I approach Mark Schultz with caution. In 1996, the ex-wrestler’s brother, Dave, was shot dead by the man who had been sponsoring them both, John du Pont. Discussing such a tragedy requires sensitivity – and Schultz has proved himself to be a social media firecracker. Having initially been wildly supportive of Foxcatcher, Bennett Miller’s dramatisation of his story, Schultz then viciously rejected the film, after reading how some critics interpreted it.
“You think I’m going to sit back and watch you destroy my name and the reputation I sweat blood for?” he spat at Miller on Twitter. “You ain’t seen nothing yet, dude.” Similar threats followed: Schultz hated the film now, hated Miller, hated everything “that scum” touched. Then, a fortnight later, he apologised, saying he loved Foxcatcher, calling Miller “the greatest director ever”. He was, he wrote, “temporarily insane”.
Schultz, competing alongside his brother, won gold at the 1984 Olympics and a 1985 World Championship title when Du Pont, a patriotic philanthropist, asked him to help work on a new wrestling programme at Pennsylvania’s Villanova University and lead the US to further victory. Schultz, jobless and broke, accepted the job, but Du Pont became increasingly invasive. A demoralised Schultz came sixth at the 1988 Olympics and left Du Pont’s Foxcatcher Farm, where he’d been living and training, to be replaced by Dave. He went into UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) for a while and continued as a wrestling coach. Since the film’s success, he’s been getting into corporate speaking, talking about overcoming adversity.
Schultz was a consultant on the film, but had no control over it. A quiet, uncomfortable study of the queasy power dynamic between Schultz, Dave and Du Pont (Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo and Steve Carell, respectively), Miller’s film fictionalises to find truths, playing things up and down to suit his themes (money, power, father figures, America). One of Schultz’s major gripes is his character’s emotional fragility. “I hate the way I’m portrayed,” he tweeted in December, just before the mega-rant. Tatum certainly plays him as insecure and sensitive, a slumped underdog despite his victories. “I don’t see how anybody could see an Olympic champion as being emotionally fragile,” Schultz says now, aghast. “It’s the complete opposite of what you have to be.”
Foxcatcher has clearly put him in a spin. Speaking on the phone from Oregon, he says: “I go back and forth. When I saw the film at Cannes last year, that was the first time I had seen the final version. The audience gave it an eight-minute ovation. I was relieved because, while I was watching it, it was really uncomfortable. I was like, ‘That’s not me, that never happened.’ But everybody jumped out of their seats and cheered, and I was like, ‘Holy crap, these people really like this movie.’ Then the publicity started. The first article I read compared it to Behind the Candelabra.”
Quite. There’s a scene halfway through where Du Pont wakes up Schultz and demands some nocturnal wrestling practice. A brief, darkened scene then finds the pair on the floor, a huffing, puffing Du Pont writhing atop a motionless Schultz before levering himself off, grunting. It’s ambiguous. It could be mere wrestling; it could be sex; it could be rape. Either way, the next scene has Schultz half dressed, cutting Du Pont’s hair, snorting cocaine and being playfully tactile.
“I got so angry when I heard that,” Schultz says of the comparison with Liberace biopic Candelabra. “I thought, ‘OK, maybe it’s just this one guy.’ Then other articles were coming out. And then I read another article about this homosexuality, and I was like, ‘Sonofabitch! Other people are thinking this!’ No way am I gonna let this go on. Sony hired a publicist to try and control me, make sure I didn’t go off the ranch, make sure I didn’t explode. But nobody can control me, it’s impossible. And I started reading other articles like that, and I started getting more and more angry. I called my publicist and said, ‘Hey man, what are you doing, how can you let this happen? I want that guy’s head on a platter!’ And I’m just pissed off.
“Finally, I read one article from the Washington Times, where the guy made it sound like Bennett Miller intended to create this idea that a homosexual relationship could have existed between me and that lowlife pig. I was like, ‘That’s it, you are fucking dead.’ I called up my publicist to say, ‘You’re fired!’ And I called up Bennett and threatened to kill him. I apologised later, and then he invited me to the Oscars, but I just couldn’t take it any more.”
The Washington Times did indeed take a leap, stating: “Du Pont and Mark Schultz were rumoured to be lovers.” (It’s a rumour I haven’t come across elsewhere.) Schultz says that, after seeing an early cut in 2013, he’d asked Miller to remove the scene. “I thought it looked gay,” he says. “And he said, ‘No it’s not gay, it’s just showing how Du Pont is gradually encroaching upon your privacy and personal space.’ And I was like, ‘Really? OK.’”
Despite the Twitter tantrums, Schultz ended up going to the Oscars, where the film was nominated for five awards. There’s a gallery of smiling selfies on his Facebook page, including one of him and the director captioned: “Me and Bennett laughing at the Oscars.” So what happened between his outbursts and the Oscars? Did he speak to Miller? “Yeah, well,” he begins, but starts laughing uncontrollably for a good 15 seconds. “Oh God, I didn’t really even know how Twitter worked, I didn’t use it very much. I figure I’m tweeting to about 30 of my friends. Then the next thing I know, it’s in the New York Times and I’m like, ‘What the fuck!’” He cracks up again.
“So I wrote Bennett right away and said, ‘Look, man.’ I have the power to really ruin somebody’s life. If I threaten them, physically, I can scare them. And I can just ruin their life. I didn’t wanna do that to Bennett. I never admitted I made a mistake, but I apologised to him for the way I was tweeting. I didn’t want him to feel this intimidation that I know I can make people feel if I want to. I didn’t wanna ruin Bennett Miller’s life.”
I still don’t know how Schultz feels about Foxcatcher, because he doesn’t quite know himself. “I’m so biased, I can’t tell,” he says. “I don’t have any opinion about it. My only opinion about the film is based on what other people think. Most people write to me on Facebook, Twitter, they love the film, thank God. Then I forgot about all these idiot critics and reviewers who have been trying to imply a sexual relationship.”
Ultimately, has he made peace with Foxcatcher? “I’ll put it to you this way: I’m glad things turned out exactly the way they turned out. I’m glad it was made. I’m not really happy it was made with that scene in it. But I’m glad it was made. I’m glad my brother was immortalised. I’m glad it launched my speaking career. And I’m glad I exploded on Twitter, and I’m glad I apologised.”
• Foxcatcher is out on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on 18 May.
