Crave Online: Are we meeting the new Mickey Rourke now?
Mickey Rourke: It’s just more fun. I'm having a good time with everything. I got the opportunity to work with a really, really great director on some material that was very interesting that with a few changes became even more better. And I had a wonderful co-star with Evan Rachel Wood, you know, who we had some very emotional scenes together and she wasn’t intimidated, and she just got better and better as the night went on longer and longer and started snowing out. And I think Darren is the main reason that this thing, this had the success, and I think the integrity and everything else that came with it is what he brought to the table on his genius and his relentless strive for perfection and hard work. And, you know, he’s a director that takes chances and he's very innovative. He reminds me of Francis Ford Coppola when he was young and just kind of did things his own way. Every time I inquired about Darren it was the same feedback. I got the same kind of information that I heard about Francis or Michael Cimino or Alan Parker or Adrian Lyne who’s just really some kind of special dude that comes around every thirty years. Then getting an opportunity at a point in my career when I had no career for over a decade, this was an opportunity I wasn't going to mess up.
Crave Online: What made you shape up for Darren as opposed to other previous directors?
Mickey Rourke: Because the people whose opinions I asked about and inquired about were people that I had a lot of respect for. And talking to the guy, talking to the man, I mean he’s very straightforward, it's not like some cat who's selling you a used car. He didn’t have to sell himself to me, nor did he. And he was very firm. He was very direct, which I appreciated. There's no gray with him, It’s black and white. He’s the boss. He’s going to be the boss.
Crave Online: How tough was filming the wrestling scenes?
Mickey Rourke: Darren made a comment the other day, "You could smell the BenGay as you watched the movie.'" I mean after my third trip and my third MRI to the hospital, it brought up injuries I had playing high school football. I had an ACL that was torn and that started to hurt again, and then a boxing injury that I've always had and has never gone away. I'm going, "Oh my god, I'm walking like this again." And then the back went out. It was tough as sh*t. There was a very interesting documentary done and I think he’s name was Own Hart, and his brother actually died doing this stuff. We did a lot of research. We watched and saw what happens at the end of somebody’s career, what they looked like then and what they look like now, or the guys who are still trying to hang in there. We really wanted to pay homage to the sport in its due course as the movie went along. Sure, we exposed certain things that wouldn't be in a Rocky movie, but we weren’t making a Rocky movie. It was a different kind of movie. And I'm not ragging that movie at all, but not everybody gets a second chance, you know?
Crave Online: Since you have a boxing background, did you help choreograph the fights?
Mickey Rourke: No, the fights were choreographed by Afa [Anoai], Dwayne Johnson’s uncle and the stunt coordinator. Then Darren, because he decided to shoot the movie in a sort of objective documentary-style way hand-held the whole movie, he said, "You have to do your own stunts." So, three and a half/four months of working with these wrestling people, I didn’t want to be in there for like two months. For about two months the back was hurt so it was torture. Then after about the third I started feeling better and I was getting it. I wasn’t moving like a prize fighter. I was understanding the way a wrestler moves. It's all exposed instead of closed up. Then I would go in on Sundays, because one of the boys was very athletically inclined in a gymnastic way and he did all these very sophisticated moves, the flips, the scissors and all that, and I said, "I want to learn that." So we went in, we did that on Sundays without Darren knowing because I wanted to surprise Darren, because I love and respect him so much I wanted him to be happy with me. Darren was like, "You learned how to do that?" And even going over the top rope. At the last minute I’d go, "I want to go over the top rope with no padding too." But I said, "You better f*cking catch me," and he did. I like the fact that either you go over the rope or you don’t. So at the end of the movie I made everybody on the crew go over the top rope and they shot a video of it. The only people that could go over the rope were the guys who trained me. Everybody else on the crew got clothes-lined. Darren halfway made it over, like barely made it. He made it over the rope like an old drunk and then he told me he’s been in the chiropractor for four months now. It was pretty funny.
Crave Online: Who are the real wrestlers you like?
Mickey Rourke: Ray Mysterio is the best. There's a move that Ray Mysterio does, swing through the middle rope, I wanted to learn but I didn't have time. They ran out of film. That was the last move, you know his signature move, I wanted to do that move and we didn’t have [time]. If we would have had one more fight scene, that move would have been in there, and pay homage to Ray Mysterio. As a matter of fact, we watched a lot of the early Mexican wrestlers in the outfits. I mean Ray Mysterio is just the [man], him and Shawn Michaels. And then you look at the way that Ric Flair has fought into his 50s. What, did he retire five months ago? I mean an honor for me is the fact that Ric wants to come to the premiere. So it’s like Rowdy Piper’s coming to the premiere. Those are the ones who I wanted to like this movie, you know?
Crave Online: What about the scenes at the deli counter in the supermarket?
Mickey Rourke: Oh yeah, because we couldn't afford to close the supermarket with our tremendously high five million dollar budget. Don’t laugh, we didn’t even have, you know the movie chairs they have on sets? Not one. Not f*cking on chair. You know, it says the name, the movie and sometimes your name. I even have had a mini chair with my dog’s name on it once but we’re behind the thing and so there were extras. Like the extras, by the way, they couldn't even afford extras. It was Darren’s mother and father and somebody else’s uncle. That's how we got our extras. And they didn’t close the deli counter so we were still working. Somebody come over to me and go, "Give me a half a pound of salami." I go, "You've got it, baby," and then I would tape it up. It’s a movie, I wasn't going to write anything in particular, so I just wrote [on the package] and the manager did come back and say, "Could Mickey clean up his handwriting a little bit? We don’t know what prices he's putting on the salami." I didn’t even know that was going on because we were in a certain part of New Jersey where there was some really ugly people, and I thought it was like an uglies only casting. There were moments of improvisation. You know, stuff in the supermarket, "Come on guys, let’s go take a shower," stuff like that. The script was very well put together from the beginning, the through line of the piece. I added some dialogue with my character, with Evan, with the end movie but it was pretty much to the script once we did the rewrite.
Crave Online: Now you've done this film and you feel like it’s the new Mickey Rourke, what do you look forward to doing now?
Mickey Rourke: Well I learned a great lesson on this movie, that maybe I learned it before but I didn't stick to it, is that I really need to work with people that I have respect for, with other casts that I have respect for, with material, director, because if I don’t do that, then that's when all hell breaks loss. This is my second chance and this is my last chance. I’m working right now with a young guy named Géla [Babluani], did a movie called 13. And I met with him, he has a lot of integrity, he’s very innovative, he’s very much in command. He knows what he wants. I made sure to say, "What actors are named in the movie?" Ray Winstone, Jason Statham, Curtis Jackson/50 Cent, Ben Gazzara. Read the material. So if I can keep myself on that path, I don’t want to go off and make Batman and have them give me f*cking whatever millions of dollars, because then I'm going to misbehave. I have to respect the material. I have to respect the director. I have to respect the other actors, and it could take on actor in a movie that I don’t like and I ain’t doing the movie. You could pay me triple. So I'm looking toward having some longevity in my career and I think the hardest thing for me to be, and has always been, is to be consistent. I need survive, and I am all about surviving.
