Sean Penn, Best Actor, 'Milk': Nobody Does It Better

Esquire (February 2009) now on stands: includes former junior senator from Illinois + Mickey Rourke

This would be Esquire's inauguration issue then. The inimitable Andrew O'Hagan writes about Obama therein. Elsewhere, the excellent Miranda Collinge interviews Michael Sheen. My contribution is a short consideration of The Wrestler, now in UK cinemas. The bits that are taken for pull-out quotes in these cases are usually a wager on what is the reader's likely interest. In this particular case:

"In The Wrestler’s first reel Aronofsky keeps his camera on The Ram’s shoulder, as if the film were hard-edged docu-drama. But in fact he’s just shooting his star, teasing us before revealing Rourke’s face – the complexion tandooried and tenderised, the lips like waxen fruit."

Call me hypocrite, lecteur, but I go on to say that I do wish people could stop writing about the tragic case of this actor's former handsomeness - it's a little bit unseemly - but then The Wrestler makes this impossible: the movie is just such a big untrammelled load of Rourke.

For the sake of full disclosure I should admit that back in late 1986, while Rourke was rumoured to be in Belfast researching an accent for a movie role with the help of the playwright Martin Lynch, I undertook a most unwise night of underage drinking in some unsuitable pubs he was (no doubt wrongly) rumoured to be frequenting. Why? Well, no doubt the touching hope of bumping into him and striking up an instant rapport. I lost it at the movies, indeed...
Currently one notes that Rourke is really putting himself out there for the awards season, and much is getting written about his Early Life and Later Lost Years, including an interview piece in the New York Times by Pat Jordan about which, one supposes, the subject may have mixed feelings.

Welcome Back Department - Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler; Axl Rose's Chinese Democracy

On Thursday night I went to see Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, which took the Golden Lion at Venice this year and is attracting an awful lot of heat (affirmed by the ram-jam attendance at the first London press screening) in terms of a possible award-season run for its leading man, Mickey Rourke, for whom this picture may constitute the most substantive career-comeback moment since he started to destroy his professional reputation round the end of the 1980s. I think I may be writing more about The Wrestler and Rourke in print soon.

That same Thursday the free papers told me that Guns 'n' Roses' 13-years-in-the-making Chinese Democracy album is now ready for stores on November 24. I was quite pleased, though I will soon be returning to my Metallica Dilemma in terms of what sort of rock 'n' roll records a fellow of my age really ought to be buying/listening to. But then Axl will have aged and matured a little bit in the interim too, right?

In any event, for various thematic reasons and nudges in the dialogue, the spirit of Rose rather hangs over one's viewing experience of The Wrestler, even before one reaches the point in the movie that showcases a highly unexpected licensed usage of 'Sweet Child o' Mine'. The end credits duly express a deep gratitude to Axl W. These are the moments in life when it all makes sense: when, as Tracy Walter says in Repo Man, you're sitting there thinking about a plate of shrimp, then someone says 'plate' or 'shrimp' or 'plate of shrimp'...