GAEA Girls;So you wanna be a wrestler?

Here is a well kept secret of the BBC. They used to make and fund really good documentaries. They have had a few hits lately in my eyes. Last years documentary on British wrestling was as funny as it was touching. When Wrestling was Golden: Grapples, Grunts and Grannies, is an excellent program. But the best wrestling documentary I have ever seen, and that includes the excellent documentaries by WWE, is Kim Longinotto's GAEA girls. It is not just a great pro wrestling film, its a great documentary. Longinotto's choices of subject is perfect. Her passive anthropological style captures the pure grittiness of the moment and she matches it with touching scenes of tenderness in a film that is about as stark as it gets.

GAEA was a promotion that was started by Chigusa Nagayo in 1995 and opened its doors to great critical acclaim. As I have mentioned elsewhere, GAEA began the stratification of the Joshi scene which has left us so many companies today. The main thrust of the film is the story of one student Takeuchi as she takes her final tests before making her GAEA début. It shows the stark living conditions and harsh training methods that make Joshi wrestlers some of the toughest performers in the world. It really is a film about ambition and the relationships between Nagayo and her trainees. Nagayo talks about how her relationship with her father drove her in her wrestling career, and its not impossible to see the relationship between Nagayo and head trainer Meiko Satomura as a quasi father son relationship in the same mould. The pattern repeats itself with Takeuchi, taking harsh and very real beatings after very real beatings to prove her worth to Satomura and Nagayo.

The reaction to this film has been as varied as it is brilliant. Longinotto cried while watching the beat downs and humiliations Takeuchi suffered, on the other hand wrestlers like April Davids and Jenny Sjordin have said it was the reason they took up wrestling. The discipline required to be a top level Joshi, or any wrestler for that matter is amazing. The physical punishment they go through is at an incredibly high level. The teaching methods while not exactly picture perfect educational theory are very tied into the military psychology of breaking people down to build them back up. To bring out that killer instinct, because in the long run, any wrestler has to have that instinct, in the ring and in business life or they will not survive. It is also not hard to see why the girls want to do it. Stardom is one thing, independence is totally another, and in what was and to a certain extent still is a very closed conservative society, the chance to be something different is a big draw.

This film is a must see for any wrestling fan, it is the best example of watching wrestlers at different tiers of the business and being able to contrast their approaches to life. The fearful Takeuchi looking to please at every turn and trying her hardest to be a totally different person,. The person she needs to be to get in the ring. Satomura, the young but able wrestler, trying to make her way worried about her students but worried about her own career and its path. Finally of course Nagayo, the legend. The one person who has seen it all from harsh abuse of her father to adoration of screaming girls from all over Japan. Nagayo was the biggest star Joshi ever produced a once in a life time phenomena, and you can physically see her frustration as she tries to bring the next generation of girls forward to fill her spot.

Counter pointing all this stark reality are touching moments of joy and mundane life, Nagayo getting her hair cut “I have a good head for slapping” and Satomura sitting in the sun having her noodle breakfast and singing a happy tune while the girls relax for a short break.

Enjoy the film.

The One and Only; A fictioanlised Gorgeous George

So welcome to an irregular column written about films (I am off school this week and decided I had to write more, I am kind of in a groove at 10,000 words so here goes a few more). Inspired by the news that Glen Jacobs is to once again star in a flick. This column will be about wrestling movies, either movies about wrestling or movies featuring wrestling. So I shall start with an old childhood favourite, The One and Only. This stars Henry Winkler as a pro wrestler who can't find his groove despite numerous attempts at finding a bankable gimmick. It roughly follows the life history of Gorgeous George, the 1940's icon that essentially put wrestling on the map in the early TV era.

Gorgeous George was in his earlier career as straight up and down George Wagner a mid card kind of guy. Middleweight, winning the Northwest Middleweight title early in his career, not particularly startling as an athlete, and not really what you would call a star. Just a dependable guy promoters liked because he could have solid matches with just about everyone. Not what you would call a star. That changed when he began to apply some showmanship to his matches. He was one of the first to get married in the ring. Which turned out to be a drawing card and so was reenacted several times in several territories (before TV made that kind of thing less likely). When he heard about Lord Patrick Lansdowne and his flamboyant robes and capes he realised he could push that gimmick to a higher level and so began using outlandish materials, ceremony and pomp that would become a huge influence on pro wrestling. Buddy Rodgers, Ric Flair, "Exotic" Adrian Street and Adrian Adonis all owe a debt to George. In fact modern stars such as Fandango and Robbie E push the same buttons George used to back in the '40s when long hair was frowned upon.

Essentially this film is about being reborn and finding your place in a new idiom. Actually that was a theme of a lot of films starring Winkler in the late '70s and early 80's. Still a star from his days as The Fonz in Happy Days, each movie he seemed to make had and edge of reinvention to it another of my favourites from 1982 (one of Ron Howard's first direction jobs), featured him as the director of a morgue who after being consigned to a night shift rebels and uses the morgue as a base for a pimping operation.

The film is well made and has a neat story. I remember watching it as a wrestling obsessed child one Saturday afternoon around Christmas on BBC 1. It was my first exposure to any kind of American Wrestling culture. So plug in the popcorn sit back and enjoy.

Sherirff Lonestar at the Movies

This blog is not going to be updated very often because there are not that many wrestling movies out there. Lots of documentaries and I will probably get to one or two of those, when I get then time and find something worth critiquing I shall get to it. All recommendations welcome :).