like his only friend, at least that's how we felt. Yeah. And, and this is this is where it all kind of the movie's ready for it to come to head. I feel like this is where I think the movie's writing is a little bit weak. Because, you know, I think that it grinds to a halt.
01:12:44
Speaker
Yeah, it kind of grinds to a halt. And then the thing happens, right? They kind of lead us there. And it feels like something else needed to happen, narratively to work. And I think that's, you know, I think the writing of this movie is hurt by the fact that it's based on a true story. Even though they change a bunch of stuff. But, you know, the true story isn't going to follow the narrative that you necessarily want it to. But yeah, the way for those that haven't seen the movie, you should watch it so you know what happens. But
01:13:12
Speaker
This is essentially how it happened in real life too. John just got in his car, drove down to Dave's family, and John has his assistant in the car, and he asks Dave, do you have a problem with me? And he pulls out a gun, shoots Dave three times, his wife and kids are there. And John ends up holding up in his house.
01:13:40
Speaker
And in reality, the cops got him to come out, you know, to surrender by turning off the heat, I believe, in the house. That's what they did in real life, to get him to get out. And he surrendered, and he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. And he died in prison in 2010. And the film ends with Mark in his UFC fight, where he, I think it was a world champion fight, right? I don't know how much that meant back then.
01:14:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I don't know because it was still like during time when UFC was just like whoever they could grab yeah, and Yeah, it was him versus a Gary Goodridge. That's right. Yeah, and beat the light. Well, they set it up like in the it's a whole I Mean it kind of works. I mean, it's fine. It's whatever they set up Where him and you know the wrestlers earlier in the movie are watching
01:14:38
Speaker
the Gary Goodridge fight where he like crucifixes the guy and elbows him and knocks him out. And then one of the guys says to Mark, he's like, oh, like that guy used to wrestle a pit. He was really good. Like, look how he's like, how much of a loser he is now. He fucking sucks. He's doing it. What a fucking loser. So they set it up like that. And then, you know, he's he's on top of them, just punching them.
01:15:03
Speaker
You know, and I don't know fades out and the crowd is chanting USA, USA. Yeah. And just brings all those themes together. Right. Oh, no. In the actually it's a it's a little bit fictionalized because, yeah, in the in the in the movie, it's not him on top of Gary Goodridge. You know, punching him like in real life, it's him versus a Russian fighter. Yeah. Possibly fictional.
01:15:32
Speaker
It's in versus like a Russian fighter. And then they're like, yeah, they're chanting USA and everything. I guess he's still like, he talks about Gary Goodrich on his Twitter. Mark does all the time. So I don't know if he's in touch with him or what, but he still talks about things. That's the thing about Mark Schultz for those that don't know. He very much lives in a lot of nostalgia about stuff. And we'll talk a little bit about Mark. I don't want to go too hard on Mark, really.
01:16:01
Speaker
But, uh, and, and I would like to read Mark's book, um, as well. Uh, and here, uh, his perception of a lot of things, I'd like to align that a little bit more because I've only kind of here heard what's in this book. I secondhand, so I'd like to read that at some point. Um, but before we move on, we have a rating system that we've established, but before we get to that, uh, Sasha, is there anything else you just want to say about this before we talk about its qualities? Um, yeah, I mean, wrapping up the,
01:16:30
Speaker
I mean, like, you know, the scene where you can like, it's a very powerful, it's a very horrifying scene. I don't know when you first so when this movie came out, and I watched it, so you know, I like went to see it in theaters like me and my friend, I think it was a theater of like,
01:16:47
Speaker
It was like pretty small. I think there's probably like 20 other people there. Fairly empty. You know, it's like whatever. We watched like the whole movie. And then, you know, I didn't tell her because I wanted to see her reaction. But then, you know, at the at the very end, right, it's like coming up. I know it's coming up. And then it does. And like it seemed like no one in the theater knew about the actual story because everyone just it was this enormous gasp from like
01:17:17
Speaker
all 20 people in the theater. And my friend looks at me, she just has this face on. She's just like, you can't be serious. Just holding her face in her hands, just freaking out. Did this really happen? I'm like, yeah, what the fuck happened? That's really interesting. She's just freaking out. You didn't tell me this was going to happen. I thought this was just going to be a sports movie. I'm like, no, it's a crime movie. They killed that guy.
