GLUED TO THE TUBE / Real Life on Cable Beats Networks' Sweeps Fables
Diane Werts. E-mail Diane Werts at dwerts@newsday.com
11/16/1999
Newsday
ALL EDITIONS
(Copyright Newsday Inc., 1999)

RAZZLE! DAZZLE! Dollars! All sweeps month, the networks are playing leapfrog, trying to rack up ratings by outdoing each other with exceptional shows and special effects.
But if you take exception to the non-specialness of big-money messes like "Leprechauns," real life comes to your rescue. Why sit through shaky fabrications when actual events provide the dramatic meat these sweeps behemoths are missing? We've got some sublime suggestions for better spending your tube time.
"The Life and Death of Owen Hart" (tonight at 8 and midnight on A&E's "Biography"). This hour about the World Wrestling Federation star killed in a botched stunt this past May is a chiller. In eerie film footage, we come to know an everyday guy from a wrestling family dynasty who was trapped by his heritage and its lucrative rewards.
"I want to be normal," Owen moans, having followed brother Bret and other relatives into dad Stu's Calgary wrestling empire. "I want to be a fireman or a schoolteacher." But heeding the "call of duty," the youngest of the 12 Hart kids joined the family business and learned to play its games. He'd "turn" on fellow WWF star and big brother Bret in a "feud" the fans loved. Then he'd go home to childhood sweetheart Martha and their two kids, having provided a substantial enough income to build the dream house in which they could seek sanctuary from the professional circus.
Making this hour particularly disturbing is Owen's testimony from beyond the grave, made possible because filmmakers Paul Jay and Sally Blake also made last year's A&E stunner "Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows," the sordid tale of brother Bret's battle with WWF kingpin Vince McMahon. They had interviewed Owen extensively in 1997, and in those outtakes he's reflective and frank. He fatefully notes how his nephew Matt's death of a virus at 12 "kind of makes you realize you're living on borrowed time." And his part in a scary in-ring neck injury to "Stone Cold" Steve Austin makes him wonder, "What's more important, the guy's health or satisfying this crowd?" Many such statements, emotions and dates seem to dovetail into the kind of melodrama you laugh at when it's fictional and weep to when it's real. "We had no plan of making a second film," says co-maker Blake in a phone interview from Toronto, noting that her partner Paul Jay went to the funeral to pay personal respects. But as this summer progressed and lawsuits were filed, "it became obvious that the family really wanted the story told." Wife Martha provides amazingly eloquent on-camera testimony to the life Owen led and tried to overcome. Even to his death: Martha ordered an open casket so wrestling execs could see the impact of their race for ratings.
This is a stark, unsettling hour for "Biography," especially in this "Body Slam Week," whose other wrestling offerings (new hours on Austin last night and Long Island's "Mankind" Mick Foley tomorrow, repeats on Jesse "The Body" Ventura Thursday and Andre the Giant, aka Andre Rousimoff, Friday) take a more entertainment-oriented tone.