WHAT MID-LIFE CRISIS?
Filmmaker-journalist steps through the ropes to become a pro wrestler in documentary
How did immersive filmmaker-journalist Omar Mouallem follow up getting into the meat sauce of Burger Baron in his fantastic film The Lebanese Burger Mafia?
By leaping off the ropes of his mid-life crisis to become a pro wrestler, of course.
Recently separated from the mother of their two beautiful children, Mouallem goes through the ropes — sometimes under, sometimes over — in an intensive 12 weeks of training, chasing a childhood dream of taking part in a match.
The result is his clever, endearing and delightfully painful new documentary Making Kayfabe: The Private Lives of Indie Wrestlers, streaming on CBC Gem starting Friday.
Kayfabe, defined on screen, is “the practice of upholding the illusion of reality in professional wrestling, including scripted gimmicks, rivalries and storylines.”
As the title suggests, Mouallem's mad quest dives into the sweat and grit of Edmonton's springy wrestling scene, seeking professional advice while looking at the lives of performing athletes Taryn Kroll (hilarious ring name: Taryn From Accounting), Ahmed Kheiri (a.k.a. TY Jackson), and the tough yet gentle Michael Richard Blais — who strove to join the big leagues and just celebrated his 20th anniversary in the ring.
“With everyone around my age, it started with Hulk Hogan,” says Mouallem. “He's like the Elvis Presley of wrestling.
“I had dozens of action figures and the wrestling ring and I would just tell stories,” says the award-winning magazine journalist, who brought us the incredible non-fiction book Praying to the West: How Muslims Shaped the Americas — not to ever forget his 2008 anthology, Amazing Cats.
But the wrestler who most inspired young Mouallem was Bret (The Hitman) Hart, a huge name in wrestling circuits from Stampede Wrestling to the global World Wrestling Federation.
“Every week I would hear, `From Calgary, Alberta, here comes Bret Hart.' Or Owen Hart or the Hart Foundation. And here they were not just representing Canada to the world, but Alberta,” says the 38-year-old.
“And in this weird way I just felt personally connected to everything.”
Mouallem shares this love of the Harts with one of the doc's most engaging subjects, veteran wrestler Blais, who guides the training towards the film's impressive, coed, ring-match finale.
Part of that journey was picking a name and shtick, of course.
Mouallem considered The Bad News Baron before settling on Fake Nooz Neville, a high-concept idea steering us into the idea of kayfabe going planetary — where “reality,” all facts aside, is increasingly something we humans choose to confirm and comfort our biases.
“That is definitely the concept from which this movie began,” Mouallem notes, “but in the execution of it I just didn't want to nail it on the head.”
He instead lets the tension between fact and fiction live in the film's subtext.
“I think there's something to be said, especially about documentary journalism and observational documentary,” he explains, “where once you put a camera on someone, they become sort of a performative version of who they are.
“There's some authenticity, but it's kind of dialed up to 11.”
His ex-wife Janae Jamieson shaving his back in the shower one last time on screen would be an easy example.
The depiction of their amicable, modern family is terrific, incidentally, with plenty of hilarious zingers.
Mouallem explains that in this documentary about wrestling, he heads to a local library to meet Love Wrestling 's founder Spencer Love, where the promoter suggests the filmmaker read up on the subject.
“Narratively,” says Mouallem of the location, “it's just more intriguing, it supports the theme and just drives the story forward.”
It's also really funny — reading to become a wrestler — Mouallem seen taking out a mountain of wrestler autobiographies.
And how much of that material did he read?
“Almost nothing,” Mouallem laughs, but that's not the point: it's theatre. “Together, I hope, the subjects and the audience are kind of buying it in that way that in wrestling, the wrestlers and the audience buys it together.”
But — including injuring his knees in training after he forgot to put on his pads — the “real” kicked in more than once.
And indeed with great tension, as when Mouallem pitches to his trainers a gimmick of a Kermit-the-frog-trench coat wearing reporter wandering around, antagonizing the pre-match crowd by questioning the credibility of wrestling itself.
His mentors are ill-impressed. “Ironically,” notes Mouallem, “in my attempt to create a character and storyline about a smug interloper, I was afraid I was being seen as a smug interloper and I was just going to get kicked out.
“That was the moment I realized the people who are interested in the meta text of wrestling, intellectualizing how kayfabe explains politics and all that,” says Mouallem, “those aren't the real diehard fans, who are very pure about their love for wrestling.
“This movie might be for the culturally interested, high-minded viewer, but for the act to sell, it's got to be for the real wrestling fans.”
Which brings us to the finale: Mouallem's live matchup at Rec Room.
It's he and his tag-team partner TY Jackson versus Taryn from Accounting and Blais.
The filmmaker's biggest fear in this moment was screwing up the sequences.
“I have so much appreciation of not just the physical talent, but actually the physical intelligence,” says Mouallem.
“It's so much more like dance than I imagined, choreography, the memorization, is incredible.” But the fight comes off amazing. Subtly, the wrestlers and ref guide the lippy, overconfident Fake Nooz Neville — including Blais calling out planned moves and improvising, which you see in subtitles over the tightly edited match.
“I thought it was like 15 minutes, and I got the footage back and it was 35,” says the now wrestler-director.
“I couldn't believe it.”
At one point Mouallem goes down hard and winces in pain on the mat. Up in the stands, his daughter is terrified, crying.
The ref rushes over to see if he's all right. But is it real or kayfabe?
You'll have to watch to find out.
With everyone around my age, it started with Hulk Hogan. … I had dozens of action figures and the wrestling ring and I would just tell stories.