Foxcatcher Movie

Sorry for old bump. Just watched. Good movie.

Says a lot about how we treat our Olympic Athletes when they have to turn to rich psychos to live and train.

Well this was when they were supposed to be amateur

Is it true that DuPont lost his testicles in a horse riding accident early in life? I read this and it wasn't touched on in the movie at all. He supposedly wore prosthetic testicles and resented horse riding more-so because of this.

Yup
 
I saw the movie when it came out but just saw the Foxcatcher documentary on Netflixs today thought is was great a lot more insight. Didn't realize Mark and Dave were never at Foxcatcher at the same time and Dupont at one point fired all the black athletes as he felt black represented death as well as looking at his paranoia. Also interesting that Valentine Yordanov inherited 80% of the Dupont wealth and consistently vised him when in prison even though Valentine and Dave were apparent best friends and their families were really close. Was it simply Valentine hoping for a payoff when John died, because the documentary talks about Dupont near obsession with Yordanov even when he was arrested by police he was wearing a Bulgarian wrestling jacket.



Trailer for the documentary, worth checking out.
 
Saw the movie last night and I think its awesome.
Dont know the truth behind the story, but I have heard stories about Du Pont been attracted to the a... manly side of wrestling.
Take it as you want.
It was weird he left his estate to the Bulgarian wrestling champ Valentin Yordanov... Heard some rumors about that too, but not willing to spread gossips for a great wrestler like Yordanov.

What did you hear because that was weird to me considering Dave brought Valentine over and they were best friends that he would stay loyal to Dupont.
 
Yeha, the Netflix doc was really well done.
 
What did you hear because that was weird to me considering Dave brought Valentine over and they were best friends that he would stay loyal to Dupont.
One thing the movie and the doc did not show was that Dupont/Foxcatcher continued to pay wrestlers even after he killed Dave. I believe it was Royce Alger and the Brands bros who kinda alienated themselves from other wrestrlers by continuing to rep Foxcatcher after Dave was gone. They claimed it was bc Dave was such an integral part of Foxcatcher but some people were not buying it.
 
One thing the movie and the doc did not show was that Dupont/Foxcatcher continued to pay wrestlers even after he killed Dave. I believe it was Royce Alger and the Brands bros who kinda alienated themselves from other wrestrlers by continuing to rep Foxcatcher after Dave was gone. They claimed it was bc Dave was such an integral part of Foxcatcher but some people were not buying it.
Yeah that bit has been shoveled under the rug. People I know who are usually willing to talk in private about less savory things that have gone on are almost always super tight lipped about all of that.
 
I will have to watch this again, its been a while
 
Yeah that bit has been shoveled under the rug. People I know who are usually willing to talk in private about less savory things that have gone on are almost always super tight lipped about all of that.
Pretty foul if Dave was their friend. That's my opinion. But then again those guys are so damned driven Im guessing they would have allowed Pablo Escobar to sponsor them.
 
If this has been covered please excuse my laziness, I have not read all eight pages of the thread. The "Team Foxcatcher" documentary was very good, however the film "Foxcatcher" by Bennett Miller was awful! it was artistically and intellectually irresponsible. Mark Schultz shared some extremely difficult, and personal information about him and his brothers life, and Bennett Miller took liberties and made crazy insinuations that NEVER happened. There are 3 scenes in the movie that suggested that Mark had a homosexual relationship with Dupont, this never happened! Mark asked Miller to take those scenes out of the movie, Miller said he would and then reneged on the deal. He stabbed Mark in the back. Mark hated, and was repulsed by Dupont from day one. Mark was hired to coach Villanova's wrestling team after Dupont made a huge donation to the school. Dupont started showing up at the practices and would interrupt Mark, and try to coach the team himself (Dupont knew nothing about wrestling). MS never lived on Foxcatcher Farms, he had an apartment 30 minutes away and would commute for training. MS and DS never trained at Foxcatcher at the same time(which the movie showed), when Dave became a coach Mark was coaching at Brigham Young. To add insult to injury in an interview Miller was asked if there was a homosexual relationship between Mark and Dupont, and he said he did not know, but would suspect there was something going on. When Mark got pissed off about this, many in the media were calling Mark and homophobe, this had nothing to do with being a homophobe, Miller was suggesting that Mark slept with the man who killed his brother. it was totally fucked up.
 
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I thought the film clearly suggested Dupont was attracted to Mark, but not that it was in any way reciprocated.
 
