March 10, 2015 Loading Docs

Big Man Body Slam Part of City Doco

header_logo-1Dunedin film-makers are raising funds to make a short documentary about a man wrestling to hold on to the best of himself.

Director J. Ollie Lucks said he would act in the three minute short documentary Wilbur Force with his friend Wilbur McDougall. 

The two men met in a Theatre Studies class at the University of Otago in Dunedin more than a decade ago.

Mr McDougall was in the back of the lecture theatre yelling inappropriate remarks, disrupting the class and annoying Mr Lucks, who was in the front row.

Later, the men became friends before Mr McDougall moved to Wellington in 2009 and became a professional wrestler.

He had found his calling, strutting around the ring, insulting the audience.

”They didn’t have a big man on the roster, so I became Wilbur Force – a big, angry monster who used to flatten opponents.”

To be close to his sick father, three years later he returned to Dunedin – a city without a wrestling federation.

Without wrestling, he had lost a creative outlet.

”It was better than any theatre. A play is fun but with wrestling you get to tear a child’s sign in half and scream in their face.”

In the documentary, Mr Lucks plays a wannabe wrestler and Mr McDougall has the mission to teach him his signature finishing move – the big man body slam.

Mr Lucks said the men had been practising wrestling moves and he was training to lift Mr McDougall and slam him.

”I’ve got to months to train. I’ll drink my protein shakes,” he said, laughing.

Mr Lucks said the documentary was a chance to show off Mr McDougall’s talents and remind audiences of the importance to hold on to the best version of themselves.

Producer Veronica Stevenson said the Wilbur Force documentary would be shot in Dunedin and Central Otago and filming would start in May.

The documentary had been selected for Loading Docs 2015, a New Zealand Film Commission and NZ On Air’s Digital Media Fund initiative designed to promote New Zealand filmmaking talent.

This year, 10 documentaries would be made, including Wilbur Force, with the theme ”connect”.

Loading Docs funding would pay for most of the production costs but the crew were attempting to raise the $2000 shortfall by accepting donations at www.boosted.org.nz/projects/wilbur-force.

The crew had 21 days left to raise the funds.

via Otago Daily Times

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