Ryan Nemeth Interview: "Heel", Bringing Awareness To Wrestling, Filmmaking, AEW, More
The timing of a movie like this and the message you're trying to send with it coming off the last year in wrestling is so perfect, would you agree?
Nemeth: Timing is the keyword with this, it's so interesting. It was a few years ago that I wrote this script and it was not... I don't know the best way to bring this up. With everything going on, for all the people excited for this movie, there's also a lot of people who are pretty pissed off and hate me. My instinct is to say that I have no idea, but the real is answer is that people don't want to be challenged when they think something is true. I think a lot of people don't want these things to be real. The movie is about, sadly, sexual assault in indie wrestling. None of us want that to be true. I don't want that to be something that exists, but I know that it does because I'm a realistic human and I have eyes and ears. I think a lot of the fans will fall in love with certain wrestlers and if anything negative is ever mentioned or brought to light about them, they just go, “Nope! Not true, can't be true.”
When someone like me comes along and says, “I'm going to make a project that hopefully opens the door on this, shines a light on some bad stuff and starts a conversation,” I'm the bad guy suddenly to those people. It's a minority of people, but they're very vocal people and they're not happy with me. As far as the timing, I started writing this a couple of years ago and then crowdfunded, shot and post-production all before the Speaking Out thing happened last summer. I think the timing of that messed with those people and so these people are very angry at me, saying, “Oh, you're taking advantage of the Speaking Out movement and trying to turn a profit on it and make yourself famous!” I would love if there was a profit from a short film. I have almost bankrupt myself making this thing. Short films don't make profits. That's not a thing that happens.
Hopefully they get into festivals and that's also a thing that costs money. That part of it I think is very adorable, but there's no money coming from this. We made this whole thing before Speaking Out happened, so maybe this contributed a little bit to helping people speak out. Maybe that was inevitable. Maybe being home during the coronavirus time just made people who have been skewing about that issue think, “All right, I have nothing else going on, let me tell the truth about this.” I'm not saying one way or the other on that, but the timing all kind of combined together and I think it's going to make wrestling better overall.
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