DAVE: Hardcore History (C-Verse '97)

[arwink]

 

“Phil’s reference point for DAVE was LL Cool J's

Momma Said Knock You Out

,” Scott Hickey says. “Here’s this guy whose from an earlier generation of hip-hop artists, going out there and reinventing himself in the age of gangsta rap, and the whole aesthetic of the film clip speaks to that. They’re always shooting him at an angle, from above or from below. It’s all black and white, with fast cuts and simple set design, everything focusing in on the figure in the heart of the shot. The whole clip is a challenge, right down to the boxing motifs, and Phil argued that’s what Danger Zone TV needed to be.

 

“And there were guys who definitely benefited from that. Turn own the sound on any Henry Lee vignette and look at the choices being made—the way he’s lit from below, the positioning of the camera so it’s just above him and looking down. The tight focus that’s all about putting him in the heart of the shot, just like Cool J in that clip.

 

“We had zero budget for production—certainly nothing that would compete with the Eisens or Hollyweird or even what RPW was putting out—but we took the meagre tools we had and crafted an aesthetic.

 

“And you had a Henry Lee—a guy who wasn’t the most polished wrestler in the ring—but he could go out there and talk until he had people in the palm of his hand. In most companies, he’s a good asset…but nce you layered the visuals over the top, he just became the Icon of Insanity in way he’d never managed during his early days with XWF.

 

“People credit Phil with being a great booker, and he is, but his vision extended beyond that. He was a

producer

, and he imprinted his vision at every level of the show.”

 

 

 

Raul Darkness sits on a balcony in Mexico City, sipping a cup of coffee. He tilts his head as he considers a question, then breaks into the smile.

 

“Oh, yeah, I know that clip,” he says. “Why do you think me and Jay spent so much time wearing hoods and getting shot in black-and-white? Or why we were never allowed to cut promos in the ring.

 

“Every vignette we ever did was basically trying to recreate the close-ups from an old rap clip.”.

 

 

 

Emma Chase smiles at the camera. “I would hire Phil Vibert as a TV producer in a heartbeat,” she said. “I don’t think he’d take the job with us, but when you consider what he achieved with a minimal budget and a gang of Tri-State misfits, surely you have to wonder how he’d innovate the industry with a million-dollar bankroll and access to the best wrestler’s in the world today?

 

“There are some who worry Phil’s too focused on hardcore for a job like that—” Chase pauses and gives a knowing look to someone sitting off-screen, on the far side of her Eisen-tower’s office “—but he took the same principles north when he had a run with the DeColts, and it wasn’t like their shows devolved into a series of hardcore brawls.

 

“People make the mistake of thinking that what DAVE did was what Phil likes to do, instead of recognizing that it was a response to a very specific time and place.

 

“And they don’t always realise what makes Phil tick—he loves pro wrestling, and he loves innovation, and he loves making good TV…”

 

 

 

“She said that?” Phil tips his head back and laughs. “Well, sure, she’s right. I’m not sure I’d ever want to go and work for the brothers Eisen, but I could definitely do something special with some of the talent they’ve been ignoring for the last few years. Guys like Laramee and Scott, who should have been much bigger than they are. Some of their tag-teams, who have been criminally underserved.

 

“But my heart wouldn’t be in it. It would just be a job—a great job, but a job—and booking DAVE and the DeColts was always about more than that.

 

“Management…well, it was always a means to an end for me. What I wanted to be doing was creating wrestling TV, playing with the psychology of these larger than life characters from the ring, finding ways to transform them into bigger stars than they ever could be on their own. I wanted to take guys like Henry Lee, or Johnny Martin, or Vin Tanner—guys who’d been told they didn’t have what it takes to play at the main event level—and I wanted to pull those main events out of them because I knew they could do it.

 

“The one time Emma and I talked about working for Eisen, there was a lot of conversation about getting mme in there as a manager for Jack Geidroyc during his first big push.

