Wrestling

My first trip to an Arthouse screening was to see Rumblefish in the then Curzon cinema on Abbey Street. The cinema was later to be my workplace, both as The Curzon and in it's later incarnation as the Lighthouse but at the time I wasn't thinking about that (it hadn't happened) I was thinking that Mickey Rourke was surely the coolest man on the planet, at least in his incarnation as The Motorcycle Kid.

For years I wore grey v-necked jumpers, second hand jackets and only saw the world in black and white. He was the older brother I wished I had (or was?).



Recently I picked up Mickey's trail and watched The Wrestler on DVD (It's too hard to get to the cinema these days, what with miles to travel, penury and the need for babysitters) Mickey's still pretty cool, even though he looks like a mixture between a clown and a heavy metal guitarist.

The film is worth a look.(but for the real deal search out Aronovsky's great debut film Pi) It is set in a genuinely seedy and run down world and the dead end world of small time wrestling is brought to vivid life. In other ways it is predictable but that's not always a bad thing. Sometimes it's just inevitability.

My counsellor keeps telling me I've got to stop wrestling with the big questions because you never win. Mickey ain't never gonna stop wrestling. Counsellors ain't in it.