I thought the film clearly suggested Dupont was attracted to Mark, but not that it was in any way reciprocated.

Many viewers wrongly interpreted that there was a homosexual relationship between Dupont and Schultz. The movie had homoerotic undertones, I am glad you did not interpret it this way, but do a google search on Foxcatcher and look what comes up. The Washington times even went so far as to say “Du Pont and Mark Schultz were rumoured to be lovers.” I have been wrestling for 33 years, and actually know people who trained at and competed against Foxcatcher farms, and I had never heard that "rumor". Miller had no right to take liberties with Mark Schultz's life, when he specifically told him not to.
 
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The "Team Foxcatcher" documentary was very good, however the film "Foxcatcher" by Bennett Miller was awful! it was artistically and intellectually irresponsible. Mark Schultz shared some extremely difficult, and personal information about him and his brothers life, and Bennett Miller took liberties and made crazy insinuations that NEVER happened. There are 3 scenes in the movie that suggested that Mark had a homosexual relationship with Dupont, this never happened! Mark asked Miller to take those scenes out of the movie, Miller said he would and then reneged on the deal. He stabbed Mark in the back.

That's odd, because Mark Schultz sure pretended to like the movie in this interview.
Q: Are you happy with how it portrays your story?
SCHULTZ: I've seen the movie three times and I've cried every time. You can't fit my entire life, even a section of my life, into two hours. You have to compress time. But in my opinion it's one of the greatest movies ever made.
 
That's odd, because Mark Schultz sure pretended to like the movie in this interview.

That was one article, when the movie just came out. Mark Schultz is not a rich man and he needed the money. Here are articles to the contrary...

Schultz even threatened to kill Miller.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/20...catcher-interview-threatened-to-kill-director


“Finally, I read one article from the Washington Times, where the guy made it sound like Bennett Miller intended to create this idea that a homosexual relationship could have existed between me and that lowlife pig. I was like, ‘That’s it, you are fucking dead.’ I called up my publicist to say, ‘You’re fired!’ And I called up Bennett and threatened to kill him. I apologised later, and then he invited me to the Oscars, but I just couldn’t take it any more.”

http://variety.com/2014/film/news/f...ie-director-i-hate-bennett-miller-1201390101/

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/...xcatcher-Went-from-Rocky-to-Rocky-Horror.html

“I didn’t expect Miller to choose the darkest part of my life to focus on — Dave’s murder — and expand that into a movie,” he told ShortList. "It ended up being almost the complete opposite - a nightmare, a horror story - they turned it from Rocky into The Rocky Horror Show."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...mark-schultz-angry-over-how-he-was-portrayed/

“Leaving the audience with a feeling that somehow there could have been a sexual relationship between duPont and I is a sickening and insulting lie. I told Bennett Miller to cut that scene out and he said it was to give the audience the feeling that duPont was encroaching on your privacy and personal space. [The scene] wasn’t explicit so I didn’t have a problem with it. Then after reading 3 or 4 reviews interpreting it sexually, and jeopardizing my legacy, they need to have a press conference to clear the air, or I will.”
 
Im not buying any of that narrative. I have watched the movie with several wrestlers and non wrestlers. None of them thought Schultz was gay. The scene in question was where dupont gave Mark a hair cut. The scene was bizzare, and was used to show that dupont was creepy and they had an unhealthy relationship. Facts have shown both of those to be true.

Mark went in expecting the movie to make him out into some kind of heroic warrior and focus on his accomplishments. The movie is called Foxcatcher, and is about the story. Why Mark is surprised they focused on the murder of a wrestler by the owner rather than focusing on his accomplishments is beyond narcissistic. When the name Foxcatcher is brought up, anyone who knew anything about it thinks of Daves murder, not the strange situation Mark had there.

In addition, Mark was upset that the movie portrayed him as a hot head and somewhat crude. Ironically after disputing these portrayals, he went around threatinng to beat up and kill the film maker, and called him numerous homophobic slurs and insults.
 
Im not buying any of that narrative. I have watched the movie with several wrestlers and non wrestlers. None of them thought Schultz was gay. The scene in question was where dupont gave Mark a hair cut. The scene was bizzare, and was used to show that dupont was creepy and they had an unhealthy relationship. Facts have shown both of those to be true.

