So yeah, Darren Aronofsky is prone to projects with uncreative titles (“The Wrestler,” “The Fountain”), but whatever.
The director was supposed to be shooting, “The Fighter” (see?) this fall, according to star Mark Wahlberg; a biopic about the unorthodox and almost improbably junior welterweight champion, “Irish” Micky Ward.
But Slashfilm talked to Aronofsky right after the Toronto Int. Film Festival and he made it sound that not only was the project having financing issues, it wasn’t finished casting and certainly not shooting anytime soon.
“We have a great script, we’re just trying to cast it and try and figure out how it’s going to get made. I think it’s a great project. It’s been in development so long there’s a lot of money against it already. They’re trying to figure that out but [me and Mark Wahlberg are] ready to go on it” (apparently Wahlberg’s been training for two years on it already).
Having just finished the script, we find this a bummer.
Maybe one of the problems and why there’s a “a lot of money against it already,” is possibly the number of screenwriters who have been hired (and paid) to write revisions of the script? In the aforementioned interview, Aronofsky says the “beautiful screenplay” was written by Scott Silver, the author behind, “8 Mile.” However, the version we have, dated March 2007, has the name of four writers on it: the screenplay is credited to Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson with revisions by Lewis Colick and Paul Attanasio. IMDB, however, has the script credited to Attanasio and Colick with Johnson and Tamasay as only having “writer credit” (which one assume is different from screenplay credit) and of course no mention of Silver at all. But then again, IMDB is slow and often inaccurate and when Variety reported in September 2007, that Brad Pitt replaced Matt Damon in the flick as Wahlberg’s older brother and eventual trainer, Silver had already been attached. Whatever, all we know is that’s five different writers who have been paid to work on this thing which might be a small part of the larger problem with getting it started.
Back to the script. Yeah, we’re working on a slightly old version, but who isn’t in most script reviews (we’re one revision behind). It’s rather a lovely thing and hopefully it will only be better since Silver already has had a pass at it.
Based on a true story, “The Fighter” is set in the blue-coller city of Lowell, Massachusetts and Brad Pitt plays Dicky Eklund a welterweight boxer whose claim to fame was facing off against Sugar Ray Leonard, going the distance and even sending Ray to the canvas, but eventually lost by decision. From there, his career took a downward slope trajectory. Cockiness leads to booze and drugs which eventually blooms into full-blown crack addiction. In fact, Eklund was once featured on a1995 HBO documentary called “High on Crack Street.” The film starts around 1978 and moves into the 1990s while jumping around chronologically just at the very beginning.
In the script, the movie feels like it’s Pitt’s story initially, but soon his downfall leads the door open to his younger brother Micky (Mark Wahlberg), who seemingly has never really had his heart into boxing, but he’s always looked up to his older brother and wanted him to approve. Dicky eventually goes away to prison — despite the near Sisyphean efforts of loyal Micky who tries to forgive and bail him out like a battered wife that doesn’t recognize an abusive relationship — and the focus shifts back to the younger sibling (Dicky becomes a worthless, shifty-eyed junkie for much of the first-to-middle part of the screenplay).
Pitt’s character has a devilish, death-wish like streak in him that sounds like it would be amazing to watch and reminds us of his best moments in “Snatch” and “Fight Club” — the character has a ton of great lines and scenes that are funny and self-deprecating. Wahlberg’s character is loyal to a fault and everything he does is pretty much in service to his big brother until he reaches a breaking point, but their rapport in the script is excellent and to see these two playfully riff on one another is something that just leaps off the page into your imagination. While as far as we know their tough-as-nails mom who also becomes their manager isn’t cast yet, but this would be meaty supporting role for someone like Amy Ryan or the likes (though admittedly, she might be too young to play Pitt’s mom unless they delved into a lot of make-up).
“The Fighter” is essentially a gritty, working-class tale about brothers and friendship and it’s got (naturally) a ton of heart to it. That probably sounds cliche as fuck for a boxing movie, but the script is a winner, trust us. When Pitt is released from jail and returns to try and train Wahlberg, the scenes where the reformed addict tries to win back his brother’s love in his own subtle way is pretty resonating. When those bitter walls are finally broken down and together they aim to land a title fight for Wahlberg, it’s like these two boys were never ever meant to be separated even for a minute. It’s touching without ever feeling saccharine in that silent manly love kind of way. The bottom line is its extremely easy to visualize these two actors in the film and it plays out in your head rather winningly.
The few small worries are this. The story rings a similar to the arc of Brian Goodman’s “What Doesn’t Kill You,” which features Mark Ruffalo in a similar, South-Boston, crack-addict-to-jail and eventual redemption narrative, but then again, ‘Kill You’ comes should come out sometime in ’08 or early ’09 and with “The Fighter” not going into production anytime soon (it might even have to wait for “RoboCop” now), we might not see it for a few years now, which is a bit of a shame.