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ANDRE THE GIANT HBO DOCUMENTARY


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11 minutes ago, MORELOCK said:

Elwes addressed this directly, saying that people treated it this way when it was clear that Andre was drinking because he was in pain.

I was talking about the overall treatment, but you're right, Elwes (and maybe others?) talked about the pain. Would the pain have been so bad if he hadn't been wrestling 300 days a year? I just think that sloughing everything off on his acromegaly is a way of absolving people who should have been helping him but instead chose to enable him even after he was way past doing much of anything in a wrestling ring. Ultimately, the decisions were his but I didn't get the feeling that anyone near him was giving him good advice.

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Halfway through. Really fun footage. Shoemaker, as noted, gives a real...non-nuanced explanation of wrestling history, to be polite but I can see them wanting the broad strokes for the audience as opposed to Meltzer's pedantic-ism (not a criticism of Dave but he needs to get lost in the weeds on his answers at times).

The downside of this doc is that anyone who follows Dave on Twitter is now forever doomed to read questions about how tall guys are and people getting really fucking mad about it. 

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1 hour ago, LP Steve said:

Actually, my reaction was meh. Fun to see the old footage. Hadn't heard of the Shoemaker guy, but he was okay here.  Not surprised to see Kevin Dunn listed as an executive producer, because this was definitely a WWF-centric version of events, with what seemed like a third of the film devoted to Wrestlemania III.  Vince being credited as the guy who discovered you could put wrestling on cable was funny, given that GCW had been on TBS for years before Vince went national. His innovation was figuring out how to cash in on the national exposure. But history belongs to the winners, so there you go.

The WWF MSG shows also aired on HBO in the early/mid 70s, so it isn't out of the realm of possibility to think Vince might take some of that credit (deservedly or otherwise).

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I thought it was outstanding. I love that they made it clear that there was a mythology surrounding Andre, and that informs all the stories being told. The point of the film was to explore the mythology and find the man. 

And that Dunn credit must be a bone HBO and Simmons tossed them. There’s no way he had a hand it the making of this.

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51 minutes ago, Johnny Sorrow said:

And that Dunn credit must be a bone HBO and Simmons tossed them. There’s no way he had a hand it the making of this.

How can you tell? Did they not cut to a new shot every half second? Was the camera not shaking and zooming in and out quickly during the interviews?

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Ric's first appearance in the doc being him talking about Andre's dick seems about right. 

Hogan characteristically making the story of the WM III finish very dramatic while they would cut back to Vince laughing it off as a rib on Hogan was fun. 

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On 4/11/2018 at 6:38 AM, hammerva said:

The claim that Vince came up with the name Hulk Hogan because it appeal to Irish fans is so weird.  Is Hogan really a popular Irish name?  I guess we should be happy he was called Hulk O Grady or Hulk O Sullivan or some shit like that.

Wasn't that because it was a Vince Sr. thing in the first place? 

Also, very pissed that we don't have HBO over here anymore

EDIT: Pete beat me to that first one which is what I get for not reading the whole thread first

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Fun watch! It's nothing most of us don't know but it's fun to see it condensed and some of the older Andre footage was cool. I feel like I got more of an insight into Vince than Andre. That part where he discusses how he deals with unpleasant memories sheds a new light on his booking of late.

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On 4/11/2018 at 11:48 AM, Web Conn said:

IDK i think if Vince was "working" the moment i think it'd be bigger and more grandiose. Vince is more later years Pacino than he is early years Pacino when it comes to his acting method. 

I saw it differently.  I think he knew what his last conversation was with Andre and it didn't go well.  I only believe that because Andre's last US appearance was on a WCW Clash.  And Andre knew what showing up on a Turner show would mean to Vince.  That's probably what he was thinking about when he got glassy-eyed.  

I get why they didn't talk about it, but it is pretty noteworthy that while Andre was involved in the most-watched US pro wrestling match in history (Hogan/Andre II  2/5/88), that match was completely ignored.  

You'll brag about a fake 93K number but ignore a potential 33 MILLION number?  

 

 

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Thanks to the miracle of free HBO this weekend I got to see the doc, and loved it. Flair comes off extra drunk and sleazy. Vince comes off just damaged. You could almost see that wall begin to crack at the end but he pulled it back. There's some serious shit going on in that dude's head. It's a shame we didn't get Bobby on this; for that matter it's a shame there will probably never be a documentary on Bobby Heenan. 

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On 4/21/2018 at 7:29 AM, RolandTHTG said:

Its weird to think that Big Show is now the same age as Andre when he died.

.....and also how much Andre's brother looks like a blonde haired, French Jake Roberts.

Andre's brother kind of reminded me of Bruce Vilanch.

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  • 1 month later...

Sorry for the bump but this was just made available on Sky here in Ireland so I gave it a watch. 

Found it to be interesting, didn’t really know much about Andre going in to this and really enjoyed parts that focused on his childhood and his presence as a leader backstage. Other than that I thought it was just ok, I really didn’t like Hulk hamming everything up and the parts where people just laughed at his drinking was sad. 

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