01:17:44
Speaker
Maybe, maybe my perception of having known the story beforehand, before seeing the film, maybe paints that a little differently, right? Maybe it's less impactful because of that. And, and maybe my perception of the editing or writing was a little skewed because of that. But yeah, that's interesting. Because when I did see a small theater and it was actually pretty packed. I don't remember people's reactions very much. But yeah, yeah, it was it was a very extremely audible guess from
01:18:15
Speaker
Everyone I was like looking around and you'd be like, oh, I guess y'all didn't know about that. I didn't know what you were. Because, you know, if you thought it was just a sports, if you thought it was a movie about two wrestling brothers and a weird and a weird guy and you're like, all right, like, you know, like there's all these themes
Foxcatcher's Rating System and Critique
01:18:31
Speaker
that's going on. You're like, all right, like this movie is, you know, complete pretty much without a murder at the end. You're like, all right, I kind of get what's there's like in all these seem like
01:18:41
Speaker
Sure. It makes sense as a movie. Maybe it's a little bit aimless and then that happens. If you don't know, you're like, Oh my God. Yeah. It just feels like it does feel sudden, right? It's out of nowhere. It's just crazy. Um, well, we have established that we are going to be doing a little bit of rating of each of these movies and we've created a rating system. Um, we will be rating each movie on writing, on acting, on production,
01:19:11
Speaker
and on its portrayal of wrestling. And that acronym is spelled W-A-P-P. So this will be known as the WAP system up until we are sued by any sort of rappers who might have a better claim to that term. But until then, this will be the WAP system. So I'll have to ask you, Sasha, on a scale of one to five, how did you feel about the writing?
01:19:41
Speaker
You know, I feel like they it would have been I mean, I you know, they're they're going for like a very and it's probably you're right. There's probably also partly determined by budget. I think it was going for like a very quiet introspective feel. And this very just sort of like, you know, John DuPont is just this quiet kind of creep or whatever. But I mean, there was so much
01:20:07
Speaker
You know, when you look at the stories and it's just like, yeah, it was insane. This dude, like in 19, uh, he, like he, in 1995, he pointed him a sub machine gun at someone who's like, you have to get off the farms or I'm gonna fucking kill you. Like there was, you know, this doesn't take a lot of digging. There's in 1987, um, danche, Dave Schultz and Metzger basically, uh,
01:20:33
Speaker
They took turns watching him while they made him do a drug detox. So they locked him in a room, basically, and got him off of drugs. And then, yeah, in 1988, they're settled out of court, the thing with the Villanova and him making that pass at Metzger. In 1995, he pointed a submachine gun at Dan Shade, and then he actually called the cops.
01:21:00
Speaker
And he was like, yeah, he fucking pointed a gun at me. It's like threatened to kill me. And they were like, ah, he's an eccentric. We know him really well. He's always doing training exercises with us. Like he's just an eccentric. So, I mean, it'd be very different movie. It might not capture. It would capture, you know, entirely different feeling. It would be a very different performance, you know, by Steve Carell's DuPont. But it would have been like
01:21:29
Speaker
would have a little bit more, you know, they allude to it. They have them do cocaine in the one scene, but then what, you know, you know, it could have been nice to have, you know, see him actually just going fucking crazy on whatever the hell he was probably on, like all kinds of amphetamines up at night, running around going crazy. Like I would have liked to see a little bit more of the, you know, what actually happened a little bit more of like the actual insanity leading up to this and his actual, you know, a little bit more of the paranoia and
01:21:59
Speaker
You know actually what led into that killing because it kind of drags Yeah, that second the second half drag is fairly like once we're done with the wrestling it drags pretty pretty hard. So yeah, let's give it Two two and a half two and a half interesting. So would you so you're kind of right in the middle on it Yeah, it's it's you know The I think the first first half of the movie, you know a lot of more of the wrestling that stuff Just has more of a
01:22:27
Speaker
There's more of a driving force in the movie and it kind of like loses that, but it didn't, you know, I'm sure the budget affected this, you know, maybe, you know, they want couldn't do reshoots. You see it in the edit, but like probably that second half of the movie could have been, could have gone a little bit more into John DuPont's character, not just his relationship with his mom, but like his actual paranoid schizophrenia and what actually led to, you know, the kind of,
01:22:54
Speaker
Cause it's in the movie, it's kind of portrayed as like, Oh, it just happened. That's kind of crazy. Like he was kind of weird, but we didn't think that was going to happen. And you know, in real life, there was a fair amount of, I mean, he had threatened to kill somebody with a gun the year before. Yeah. There's a lot of, a lot of trauma that just left out and I'll reiterate for listeners, you should watch the doc and maybe we'll cover it as well.
