BRM Reviews Kayfabe Commentaries Guest Booker w/ Vince Russo

[Big Red Machine]

This is quite possibly the most-anticipated edition of the Guest Booker series. Many fans saw this as a chance to judge for themselves whether or not Russo is the moron most people claim that he is. A chance to determine whether or not he actually gets the wresting business.

They started off with a basic shoot interview and you do get the sense that Russo was definitely a wrestling fan growing up. He also does give some interesting insights into things like why promotions switched from mostly squashes and angles on TV to having competitive matches on TV when they moved to prime time, but he also says a lot of things that drive me nuts.

Russo says that you can’t do a WCW Invasion without Hogan, Hall, and Nash- BS! You can’t do an NWO angle without them. You can definitely do a WCW angle without them, though. At prompting from Sean Oliver he later adds Booker T, Flair, Sting, and Goldberg to this list, but I think that immediately saying that you absolutely need Hogan, Hall, and Nash for this angle to work really speaks to Russo’s mindset.

He also says that the way WWF brought WCW in didn’t make sense. IMO, Shane buying WCW out from under Vince’s nose and trying to use it to put his father (whom he had been feuding with at the time) out of business made PERFECT sense. What does Russo say IS logical, though? Bringing ECW into it! WTF?!

Russo thinks that a promoter should let a writer do whatever he/she wants. He says a bad promoter (although he uses the term “boss”) will look over the writer’s shoulder and ask “why are you doing this? Why are you doing that?” If you don’t have a reason for booking your match/angle… DON’T BOOK IT! If you are writing a story and can’t explain the actions of your characters, then you need to go back and rethink those actions. He also stresses the point that the characters' actions have to make logical sense from the characters' point of view. He says that is his view of logic in wrestling. What he misses is that the other elements of your story have to make sense, too! For example, if Hogan, Hall, and Nash don’t work for the WWF, how do they take over the TitanTron?

I’m not trying to say that everything he says is bad. I actually agree with him that getting titles mixed up in an angle like this usually makes it feel less real. There are, of course, ways to make it work, such as the invaders using the titles a way to get themselves continuously booked on the shows (which they need, because they don't work for the company), or something like Chris Hero wanting to win the ROH Title specifically for the purpose of throwing it in the trash, but with the way that the WWF did it in the Invasion Angle, I agree with Russo that not having the titles would have been better.

Another problem that Russo has is that he contradicts himself in his booking. For example, he says that Vince would never rehire Hogan, Hall, and Nash because they jumped ship, but has no problem saying that Vince would hire back Luger. Even worse, he has Bischoff sell Vince on how dangerous the nWo are by saying that Bischoff couldn’t control them so they killed WCW... but then somehow has Bischoff convince Vince that he is the only person who can control the nWo. WHAT?

Russo says that he is doing this with practically no knowledge of the WWF product at the time, and who was on the roster. My first thought was “how the hell do you book an invasion (or any angle) without knowing who was on the roster?” but Russo doesn’t do too shabby a job of it, using only a few big names on either side (plus the McMahons). The beginning of what Russo books is actually very good, (up until the point when he starts trying to integrate WCW guys who aren’t Hogan, Hall, and Nash), but the lack of preparation really irks me.

Speaking of things that really irk me, we have my number one disappointment with this DVD: This was advertised as Russo rebooking the WCW invasion of WWF. The problem is that Russo only books THE BEGINNING of the invasion. Where he leaves you off, you haven’t even had a WWF vs. WCW match yet! I have discovered, unfortunately, that Kayfabe Commentaries rarely delivers on exactly what is advertised with these DVDs, and that is just plain not fair to the customer. It feels like they put out their hype before they even tape the DVD, and don’t bother to change the hype if it doesn’t match up to the content.

Now to answer the big question here: Does Russo understand the wrestling business? I think so, but not necessarily in the way that many fans (and wrestlers) enjoy it. A lot of his comments here about characters and storytelling remind me of an anecdote that Lance Storm told in one of his shoot interviews (RF Video, vol. 2, I think) about a conversation he once had with Russo’s writing partner Ed Ferrara. Lance looked at the WCW run sheet, which was filled with backstage segments, then jokingly said to Ed “You’re not afraid to write a pre-tape or two, are you?” Ferrara, entirely seriously, responded, “well, we have to tell those stories.” I think the point that Russo misses is that you can tell stories within the context of a match just as well as you can with a promo, segment, or post-match angle. For a half-hour show like MTV’s Wrestling Society X, I think Russo would make a decent booker, but for a two-hour show where fans expect wrestling, his five minute matches and millions or pre-tapes will turn people off.

Now to answer the other big question: Should you buy this DVD? No. It is maybe worth renting, if you are curious about Russo’s booking ability unfiltered by Vince McMahon, Jeff Jarrett, or AOL Standards and Practices, but not worth buying.