HBO’s much-hyped André the Giant documentary, which aired in the States in April, finally premiered in Australia on Sunday night on SBS.
Produced by Janine Marmot and Bill Simmons, it follows a somewhat stale linear biography of French wrestler André Roussimoff: his upbringing, diagnosis of gigantism in his teens, his unprecedented success in the professional wrestling industry and his cementing as a pop culture icon, largely through interviews with the white men who run wrestling and are still alive to tell the tales.
Many of these tales are relayed with a laugh and smile, redolent of the boys’ club mentality and hard partying mindset of the time. Roussimoff’s pain and self-medicating with alcohol is downplayed in favour of solidifying his legendary drinking – “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair marvels at his former opponent’s ability to drink over 100 beers in one sitting.
The only person interviewed to really express sympathy for Roussimoff’s disability and addictions is his co-star in The Princess Bride, Cary Elwes.
Tonight see @HBO's doco on the incredible Andre the Giant. 830pm @SBS pic.twitter.com/gLWnYbOOq7
— Ben Nguyen (@ben_syd) September 2, 2018
While professional wrestling has changed a lot in the last decade or so, with younger wrestlers being more interested in video games and geekdom as opposed to hard partying in the age of social media, wrestling has a very dark past.
Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, who is shown in André the Giant diving off the shoulders of Roussimoff, was deemed unfit to stand trial in the reopened 1983 murder trial of his girlfriend Nancy Argentino shortly before his death in early 2017. Jerry “The King” Lawler, whose interviews are used heavily in André the Giant, has been arrested multiple times for gendered violence and has allegations of statutory rape against him.
Vince McMahon, overlord of the industry and chairman of World Wrestling Entertainment who has also been the subject of sexual assault allegations, is largely responsible for the culture that spilled outside of the ring and helped protect the men involved.
André the Giant doesn’t outright condemn McMahon’s involvement in its chronicling of Roussimoff’s decline – rather it lets his words speak for themselves. “When his career was over, he had no value…” McMahon says, trailing off and quickly adding: “You know, to himself.”
A documentary more critical of WWE’s contributions to Roussimoff’s ill health, and that of many of his contemporaries, is unlikely to be made given that WWE is in possession of much of the archival footage of professional wrestling in the U.S.
The timing of the documentary is uncanny. In July, after three years of exile during which he helped bring down media conglomerate Gawker and proudly identified as a racist, Hulk Hogan was reinstated to WWE.
Granted, Hogan and Roussimoff’s wrestling legacies are inextricable – which explains André the Giant’s outsize focus on Hogan, who is certainly turning on the charm in an effort to rehabilitate his image in the wake of recordings of Hogan spouting the n-word being made public.
But with WWE’s approval of the doco and the company welcoming Hogan back into the fold three months after it aired, it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility that André the Giant is as much a PR move to change the perception of Hogan than it is a celebration and documentation of André’s short but impactful life.
Though many of Roussimoff’s contemporaries mentioned in André the Giant are dead – many casualties of an industry for which the life expectancy is quite low – for the reasons stated above the doco does not dwell on their absence. Rather the producers again let McMahon indict himself and the wrestling business for failing so many of its workers.
“Did Andre’s passing affect you more than other passings you’ve experienced?” the interviewer asks, the 73-year-old McMahon barking at them to repeat the question.
He never actually answers, though, instead letting a tear or two well in his eyes.
This is perhaps the lone, perhaps unintentional condemnation of the man who is largely responsible for the professional wrestling industry as we know it, and all its faults. An industry in which the death toll is so high that the passing of Roussimoff seems to McMahon as just another drop in the bucket.
