CALGARY DIRECTOR TURNS TO ROM-COM
Robert Cuffley’s Chokeslam set in unlikely world of wrestling
There is a little-known rule in moviemaking.
If you want a coveted PG rating, there is a strict limit to the number of f-bombs you can drop into the dialogue. In fact, you’re allowed exactly one.
Calgary director Robert Cuffley seems to have mixed feelings about this limitation, but he did abide by it for his newest comedy, Chokeslam.
After all, a PG-rating is good for wide demographic appeal.
But there was a bonus reason for keeping the film free of some of the racier and more violent content of his previous outings.
For a filmmaker who has had a habit of filling his movies with strong female characters, Cuffley had never made one that his daughters, currently aged 6 and 10, could safely watch. Chokeslam will be the first. “There is one f-bomb, and they hear that around the house way too often,” says Cuffley, who will be on hand Sunday when Chokeslam screens as the closing gala of the Calgary International Film Festival. “But, yeah, until they are older, it’s the one of mine they can see.”
Chokeslam, shot last year in Regina, is Cuffley’s fourth feature film and his first since 2012’s violent and claustrophobic thriller, Ferocious. But while the comedy’s PG-rating may suggest he is aiming for more mainstream acceptance, it’s not as if the premise of Chokeslam is pandering, or even particularly wholesome.
Yes, it’s more or less an audience-friendly rom-com. But it’s one that balances broad comedy with an underlying sense of regret. It also takes place against the very strange backdrop of professional wrestling. Our protagonist is Corey Swanson, a failure-to-launch sad-sack played with nervous nerdiness by American actor and John Cusack look-alike Chris Marquette.
But it’s his would-be love interest Sheena Halliday who is the more unusual movie character. Played by a height-enhanced Amanda Crew, she is an illtempered grappler who is prone to sudden fits of violence and regarded as “the Lindsay Lohan of professional wrestling.”
Still, she is successful. Or at least she was. Which means her smalltown homecoming for a highschool reunion is big news.
For the still-enamoured Swanson, who was once her friend until he accidentally embarrassed her in a very public way, it’s a chance to dig himself out of the deep rut he has been living in.
So while Cuffley is happy to tap into the lucrative pro-wrestling audience, he admits that it’s not really a pro-wrestling film.
Sure, it was helpful that cowriter Jason Long apparently knows that world “inside and out,” but the jumping-off point for Chokeslam was more universal.
“It started with me just talking about yearbooks and how strangely eerie they are,” says Cuffley.
“Looking through the pages, it’s like a snapshot of people at a very pivotal turning point in their life. You look back at it years later and some have moved, some have died and I just found it very captivating and eerie.
“We started talking about that and about nostalgia — which is a big thing, I’m nostalgic for things I wasn’t even alive for — and what can happen to people in 10 years and how quickly things can change. That put us on the path to this couple.”
Chokeslam takes the well-worn will-they-or-won’t-they premise of an estranged couple’s possible reunion and throws in a “one-lastmatch” angle for Sheena.
Due to her bad temper and stints in both rehab and reality television, she is in dire need of a comeback, which her ambitious, slimebucket boyfriend-manager (played by Edmonton actor Niall Matter) is diligently working toward. So Corey must find a way to work around him and keep her in town.
All of which leads to plenty of laughs, springing from both the squirm-inducing romantic awkwardness of the situation and the slapstick that naturally flows from having an insanely tall woman beating on hapless men.
Sheena’s robot gimmick is pretty daft, even by pro-wrestling standards, and Cuffley acknowledges his initial attraction to the sport was that it seemed to be a gold mine for comedy.
“I don’t want to make fun of it, because I too am caught in its web all the time,” he says. “It’s just so outrageous. But there’s elements of drama and theatre in there and it seems to be a natural progression for people in visual arts to gravitate too.”
He certainly took it seriously when it came to offering authentic depictions on screen. For one, there are plenty of real pro-wrestlers in the cast. That includes Harry Smith, the son of the late Davey Boy Smith and nephew of Bret (The Hitman) Hart, who plays a hulking monster named Merciless Mordecai. Wrestler Chelsea Green plays Angel, who is initially recruited to be Sheena’s hometown opponent.
Canuck wrestler and trainer Lance Storm appears, as does Mick Foley, a iconic WWE wrestler who turns in an assured comic performance as an endearing hasbeen-wrestler-turned-promoter who loves to talk about himself.
It also helps that Crew, who also had the lead in Cuffley’s Ferocious, went above and beyond to learn the moves.
“She just threw herself into this,” Cuffley says. “She hired a trainer and went hard at it. From the second we talked about it, she was instantly on the net sending me photos. It’s kind of my dream because I sometimes overwhelm people with too much information. So we started trading back and forth: intro songs we liked, lighting effects, costume and came up with (Sheena). She nailed it. She came in early and trained with real wrestlers and I think it shows.”
In Ferocious, Crew played a small-town girl turned famous TV actress dealing with a dark secret. In Cuffley’s 2007 comedic thriller Walk All Over Me, Leelee Sobieski played a small-town girl turned dominatrix.
Having strong and nuanced female leads is a hallmark of Cuffley’s films and another reason his daughters, and all daughters, should watch them.
“The lead females all have this secret persona,” he says.
“The camera sees one side of them — in Sheena’s case an obnoxious, ball-busting, I’m-going-to-put-you-through-a-table type. But we also see her offstage, without the spotlight pointing at her. She is a real person, quite vulnerable and very sincere. In Ferocious (Crew) was a TV star who was charming onscreen but had a nasty secret in the background. Sobieski in Walk All Over Me played a would-be dominatrix, but the audience can see right through it.
“So I do love that duality, of seeing people in two different ways.”
It started with me just talking about yearbooks and how strangely eerie they are.