Even in death, wrestling titan Andre the Giant has a posse.
At least until it kills you.
HBO’s demystifying documentary on 7′4″, 500-pound wrestling legend and unwitting sticker model Andre the Giant supplants the giant narrative of wondrousness with the heartbreaking reality of being too large physically, culturally, and biologically to survive.
Andre The Giant: “It’s difficult everywhere I go. They don’t build anything for big people. They build everything for blind people, crippled people, for some other people but not for big people. So we have to fit in there, and it’s not too easy all the time.”
Wrestling has always understood the role of spectacle in its desire to entertain, and André was a 24/7 spectacle. He’d enter the ring by stepping over the ropes, then toss extremely muscular men through the air as if he were tossing flatware into a dishwasher. He’d cover an interviewer’s face with his massively fleshy hand like the facehugger from Alien. He’d quaff twenty beers in a row on his way to finishing off a case of wine. He left people awestruck.
Arnold Schwarzenegger: “He grabs me out of the chair, and he holds me up, and then he puts me on an armoire. He just set me up there like a little doll. This just shows you how strong he was.”
“Andre the Giant” is a spiritual cousin to ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary series, sharing a producer in The Ringer’s Bill Simmons. It also shares a lean focus on conditions outside of sports that influence the athletes. The turning point in American wrestling was the rise of the World Wrestling Federation (now the WWE), who turned once-regional stars into national heroes, propelling André to maximum exposure just as his abilities were starting to atrophy.
In his 20s Andre was diagnosed with acromegaly, a condition in which his pituitary gland produced excess growth hormone. Acromegaly is incurable but treatable yet Andre declined treatment fearing it would interfere with his livelihood as the world’s most famous wrestler/living giant. This also meant his body would continue to grow while his organs remained the same size, causing him constant and irreparable pain. During the filming of The Princess Bride the man once capable of lifting wrestlers was now unable to catch the petite actress Robin Wright.
Hulk Hogan: “There was never a bed, there was never a knife, there was never a fork, there was never a chair [that would fit him]. It was like if you had to sit on baby furniture your whole life in a dollhouse. I just remember the 14-hour flights from JFK to Narita in Tokyo that I knew he could not go in the bathroom.”
Andre had a gentle and tender side away from the cameras—the side of him that cried when strangers made fun of his height in airports. It’s the side of him that caused his alpha male co-workers at WWE to tear up during their recollections of him. It’s a rare day when WWE CEO Vince McMahon can’t maintain his composure.
Dr. Terry Todd: “[Andre] mentioned to me once that’s he’d be so grateful if he could have one day a week in which ‘I can just walk around and I’ll be the size of a normal man. I could go to a movie, I could get into a cab. I could have my own car, a normal car’.”
What do giants dream of? Pillaging? Conquering? No, simply to ride in a normal car. I’m 6′9″ with hands that can palm an iPad yet I can fit in a regular chair and occasionally blend into my surroundings. Andre the Giant was humungous and internationally famous so he had almost nowhere to hide.
Under the guise of a straight sports biography Andre the Giant is, in truth, a horror movie with a heart.