Bret Hart Shoot Interview #2 (RF Video)

[Guest TSMAdmin]

I just got a massive set of shoots in today and, as such, I'll be reviewing them soon. But, until then, here's a shoot that I've kept in my "shit happens" file in case I missed a deadline for any reason.

 

 

This special mid-week shoot review being brought to you by the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City soundtrack, specifically Volume 3: Fernando Presents Emotion 98.3.

 

 

This stuff makes you feel like you're right back in the 80's, wearing that ugly white leisure suit with the pink shirt like Paul Heyman used to wear in WCW. The only way to make you feel MORE like you're back in the 80's is if you get a Flock of Seagulls haircut and start playing a Colecovision.

 

The album starts out with an intro by Fernando, which is fucking GREAT as he says, among other things, "Love is like a roller coaster... you pay a lot of to get tossed around and, before you know it, the ride is over and you're covered in vomit. And, if you're less than 4 foot 6, they don't even let you on."

 

The first song is Africa, by "a group EVERYONE likes... TOTO", as the mayor of South Park would put it. Then again, as my local radio station says... "Does anyone ever wonder why Toto broke up? *dialtone* Neither do we." Good mid-80's synthesizer music, but tremendously campy.

 

The rest of the tracklist includes Crockett's Theme (from Miami Vice), Missing You by John Waite, Died In Your Arms Tonight by the Cutting Crew, Waiting For A Girl Like You by Foriegner, Broken Wings by Mr. Mister (which is in the opening movie sequence of Vice City), More Than This by Roxy Music, Tempted by Squeeze, Keep On Loving You by REO Speedwagon, Sister Christian by Nigh Ranger, Never Too Much by Luther Vandross, and WOW by Kate Bush. Some of this is pretty damn good, especially Died In Your Arms Tonight and Broken Wings.

 

 

In addition to this are several fake commercials, like an ad for a Friday the 13th knockoff "rated "R"... for "Retarted"", and some commentary by Fernando.

 

The Fernando bit at the end of the CD is about as fuckin' GREAT as the first one, as he curses you out wanting his money for the CD you just listened to and generally insults you for 2 minutes.

 

This CD is ESSENTIAL for anyone who has any fond memories of the 80's or someone who just plays Vice City and wants the music found on 98.3. VERY recommended.

 

 

Almost forgot... if you've got and comments, suggestions, questions, or the money to buy me volumes 5 through 7 of the Vice City soundtrack series, drop me an e-mail at this address.

 

 

 

This is the second shoot interview that RF Video has done with Bret Hart, and it covers everything from entering WCW in late 1997 to the present (2001, before his stroke). As of now, I don't plan on covering the first shoot interview because a more famous internet writer has already done a review of it and, besides that, there are various techinical difficulties in the master tapes which make it a bitch to listen to.

 

 

Bret Hart Shoot Interview #2

 

Plans for him upon entering WCW- Eric Bischoff told him he wanted “To make you a bigger star than ever”, although nothing ever came of it.

 

Was he apprehensive about all the politics? Yes. There were several major groups fighting, including Hulk Hogan’s group, Ric Flair’s group, and the nWo group (Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and their associated flunkies). He got along well with Hogan and Flair, though. Said that the whole faction politics situation was all Bischoff’s fault.

 

Was he disappointed when he came in? “I was scratching my head the whole time I was there”. Said that Vince McMahon was right when he told him that WCW wouldn’t know what to do with a Bret Hart.

 

Differences in atmosphere- WWF was more polished and had guys who tried harder each night. WCW had no direction and guys would just go through the motions for their check every two weeks.

 

The WWF skit with the midget portraying him- He had asked, as a joke, whether he’d be subjected to the kind of treatment that Randy Savage and Hogan had gotten in the Billionaire Ted skits in early 1996 and was told “never in a million years”. Vince had also told him that he’d always have access to his history (video footage, stills, etc.), which changed after Montreal. Said it would be a lie if he said the midget stuff didn’t upset him a bit.

 

Did Owen Hart attempt to jump to WCW? Bret tried to bring him over and had gotten approval from Bischoff to get him a contract equal to what he had in the WWF. However, Vince didn’t want to let him go because he was in a long-term deal. After Vince Russo ratted Bret and Owen out to Vince McMahon, McMahon threatened Bret with a tortious interference lawsuit if he got involved in Owen’s affairs again.

