REVIEW

truly a knockout film.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Our Critic Goes to the Mat

By Barbara D. Phillips

No one could call me a pro wrestling fan. Sure,

I've known for months that this soap opera

buffa filled with beefy stuntmen garners some

of cable TV's highest ratings, particularly among

guys 18 to 34. But until a few weeks ago I

couldn't tell Ted Turner's World Championship

Wrestling from Vince McMahon's World

Wrestling Federation.

Still, I was pinned to the living-room couch for

the entire length of "Hitman Hart, Wrestling

With Shadows," Canadian filmmaker Paul Jay's

behind-the-scenes documentary that has its U.S.

debut on A&E Sunday (9-11 p.m. EST). Mr. Jay

and his crew kept the cameras rolling for a year

as the real life of Bret "Hitman" Hart came to

resemble one of wrestling's fictional morality

tales.

Hart, now in his early 40s, grew up one of eight

boys and four girls in Calgary, Alberta, the son

of Stu Hart, a wrestler and promoter now retired

and in his 80s. On-screen, Bret's siblings talk

about the family "dungeon," a basement gym to

which Stu would lure young men eager to prove

their stuff. His sister Diana recalls that "my

brother Bruce sent Owen in once to tape record

this one guy. He was actually really pathetic. He

was crying and weeping through the whole

thing. There was some country-western song in

the background and this guy's screaming, and

my dad saying, 'Have some discipline.'"

Bret says he was "deathly afraid" of his father

back then. "He could get you to the top of the

mountain, which is his word for screaming for

your life....I used to often sort of envision the

newspaper headlines sort of spinning around

going, 'Professional Wrestler goes Too Far.'"

Bret's own wrestling philosophy is different

from Stu's. "I've been wrestling for 20 years,

and I've never hurt anybody," he tells the

filmmakers. "I mean, it's been full contact and

very physical, but when you come back to the

dressing room after, you should be able to put

your boots on and go home....You know, there's

an art to wrestling. But people never come up

and say you're a hell of an actor. They always

come up and just go, "You're a phony.'"

Despite Bret's early determination to stay out of

the family business (he was a film major in

college), he soon found himself working for Stu

and, a few years later, for Vince McMahon, who

bought out Bret's father while building his

wrestling empire. In fact, all the Hart boys

became wrestlers and all the girls married them,

much to the chagrin of their mother, Helen.

Bret's wife Julie is only a little less enamoured

of his career choice, which keeps him away

from her and their four children far too often.

Bret has been playing the hero at the WWF for

14 years, when, in 1996, the WCW makes him

an offer he is hard-pressed to refuse. "They've

offered me $9 million over three years. Which is

– you know, when I got into wrestling, beyond

anything I ever imagined. Vince McMahon came

to me and he offered me – you know, for a lot

less money – but he offered me a 20-year

contract....I feel like the prettiest girl at the

dance."

After a lot of soul-searching, Hart re-ups with

McMahon and the WWF. "You know," he says,

"I think my relationship with, with Vince

McMahon was always sort of like a father....If I

left, it would have been a little like leaving my

dad. And especially when the chips were

down....Loyalty is important." Looking back a

little later, Hart says there was an even bigger

factor. "What would happen to the Hitman

character? What would the WCW do with that

character? And I had to reflect and go, 'I know

one thing. In the WWF, I'll always be able to go

out the hero.'"

He couldn't have been more wrong.

While bad guys once got only boos, American

fans have started to cheer the most evil character

in the WWF empire, Stone Cold Steve Austin.

"In the end, the fans decide everything," Hart

says. And "McMahon is positioning him to be a

fan favourite." Part of this modern-day

Barnum's plan for Austin involves the Hitman

turning villain. And eventually Hart agrees.

"You end up trying to find the vein of reality in

it," says the method wrestler. So Hart's Hitman

declares war on the U.S. fans while remaining a

hero in Canada: "Nobody glorifies criminal

conduct like the Americans do," Hitman

proclaims. "In all the countries that I go to

around the world, they still respect what's right

and what's wrong. You American wrestling

fans, coast to coast, you don't respect me. Well,

the fact is, I don't respect you." Back home he

wraps himself – sometimes literally – in the

Canadian flag: "For me, Canada is a country

where we still take care of the sick and the old,

where we still have health care, we got gun

control, we don't shoot each other and kill each

other on every street-corner. Canada isn't

riddled with racial prejudice and hatred."

And as the WWF takes a pounding in the real

ratings war against Ted Turner's WCW, the

WWF becomes ruder and cruder. "I can't

imagine what their thinking is," Hart says. "I

can't imagine Vince McMahon sitting around the

table going, 'Well, why don't we try this tonight?

You know, Shawn [Michaels] will pull his pants

down and show the crack of his a– to

everybody.'...I wish I could be in the room and

go, 'What, are you guys nuts?' It's become smut

TV."

In September 1997, McMahon tells Hart that he

wants out of their 20-year contract, citing

"financial peril." He says the wrestler will be

doing him a favour if he can get his old deal

with the WCW.

Luckily for hart, the Turner folks welcome him

into the fold. So this true story falls far short of

tragedy. (Hart, who writes every week for the

Calgary Sun, said in a recent column that his

year with the WCW has been happy.) But in

November 1997, before Hart moved to the other

side, McMahon lied to him, setting him up for a

psychic blow that a stunned Hart then countered

with a (real) punch to McMahon's jaw. (Perhaps

giving McMahon the idea, when he came to, for

his own current onscreen persona – a smarky,

evil schemer regularly pummelled by his own

wrestlers.) This is truly a knockout film.