Mickey Rourke Inteview

Charlie Rose's interview with Mickey Rourke is surprisingly successful given Rose's unfortunate habit of getting in the way of his guests, pre-empting their responses and answering his own questions. Rose is all too frequently excited rather than engaged by his guests, particularly actors. When he's excited, Rose is especially giddy, shallow and interruptive.

However, he appears genuinely fascinated by Rourke, where fascination implies stillness, silence and grave attention. Rourke, for his part, is less self-conscious than one might expect and less guarded. Perhaps he does not reveal himself completely, but he certainly invites Rose in and offers him a drink.

The feeling that we are eavesdropping on two fellahs at a bar evaporates when Rose neglects the intimacy that's developing by referring to other published interviews, and to his unfortunate preoccuption: celebrity ("You're back with a vengeance!")

Rourke describes feeling crushed some years ago when patrons at the 7-Eleven recognized him as someone who used to be famous. Rose strangely misreads the emphasis, pressing Rourke as to whether or not the incident really took place at the 7-Eleven.

Naturally, as Rourke confides, this was merely the first or most vivid instance of something that happened over and over again during the years he was not acting (of course not just at the 7-Eleven). The question begged is how Rourke dealt with it. Did he avoid going out in public? Did he disguise himself? Did these encounters enhance the shame that thematized his life until recently? Did these "has-been" moments cause him to wallow in the feeling that he'd never return to acting or did they spur him to try to get back in the game?

Rourke says that working on The Wrestler was hard, but focuses mainly on the issue of not being paid for the role. What else was hard about it? What was the experience like emotionally? Rose tries to get at this by asking whether or not Rourke's acting skills were like disused muscles waiting to be flexed, and then... says no to Rourke's cigarette.

It's unaccountable why Rose denies Rourke the cigarette he wants. They talk about Sean Penn's having smoked in the studio. Rose is, therefore, guilty of bad manners as well as a strategic mistake. By not allowing Rourke to partake of what he feels he needs to address the question, Rose closes off the possibility of a deeper camaraderie and a more searching response. (I've been in that studio, so I happen to know there is an ashtray sitting on one of the unidentifiable pieces of painted black, particle-board furniture that line its edges. The ashtray was full when I saw it; perhaps they are saving Penn's butts for some reason.)

It would also have been really interesting to understand how Rourke got by financially during the last decade...after he sold his Harleys and, presumably, the Mini-Cooper. The few films he mentions having appeared in don't seem to account for it, unless he, like his character, lived in a trailor.

And, when Rourke mentions that some part of him is still liable and even eager to destroy the success he has now, I wish Rose had followed up. What form would the catastrophe take? And how does Rourke experience the temptation to provoke it (does he hear a voice, picture himself doing it)?

Other loose ends that might have been gathered include Rourke's comment about not being ready to pursue a relationship. Has he been single since the failed marriage? What was the working relationship with Marissa Tomei? Rourke never mentions her.

The most obvious omission (and there may have been a really good reason not to ask this) concerns Rourke's altered visage. Rose could have introduced this when Rourke confided that making his body into a suit of armor was a way to stave off shame and banish fear. Were the plastic surgeries an extension of this? Rourke's surgery is regarded as a failure because it has changed his appearance radically. But based on what he says, he may not have been striving to look younger; he may have simply wanted to look like someone else.

This could have led to what might be an even more delicate question: Does Rourke imagine and can he accept the idea that, as in Animal Factory and now the Wrestler, the roles he's offered in the future may be limited to those which demand a peculiar (i.e. damaged, unnatural) appearance?



Weird coda: Surprised to find this on the CR website. I guess Rourke did get to smoke...furtively, in the john.