Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Apr 29, 2015 23:58:47 GMT -6
Esquire has a feature about Billy Corgan joining TNA as Senior Producer, Creative and Talent Development. Well worth checking out. He makes some prttty big promises, like turning TNA into a completely modernized TV show when it comes to the social consciousness of storylines, including representation of homosexual characters.
www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a34677/billy-corgan-interview-professional-impact-wrestling-tna/?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1456_174831183
Billy Corgan on His Surprising Quest to Tell Professional Wrestling's 'Great American Story'
The Smashing Pumpkins frontman tells us why he joined forces with TNA's Impact Wrestling
Billy Corgan, founder of the alt-rock band Smashing Pumpkins, thinks professional wrestling could be more like All in the Family. Norman Lear's 1971-79 sitcom didn't reinvent the wheel, but gave it treads. Tucked inside jokes were serious issues, refracted by Archie Bunker, the laughable bigot. Lear checked America's privilege, his cartoonish crank slowly embracing the disenfranchised. Corgan calls it "the Great American Story." He hopes to do the same for the theatrical sport founded on piledrivers, chokeslams, and folding-chairs-to-the-skull.
On Monday, the musician joined the Total Nonstop Action Wrestling promotion as Senior Producer. In the role, he'll create characters, thread plots, and reframe TNA's flagship program, Impact Wrestling, with a Learian eye. "Any culture, and I don't care how hairsplitting you want to get, but the mainstreaming [process] is going to deal with the bias," Corgan says over the phone, calling Esquire from a studio session. "Where it splits is where you find story. Not in race or gender, but where people are dealt with. In the workplace. If we can have a woman President. Or rock stars who aren't supposed to be in wrestling."
While music fans might raise an eyebrow, Corgan's love for pro-wrestling is nothing new. He started following the sport at age five thanks to his great-grandmother, who, like many Chicagoans in the 1970s, paired early pro-matches with roller derby and fight-heavy hockey games. Wrestling was always around when Corgan's music took off. In 2011, the musician decided to crystalize his intrest into a side-career, forming the independent wrestling promotion Resistance Pro.
"I was sucked in over the years by various relationships and circumstances to [the point] where, when someone finally showed up one day and said, 'Do you want to start a professional wrestling association with me?' I thought that was a good idea," Corgan says.
He says that it took him years to understand the sport's "language." What he didn't realize, and what few do looking in from the outside, is that professional wrestling involves professional dynamics. The way LeBron James has to think of his knees versus and winning Cleveland a championship, a wrestler balances the real damage of a well-executed bell clap and putting on a good show for the promotion's audience. Corgan takes a serious stance in this balancing act. The company comes first—and not just because he's working for one. Great stories, even in the ring, require wrestlers trusting the team running the show. But he regards his players as artists. That's key too. "They're underestimated in that way. They're a cult of personality unto themselves, the ones that are really, really good at what they do. They're playing a character that they hone over time and then, often times, an outside force is asking them to change that character or tweak that character vis a vis the goals of the company."
For Corgan, wrestling matches are like Greecian conflicts. They're battles of good versus evil confined to an 18-by-18-foot ring. Loyalty is tested. Friends betray friends. "Stuff out of the Bible," Corgan says. He recalls one of his favorite feuds of all time: Terry Funk and Ric Flair at WrestleWar 1989. Flair had just defeated Ricky Steamboat for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship when Funk, a special judge at the match, challenged the winner for the title. This was humanity's natural a-hole behavior hulking out in tights. "Some of the biggest money-drawing feuds in the history of professional wrestling were based on, let's call it 'real things,'" the musician says. "You start with that foundational level, then you put that with a systemic way a wrestling company works, and somewhere in-between you get into real, sustained drama."
A pro-wrestling scholar, Corgan acknowledges the pastime's rigid core. Televised wrestling started when the home entertainment device was first introduced to the hungry public. Since then, it's remained stagnant, relying on machismo and archaic character types. An Archie Bunker that doesn't realize it's an Archie Bunker. As Corgan puts it, even porn is more mainstream than wrestling. "If you had gone back 50 years and said to Dick the Bruiser, 'The girl who makes the sex tape is going to get more juice than you,' he'd have a hard time believing that." The business is successful—TNA and the thriving WWE brand are proof—but Corgan wants to lure back a broader audience he believes are interested, but look down their noses at the combative sport. Wrestling can offer progressive stories and fighting.
If you wander towards a wrestling ring and see a homosexual wrestling character, Corgan says, chances are you're encountering a 30-year-old stereotype. He hopes to change that at TNA. The format can be of The Now. He can picture grafting the millennial narrative—young bucks who've got their "heads stuck up their ass or in a phone"—to a excrement-talking smackdown. Anything goes, and should go, as long as it's fun. Because, unfortunately, the days of All in the Family are over and need a replacement. Corgan laughs off current "golden age of television" proclamations. Shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men are just long movies. You don't watch them around the dinner table. And network programming? "I want to kill myself," he says.
Laugh at his wrestling obsession all you want. This is Corgan's parallel passion. He lives by TNA President Dixie Carter's mantra: there's no shame in entertaining people. "This is a longstanding concept of how to entertain people. Instead of trying to saw off the edges, you proudly wave what you're great at. Wrestling, when it's done well, is great at telling stories and showing athleticism in a live event setting that's must-see." It helps that the wrestling talent pool is crazier than ever. On the indie circuit, Corgan sees wrestlers outdo the already-impressive 450° splash attacks with 480° twist moves that look like high diver routines. Describing the turnbuckle attacks makes the disaffected Gen Xer downright giddy.
