Mickey Rourke Continues Comeback Trail with Wrestler Top Honors

Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler took the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, scoring the Golden Lion for himself and for star Mickey Rourke. (Source: The Circuit @ Variety)

I am very pleased to hear this news, because I always like watching actors reinvent themselves or find new aspects to their craft and explore the shit out of them, and for Rourke to have been a part of a project that played to his strengths while delving into Aronofsky’s usual existential matter is pretty damn gratifying. The comeback story is also a compelling one as well, and I’m a huge sucker for underdogs. It’s why Sunset Boulevard — both the movie and the musical — is such a compelling story, it’s why you watch Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, it’s how movies will always be a part of the human entertainment experience.

Though it’ll be playing at the New York Film Festival this October, I can’t wait till this gets picked up by a distributor for wider distribution.

UPDATE (9/8 3:49 PM): Ask and ye shall receive, Trish. Variety’s Anne Thompson broke the news (mere hours after you first posted this) that Fox Searchlight has picked up the film for a cool $4 mil. It’s assumed (although I didn’t see anything concrete) that they’re going for an “Oscar-qualifying late-year platform with a wider release in January.” — Gordon

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