![]() “I’ve never quite had Wiseman’s courage to let situations breathe for as long as they’ll breathe,” Whiteley said. But for all of us, it was the tension between Al and Matt that really made this show super interesting, to have this almost Shakespearean battle between these two completely different personalities over this little gym.” “Yes that’s great, and that’s a part of it. ![]() “When you’re presented with a project like this, you think it’s going to be about funny wrestlers and their crazy costumes and their personalities,” Leibowitz continued. “Credit to Greg, he sniffed that out,” said Adam Leibowitz, a producer who has been working with Whiteley since “Mitt” (2014), Whiteley’s documentary portrait of Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful bids for president in 20. It doesn’t seem like the most obvious angle, but Whiteley has a gift for finding gold in the unobvious, in this case a conflict outside the ring that turns into a battle for the soul of O.V.W. The primary tension in “Wrestlers” simmers between Snow, the professional wrestling purist, and Jones, the entrepreneur focused on the bottom line. He’s like a Broadway director in an old Hollywood musical, agonizing until the final curtain goes down, at which point he starts agonizing anew. Snow, who in the series likens himself to Kermit the Frog presiding over “The Muppet Show,” emerges as a sort of tormented showbiz impresario. He tells stories by spending countless hours with his characters, not by asking hot-take questions about drug abuse and romantic problems (both of which are present in “Wrestlers”). This, in turn, reinforces the trust level. He wants his three camera teams constantly rolling film - unless his subjects tell them to stop, in which case they generally do. His ideal is to disappear, or at least create the illusion that he has. He doesn’t push things, preferring instead to burrow in and hang out and get to know his subjects “Wrestlers” was shot over a period of three and a half months. The trust is largely a byproduct of Whiteley’s patience. But meeting Greg I really got the idea and the impression that he was going to treat it with respect and he was going to be honest.” It was a tough decision for me to let this happen and be involved in it. “Professional wrestling as a whole has always been a very closed, very secular business, never open, especially not to the general public and especially not in this manner. “There was a great deal of trust,” Snow said in a video interview from his home office. Perhaps most important, he quickly established that he wasn’t trying to burn anyone or manufacture the gotcha moments that fuel reality TV, which those on both sides of the camera are adamant that “Wrestlers” is not. Whiteley and his crew settled in and familiarized themselves with the rhythms of the operation. ![]() co-owner and sports radio personality, focused on touring and keeping the company afloat financially and HollyHood Haley J, a rebellious (and often irresponsible) young wrestler who is one of O.V.W.’s most popular performers and drives Snow mad with her propensity to smoke weed on the gym premises. (later the W.W.E.) wrestler and current minority owner and day-to-day manager of O.V.W., who sees wrestling as a means of telling great stories, preferably for television Matt Jones, the aggressively opinionated O.V.W. ![]() He identified a few dynamic lead characters, including Al Snow, the fiercely dedicated, disarmingly thoughtful former W.W.F. alumni include John Cena and Paul Wight (who wrestled as Big Show), but the company has maintained an authentic little-guy personality. And for “Wrestlers,” Whiteley and his 20-person crew descended upon Ohio Valley Wrestling, a scrappy, underfunded professional wrestling company, with a passionate, blue-collar fan base, based in Louisville, Ky. In “Cheer,” the subject is a Texas community college cheerleading squad that happens to be a national dynasty. ![]() For “Last Chance U,” which premiered in 2016, Whiteley focuses on individual community college football and basketball teams. In other words, this isn’t “Hard Knocks,” the HBO series that purports to offer revealing behind-the-scenes stories from N.F.L. “It’s really hard to get that from the New England Patriots,” he said. Whiteley finds subjects that offer maximum access and editorial control. ![]()
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