This piece was originally published on December 15, 2023. We are recirculating it now timed to The Iron Claw’s digital release.
Unlike so many “based on a true story†movie offerings aiming for the Oscars this time of year — you know, the type of biopic that resorts to historical lily gilding and sometimes outright fictionalizes the lives of its subjects to pump up the prestige drama — writer-director Sean Durkin’s A24 wrestling tragedy, The Iron Claw, (which arrives in theaters December 22) takes notable effort to lessen the concussive impact of its real-life source material: the incredibly sad saga of the Von Erich family, the so-called “Kennedys of wrestling.â€
Blazing a trail of double dropkicks across ’80s popular culture, the Von Erich brothers — Kerry, Kevin, David, and Mike, respectively played in the film by the thirst tag team of Jeremy Allen White, Zac Efron, Harris Dickinson, and Stanley Simons — ascended the heights of the sport while secretly plumbing personal depths of misery. They captured title belts and morphed into syndicated TV superstars, becoming golden-haired Texas folk heroes in the process. Until one by one, every brother but Kevin succumbed to the family “curse†of self-destruction, dying before age 35. From watching The Iron Claw alone, however, you’d never learn that Von Erich isn’t the family’s real surname but a Nazi-inspired nom de ring adopted by its tough-love dispensing, former–World Heavyweight champion patriarch Fritz Von Erich (né Jack Adkisson Sr., played by Mindhunters’ Holt McCallany), to stoke anti-German ire in the aftermath of World War II. Nor would you know that there was yet another wrestling Von Erich: the physically frailest and youngest brother, Chris, who took his own life via self-inflicted gunshot wound after suffering through depression, drug addiction, and a chronic inability to wrestle at his brothers’ elite level. He receives not so much as an oblique mention in the movie.
To hear it from Durkin, the Canadian-born filmmaker who nabbed a Dramatic Directing Award at 2011’s Sundance Film Festival for his Elizabeth Olsen–starring debut feature, Martha Marcy May Marlene, such Von Erich erasure didn’t come easy. The Chris character remained in successive script drafts for five years until Durkin came to a “kill your darlings†realization. “It was the hardest decision I made,†the director says over coffee at Venice, California’s Gjelina restaurant. “The movie just couldn’t withstand another brother’s death. It’s hard to say this from a human level but from a narrative and character standpoint, there’s a repetition that’s just hard to take. Mike, Kerry, and Chris all suffered similar fates: They took a gun or a bottle of pills into a field on their ranch and killed themselves overnight. I don’t want to say it was stopping the movie from happening but if I’m honest, it was. It took me a year to write it and take him out.â€
To be sure, the Von Erich saga stands as a Shakespearean tragedy that is so much more unwieldy and stranger than fiction — filled with testosterone, us-against-the-world brotherly love, unhealed trauma, sibling rivalry, and American-style deaths of despair. The material could have easily been fleshed out into a limited series, which is something Durkin and his producer partners at House Productions and BBC Film discussed after getting the project going in 2015. But over The Iron Claw’s eight-year journey to the screen, the screenplay underwent multiple revisions, taking into account — but never becoming beholden to — input from the sole surviving Von Erich brother, Kevin, through whose perspective the story is focused. Extraneous plotlines were jettisoned. Yet another deceased Von Erich brother, 6-year-old Jack Jr., who suffered an electric shock and drowned in a puddle, merits but a fleeting moment onscreen. And even seemingly important real-life figures such as World Wrestling Federation CEO Vince McMahon, who controversially lured Kerry Von Erich away from Fritz Von Erich’s World Class Championship Wrestling league, were omitted to keep the narrative spotlight on Efron’s long-struggling character. Given The Iron Claw’s current near-perfect Tomatometer rating and Christmas corridor theatrical release (typically reserved for films in which distributors feel utmost commercial confidence), that storytelling discipline appears to have paid dividends.
“The story needs to focus on Kevin’s survival,†Durkin explains. “So everything has to be about Kevin’s journey. You make tough choices. Which means that you don’t depict David being a father who loses a 1-year-old child. That’s a tough choice to make when, on a human level, you feel connected. You feel responsible for how you’re depicting this family. But there is just not room for that in this story.â€
“I really believe that constraints lead to great creative choices,†he continues. “Discipline and rigor: I thrive on those things and I embrace those things. In some ways, they help simplify.â€
The Iron Claw’s genesis can be carbon dated back all the way to the director’s childhood. Growing up in the U.K. (where his father relocated the family from Canada) in the late ’80s, Durkin became fascinated with the WWF, back ordering wrestling magazines and tracking down old VHS tapes of era-defining pro wrestling matches like the Parade of Champions and the classic Von Erich clan clashes against their Georgia nemeses the Fabulous Freebirds. “I used to have all these wrestling toys and made this federation; I’d take my dad’s cigar wrapper and make a [championship] belt from that,†recalls Durkin, 42. “I had all these storylines and champions and I would have main events every few weeks. It was my introduction to writing and storytelling.â€
After the director’s Hollywood breakthrough with Martha Marcy May Marlene, in the mid-2010s he embarked on a trio of projects: The Nest, which Vulture’s Alison Willmore called a “virtuosic movie about the slow implosion of a family unit,†and an ultimately ill-fated Janis Joplin biopic. Durkin also began communicating with Kevin Von Erich but purposely kept his creative distance thanks to his experience working on that Queen of Rock biopic. “I got very close to a lot of people in her life. But when it came to showing them the script, they had a really strong reaction about their perspective not being the only perspective in the movie,†the director says. “It got a bit messy and it was quite sad. So I made a decision on [Iron Claw] as a fan and someone who loved Kevin and the family to keep some space.â€
