You Cannot Kill David Arquette

For many fans, David Arquette's brief, but notable, intrusion into World Championship Wrestling represents the lowest point for the long-dead company, the moment a promotion that had set trends cashed-in their self-respect to hang their Heavyweight Championship belt off Courteney Cox's (then) better half. Hunched and weaselly, Arquette was a world away from the supplemented monsters that thrived in WCW. His run with the title, such as it was, popped the bubble - the illusory battles of pro wrestling, and the storytelling that surrounds them, very obviously falling afoul of a cynical attempt to sell a film, in this instance 2000's buddy comedy Ready to Rumble. The move did Arquette no favours either, trapping the star between two incompatible strata of showbiz.

David Darg and Price James' You Cannot Kill David Arquette is an apology tour then, a pseudo-documentary told with the same precious, insider myth-making as the sport Arquette was seen to muscle in on. We are told Arquette's acting career has stalled; directed to take note of how degraded and age-worn his body and mental faculties have become. This underdog wants another shot though, to put some much delayed respect on his name by grappling anywhere that will have him. When Arquette is outlining this plan we see him mixing with WCW luminaries like Eric Bischoff, the former company president assaying his former co-conspirator with a mix of fatherly concern and unconcealed alarm.

You Cannot Kill presents a fiction in which the genuinely likeable Arquette goes out of his way to demonstrate respect for wrestling as a performing art, transforming his body from stout to trim by, in part, repeatedly falling on rock hard Mexican mats. Despite this intimate access, the reality of what is unfolding is strictly guarded. So, when blood starts gushing from Arquette's neck during a Death Match with glass tube aficionado Nick Gage, we are never asked to consider the bout as a predetermined dance that has ran afoul but as a fight that has gotten completely out of control. Although, at this stage, the mockumentary concept was likely too ingrained to adjust the tale at a mechanical level, it feels like a missed opportunity to not get a full, detailed, debrief of Arquette's thought process when, after hopping out of the ring to take stock of his pissing injury, he climbed back into the squared circle to finish his match with Gage. To his credit then, even with blood seeping from his throat, Arquette sought to protect the business.