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They know and they can't wait. Look: The up-and-coming part is the struggle. The least savory people you meet are on the lower levels. Originally the film was going to be about following young guys. I must have seen about 150 young guys. The problem is, because they're young, their stories are not as interesting. There was one guy I was going to follow, who by the time I got my cameras and everything actually made it. He's in the picture, Matt Hyson; he's got his own kind of charisma.

He's the former third-grade teacher -- the English major. There's an odd moment when someone off camera asks him to wipe off some of his blood.

Michael Sragow Michael Sragow's column appears every Thursday in Arts & Entertainment + Archives

It's so bizarre. I'm squeamish around blood. But after a while you come to accept it. Matter of fact, when you talk to people, and blood is squirting from their heads, you're just having a regular conversation. But with Matt, we had to cut around it -- because I'm laughing. I was thinking to myself, "This is like a Monty Python sketch! Blood's shooting out everywhere!" And I think that's the absurdity of it that I like.

Is there any relationship between your love for wrestling and your comedy work?

I like to say I did this film so I could prove to Hollywood that I could work with white people! I gave Eddie Murphy a video and he said, "Wow, I saw it four times over the weekend. It's great." Eddie's got a real quick mimic's memory; he was blown away by the Jake stuff.

Does that mean wrestling, in your experience, is still almost exclusively white?

Well, it is mostly white, and there aren't many women either. In the ring, most women are used as sex objects. But some women do go to the matches and like wrestling. And Chyna is different, she isn't lumped together with the rest of the women wrestlers.

In her black leather hot pants, boots and halter, she has a Wonder Woman thing going.

Yeah, almost. Chyna has gone through life having to hear people say she looked like a man or she must be a lesbian, but she sees herself as a figure to empower women. In the movie I say she had her jaw restructured to enhance her femininity. She's recently got her breasts enlarged. I know she's conflicted about it, but it's a business decision, and if you're going to sell out you might as well go all the way. Her following is still predominantly male, but she feels great when little girls go up to her in a mall and say, "Wow, you're great -- you're someone to look up to, a woman who'll stand up for herself." She's Chyna: She fights the guys.

But to get back to the relationship between Eddie Murphy comedies and wrestling ...

Well, wrestlers are outsiders and Sherman Klump is an outsider in a weird way, because of his weight and his appearance. In the first "Nutty Professor" movie Eddie played all the characters but the family was only in two scenes. In -- I think it's now called, "Nutty II: The Klumps" -- there are only three scenes we shot where he wasn't at least two characters in it. Mama and Papa are having problems, marital problems; after all, Papa's getting older, so he's having performance problems and psychological problems. Granny has a fantasy love scene with Buddy Love [Sherman's slick alter ego] that we have to edit down to get a PG-13 rating. I think Eddie feels very close to these characters, all of them, and I think he gives an even better performance. What's amazing is that it never feels like "Here's a guy in makeup." I hope people respond to him in the role because Sherman is such a decent person. He has everything going for him except for his weight.

I think studios are always pushing Eddie into playing the Black Guy. The Black Guy in a White World. The Black Guy that Really Outsmarts White People. And you know what? As a white person, we're not always going to get tricked. But in the Nutty Professor films the characters are very close to him. He talks about the mother being based on his grandmother. For me, looking at Granny is just like looking at my own grandmother -- same look, kind of freaky. It's a real collaboration between Eddie, and me and David Sheffield.

As for wrestling, the worst thing for me is when they do comedy; it makes me cringe. Whenever I told people I was making a movie about wrestling, they'd say it was going to be funny. I said, "No, it's a serious film." Recently, I took my daughter to an art theater in downtown L.A. to see some documentary about inner-city kids. There were only six people there. But I remember saying with pride, "This is what it's going to be like when my movie opens. I'm going to be opening in art-house theaters. Enough of these big openings! I'm finally going to do an obscure movie!"
salon.com | March 16, 2000

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