The Wrestler

Have you seen 'The Wrestler?' Yowza. Although I think Sean Penn is terrific in 'Milk,' I don't think I've ever seen anything like Mickey Rourke in 'The Wrestler.' He's so ugly, you know? And by ugly, I mean that he is literally ugly from his long bleached hair, to his massively over-surgeried face, to his roided body, to his crackly deep voice to his dirty unmanicured fingernails. But his performance is unlike a performance - it's real. Like each day of shooting, Mickey Rourke came on set and was just himself. He's destroyed his face and body and voice over the years, and here he is putting it out there. The performance is self-conscious, but not in a bad way. I guess here is a situation where it works. It's almost like 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane' in the sense that in that movie, there were two icons who had become old and ugly in real life, and they came together and documented their realness for all the world to see. I don't think 'The Wrestler' will have the same camp value in 30 or 40 years. But I do think it will be remembered.

Ass still hurts.