 

“That didn’t hold much appeal to me. For one thing, Giedroyc didn’t need someone to talk for him and he sure as heck didn’t need me to generate heat on his behalf.

 

“But also…I started managing because I could talk and I knew nobody would let me write TV without being involved in the business, and while we ran with the stable for a while…well, I would have been quite happy staying off-camera and focusing on the product instead of going out and performing night-after-night.

 

“And the Eisens don’t let resources go fallow like that. If they’d agreed to a producer gig, it would only be a matter of time before someone tries to convince me the product needed a manager with my voice to get someone else over.”

[arwink]

 

Freddie Datsun sits in the office of the custom bodyshop he owns while his crew restores a classic cherry-read mustang in the floor behind him. “The thing about DAVE,” he says, quietly, “is that it was hell on your body. Everybody went out there and worked these intense matches, because the fans would s—t on you if you did otherwise. If you were in the ring, you were on…and you rarely got the time to think about what comes next. The moment you slapped on a rest hold to buy yourself time to plan the next step, the fans would be on you with a ‘boring’ chant before you took a breath.

 

“That hurt the in the long run—a lot of potentially world-class matches never came together because the boys didn’t have time to plan—but we also paid a toll in the ring. A lot of us were tired and hurt—business as usual in the wrestling business—but the DAVE fans really valued guys who could go out there and take a beating.

 

“And there were lots of guys who could do that. Henry Lee was always someone who got a lot of sympathy when people beat on him….the problem was, Lee actually had to

take

a beating to make it look legit, and we’d just gone from running one date a month to three, and it was looking like we’d be doing more dates really, really soon.

 

“It always used to bug him that I’d get twice the pop when we tagged together, because people would beat the hell out of him and go light on me, all because I had the good sense to sell their offence.”

 

 

 

 

The man once known as Nuzzle Bunny sits in his back yard, throwing a stick for a handful of chihuahuas who bustle around his feet.

 

“I was still relatively new to the business when I started, hadn’t ever really figured out the toll the job took on ya. Then Kurt Laramee dropped me across that chair and I felt my shoulder pop out of the joint on the impact. Hurt bad enough that I just lay there, trying to work my fingers, ignoring the thread of panic that told me I’d just killed my career then and there.

 

“I hadn’t, but I’d done some damage—subacromial bursitis, which basically means I’d inflamed the little fluid sacks that kept the shoulder joint working properly. Scary and painful, but not actually life threatening. What got me was the feeling of weakness – of not actually being able to reach for a drink or take a shower without pain—and the fact I wasn’t working a steady job and didn’t have any medical insurance despite having a job where people punched me in the face three nights a month.

 

“I loved wrestling, but I’d look at some of the older guys—the Eric Tylers, the Big Troubles—and I knew I didn’t want to be moving like they did once they got backstage. I knew I was going to get out sooner rather than later, and that night was probably the start of the decision to walk away before I turned thirty-five.”

 

 

 

Kurt Laramee sits backstage at an RIPW show, wearing a vintage Pain Alliance t-shirt that’s been re-released as part of the angle where the team go for one last run at the SWF tag-team titles.

 

“Yeah, guys got hurt.” He lowers his sunglasses and fixes the camera with a fierce stare. “Like Professor Nero is fond of telling the kids who come through here, this ain’t ballet. It’s a physical sport and it takes a toll on your body, and there’s plenty of us who want to work snug and really lay it in.

 

“But even when there were’t guys getting hurt, Phil Vibert liked to

play

it like folks was getting injured. Half the injuries were a work, man, to sell the product and help it stand out. No point in being hardcore if a man gets up after the match and dusts himself off like it’s no big deal. In Phil’s world, if you get yourself cracked in the skull with a chair, it damn well hurts and you get a concussion.

 

“Injuries were a way to legitimize the product, an’ if they didn’t happen naturally, we’d just go ahead and fake one...”