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Mark Schultz still angry over ‘Foxcatcher’: Went from ‘'Rocky' to 'Rocky Horror'’

In December 2014, champion Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz blasted the locally focused drama Foxcatcher, saying that “everything I’ve ever said positive about the movie I take back.” He later apologized, saying he “tweeted out of anger.”

In December 2014, champion Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz blasted the locally focused drama Foxcatcher, saying that "everything I've ever said positive about the movie I take back." He later apologized, saying he "tweeted out of anger."

However, despite that apology, Schultz appears to still be distinctly unhappy with how the film turned out, saying that it turned his account of the story from "Rocky into Rocky Horror."

Foxcatcher revolves around the January 1996 murder of Dave Schultz, Mark's brother and best friend, at the hands of Newtown Square millionaire John du Pont. And while the base of the story is true, Schultz has taken issues with liberties taken by director Bennett Miller that were not in Schultz book, Foxcatcher, the film's original source material.

Primarily, the problem is the implied connection between Schultz and murderer du Pont. Via DailyStar:

"I never had a friendship with him. I never even wanted to be around him. "I didn't even go to Foxcatcher Farm, I went to work at Villanova University, which was 20 miles away.

"The movie tries to imply that there was some connection with the murder and me. I left and he wanted me to come back or something like that.

"But the movie cut out seven years of time. I was gone for seven years by the time of the murder."

Similarly, Schultz is disturbed by the apparent homosexual undertones presented in the film between his character and Steve Carell's John du Pont — which he says is impossible, given that du Pont was a eunuch:

He revealed: "One of his mother's horses threw him off and he landed straddling a fence.

"His nuts got infected and they had to cut them off. So he couldn't have sex, that whole homosexual thing was impossible even if he wanted it."

And, finally, Schultz cites the lack of a trip to the Olympics in the film as evidence that director Miller had a negative impact:

"Why didn't they put that in the film? Why didn't they put us winning the Olympics in the film? 

"In my book I come out like a winner in the end. But the movie is just down, down, down." 

However, despite the problems Schultz still has with Foxcatcher so long after its release, he tells entertainment blog ShortList that he remains "happy that my brother was immortalized." Even if it wasn't in the way he was hoping.

"I didn't expect Miller to choose the darkest part of my life to focus on — Dave's murder — and expand that into a movie," he told ShortList. "It ended up being almost the complete opposite - a nightmare, a horror story - they turned it from Rocky into The Rocky Horror Show."

Foxcatcher is out on Blu-ray and DVD today.

[DailyStar | ShortList]