 

His initial program in WCW- He worked with Flair but the program was quickly dropped. He doesn’t know why, but said there was a LOT of that going on there. WCW didn’t know a good idea from a bad idea, which is why they turned down his suggestion of reforming Team Canada with guys like Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit.

 

Was he getting screwed by politics, such as getting left off of PPVs in his early months in the company? Possibly.

 

Hogan’s political pull- He didn’t see it if it was there, as it must have been all VERY behind the scenes. He figures a lot of the political stuff might have been the fault of Kevin Nash or Kevin Sullivan instead.

 

Goldberg angle- Either he or Kevin Nash came up with the angle where Goldberg would attempt to spear him but hit a steel plate. It got approval from everyone involved, like Bischoff and Goldberg. It was supposed to involve a long winning streak leading up to a match with Goldberg, but he was jobbing to Booker T (whom he wishes he could have put over properly) instead of being built up. On the day it was supposed to happen, Bischoff pulls him aside to run some ideas by him at 2:30. One involves him running down the Canadian fans in front of the arena, which he refuses because they could hear thousands of fans chanting his name from the locker room. Bischoff also pitched the spear angle with a different ending… Hogan coming out and pretending to high five him before proceeding to beat Bret down. Bret shot THAT down because there was no plan for him to work with Hogan. In the meantime, someone convinced Goldberg that the whole thing would make him look weak. Finally, Bischoff made Bret get approval from Hogan to do the angle with Goldberg without Hogan being involved. Hogan agreed that he didn’t need to be out there either, then Bret looked over and saw a wave of relief pass over Bischoff’s face, which made him wonder what the hell his problem was. Says that Goldberg didn’t know who to trust, but Bret was able to convince him to go through it. Bischoff was paranoid about killing Goldberg off with the whole angle.

 

The punchline of that- Despite everyone trying to kill it beforehand, EVERYONE took credit for that angle AFTER it went on and was successful.

 

Says the only good things he did in WCW were the match with Benoit in Kansas City and the steel plate angle with Goldberg.

 

Lost confidence with Bischoff during the steel plate angle. One thing that pissed him off was when he had surgery and was out of commission for a while but Bischoff called him up to show up on the PPV 2 days later. Said he knew Bischoff’s days were numbers when he had a meeting with him and Hogan in Chicago when Bret was unsure if he wanted to keep wrestling. Says that Hogan might have been there because they’d be pit against each other soon afterwards, but it might have been a sign of his political pull. Insisted strongly that he be a babyface for the first few months after he came back before going heel and working with guys like Sting and Benoit.

 

Was pissed that he was supposed to work something for Molson’s but what was sent to work a babyface match against Hogan at a house show where he wasn’t advertised. Says it totally screwed him with Molson’s because he’d been advertised to do something for months before WCW pulled him out at the last minute. Says that after low response working with Hogan at house shows, their potential program was dropped. Said his first night back on TV that he was ignored until shortly before he went out. Bischoff had scrapped the initial plans for that night, then told him the skeleton for his interview as he was walking towards the ring shortly before they went live. When he came back, Bischoff was pissed because he apparently didn’t do it right, despite the fact that they had no plans for him.

 

Talks about his lateness in attending shows. Says it was something he told Bischoff about before ever signing and that no one ever told him anything until 30 seconds before he went out, but he got blamed because he was late whenever anything went wrong. Says the main reason his lateness was blamed was that he and Sting had a match that went all through the building and the planned finish was both passing out and being driven off in ambulances. Unfortunately, no one ever got the paramedics to pick them up, so the finish was screwed up. Despite the fact it was probably Bischoff’s fault it happened, he said it was Bret’s fault because he was late.

 

Put over Mick Foley’s “Have a Nice Day” and talked about how it correct it was when it talked about WCW.

 

Over the Edge 99- Thinks Vince should have stopped the show after Owen fell from the ceiling. Says that if Stephanie McMahon had died, they’d have stopped the show. Talks about the RAW Is Owen tribute the next night. Says people may have been truthful but that it wasn’t proper to do with the cameras on. Thought it should have been about Owen rather than wrestlers coming out and talking about Owen, possibly showing footage from his career.

 

His meeting with Vince after OTE 99- He and Vince met in a park shortly after Owen died. It was set up through a third party because Bret refused to talk to Vince on the phone. Resented the insinuation made by the WWF and certain Hart family members that his attitude towards Vince was based on what happened at Montreal rather than Owen’s death. His only regret about Montreal was that a guy he worked that hard for would do that to him. Talks about how slimy WWF lead counsel Jerry McDevett was by dividing and conquering his family. He wasn’t in control of the lawsuit brought by Owen's widow, Martha Hart, despite rumors to the contrary. Wishes he had been in control of it because he’d want to see it go to trial instead of being settled.

