Scene Stealer: Beating the count with ‘The Wrestler’s’ life story

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Title designer Kristyn Hume had less than two minutes to summarize the life of pro wrestler Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson for the opening title sequence of director Darren Aronofsky’s ‘The Wrestler.’ Using a basic outline of the Ram’s early wrestling days leading up to the biggest match of his career in Madison Square Garden, Hume created dozens of posters, magazine covers, newspaper articles and photo spreads in Photoshop over the course of a full year to simulate a massive collage spread. ‘When we started, it was going to be one magazine spread per credit,’ she says. ‘Then it escalated.’ For many of the spreads, Hume took actual magazine articles and cleared out the info and replaced it with articles she wrote. ‘I grew up with my brothers watching [wrestling], but I used base ideas from other articles to get the terminology right.’ For the fliers, she included names of friends of loved ones and then ‘wrestlerized’ them. Hume even used her own middle name to become the wrestler Killer Joy.

-- Patrick Kevin Day

(Photo courtesy Kristyn Hume / Fox Searchlight)