By Chris Sabga
"350
Days" refers to the amount of time the average professional
wrestler spent
on the road and away from his
family. Driving many miles,
working through multiple injuries, and combating loneliness, fatigue,
and problems at home, they
wrestled every night of the
week and "twice on Sundays." The
highlight of their day was often those few minutes inside the ring.
But that wasn't the
only thing they had to
look forward to! After the matches,
they had
instant access to drugs,
alcohol, and willing women known as "ring rats."
This
documentary assembles a who's who of
great names to discuss the
professional wrestling lifestyle from every perspective:
Tito Santana • "Mr.
Wonderful" Paul Orndorff • Greg "The Hammer"
Valentine • Bret "The Hitman" Hart • Wendi Richter •
George "The Animal" Steele • Don Fargo • "Superstar"
Billy Graham • Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka • Bruce Allen
(Promoter) • JJ Dillon • Ox Baker • The Masked Superstar (Bill
Eadie) • Lanny Poffo • Abdullah the Butcher • "The Million
Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase • Gangrel • Angelo "King Kong"
Mosca • Farmer Pete • The Wolfman (Willie Farkas) • Howard
Jerome • "Butcher" Paul Vachon • Angelo Savoldi •
Stan Hansen • Gino Caruso • Ricky Johnson • Doink the Clown
(Ray Apollo) • Lex Luger • Paul Lazenby • Slick (Ken Johnson) •
Davey O'Hannon • "Pretty Boy" Larry Sharpe • Ric Drasin
• "Cowboy" Johnny Mantell • "Bushwhacker"
Luke Williams • Gene LeBell • Don Leo Jonathan • Marty Jannetty
• Nikolai Volkoff
Filmed
over five years, a staggering
number of wrestlers were
interviewed for "350 Days." Several of them are no longer
with us.
The
movie
often switches from the silly to the surreal to the sublime,
sometimes in the same scene.
One
of the highlights: footage featuring the "crazed" Ox Baker
preparing a meal in his own kitchen. Was it
entirely necessary to include five
full minutes of this?
Possibly not. But I can't lie: I wouldn't have been in the least bit
disappointed if the rest of the film
consisted of cooking lessons from Ox Baker.
Here's
a picture of Ox Baker, in case you need a visual aid:
This
alone would have make Ox Baker a star again – it's a shame he
didn't live to see it.
On
the other end of the emotional spectrum, there's a touching segment
with "Superstar" Billy Graham (not the preacher) discussing
his health issues. Known for his outrageous catchphrases, such as
"the man of the hour, the man with the power, too sweet to be
sour," Graham puts aside the bluster of his bombastic character
to discuss his battles
with Hepatitis C and the young lady who died, which allowed him to
live by receiving her liver.
However,
Abdullah the Butcher has been accused of infecting other wrestlers
with
Hepatitis C (not Graham) by using an old razor blade to draw blood in
matches – a common, if barbaric, practice in wrestling – but the
movie completely ignores his irresponsible, reckless, negligent, and
potentially murderous actions. A similar blind eye is also turned to
"Superfly" Jimmy Snuka, who
allegedly beat his girlfriend
to death in 1983. (He
was arrested and indicted in 2015, 32 years later. He died in
2017.)
At
first, I was distracted by these omissions. The
endearing scene of a loving,
nurturing "Superfly" feeding and petting adorable
farm animals takes
on an almost dreamlike quality. People are complicated! But I can
also partly understand why the filmmakers decided
to shy away from spotlighting such shocking stories. The
darker side of these
wrestlers' personal live might have overshadowed the rest of the film
and obscured the overall
purpose of the documentary.
Despite
that, there is still plenty of bad behavior to go around.
Bret
"The Hitman" Hart spent his entire career portraying a
virtuous "Canadian hero." The revelations in "350
Days" won't be surprising to anyone who read his voluminous
almost-600-page tome, Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon
World of Wrestling. But for the
average fan, this film will definitely expose a different side of
"The Hitman." Anyone who has listened to any
recent Bret Hart interviews
will already know that he's
honest to a fault (potentially the result of a stroke he suffered in
2002). Here, his "Canadian
hero" persona is laid bare. In one startling speech, he
practically endorses cocaine by fondly reminiscing about
the drug while going out of his way to point out
that it did not impair him.
He claimed to
retain everything he ever
learned from veteran
wrestlers during those powdery bonding sessions. Later,
he concedes that drug testing has been good for the industry. "The
Hitman" also makes no apologies – and has no regrets – for
indulging in extramarital affairs during his career. He said he made
many friendships that way. Wrestling is indeed a hard life – as
this documentary points out – but coming from the mouth of Bret
Hart, you would think he was a combat veteran who served in two World
Wars.
Then again, "The Hitman" has always taken himself very
seriously – as demonstrated in another excellent wrestling
documentary, 1998's "Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows."
What
makes the movie so fascinating is the often contradictory opinions
expressed by different wrestlers on a wide variety of topics. For
example, one common belief expressed in the film is that the
wrestling business ruins marriages. Lanny Poffo, however, is quick to
dispel that notion.
"350
Days" is a revealing
look at the human beings behind the wrestling personas. "Mr.
Wonderful" Paul Orndorff expresses regrets about placing
wrestling and money ahead of his family and laments that he can
barely move his arm after years of abusing his body in the wrestling
ring. "Superfly"
Jimmy Snuka somehow come
across as calm, clear, and coherent – a far cry from one of his
wild "Superfly" wrestling promos that
were nearly impossible to decipher – while "Rocker" Marty
Jannetty is sadly almost unintelligible.
The
sheer breadth of wrestlers interviewed in "350 Days" is
ultimately what gives this documentary
its considerable
depth.
