“If we didn’t do them justice, they would have kicked the living s___ out of us,” said Mark Wahlberg to a big round of laughter at a Q&A following a Wednesday night screening of “The Fighter” on the Paramount Studios lot.
A night after the surprise AFI Fest unveiling of the film about the real-life Massachusetts boxers and brothers Micky Ward and Dickie Eklund, Wahlberg brought fellow cast members Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Jack McGee to Paramount for a SAG screening, where he joked about how the pugilist brothers served as a constant presence on the set, and as a constant reminder that the actors, and director David O. Russell, had better get it right.
“I really was thinking, Oh crap, is Dickie gonna lay one on me afterwards?” said Bale, whose haunted, fearsome portrayal of the crack-addicted older brother of Wahlberg’s character has made him a formidable Best Supporting Actor contender.
The brothers, they said, do like the film, which details the hellish addiction that wrecked Dickie’s boxing career, and the tortured relationship between Micky and his brother and domineering mother Alice (played by Melissa Leo) as he tried to fight his way up the welterweight ranks.
While the film is dark, often gripping character study, and a brutal reminder that the ties that bind can also hold us back, “The Fighter” also has moments where the depiction of Alice and her brood of brassy, big-haired daughters veers into the comic; the family’s gallery of grotesques can be a distraction from the brothers’ relationship, or from the growing bond between Micky and his girlfriend Charlene (Adams).
But, insisted Wahlberg, those characters were in fact toned down for the movie – as was Bale’s jittery, mumbling, fast-talking Dickie Ward. “If Dickie were here, you’d see that I really pulled back for the movie,” said Bale. “I know that sounds unbelievable.”
The other actors said they never once heard Bale speak in his real voice during the five weeks of filming; Wahlberg was similarly passionate, sculpting his body during the film’s five years of development until he was convincing as a fighter.
“I never wanted to look like an actor who was pretty good in the ring,” he said. “I wanted to look like a fighter who would win the welterweight title.”
During the Q&A, Wahlberg admitted to flirting with the idea of going with a boxoffice star in the Dickie role to get the movie off the ground: “At one point I was thinking, well, maybe Daniel Radcliffe could play Dickie.”
Bale took a number of questions about immersing himself in such a dark role, insisting, “I actually felt that her was kind of a light character who goes to dark places – he has this kind of buoyancy to him.”
Adams talked about how director Russell gave her a copy of “Raging Bull” before the shoot – but, to her delight, he asked her to focus on Robert De Niro’s portrayal of Jake La Motta, not Cathy Moriarty’s work as La Motta’s wife.