 

Didn’t know what he even wanted to say to Vince at the meeting. Was with Martha when she saw her lawyers and was told under no circumstances to talk to Vince about the case and the lawyers didn’t want him to talk to Vince at all.

 

He got called 2 hours before the meeting and told him Vince didn’t want to meet in the park because “he was scared he would kill him”, and he told them to go fuck themselves because the meeting was Vince’s idea in the first place. It was okayed shortly thereafter.

 

He told Vince that he wasn’t allowed to discuss the case. Told him how pissed he was over the RAW is Owen show. He asked why Vince screwed him in Montreal, and Vince gave him his answer. Bret said that he had a better answer to everything Vince said. He finally told him that “it’s the biggest regret I ever had. I’m sorry it ever happened” and offered to bring him back. He told Vince he wasn’t even sure about staying in the business at that point. Thought it might have been in a PR thing, as well as a way to mess with the lawsuit and a way to make big business (him vs. Shawn, him vs. Vince). He asked Vince for access for his footage because there were 14 years of his career where the pictures belonged to Vince. Asked for the same for Owen as something for his estate, totally unrelated to the lawsuit. Vince agreed to both and told him just to call him up for it later. By the Thursday of the funeral, Vince’s lawyers started claiming that the last part of the conversation never happened. He then found out that Vince had been wired and that a SWAT team had been stationed around the park in case of trouble. The cop he talked to said that Vince was a total slime.

 

Final outcome of the lawsuit- Total waste of time for everybody. Vince paid Owen’s estate $18 million dollars because he came up with a random amount. Bret said it’s hard to put a dollar figure on someone’s life and that money was never bringing his brother back. He wanted to find out what really happened to his brother and why, and for someone to be punished for it. Says that Martha did as good a job as she could, but believes she hired bad lawyers and that Vince’s big time lawyers ripped them apart. She was undermined from the start by family members, as Ellie Hart was sending legal documents straight to Jerry McDevett’s office. Bret was upset with this, but the sisters all claimed that Bret had a vendetta with Vince, which pissed him off. Says Martha was really forced into taking the settlement and pretty much shutting herself off from the Hart family with the exception of Bret and possibly a few of his brothers. Says that between insurance and doing re-runs of OTE 99, that Vince probably only paid about $3 million of the $18 million. Was pissed that Vince claimed that Bret didn’t even talk about Owen at the meeting. His response is “Let’s drop Shane McMahon from the ceiling and let’s see what happens.”

 

Wasn’t happy that Russo took over in WCW. Said Russo did more for him than anyone else in WCW, as Russo tried to put him at the top and that’s why he won the WCW title. His response to people calling him a hypocrite for criticizing the WWF for extreme stuff but accepting Vince Russo. His response is that he never had any control of either company. Says Russo was the worst guy to put in charge of the company, as a combination of the content and the David Arquette title reign. Says that anyone could have done better than Russo.

 

His match with Chris Benoit on TV- Really powerful match. Exhausts him just thinking about it. Says that Benoit was a really good friend of Benoit’s. Wanted to wrestle him for an hour, but was shot down by the WCW brass. Benoit was touched by the idea. Bret had wanted to put him over, but Benoit and everyone else insisted that he go over. Called it the last pure wrestling match, the tombstone on actual wrestling on TV. Says that it was like an old-time match, as people gradually got more and more into the match until they were on the edge of their seats by the end of it. Loved that he got to work with Benoit and appreciated that Benoit tried to make him look good after such a long absence.

 

Bill Goldberg injuring him at Starrcade but not taking responsibility- “Would love to kick him in the head the same way he kicked me” after hearing Goldberg claim that he wasn’t responsible. Doesn’t surprise him since Goldberg hurt Meng (currently Haku in the WWE) but denied it was his fault the next day. Says he got three concussions in the match and that, ironically, he’d asked that Goldberg not to hurt him when they wrestled. Said he got a first concussion with an elbow smash to the head, as he went out cold. He was thinking “Holy shit, this guy makes Vader look like Shawn Michaels!” at the time. Says Goldberg didn’t do the spot right when they did a figure four around the ringpost, which resulted in concussion #2. He also pulled something in his back and almost didn’t finish the match. He says that Goldberg kicked him as hard as he can in the head, which tore a muscle in his neck in half. That last one WAS the injury and he doesn’t remember much afterwards. Says no one took care of him afterwards other than giving him some Advils. Passed out with all his clothes on in his bedroom. Worked with Goldberg the next night, then Benoit with a Goldberg run-in the next night (where Goldberg screwed up his arm punching a window). Called Goldberg about the arm but never got a call back. He talked about how he was getting powerbombed and chokeslammed each night, which is exactly what NOT to do when you’re concussed. Said he was seeing silver and a lot of stars whenever he took one. He said that Goldberg definitely ended his career and caused him a lot of mental distress considering how screwed up his memory was for a while until everything started coming back to him.