Mark went in expecting the movie to make him out into some kind of heroic warrior and focus on his accomplishments. The movie is called Foxcatcher, and is about the story. Why Mark is surprised they focused on the murder of a wrestler by the owner rather than focusing on his accomplishments is beyond narcissistic. When the name Foxcatcher is brought up, anyone who knew anything about it thinks of Daves murder, not the strange situation Mark had there.

In addition, Mark was upset that the movie portrayed him as a hot head and somewhat crude. Ironically after disputing these portrayals, he went around threatinng to beat up and kill the film maker, and called him numerous homophobic slurs and insults.


Disclaimer: Although I have met Mark Schultz twice, I do not claim to be a friend, confidant, or even to know the guy. With that said, I have been a fan of the Schutz brothers since 1984 (admittedly, this may make me biased in Mark’s favor), during the media meltdown in 2014 I was friends with Mark on Facebook and I saw all the posts that have since been erased on the advice of a public relations firm he hired. I also messaged back and forth with him numerously on Facebook Messenger, he was surprisingly pretty responsive. I also read his book “Foxcatcher” twice, although I am hardly an expert on the life of the Schultz brothers I think I know more than most.


While I do agree with @Dirty Holt, that it may have been narcissistic on Marks part to think Miller was writing a biopic about him, and I do agree with you that people think of the Murder of Dave Schutlz when you hear the name "Foxcatcher", you have to remember that the book that Mark wrote was called "Foxcatcher" and was written before the movie was made. I think Mark was under the unrealistic impression that Miller was going to make a biopic about his life. However, what actually sent him over the edge was the fact that Miller took liberties with his life and made it appear that that there was some sort of homosexual relationship between Mark and DuPont. It is a fact that his time at Foxcatcher Farms, and the murder of his Brother was a very dark period in MS life. Mark shared some really personal information about his and his brother’s life, and if Mark felt Miller was making the picture homoerotic, which he didn't approve of, than Miller should have respected Mark’s wishes and cut out the three scenes that Mark felt were in question.



You mentioned the scene with the haircut, but there were two more scenes that I felt were much creepier, and clearly suggested a homosexual relationship between the two. One scene shows Mark in booty shorts, with his shirt off, his hair was frosted (Mark never frosted, or dyed his hair) and he is snorting cocaine, (Mark has admitted to trying coke in college, but he never did coke with DuPont), and he is playfully feeding DuPont candies. If that scene isn’t gay then I don’t know what is. There was also a scene where DuPont wakes Mark up in the middle of the night (Mark never lived on the compound) and they start wrestling in DuPont’s living room, the screen goes black and you hear grunting sounds. I believe that the scene was intentionally put in to leave the viewer open to interpretation that the grunting was either from the wrestling, or gay sex.


Before I am called a homophobe, let’s turn the tables around a bit. Bennett Miller did a biopic on Truman Capote’s life. Capote was a gay man, how do you think the gay community would have felt if Miller took liberties with Capote and made him straight, and had scenes suggesting that he had love affairs with different women?
 
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Before I am called a homophobe, let’s turn the tables around a bit. Bennett Miller did a biopic on Truman Capote’s life. Capote was a gay man, how do you think the gay community would have felt if Miller took liberties with Capote and made him straight, and had scenes suggesting that he had love affairs with different women?

It's not a reasonable comparison, because no one can credibly claim that the Foxcatcher movie "made Mark gay." The only man it portrayed as having homosexual tendencies was duPont.

That portrayal was accurate. There were strong homosexual overtones to duPont's obsession with wrestlers. Mark Schultz admitted in an interview that duPont's implicit sexual interest made him uncomfortable:

At one point I actually thought he cared about me, but it was a weird feeling, like there might have been something sexual to it.
. . .

And then he invented this move called the 'Foxcatcher Five.' I almost named my book after this. Basically, it was just him grabbing someone's balls. One time, he came up to me and was like "Here comes the Foxcatcher Five" and I looked at him like, "You touch me and you're dead."

Part of what made the movie's portrayal of duPont so haunting was this implicit, unrequited sexual interest in the young, virile wrestlers. That is the dynamic at play in all of the scenes you have described. None of them suggest that Mark felt any sexual attraction to duPont. At most, they depict him as humoring duPont's creepy preferences.

Indeed, Mark actually approved the scene where duPont wakes him up to wrestle on the floor at night.
“I told Bennett Miller to cut that scene out and he said it was to give the audience the feeling that duPont was encroaching on your privacy and personal space. It wasn’t explicit so I didn’t have a problem with it."

