I.
Have you ever been into wrestling? Maybe as a kid, maybe as a teenager, maybe now trying to relive those days? Do you know the names Stone Cold, The Rock, John Cena, and Hulk Hogan? Have you felt the energy of a crowd as your favorite guy tried to take down some mother fucker you absolutely hated. Have you just sat there with your mouth open, watching and saying, “wow?”
I was a little Hulkamaniac.
One of my parents' first stories of me was running from radiator to radiator, like bouncing off the ropes, charging at my invisible enemy, and laying them out with a clothesline.
I can’t tell you exactly why I fell in love with wrestling. I just did. Like most people my age, after losing touch in the early 90s, my attention was snapped back into place because of Stone Cold Steve Austin and the Attitude Era. The first PPV I ever watched was the ’98 SURVIVOR SERIES, when The Rock ascended and became the Great One. I watched every goddamn Monday, Friday, then Tuesday, and then back to Fridays, and every PPV (thanks to my family's cable scrambler).
My guys were Austin, HHH, Jericho, Rock, and Foley, the same as everyone else.
Me and my friend Kenny couldn’t get enough. We were obsessed. We’d pull PVC piping out in his backyard to create our own squared circle and put on shows for nobody. We got our parents to drive us 45 minutes away to get Mick Foley to sign our copies of his book. HAVE A NICE DAY. When BEYOND THE MAT came out, me and Kenny rushed to the theater.
BEYOND THE MAT was the first time I got a glimpse of the backstage. I got to see what it was like “for real” as these men and women wandered around, waiting for their turn in the big show to happen. These little peeks backstage made you lean in and try to get a closer look. I remember Jim Cornette and Vince McMahon watching a tryout match from a TV in the back, seeing Goldust without the face paint, Vince McMahon sipping from a water bottle, and declaring, “We make movies.”
One night, flipping through the channels, I stumbled on the Bret Hart documentary WRESTLING WITH SHADOWS on A&E. I never watched Bret Hart in his prime. As I said, I was a Hulkamaniac in the late 80s and early 90s, then dropped off until Stone Cold came crashing through the glass to stare down The Rock. By the time I returned to wrestling, Montreal was miles behind it. Bret was floundering in WCW, and god help me if I turned on TNT. But my wrestling-obsessed mind needed to watch this Bret Hart documentary before bed.
Unlike BEYOND THE MAT, which bounced around to tell different stories up and down the ladder of wrestlers, this was focused on a top guy at the top of the business. We hang out with Bret backstage as he plans matches, cuts promos, and travels the road, going from show to show. It was a crucial time in his career as he’d been offered a ten-year contract only to have Vince McMahon take it away, citing “money issues.” Now Bret is signing with the competition, WCW. You experience the real-life high stakes as Bret’s crumbling relationships converge into a monumental explosion in Montreal.
And I watched with rapt focus. That documentary would form the basis of a story that would brew in my mind for two decades after seeing it, and I’ve no doubt seen the documentary a good ten times.
I lost touch with wrestling. Then I went to Wrestlemania. I became an AEW fan, and now my nights are Wednesdays. I even turn on TNT. I listen to all the Conrad Thompson (no relation) podcasts, starting with Something to Wrestle, which eventually led me to be an Ad-Free Shows member.
During one episode of What Happened When, Tony Schiavone talked about the lack of proper representation of wrestling in media. I got it. The only time you saw the sport be depicted was in some backwoods, southern, wrasslin’ cartoon. You never saw real people. I thought about BEYOND THE MAT and WRESTLING WITH SHADOWS. As wrestling fans, we all know that backstage drama is sometimes more engaging than what we see on TV. Hell, Dave Meltzer built his legacy in the business off it.
There was an idea that felt like it weighed enough to keep and not throw back.
I put the story together as a 10-episode, half-hour glimpse of life on the road. There’d be a rotating roster, just like in wrestling, focusing on different storylines as a year in the life of the business unfolds. I set it in that late-90s period when wrestling was its hottest. I bring it to the edge of the wild times before everything went corporate.
In Jim Ross’s book UNDER THE BLACK HAT, he has a paragraph that nailed everything I wanted this story to be (and gave me my title):
“Any curtain in the entertainment business is, by definition, a portal between two worlds. When you’re on the public side of it, nothing exists except the story you’re telling your audience. On the other side is real life. In my business, that other side is where larger-than-life...become everyday people with everyday problems. They hobble in pain, dance with joy, break down in tears, or celebrate--depending on how their night went.”
But how the hell do I make this happen? I know that I need to show this concept in action for anyone to understand it. How can you see the vision unless your eyes are open to it? My idea was to write a short film that could act as proof of concept for the show. So, I did. I’m keeping it simple and stage the whole short in one of the show's primary locations, the locker room, to tell the story of two wrestlers in transition. One is about to retire, and the other is beating him in his last match.
Part one of this long journey begins here. I’ve told you what I’m trying to do. I’ll chronicle the story of putting this short together, from pre-production, finding the money, shooting, and then finishing it. Along the way, I’ll try and write about the process, the ideas, and the inspirations behind it. Let’s see if I can put each piece together and make it happen.
We’re going to do this one hold at a time.
Jonathan Thompson