“The Wrestler” star Mickey Rourke won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award for a performance clearly enhanced with the use of drugs. Why isn’t Bob Costas complaining about that?
When I’m a wrestler, I behave as a wrestler.
That was Mickey Rourke in 2009 responding to a Men’s Journal question if he used steroids to aid in his nearly 40 pounds of muscle weight gain for his role in The Wrestler.
I don’t know if, as non-denial denials go, that put Rourke in the same category with Mark McGwire’s “I’m not here to talk about the past,” but adults could look at the rapid change in middle aged Rourke’s physique and comfortably speculate about how much flaxseed oil he had to inject to make that happen.
So, what am I not understanding?
Mickey Rourke discusses the performance-enhanced highlight of his acting career.
I mean, I assume that, if Rourke took some steroid it wasn’t done by happenstance; he didn’t find it mixed in with the chocolate syrup on Kim Basinger’s ass in some unfortunate 21st century sequel to 9 1/2 Weeks. I assume if he took steroids for a film role it was for cosmetic purposes, for purposes of authenticity, to better enable him to train and recover for an athletically demanding role. I assume that, if Rourke took some steroids that was a step beyond which some other actors, had they had a chance at that part, would have taken. I assume that the widespread acclaim that Rourke received was a lesson not lost on young actors, actors hoping to emulate Mickey Rourke. Acting is as highly a competitive marketplace as exists; every now and again you’ll read that the average yearly acting income for someone with a SAG card is like 6 grand. Actors will do virtually anything to scratch and crawl their way into exactly the position in which Mickey Rourke found himself, a position solely existing because of the authenticity of his portrayal of a professional wrestler.
So, what am I not understanding?
Mickey Rourke, a decade long celebri-joke–a pre-TMZ version of Amanda Bynes–won the Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award for a performance clearly enhanced through the use of drugs. Mickey Rourke took PEDs.
How else would you classify whatever drugs Rourke seem to have taken for this role? He gave a performance. His performance was enhanced to some degree by his look and ability to train and do stunts. I don’t have a metric to quantify how much his performance was enhanced but given the downward trend of his career path, the few hits he has been able to produce, what clearly looked like the normal end of a career – given that it has wildly spiked outside of normal levels – I think it’s not unreasonable to correlate that wild spike with the use of performance enhancing drugs.
So, what am I not understanding?
Where were the Congressional hearings? When did the grand jury convene? When was the raid on his house, gym, doctor’s office, anti-aging clinic? When did Sports Illustrated start a jihad to see that he was viewed in the same league as OJ Simpson? When did we talk about the children? The innocent, impressionable children?
The American public seems clearly more bothered by whatever it is that Alex Rodriguez puts in his body than that the work force just suffered the biggest drop in hourly pay in the 65 years since that statistic has been kept. Perhaps that’s just media emphasis – the mainstream sports media doesn’t allow much leeway from a view that baseball’s leaking of the Biogenesis investigation is a good (in the way the leaking of the PRISM and drone strike programs are viewed as a bad) and the most progressively minded baseball analysts like Bob Costas and Brian Kenny will blame union intransigence for the “steroid era” while the steep decline in union membership nationwide specifically correlates with the largest upward shift of wealth in US history.
Jason Collins coming out helps the cause of gay equality. It isn’t as good as it would have been if Steve Nash came out, but you play the cards you have. If it were possible for 3 Hall of Famers and 2 major Hollywood action stars to come out the same day, it would alter the trajectory of that conversation.
The steroid conversation could change too, if four Hall of Famers come out as steroid users and a dozen come out discussing how critical their amphetamine use was. It would start to disable the view that there is a definable evil that we should use any means necessary to destroy through a War on Steroids.
Churchill said if you’re not a liberal at 20 you have no heart, and if you’re not a conservative at 40 you have no head. I’m 42 and apparently understand less with each passing year.
And now that lack of understanding is on daily display on Twitter: @JimJividen
As a man who loves going to the gym, and has for many years, I can confidently say that a large number of the guys you think have great physiques have likely done steroids. It’s nowhere near uncommon, and the use of test creams and injections is pretty unremarkable in my opinion. Don’t be naive about it. He used steroids to gain mass for a movie role, and he is nowhere near being the first actor to do it. The amount of muscle actors routinely lose and gain is extreme. There is very little chance that most aren’t using clenbuterol… Read more »
“I’m 42 and apparently understand less with each passing year.”
That’s because when we are young we know an awful lot about very little. It’s when we become older that we realize we know very little about an awful lot! Seriously though, if in fact Steroids were used for what they were originally developed for (injury recovery) and allowed to be perfected and further developed it might have been a different story. My son in law is a strength and conditioning coach at an S.E.C. college an he told me he feel science missed an opportunity.