Saw an amazing documentary the other night: "Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story." The film told the story of Griffith, a former middleweight champion who killed a man in the ring in 1962, and has spent the rest of his life since then haunted, both by the fight, and by his own latent homosexuality. It all leads up to the first meeting, in 2003, between Griffith and the son of Benny "The Kid" Paret, the man who died at Griffith's hand nearly four decades earlier.
Poignant as the film was, I couldn't help but thinking that a very clever satirist could come with a skillfully constructed hybrid of "Ring of Fire," and "Rocky IV." Say Ivan Drago, years later, has lost the heavyweight crown to Rocky, and he's simultaneously haunted by his guilt over having killed Apollo, his latent homosexuality, and the fall of communism worldwide. Really- it could be the role of Dolph Lundgren's life.
Sorry for the tangent- I just have this on my mind 'cause I went and saw a friend's band the other night, and someone signed up to be on his mailing list with the name "Ivan Drago," the hometown "Moscow," and the e-mail address "IWillBreakYou@IfICanChange.com."
Posted by Stephen Silver at October 19, 2005 08:13 PM