01:23:18
Speaker
Watch documentary, Team Foxcatcher, I think it's on Netflix. It gives pretty much all the details of the story, let you know what's left out. And yeah, there's a lot of stuff that's just wild that was ripe for drama. So I agree with pretty much everything you said. I think I liked it a little bit more. Like I overall think it is a good script, even though I have my complaints about it. I really like the way they pulled a lot of the themes together. I think they did a really good job of that.
01:23:46
Speaker
So I gave it a 3.5 rather than I was kind of going between 3 and 3.5. So I went 3.5. I think I liked it overall. Oh, and if anyone's interested, I mentioned earlier budget was 24 million box office made 19.2 million. So it definitely lost money at the box office might have made a little bit of cash by the end of things with home releases and such, but not a hugely profitable movie as you shouldn't be too surprised by.
01:24:17
Speaker
All right, our next category is acting. I'll go first this time. I thought the acting was really superb with such a small cast. You know, they really swung for the fences and I think everyone really did a good job overall. I think Channing Tatum, this is the best we've seen him. Mark Ruffalo.
01:24:38
Speaker
freaking nailed it. I couldn't see it played any better. And I really like Corel's performance as well. I thought acting was probably the strongest aspect of this. The dedication they went through to make the wrestling, you know, feel very real. And just overall performance, and everyone really did a good performance. Even the wrestlers, no lines. I'm very proud of you, Jake Herbert. It definitely looked like you lost that match. That was excellent.
01:25:05
Speaker
Um, but I am giving it looks very sad. I am giving acting a 4.5. So very positive for me on the acting. Channing Tatum did a great job. I think, I mean, I think the biggest thing, um, I read like another review looked at, like some of the people said, um, it's always funny. You can't, you don't really notice it necessarily. I mean, sometimes you kind of do, but other people seem to notice it a lot more. It's like the rest of us just kind of walk a different and he's kind of have like, they're hunched over a little bit. They just look very.
01:25:34
Speaker
Like, especially Mark. Like, Ruffalo really gets into the physicality of Schultz. Like, he's just got the, like, I don't know, he's got, like, the hairy arms. He's got, like, just the hit, you know, just the way he moves. He's always, yeah, with the T-Rex arms, he's always looks like he's gonna, like, grab something. As far as, like, that physicality, I think, like, Mark was really great. Channing Tatum did a good job. Definitely a very, like, introspective performance.
01:26:04
Speaker
Um, and he definitely sold like how lonely he was. Um, and then Steve, I mean, I kind of go back and forth on, I dunno, like I don't, John DuPont might've just been exactly like that and he might've done a great job, but I was always kind of looking for something to hold onto with Correll's performance as DuPont. I was always like, there was always a little bit of like, I mean, I feel like, I don't know. I feel like DuPont is kind of the worst part of this movie.
01:26:31
Speaker
which might again, might be more part of like a, like aspect of the writing. But I feel like his, um, when, when his, like his character is just very, just always kind of talk the same way. And probably what he was like, he's very monotone. Um, just he's, he's cre, he's like creepy. He's like strange. He's off putting, but he's not particularly scary, which the guy probably wasn't. He was very laughable.
01:27:01
Speaker
I agree, I agree that he is really missing like the, the, there was a menacing thing to DuPont that's a little bit missing. Yeah, he's not very, I mean, and you know, it'd be like a little bit of a different movie, but you know, if you're gonna make a movie, it's, but I feel like, I don't know, I just feel like it set the tone for Steve Carell's foray into being a serious actor. And that it never really seemed like he quite hit the mark. I don't think he was
01:27:30
Speaker
necessarily a convincing villain, but, um, I think Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo were really good. And maybe, and DuPont probably was also just kind of like that. So, so I think I'd probably give it like a four out of five for, for how well, yeah, Mark Ruffalo did. Like he was great. Like his, his whole aspect of like, did a really good job of selling that he's like this dad to Schultz, to Mark Schultz that he's like loves him and cares about him.
