Was Artie Lang Going To Be The Wrestler?

When you think about major wrecks in this world, you can’t get much more defined than Howard Stern sidekick Artie Lang. Rarely shaven or sober, Lang personifies the self destructive person. So when we heard that he was in the running to be in Darren Aronofsky’s amazing The Wrestler (though luckily not in the title role, but a secondary one as a wrestling promoter), it just made sense. But Lang didn’t land the role, and he started bitching about it on Stern’s show. While that’s an interesting tidbit, the greatest point in the story is actually why Lang may have lost the role. While he thinks it was because he didn’t nail the audition, word is that the director Aronofsky was still holding a grudge against Lang for something he did long time ago (well, ten years in movie time is, like, eons), according to one of Artie’s friends.

“My friend says, doesn’t ‘Artie remember Darren Aronofsky? I was like ‘What are you talking about?’ When I was at Mad TV back in 1996 we went out to a Hollywood party, the kid tells the story ‘Artie got completely fucked up… this is one of those times when we had to pull him out of the party. This kid went to film school with Darren Aronofsky. He said in this party you claimed this guy Aronofsky, this is before Requiem for a Dream, you claimed that he was looking at you wrong and you kept hitting him in the head and you punched him in the face. I said ‘What?’ He goes ‘You were abusing this guy, calling him a film school fag’.

So there you go, any wanna be actors in our readership. Treat directors with utmost respect when you meet them, even if they’re just peddling a movie they shot on Super-8 with their mom’s money and their friend’s labor. You never know when you might be in Lang’s situation. Screenwriters, though… yeah, kick ‘em in the nuts whenever you can.
Artie Lange Was Almost Cast in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler [Slash Film]
Image [startraskphoto]