Piss+Vinegar

April 9, 2005

As a fan of pro-wrestling and someone generally intrigued by its history, I was pretty disappointed with Lipstick and Dynamite, Piss and Vinegar : The First Ladies of Wrestling, Ruth Leitman’s new documentary about the old dames of the sport. The doc isn’t bad, and it’s stocked with tons of solid archive material and old ladies cussing up a storm, which is always good for a laugh. The best interviews come from Killem Gillem, the oldest living lady wrestler (82 years young!) and The Fabulous Moolah, the former world champ who is still working occassional matches with the WWE.

Unfortunately, there’s not much of a narrative to hold it together. There are four or five key interview subjects, but they only crossover in rare spots, connected mostly by the male promoters that they slept with and were beat by. The movie gets across how tough it was in this world, and how tough the ladies were, but not much else. I expected the main interviews to be buffered by some more historical experts, but that never really happened. The problem with interviewing pro-wrestlers, particularly ones that worked in the wayback, is that many of them still talk to reporters as if wrestling were not scripted. There’s only a few interviews that seem to acknowledge that. When a lot of the backstage politicking can be more interesting than the results in the squared circle, you got the feeling that you weren’t getting the whole story.

It’s a great tribute these tough broads from yesterday, but it lacks depth. The really brilliant documentaries tend to stumble onto some unexpected turn of events that they can turn the movie around, but that never really happens for Lipstick and Dynamite either.

P.S. After the screening there was actually a Q+A with the director and four of the wrestlers. The women were great (if a tad long-winded), but I have never experienced a longer string of dumb questions in my life. Questions about the stiffness of the mats and breast implants and one fan who desperately tried to get them to talk about Andre the Giant… it was excruciating!

Posted in Moving Pictures