01:28:01
Speaker
then is also ready to just like beat the shit out of him at any moment if he like is there if there's competition like right he's very like outgoing but he's also very scary so i feel like that's definitely the performance of the movie and something we're saying about a lot of these categories is we're gonna be grading on a curve i think right i'm not gonna hold this movie to the same standard as i would hold like
01:28:24
Speaker
a very small indie wrestling film, like reversal or something, right? That just, yeah, no real budget, no real actors, right? We will, we will, you know, it's going to be a little bit on a curve, right? This movie will definitely score higher than that movie, but you know, we're going to take that stuff into account. And then speaking of, how did you feel about overall production? You know, sound design, cinematography, editing, all that good stuff, overall directing,
01:28:54
Speaker
What do you think? Yeah, I think they did a pretty good job of like the wrestling scenes. I mean, there's also an S like, you know, some, some movies doing this would try to probably portray, you know, the wrestling scenes with like a really crowded pack stadium or something, you know, they wanted to like really hit home like, Oh, how incredible this is. Um, but they were like, correct. Like they stayed true to it. Like, and then I'd also, I think it also helped. Like the wrestling scenes are very,
01:29:22
Speaker
You know, like they lean on like the spotlight a lot. Uh, you can always see that the stands aren't full. Um, they're like fairly quiet. There's, they're not very loud. There's some aspects of like coaches yelling, but there's not a lot of fanfare. Um, I think it kind of captures that aspect and it definitely like, uh, it's like focused in that way. I think visually, visually it's like can get a bit boring. The, the scene you were talking about where he opens up the,
01:29:53
Speaker
He opens up the stables and the horses run out. I thought that was beautiful. That whole scene looked incredible. And he goes from like inside the stable to out and the horses and the fog. It looks amazing. And that was like that, those two shots where he lets them out and he runs out and he's like shadow on his back and he sees the horses. Those are like incredible. And they kind of, they almost made everything else in the movie. Like, Oh my God, why is everything else?
01:30:21
Speaker
compared to that one shot, everything else so visually uninteresting. Oh, I just I disagree. Incredible shot. See, I liked a lot of the cinematography. I really liked it. And I also like you were saying, like not just like the way the wrestling looked, but they did a good job with like the costuming. Right. With a lot of like making things feel like this is the 90s or the late 80s. Right. Everything looked right in that sense. Everything looked very familiar.
01:30:50
Speaker
Um, we've, we've talked about like some like little mistakes, like a brick was thrown or whatever. Um, so there's like, sometimes they're not quite nailing it. Um, but I definitely felt very differently about the look of the film. I really liked the way it looked. Um, uh, and one thing I will say is I thought the music was fairly forgettable. I thought it was serviceable, but I was not like blown away ever.
01:31:14
Speaker
and didn't feel like a lot of music going on. There was a lot of silence in the film though, right? There was a lot of like no music, which I think was effective, but I could have used better music. And, but apart from that, everything felt very authentic to me. And I liked a lot of the cinematography. So for me, production, I think I would say
01:31:42
Speaker
probably a 3.5 again. I like it overall, could have been improved, but overall I really like it. Yeah, I think I'd probably say right around there too. I mean, I think as far as if you're coming to it to watch it as like a block, but like if you're expecting a lot of incredible visuals,
01:32:06
Speaker
Like it's not that, like I said, like the scene with the horses, I'm like, oh my God, this looks insanely good. Everything else is, like it captures it pretty well. Like the production style kind of matches the mood of the film, which is this very introspective, like very lonely sort of like drab and gray, but the pops of color with like the singlets. Yeah, especially like, you know, they capture like,
01:32:34
Speaker
what a wrestling shirt looks like really well. So I think they did a great job on all that. I would say probably, yeah, I think it also go like three and a half out of five. And then our final category of the WAP score is the portrayal of wrestling. And I'm going to say that the ideal for a portrayal of wrestling is going to be probably a documentary, right? That just shows wrestling and is about wrestling, right? This film at the end of the day, wrestling, it is not about wrestling, right?
01:33:04
Speaker
It is about some wrestlers and something that happened to some wrestlers, but wrestling itself, it's not, like you said, it's not a sports movie. It's a crime movie, right? And, you know, it's not about wrestling the way a miracle is about hockey, right? Or the way, you know, angels in the field about baseball. I mean, obviously all those things have their own subtext and all that.