"People are doing things in the ring that people couldn't dream of 30 years ago. 30 years from now, we'll see things we couldn't dream of today. You want to go to the circus and see something you've never seen. You go to a wrestling match and want to see something you've never seen." That's the Great American Story.
www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a34677/billy-corgan-interview-professional-impact-wrestling-tna/?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1456_174831183
Billy Corgan on His Surprising Quest to Tell Professional Wrestling's 'Great American Story'
The Smashing Pumpkins frontman tells us why he joined forces with TNA's Impact Wrestling
Billy Corgan, founder of the alt-rock band Smashing Pumpkins, thinks professional wrestling could be more like All in the Family. Norman Lear's 1971-79 sitcom didn't reinvent the wheel, but gave it treads. Tucked inside jokes were serious issues, refracted by Archie Bunker, the laughable bigot. Lear checked America's privilege, his cartoonish crank slowly embracing the disenfranchised. Corgan calls it "the Great American Story." He hopes to do the same for the theatrical sport founded on piledrivers, chokeslams, and folding-chairs-to-the-skull.
On Monday, the musician joined the Total Nonstop Action Wrestling promotion as Senior Producer. In the role, he'll create characters, thread plots, and reframe TNA's flagship program, Impact Wrestling, with a Learian eye. "Any culture, and I don't care how hairsplitting you want to get, but the mainstreaming [process] is going to deal with the bias," Corgan says over the phone, calling Esquire from a studio session. "Where it splits is where you find story. Not in race or gender, but where people are dealt with. In the workplace. If we can have a woman President. Or rock stars who aren't supposed to be in wrestling."
While music fans might raise an eyebrow, Corgan's love for pro-wrestling is nothing new. He started following the sport at age five thanks to his great-grandmother, who, like many Chicagoans in the 1970s, paired early pro-matches with roller derby and fight-heavy hockey games. Wrestling was always around when Corgan's music took off. In 2011, the musician decided to crystalize his intrest into a side-career, forming the independent wrestling promotion Resistance Pro.
"I was sucked in over the years by various relationships and circumstances to [the point] where, when someone finally showed up one day and said, 'Do you want to start a professional wrestling association with me?' I thought that was a good idea," Corgan says.
He says that it took him years to understand the sport's "language." What he didn't realize, and what few do looking in from the outside, is that professional wrestling involves professional dynamics. The way LeBron James has to think of his knees versus and winning Cleveland a championship, a wrestler balances the real damage of a well-executed bell clap and putting on a good show for the promotion's audience. Corgan takes a serious stance in this balancing act. The company comes first—and not just because he's working for one. Great stories, even in the ring, require wrestlers trusting the team running the show. But he regards his players as artists. That's key too. "They're underestimated in that way. They're a cult of personality unto themselves, the ones that are really, really good at what they do. They're playing a character that they hone over time and then, often times, an outside force is asking them to change that character or tweak that character vis a vis the goals of the company."
For Corgan, wrestling matches are like Greecian conflicts. They're battles of good versus evil confined to an 18-by-18-foot ring. Loyalty is tested. Friends betray friends. "Stuff out of the Bible," Corgan says. He recalls one of his favorite feuds of all time: Terry Funk and Ric Flair at WrestleWar 1989. Flair had just defeated Ricky Steamboat for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship when Funk, a special judge at the match, challenged the winner for the title. This was humanity's natural a-hole behavior hulking out in tights. "Some of the biggest money-drawing feuds in the history of professional wrestling were based on, let's call it 'real things,'" the musician says. "You start with that foundational level, then you put that with a systemic way a wrestling company works, and somewhere in-between you get into real, sustained drama."
A pro-wrestling scholar, Corgan acknowledges the pastime's rigid core. Televised wrestling started when the home entertainment device was first introduced to the hungry public. Since then, it's remained stagnant, relying on machismo and archaic character types. An Archie Bunker that doesn't realize it's an Archie Bunker. As Corgan puts it, even porn is more mainstream than wrestling. "If you had gone back 50 years and said to Dick the Bruiser, 'The girl who makes the sex tape is going to get more juice than you,' he'd have a hard time believing that." The business is successful—TNA and the thriving WWE brand are proof—but Corgan wants to lure back a broader audience he believes are interested, but look down their noses at the combative sport. Wrestling can offer progressive stories and fighting.
If you wander towards a wrestling ring and see a homosexual wrestling character, Corgan says, chances are you're encountering a 30-year-old stereotype. He hopes to change that at TNA. The format can be of The Now. He can picture grafting the millennial narrative—young bucks who've got their "heads stuck up their ass or in a phone"—to a excrement-talking smackdown. Anything goes, and should go, as long as it's fun. Because, unfortunately, the days of All in the Family are over and need a replacement. Corgan laughs off current "golden age of television" proclamations. Shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men are just long movies. You don't watch them around the dinner table. And network programming? "I want to kill myself," he says.
Laugh at his wrestling obsession all you want. This is Corgan's parallel passion. He lives by TNA President Dixie Carter's mantra: there's no shame in entertaining people. "This is a longstanding concept of how to entertain people. Instead of trying to saw off the edges, you proudly wave what you're great at. Wrestling, when it's done well, is great at telling stories and showing athleticism in a live event setting that's must-see." It helps that the wrestling talent pool is crazier than ever. On the indie circuit, Corgan sees wrestlers outdo the already-impressive 450° splash attacks with 480° twist moves that look like high diver routines. Describing the turnbuckle attacks makes the disaffected Gen Xer downright giddy.
"People are doing things in the ring that people couldn't dream of 30 years ago. 30 years from now, we'll see things we couldn't dream of today. You want to go to the circus and see something you've never seen. You go to a wrestling match and want to see something you've never seen." That's the Great American Story.