Adam "The Amateur" vs. Randy "The Ram"

I take it most of you are familiar now with "The Wrestler," the sensational new movie from Darren Aronofsky and starring the irascible Mickey Rourke?

What many of you might not know is that many of the characters who show up frequently on this blog had a hand in making the movie. First and foremost is my friend Mark, Diana's betrothed; remember the engagement dinner I cooked for them? And our trip to Rhode Island? Well Mark co-produced "The Wrestler." Many of our conversations over the past year were conversations about all the behind-the-scenes shenanigans that went on making the movie. When we talked about it, we never knew it would be this big; and now it's huge. And I'm very proud of Mark: we saw the movie with him on opening night, and it really blew me away. We applauded when his name showed up in the credits.

We also applauded for our friend Krisse, who you may remember as our favorite Cape Cod cook and dinner party hostess. She did the opening credits for the movie as well as the video game imagery. She recently did an interview with The L.A. Times about her work and they rightfully praised her for summarizing the life of Randy "The Ram" in less than two minutes. More on that article in a bit.

Finally, we applauded our friend Rena who worked in the costume department on the movie. Remember when Rena stayed with us last winter and made us dinner? Well she was here working on "The Wrestler." We had Marisa Tomei's boots drying in our bathroom and Mickey Rourke's underwear draped over our dining room chairs (ok, that's an exaggeration; but we did see lots of plastic bags full of leftover costume stuff!) Recently, I saw Rena in Washington State and she made awesome savory tarts with figs, onions and blue cheese. This is her with her dad:

Now, back to that Krisse article. In the article it talks about the collage Krisse created of articles and fliers about Randy "The Ram" that opens the movie. It says: "For the fliers, she included names of friends of loved ones and then 'wrestlerized' them."

Loyal readers, would you believe that at one point she had "Adam 'The Amateur' Roberts" in there? Because she did! And guess who made her take it out? Mark! He said "The Amateur" didn't sound like a real wrestling name.

I'd have to agree with him, but wouldn't it have been cool to see your favorite food blogger in one of the most notable movies of the year? Still; I've got love for "The Wrestler." If you haven't seen it, please do; and cheer when you recognize the names of Amateur Gourmet friends in the credits.