 

Didn’t have a problem trying to give Lance Storm a rub when he was hot in WCW. Wished he could have done more for him.

 

Talked about working Off The Record and answering stuff dealing with Vince McMahon, which took him out of his groove for 3 weeks because it was so draining.

 

Got a notification of his release through the mail, but says they were “kind” enough to notify his representation that a letter would be coming. Says he wasn’t too sorry to go, because the ship was sinking and they were trying to plug holes.

 

If Vince had bought the company, he probably would have tried to get his money then leave. He’d made a promise before Montreal that he wanted to get all of the money he was ever promised to him. He wasn’t sure how many more years he would have wrestled, though. Don’t think he would have worked with him, though.

 

Dynamite Kid’s book- Didn’t like it, hasn’t talked to him since it came out. Says that DK was too bitter to get the stories right. Disputes DK’s claims that he (Bret) wrestled Abdullah the Butcher and other things in there. Says that Stu Hart wasn’t getting kickbacks from the Japanese companies for sending him over and that Bret wasn’t sent along with him to Japan as a package deal. Still respects him, but that he got VERY bitter after everything he went through, so it paints his comments about Bret, Davey Boy Smith, etc. DK had told Bret about a derogatory story about Stu that Bret claims never happened and resented it. Says that Stu had looked forward to DK’s book but that he must have been disappointed having reading it. Dropped all association after reading it. (This was after Bret says he paid for DK’s back surgery)

 

What do you think about the WCW sale? Sad because it means no wrestler’s union or having some way to negotiate like they used to.

 

Wishes Bischoff luck with the MatRats venture. He and Stu aren’t really into all the aerial stuff, but that they’ll watch Ultimate Fighting. Says that’s what wrestling is supposed to be like.

 

How would he like to be remembered and is there anything he’d like to say to his fans? He’s working on a book (which he claims isn’t a negative one). It’s supposed to be about the friendships and so on. Says that most of the books can be flushed down the toiled except for Mick Foley’s books. Says Mick missed the boat, but that he wasn’t a masochist like Mick with all the deathmatch stuff and flaming tables. Just wants to be remembered.

 

What does he think on people who don’t want to retire (Hogan, Flair, etc)? More power to them. Says that some of them just don’t know how to do anything else, all their friends are wrestlers, etc. Says he wasn’t like that, as wrestling was just a job. Wished he could have opened up a wrestling school, but says his injury limits what he can do. Watches a lot of old Stampede Wrestling and loves it, but says that there’s a lot of good stuff that was cut off because they wanted people to go to the shows to see the rest of the stuff. Likes a bunch of old-school stuff like the AWA instead of the current product.

 

Any regrets? One. Regrets that he wasn’t able to get Owen out of his contract or stop what happened to him. Says any bitterness he has probably goes back to that. He’d always hoped to be able to spend time with Owen after they retired and relive a lot of old memories. Doesn’t have a chance to do anything like that because Owen’s dead, and that Jim Neidhard, Dynamite Kid, and Davey Boy Smith are all estranged from him. He hears from Brian Adams (Crush, one half of Kronik) and Brian Knobbs of the Nasty Boys a lot, along with a few in the WWF. Doesn’t want to bury them by identifying them, because he figures Vince will punish them. Misses the moment of knowing he worked the crowd and not the other way around. Misses being a heel sometimes. Misses his friends. With the exception of Shawn Michaels and Triple H, there’s no one in the business that he has hard feelings towards.

 

 

This is a very honest interview and Bret gives a lot of insight to the clusterfuck that was WCW and how slimy Vince can be. It’s very sad to think of some of what he said then remember that he’s just had a stroke and that Davey Boy Smith has recently passed away. Here’s hoping that things finally turn around for Bret after about 5 really bad years. Highly recommended.