THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Documentary wrestles with Hitman's pain
FINE TUNING
Friday, November 13, 1998 JOHN ALLEMANG
Out-of-touch political commentators wondered where Jesse (The
Body) Ventura
came from to win the Minnesota governor's race this month. They
should watch
more television. Ventura is one of the hallowed names in the world
of
wrestling, a sport that is now the most popular and possibly the
most
profitable form of cable programming in the world.
As Paul Jay's superb documentary Hitman Hart: Wrestling
with Shadows reveals,
the battles for U.S. governors' mansions are nothing compared
to the weekly
TV contests of musclebound hulks representing the World Wrestling
Federation
(WWF) and its archrival, World Championship Wrestling (WCW). Their
live,
main-event shows are regularly the most watched programs on U.S.
cable, and
have an enthusiastic following in Canada, where they air on TSN
and TBS. The
two wrestling bodies have gone toe to toe in a battle for ratings
supremacy
in the last three years, turning up the volume on the blaring
rock music,
making fireworks a compulsory part of each match and creating
new characters
who are each more evil and nasty than the ones who came before.
As Ted
Turner's fledgling WCW steals WWF's big names such as Hulk Hogan
and Jay's
moody subject Bret (The Hitman) Hart, Vince McMahon at WWF ups
the ante with Jerry Springer-style production values that shame
the memory of gentlemanly Whipper Billy Watson.
The kingpins of wrestling have belatedly discovered that
it's the bad guys
who sell, and at WWF, which now leads the ratings wars, the new
heroes are
the bloodless thug Stone Cold Steve Austin and the narcissistic
sexpot Shawn
Michaels. The Canadian Bret Hart, who carried on as much of Whipper
Billy's
good will as was possible in a more arrogant age, may have been
the last of
the WWF nice guys, and his downfall at the hands of Vince McMahon
is
chronicled in Wrestling with Shadows.
Jay's film, with stylish up-close camera work by Joan
Hutton, is partly a
biography of Calgary- born Hart, who took up the sport at the
insistence of a
brutal father who liked to see how much pain his offspring could
endure.
Since all eight sons became wrestlers, and all four daughters
married
wrestlers, the answer seems to be: a lot.
But the Bret Hart who rose to fame as a WWF force of
good seems to be feeling
the pain as the cameras roll. It's not just the rigours of wrestling's
nomadic life, although Jay captures those evocatively with cold
backstage
shots that contrast neatly with the tarted-up glamour of the ringside
antics.
The 40-year-old, much-pummelled Hart is starting to feel his age,
which is
bad enough, but there are signs that the manipulative McMahon
is growing
tired of his act. When Hart is persuaded to turn evil -- rounding
on the
flag-waving crowds and trashing WWF's all-American values -- he
suddenly
becomes expendable in the entrepreneur's eyes. The end is near,
and it is
only a question of how The Hitman will be finished off.
It's the fakery of wrestling that paradoxically makes
Jay's film so
captivating. These guys are all actors, right down to McMahon,
who plays
himself at every WWF event. Trained to regard wrestling as make-believe
fun
(though it looks more like made-for-TV evil these days), we never
quite know
how much commitment to give Hart as he pours out his sufferings
and fears. If
it's an act, it's much more persuasive than anything in the ring.
