I was very surprised when I recently saw the film "Foxcatcher". While I love wrestling and did this through high school, I was surprisingly unmoved by this movie--mostly because of the bizarre performance by Steve Carrell as well as the script occasionally playing fast and loose with the facts of the story. So, when I saw that the "30 for 30" series did a film about this same subject, I was eager to see it.
The story of John du Pont and his Foxcatcher wrestling team is told here through interviews with many world-class American wrestlers, a few other interviews and stock footage. The story begins with Mark Schultz and his being lured to the du Pont wrestling team, Foxcatcher, in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Eventually, he'd leave the compound and give up wrestling after the 1988 Olympics but his brother, Dave, then came to Foxcatcher...and then tragedy occurred. The interviewees explain du Pont's strange obsession with wrestling as well as paranoia, arrogance, drug abuse and emotional decline that led to him inexplicably murdering Dave. To this day, no one is exactly sure WHY he did this...and folks in the film make their best guesses. And, why those around him didn't stop him or at least leave this crazy compound is explained as well. What I found amazing is that du Pont sure acted crazy...yet folks stayed because of tunnel vision and denial! All in all, an interesting story and about the best summary of the events that led to the murder back in the 1990s.
By the way, maybe it's just me, but I always felt that there might have been some homo-erotic quality to all this but it wasn't mentioned in this or "Foxcatcher".