He adds: “I knew exactly what movie I was making before I reached out. ‘The first thing he said to me was, ‘There’s a lot of trash talk out there. There’s a lot of gossip. What I care most about is that you know and the movie knows how much my brothers and I love each other.’ I was like, ‘We’re already on the same page.’â€
With two pieces of British financing already in place, Durkin and his producers began seeking an American backer in order to make what he calls a “very American film.†Enter A24. In the summer of 2021, the New York–based art powerhouse signed on to produce and distribute The Iron Claw, its executives having “just got it in a way that no one else did,†Durkin says. “Not only a vision for what it could be but also just fully supporting what I wanted it to be, which is a dream.â€
Soon locations were being scouted, with Louisiana and its generous film-production tax credits standing in for Texas and a former Baton Rouge furniture warehouse extensively retrofitted to stand in for Dallas’s barnlike Sportatorium wrestling arena. Zac Efron, whose gym-honed physique stole scenes in 2017’s Baywatch movie adaptation and who has shown actorly range hopscotching between mainstream comedies (Neighbors, Dirty Grandpa), edgy biodrama (portraying serial killer Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile), and brassy musicals (The Greatest Showman), claimed the part of Kevin, for which he grew his hair into a funky, shaggy Prince Valiant pageboy. “He’s obviously known for his physicality,†Durkin says. “But the core for me is, Kevin has a sincerity and purity. I had seen that in Zac’s work. Meeting him, I just felt that right away. His character’s journey is the toughest in some ways because it’s quite quiet; it’s really his sort of pure self emerging.â€
Durkin had produced one of The Bear breakout star White’s earliest acting projects, the 2008 teen drug drama Afterschool, setting the stage for a reunion of sorts. (“We were very young and shooting in a boarding school so it was a very summer-camp bonding experience,†the director remembers.) Dickinson, who has also co-starred in such films as Best Picture nominee Triangle of Sadness and Where the Crawdads Sing, meanwhile, popped up on Durkin’s filmmaking radar inhabiting the part of a rough-and-tumble Brooklynite in the 2017 coming-of-age drama Beach Rats. (“I’m a particular snob about accents. And when I saw it I was like, ‘Oh, they found a kid from Brooklyn who’s never acted before.’ I was totally fooled to find out he was English and, obviously, an actor.â€)
Although the actors appear impressively buffed up with the requisite six-pack abs and pectoral rippage for their turns flying off the top turnbuckle, Durkin mostly left the protein-heavy diet preparations and iron-pumping exercise regimens up to them; their intensive workouts continued in between scenes via ’80s-era exercise equipment situated in a gym-garage on the film’s Von Erich family ranch-compound set. None of the primary performers had set foot in a wrestling ring prior to shooting. But they underwent weeks of training under the tutelage of former pro Chavo Guerrero Jr. (who also faces off against Efron’s character onscreen as the villainous Sheik). And over the movie’s 36-day shoot, the quartet of actors bonded quickly as movie brothers — enacting complete wrestling matches in front of hundreds of screaming background actors. “We didn’t think about the stunts. We didn’t think about the wrestling, first and foremost. We thought about the character and action and that guided everything,†says Durkin. “Whenever I do a scene, I want to run it to completion from top to bottom. And I don’t shoot pickups. So the wrestling had to be top to bottom. These guys were wrestling full matches.â€
(Warning: Minor spoiler to follow.) Late in the film, moments after Kerry Von Erich is shown having taken his own life with a single gunshot from a .44 pistol to the heart, we see White’s character suddenly resurrected: drifting on a raft along a quiet stream at sunset. He emerges onto its bank where he is greeted by his other deceased brothers: David, now in possession of the championship belt that eluded him in life; Michael, outfitted with a guitar in honor of his foregone rockstar dreams; and 6-year-old Jack Jr, seen for the first and only time in the film. In certain ways the sequence is somewhat jarring, almost too symbolically on the nose for a film so otherwise grounded in sawdust and spit.
I ask Durkin if he encountered any resistance including it in The Iron Claw. “It was a hard sell,†he admits. “It’s the scene that got commented on the most times in the writing process and questioned the most. This scene should not work, right? You’ve got a pretty grounded world, an emotionally honest look at family. But I wanted to visually portray Kerry’s final imagining of where he was going when he [died by suicide], what he felt he was escaping.â€
“I wanted something heightened, a bit more other worldly,†the director continues. “I wanted to visualize the purest sense of their connection. It’s a release. The only direction I gave the guys was about the tenderness with which they touch each other. I wanted them touching each other’s faces. Almost sensual. I wanted a mythical sense of crossing the river and leaving the coin. Just to have that sort of love in its purest form.â€
Last month, Kevin Von Erich attended The Iron Claw world premiere at Dallas’ historic Texas Theatre alongside his sons Ross and Marshall Von Erich (themselves former Major League Wrestling Tag Team Champions between 2019 and 2021) and Kerry Von Erich’s adult daughters, Hollie Chilton and Lacey Von Erich. “Kevin sent me a text afterward,†says Durkin. “It’s quite extensive and personal. But essentially, he said he felt like I had taken the time to understand what it was to walk in his shoes. They’re really happy with it. It’s brought them together.â€
“That’s great. But I’m not making it for their approval. I’m trying to do something truthful — and I hope they love it. But I’m trying to tell the story how I see it,†he says.