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New Truly Independent ECW Documentary


Dylan Waco

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I'm cross posting this from the WC thread in the other forum because frankly it deserves its own thread.

 

Episode 25 of The Wrestling Culture Podcast is up and it is probably the most important podcast we have ever done.

 

My friend John Philapavage and his life long friend Kevin Kiernan have been working on a documentary on ECW for 12 years (yes this means interviews that go back to the very tale end of the companies existence and pre-date Forever Hardcore and Rise and Fall by years). After multiple ups and downs along the way the project is nearing completion but they need our help.

 

I know what you are thinking - ANOTHER ECW documentary? But everything I know about this tells me this will be radically different. This is not a storyline/angle driven doc. It is not a documentary with an agenda. It is a documentary that includes members of the wrestling media, fans, lesser known promoters and behind the scenes figures. It takes a look at the impact the promotion had not just on wrestling but on the wrestlers themselves. Most importantly it is something put together by an ECW fan who is candid about how this project started, the twists and turns it has taken and the fact that it will not be a hero worshipping or "those were the days" piece.

 

We cover all of this and a ton more, including our shared near death experience at Ag Hall in Allentown in 97, behind the scenes details of the chaos at Extreme Reunion, Steve Corino as (one of) the nicest guy in wrestling, John's "stalking" Tod Gordon and how that got the project started, and tons more.

 

http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkC...2658&cmd=tc

 

If you are interested in donating to get this important project over the hump, here is the link to the kickstarter page. Every little bit helps. At minimum check out the great video they have posted there. If that doesn't convince you I don't know what will.

 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bwcfil...nship-wrestling

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Dylan covered everything. I get cranky and tut whenever someone even mentions ECW after being DVD'd, book'd and reunion'd out. But Dylan's podcast and the project's communications via social media have changed all that for me. John and Kevin do have something really unique in the footage they have amassed and their own perspective on the impact of the promotion.

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I'm glad Heyman isn't in this. Sometimes it's better for a documentary to not have a person who's a major focus of the piece not in it, and show as much about the person through the other subjects being interviewed. For example, as good as it would sound on paper I don't think it would have made for good documentary cinema if Michael Moore interviewed G.W. for Fahrenheit 9/11. Not nearly the same, but you hopefully get the idea.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Also I would add that for ten bucks you get access to the donor exclusive clips. Of course I'm all in for you donating more than that, but I would be interested to hear peoples thoughts on the stuff that is up for donor's so far, including a really interesting segment on the violence in ECW and some lengthy comments from Meltzer, Gertner, Mikey and others.

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I do think this is going to be a good high quality documentary but I do have a feeling that for the hardcore wrestling fans the best shit will be on the cutting room floor unless they are doing something like Beyond the Mat and have 4 or 5 different versions. For example the latest video with Meltzer talking about New York and Philly fans is really good but for a 90 minutes movie you will be lucky to see 5 or 10 seconds of that 3 minute interview

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DYLAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bwcfil...nship-wrestling

 

Holy shit.

 

I guess the show on F4W helped?

They got one 4k donor, but they were having a good day even before that. Hell even before the f4w show they had cleared over 1500 for the day.

 

No doubt the f4w show will help going forward.

 

Still need to get over the last little hump, but things are looking really good now.

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I do think this is going to be a good high quality documentary but I do have a feeling that for the hardcore wrestling fans the best shit will be on the cutting room floor unless they are doing something like Beyond the Mat and have 4 or 5 different versions. For example the latest video with Meltzer talking about New York and Philly fans is really good but for a 90 minutes movie you will be lucky to see 5 or 10 seconds of that 3 minute interview

No documentary is going to contain three minutes of raw footage, not even as an out take. Having said that, I don't see why the running time has to be 90 minutes. If there's enough footage and enough story then 120 minutes is perfectly acceptable. It depends on the editor, story consultant or supervising executive (which these guys probably don't have), as well as whether it's for theatrical release or television. Whatever the case, I doubt Meltzer talking about New York and Philly fans is a central part of the story. If you were going through the transcript you'd run a pen through everything except the one or two lines that are relevant to the narrative. The full interview wouldn't make a director's cut as a director's cut usually contains scenes that were edited after rough cut screenings, not raw footage.

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It seems to me that they want to make something of interest to both the hardcore fans and documentary fans or people unaware that it ever existed. It is entirely possible they can cover all the bases they need to in a two-hour timeframe (90 minutes seems too short to me).

 

And it looks like it made it's goal already. Good on them, I knew this would get funded.

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This is no diss to anybody involved but you might want to consider doing another podcast about this because the first podcast completely failed to get across how this would be different than the other ECW docs and considering all the unnecessary and vague disses towards Forever Hardcore (a movie which many, including myself, find to be an entertaining experience if not "educational" in the strictest sense of the word) I would say that is what is needed at this point. Tell me why I should shell out money for this documentary instead of saying "heh, I can't tell you about that" right when you're on the edge of distinguishing your product. Accept that this is a extremely niche product that will be unable to use to the original event footage and be a little less coy about the content.

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He's done a dozen or more podcasts.

 

I don't even know what the line about not being able to use the original event footage means - this will have actual footage from ECW throughout.

 

I think it's pretty clear from the clips that are up that it will take a different tone than the other two docs. The first show may have been somewhat vague at time but I think there were very specific things covered about what would be different about this doc.

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It's been a bit since I listened but while the guy had some very interesting stories I didn't feel that, apart from the crazy interview backlog, the uniqueness of the undertaking was communicated at all.

 

I don't even know what the line about not being able to use the original event footage means - this will have actual footage from ECW throughout.

Really? That's very interesting. The usage of the ECW tape library seems to be locked down by the WWE and I would assume unless they're counting on WWE being incredibly good sports fan cams would be as well, so how does that work? Forever Hardcore skirted the issue with XPW and indie footage.
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