Chuck Wepner is a liquor salesman from Bayonne, N.J., who drives a Cadillac with “Champ” vanity plates. A former New Jersey State Heavyweight Boxing Champion, he took abuse from Sonny Liston, got his nose broken by Muhammad Ali, and inspired Sylvester Stallone to write “Rocky” which won three Academy Awards. Wepner was left out of the “Rocky” glory, and his career took turn after strange turn as he worked to stay in the spotlight: he went on to fight Andre the Giant as “The Assassin” and boxed a 900 pound bear. Twice.
This short documentary explores just how the film Pumping Iron revolutionized the fitness industry and created an international icon in Arnold Schwarzenegger. It also touches on what Hollywood's idea of an action star was and is.
Filmmaker Alan Smithee finds himself the unwilling puppet of a potentially bad, big budget action film which he proceeds to steal the reels and leave the cast and crew in a frenzy.
In America, we define ourselves in the superlative: we are the biggest, strongest, fastest country in the world. Is it any wonder that so many of our heroes are on performance enhancing drugs? Director Christopher Bell explores America's win-at-all-cost culture by examining how his two brothers became members of the steroid-subculture in an effort to realize their American dream.
The 35th anniversary of the 1976 Oscar-winning film “Rocky” is marked with a TV retrospective in which Sylvester Stallone and others reminisce about the creation of the movie as well as the other films in the franchise.
Warren Ellis: Captured Ghosts is a feature-length documentary that takes an in depth look at the life, career and mind of the British comic book writer Warren Ellis. The film combines extensive interviews with Ellis with insights from his colleagues and friends, as well as ambient visual re-creations of his prose and comics work.
Tony Bennett: An American Classic was an Emmy Award-winning television special celebrating the life of musical icon Tony Bennett on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Directed by Rob Marshall (Memoirs of a Geisha, Chicago), it charts Bennett’s career by faithfully re-creating venues from his past, from the downtown Greenwich Village club where he was discovered, to the Columbia recording studios of the early 60's, from rat pack Las Vegas to Carnegie Hall. Bennett is joined for each number by the artists that collaborated with him on his Duets album, with musical performances by Barbra Streisand, John Legend, k.d. lang, Chris Botti, Diana Krall, Juanes, Elton John, Michael Bublé, Stevie Wonder and Christina Aguilera.