“I am not spending Sunday night watching Frost/Nixon,” my girl stated. “I don’t care what ridiculous promises you made on your crappy little Web site.
“First of all, the entire thing is nothing but goofy stunt casting. You’ve got the guy who played the king of the werewolves in Underworld as David Frost, and Nixon’s played by the guy who was Dracula. It’s a two-faced stone killer – slash – adolescent power fantasy against the king of the fucking bloodsuckers, and I don’t need that kind of awful wink-and-nod, pseudo-intellectual circle jerk on my night off.
“Besides: I’m hung over. So thinking? Not so great, actually. Plus, why would I watch a boring reproduction of a boring news interview when I could watch a man try to eat a hamburger the size of Richard Nixon’s prostate?”
“Um… Nixon’s dead,” I said haltingly.
“Yeah, but when he was alive, he was all asshole. Now put that DVD away, sit down, and watch the nice man yerk a perfectly good Godzilla burger into a mop bucket.”
So, after Saturday’s promise to write about Oscar-nominated movies, I was stymied almost immediately. I initially resented my girl’s unilateral derailing of my plans, which seemed to leave me high and dry on my writing schedule… so thank God that Mickey Rourke is hung like a Goddamned horse.
At least I assume he is, because the poor bastard can’t seem to string together eighteen months without stepping on his dick.
Mickey just announced that, after his unexpected and critically acclaimed performance in The Wrestler, that he would make his first follow-up a leading role alongside such historical eminaries as… Mr. T, Ice-T and Pamela Anderson (Who squeaks into the “T” theme by dint of “T & A”)… in WrestleMania XXV. And if Mickey’s personal history is any kinf of guide, he’s hoping to win a belt, celebrate with a belt, and use both an an excuse to belt his wife.
Jesus, Mickey; you’ve played dozens of roles in dozens of movies, so… how can you not understand the role that you’re supposed to be playing now? You’re in the middle of a redemption story. It’s America’s favorite kind of story: a man scrapes himself out of personal turmoil to achieve professional triumph. We’ll forgive damn near anyone in that kind of story… but it needs to have the right ending. For example, the story of an unreliable, degenerate, thirty-year alcoholic who gets his one-year chip is a great story… but if it ends with him protesting, “At least this time I was sober when I fucked your wife”? Not so much.
You could have been the Travolta story of the 00’s, Mickey; all you had to do was act normal for a while. It was a simple example to follow: Trovola got his shot, he acted humble, did a couple of indy flicks to build his rep back up, and then he got the twisted hubris to think that anything that crossed his mind was actually a good idea. If he’d used Tarantino’s largesse as an excuse to immediately finance Battlefield Earth, star in Wild Hogs and let his son die alone in a toilet, his follow-up to Pulp Fiction would have been Look Who’s Talking VI: Now The Crapper’s Rapping!
But no, instead you feel the need to piss away any goodwill you build up with The Wrestler by using that capital to put on tights and get into homoerotic grapples with Rowdy Roddy Piper. Who is at least probably easy to get a hold of; I imagine Roddy’s carved a comfortable, twenty-year ass-groove into whichever chair is closest to the phone, waiting for John Carpenter to call.
And if you go through with this, you’d better park a La-Z-Boy next to the phone, Mickey. Because I guarantee you that Darren Aronofsky is already on the phone with Ma Bell to get a new, unlisted number. He went out on a limb to cast a notoriously difficult and erratic former star in an Oscar-grade picture to give him a second shot at fame, and how is he repaid? By you taking advantage of having your name in print for the first time in ten years on something besides a subpoena to cynically grab a percentage of the pay-per-view on an event historically embraced by children, or rednecks who find themselves confused and baffled by fucking NASCAR.
So good luck getting a part in the next Aronofsky magnum opus, Mickey. I’m guessing that next time Darren’s looking to rehabilitate someone’s career, he’ll be calling someone a little more grateful, like Macauley Culkin.
Probably to star in The Mickey Rourke story.
[tags]2008 Academy Awards, Oscars, Mickey Rourke, The Wrester, Darren Aronofsky, dark humor, satire[/tags]
I sure hope the NY Times hires you to write Rourke’s obituary.
@The Damonowskivich – I doubt it; they wouldn’t even come up with the green for me to write obits for any member of the cast of The Hills… even when I offered to sweeten the deal by guaranteeing they could publish them tomorrow.