Then, when one or two idiotic reviewers misinterpreted that part of the movie, Mark lost his shit and threatened to kill the director. Since then, he's apologized and claimed he went “temporarily insane." I admire Mark's athletic accomplishments, but this meltdown was not his finest hour.
 
It's not a reasonable comparison, because no one can credibly claim that the Foxcatcher movie "made Mark gay." The only man it portrayed as having homosexual tendencies was duPont.



That portrayal was accurate. There were strong homosexual overtones to duPont's obsession with wrestlers. Mark Schultz admitted in an interview that duPont's implicit sexual interest made him uncomfortable:



Part of what made the movie's portrayal of duPont so haunting was this implicit, unrequited sexual interest in the young, virile wrestlers. That is the dynamic at play in all of the scenes you have described. None of them suggest that Mark felt any sexual attraction to duPont. At most, they depict him as humoring duPont's creepy preferences.

Indeed, Mark actually approved the scene where duPont wakes him up to wrestle on the floor at night.
“I told Bennett Miller to cut that scene out and he said it was to give the audience the feeling that duPont was encroaching on your privacy and personal space. It wasn’t explicit so I didn’t have a problem with it."

Then, when one or two idiotic reviewers misinterpreted that part of the movie, Mark lost his shit and threatened to kill the director. Since then, he's apologized and claimed he went “temporarily insane." I admire Mark's athletic accomplishments, but this meltdown was not his finest hour.

I beg to differ, the three questionable scenes depicted Mark as a willing participant to DuPonts advances. It NEVER HAPPENED!! It is pure fiction! Furthermore, John DuPont was a Eunuch, when he was 13 years old he was thrown from a horse and ruptured his junk. For the rest of his life he had to take testosterone. Was DuPont a homosexual? It is possible, but in order for a gay act to have happened as depicted in the movie, Mark would have had to have been a willing participant.

I actually know people who trained at Foxcatcher Farms, according to the wrestlers who trained there DuPont did not display a "unrequited sexual interest in the young, virile wrestlers", he was a weird guy, but he did not act out on his so called "homosexual tendencies". If he was a homosexual, he was a latent homosexual. In all of the years that DuPont ran Foxcatcher, and all of the wrestlers that trained at Foxcatcher, there was literally only one sexual harassment complaint. DuPont was accused of many things, a racist, a mad man, a raving lunatic, a sociopath , however only once was he accused of making a sexual advance against a resident at the compound and most thought it was a frivolous complaint by a disgruntled wrestler. I was training at the Michigan Wrestling Club during the 90's and I remember guys who went to Foxcatcher Farms to train, and I remember Bizzare stories, but none of the stories were sexual. The thought of DuPont's sexuality never even crossed my mind until the movie was made. Miller's belief that DuPont was a homosexual is just speculation, he may or may not have been. But he was not an out loud and proud homosexual who the wrestlers would tolerate because they needed a place to train. That is completely false.

Regarding the interview that you posted, it was Mark's personal opinion that DuPont was in love with Valentin Jordanov and his story about the "Foxcatcher 5" may suggest that he was a latent homosexual but DuPont never used the move, it says nothing about DuPont making passes at other wrestlers, or displaying "homosexual overtones". I was very well aware of DuPont's obsession with Bulgaria, but to think DuPont had the hots for Valentin Jordanov is ridiculous, if that is what Mark actually meant. More likely, Joradanov is quite possible the greatest wrestler of all time, DuPont was in awe of the fact, that he was buddies with him, I think it also may be jealousy on Marks part (but this is also speculation on my part).

Mark did apologize, after the Public relations firm that he hired told him to, and his lawyer told him to keep his mouth shut. Since the movie has come out he has spoken out against the film a countless number of times. If you don't believe me, message him on Facebook, he is actually pretty responsive. (Facebook page "Mark Schultz:Olympic Champion".

Regarding the articles speculating on a gay relationship between DuPont and Mark, there were a hell of a lot more than just two! Do a Google search for "Was there a gay relationship in the movie Foxcatcher" you will get 1,270,000 hits.

Regarding Mark's meltdown, it was juvenile, and immature. Uttering threats against the directors life is actually criminal. With that said, Miller fictionalized a living persons life implying that the said person may have been in a gay relationship with DuPont. This is completely out of order! So again I will say it is artistically, and intellectually irresponsible.
 
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