01:33:29
Speaker
This was about an incident, things leading up to an incident rather than someone's career, right? That being said, I don't know, other than some films I've seen where they've just literally hired wrestlers to play all the characters and it's a wrestling movie and the wrestlers, you know, it looks like real wrestling. It's not going to get a whole lot better than this. If you're hiring like real actors and putting them through stuff and asking them to make things look real.
01:33:56
Speaker
This is about as good as it gets. Um, it could be tiny bit better. Sure. Um, so for that, I'm going to give it a four. Yeah, they, they do a great job. Um, like, and especially all the little things, like things that you, you wouldn't really catch on if you're not a wrestler, but you like, you see them binge eating. You're like, yep, I know what that's all about. You know, like the blood rag, like the physicality, uh, of Mark, um, and Channing Tatum, like it's incredible. Like they.
01:34:26
Speaker
They look like wrestlers. They feel like wrestlers. The wrestling scenes are pretty great. You know, they go for some arm spins and throws and like that stuff looks great. And it's a good technique. And they were hitting that. So it's not like nothing feels they're just out there throwing headlocks. Like, oh, it's all headlocks. The only move is headlock. No, like it looks great. Like, yeah, I thought I thought it was really good. Like, you know, they put his weight cutting, he's running on the bike, like,
01:34:53
Speaker
There, there's so many aspects of it that I think they did a really great job on that just I'm like, watch them like it. That's fucking, that's wrestling. So yeah, four, I think I'd go four out of five, four out of five as well. All right. So for our final WAP scores, I have 15.5 on the WAP scale. It's out of 20. You have eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.
01:35:22
Speaker
14 on the WAP scale so Both of us pretty close pretty close together there I think I I liked a couple things here more a little bit a little bit more here and there But otherwise that is our our first film review and before we go anywhere I do want to say, you know, we talked about last episode. We might need to talk about Mark Schultz and And and Mark is a complicated guy And I don't want to be hard on him. Like I've said before
01:35:52
Speaker
Um, but I do want to leave everyone with some of my favorite Mark Schultz quotes. Um, he is a very interesting follow on Twitter. Um, but I think these sort of things, uh, uh, put, put this character who we just watched a little bit more into perspective of who they really are. Right. Um, so here's my first one that I pulled up. Thank God. I had a brother that never took shit from anyone growing up in the same house with the greatest high school wrestling history.
01:36:21
Speaker
gave me two distinct choices. I could either become the toughest man on earth or a flaming homosexual. Now I don't want to, you know, do any pseudo psychology on here, but Mark, Mark, come on, man. You can't get upset about like all the stuff that you say. I feel like there's some defensiveness going on here that Mark is trying to, uh,
01:36:50
Speaker
not be associated with. But when he tweets something like this next tweet, it feels even weirder. And this next tweet says, I have a master's in exercise science. One time I saw a picture of all the D1, D2, D3, NAIA, and JUCO national champions on one page. D1 guys were the best looking, then D2, then D3, etc. So Mark has ranked
01:37:20
Speaker
the attractiveness of all the college champions and notice that the most attractive guys wrestle D1 and so forth. He continues, I theorize self image leads to success and wrestling symmetrically transforms facial bone structure. Now, I do not have a master's in exercise science, but I am fairly confident that wrestling does not symmetrically transform anyone's facial bone structure.
01:37:51
Speaker
No, I don't think that's happening, Mark. And this is a weird thing to tweet. But okay, once again, Mark's got stuff going on that's very interesting to me. And then my final tweet from Mark is, my dick is so deformed from a shot I got from Peroni's disease, it wouldn't even be considered porn to show it. But I don't want to make you guys vomit. Jesus Christ.
01:38:20
Speaker
And, well, we leave you, listener, we leave you with that. So like I said, I have a perception of Mark that, you know, is, is leaves me feeling conflicted. And like I said, I need to read his book. I think that would be a good next step for me to really, truly understand Mark Schultz. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that at some point. But there are some characters in our community, the wrestling community.
01:38:50
Speaker
And we are going to run into several of them throughout. Once again, Mark, you have the right to respond if you need to come on and talk with us about these tweets or anything that we got wrong. And I know Mark really, you know, is pretty adamant about the things the film got wrong that he wished they would change. But he's also been relatively supportive of it overall. But Mark definitely wants everyone to know that he never touched John DuPont. All right, folks, everyone have a good day.