Twenty years after his obsession with wrestling nearly ruined his acting career, David Arquette can not let it go. There is a shame that comes from being at the center of the moment that Vince Russo claims “killed the business,” an angle from which an already teetering WCW would never recover. And there is a hurt that comes from being so wholly rejected by one of your greatest passions, to be kicked and abused by the industry and fanbase that has brought you such joy in your private life, that you so badly want to be a part of in public.
So what happens when a laughingstock takes stock of himself? That is the question at the heart of the new documentary You Cannot Kill David Arquette, as its titular star seeks both personal and professional redemption by paying his dues and taking his lumps, bumps, and jumps at the altar of pro wrestling. And if you cannot kill David Arquette, neither can you kill his connection with on-again, off-again tag team partner RJ City.
Ahead of the film’s release on August 28th, Arquette joined Justin Morissette on Sportsnet 650’s Wrestle Central to talk his return to wrestling, his struggles with mental health, and his friendship with the late Luke Perry in an interview that was crashed not once but twice by Arquette’s Canadian foe turned friend, RJ City. With the radio show on hiatus as Justin recovers from a broken leg following a vicious assault in Vancouver’s West End, it’s a conversation that is presented in print as a special guest feature on POST Wrestling.
Justin Morissette: First of all David, I really loved the film and thought it was a genuinely moving love letter to the business. But before we talk about the documentary I want to go all the way back to 2000 with you because as a lifelong fan yourself, is that kind of touching tribute to pro wrestling what you thought you were making with Ready To Rumble?
David Arquette: *laughs* No, Ready To Rumble was always supposed to be over-the-top fun, sort of humorous look at wrestling. I think people got a little upset that it kind of made the wrestling fans look dumb, or just didn’t take it seriously or something. But you know, people have grown to love that movie, and I love that movie. And I kind of did this as an unauthorized sequel to Ready To Rumble.
JM: Well, I’m glad that you said that because I actually went back and watched Ready To Rumble for the first time last night after seeing You Cannot Kill David Arquette, and I’m glad that I did because I was struck by the parallels in both stories. Is there some Jimmy King (Oliver Platt’s character) in David Arquette’s wrestling redemption?
DA: There is! There was a lot of that. There was definitely that feeling. I actually tried to get Scott Caan to be in the wrestling documentary because he’s a friend. But he said, “No, bro. I can’t do that.” He’s a private person and all that. But I’m so glad you said that it’s a love letter to wrestling because that’s really what I wanted it to be. It’s something I’d loved for a long time, and then after what happened in 2000, people got really upset and since then I’ve always had this weird feeling about wrestling. I’d go to matches and a lot of people would be mean about it. Maybe one person would say, “Hey Champ!” or something like that. But for the most part, I was just a joke. So I really wanted to come back and prove myself.
JM: So much of the documentary is about your quest for respect and camaraderie in wrestling, and as you mentioned, obviously the fans rejected you in WCW. But what about the wrestlers? Because we do hear from DDP in the film that if you want to be mad at someone, be mad at Vince Russo, that the blame falls on booking. But did you feel resentment from the boys backstage over your involvement at that time?
DA: Yeah, definitely. There were definitely people who were upset. I was in a locker room and I asked Booker T. I said, “How many times have you been champ, Booker T?” And he said, “I’ve never been the champ.” And just… oh my gosh. So I could understand it. Scott Steiner was another one who had never been the champ and I could tell he just didn’t want me around. *laughs* I understand it. He should have been the champ, not me. But, you know, listen. It was a bad idea. It was a bad idea that has lasted 20 years.
JM: You’re working through a lot of issues throughout the film, and as your journey takes you to Mexico for training, it sort of hit me how perfect wrestling is as almost therapy for what you’re going through — this exercise that requires complete trust between participants, which can be a difficult thing when you’re battling anxiety. Of course, that training helped you physically get into shape and feel comfortable working a match, but how much did it help you mentally as well?
DA: It helped a lot. I mean, you learn so much through this process, so much about what you can handle. How to get through really tough times, and really power through it. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication. It also takes a lot of learning from other people, learning the ropes, just learning the dialect. I mean, there’s things that people say in the wrestling world that unless you are part of it, you just won’t understand what they’re talking about. Stuff like, “That sucks.” You say, “How’s that powerbomb to take?” And they’ll say “That sucks.” And what they really mean is it hurts so bad that you should never even do it. Just don’t do that. But they won’t say that a wrestler will never say “That hurts.” I go around saying it all the time, so maybe I’m really not a wrestler? But it’s such a painful thing. I guess you’re not supposed to say how painful it is. But gosh, it’s painful.
JM: There’s a lot of struggles in your return to the business, but it seems like one of the first big indie names who’s really enthused to work with you, and not just enthused to beat you up and break light tubes over your back, is one of my fellow Canadians, RJ City. How did that connection come about?
DA: I don’t know why that connection came about or how. I don’t know what cursed me to be… I’m just kidding. I’m a huge fan. I was a huge fan of RJ City. I had this friend Ben Joseph, who lives up in Toronto who’s a writing partner of mine, and we often talk about wrestling, the wrestlers we’re into, this and that. He tells me there’s this really funny wrestler up here named RJ City and then I started following him on Twitter, and his whole wrestling career is on Twitter. He has wrestled all over for years, he’s wrestled all the greats, but he is especially good at wrestling with fellow Twitter people. He’s a really funny guy. So he thought I was siphoning his jokes. Like he’d make a joke and then I’d tweet something that would be sort of using his joke in response, and he’d take offense to it. So first off, he got offended by me. And then we met at WrestleMania in New Orleans, and we did his RJ City Makes Coffee In His Underwear show that’s on Sundays, which he does every Sunday. And we became friends, or rather, I became his friend and he still hates me I think. *laughs* But I had my first match back with him and then we started tag-teaming, across the country and in Canada as well. And I just, I learned a lot from him. My favorite time I’m wrestling is when I’m tag team wrestling, it’s just a lot easier on the body. I have someone else there to say, “You know what, you probably shouldn’t do that,” because I don’t really have a great gauge of that in my head. I learned a lot from RJ. I still owe him a talk show appearance. That was part of our deal, that I would get him on a talk show. But all the talk shows rejected me on this round of press, so…
JM: Well I would love to talk to RJ so if you can make that happen, I feel like I can make that promise come true for you.
DA: Oh my gosh, come on RJ. Pick up. Pick up the phone RJ, pick up the phone! *David pulls out his phone* Hold on one second. RJ! RJ!
RJ City: *on speakerphone* Hello, is this Dick Cavett?
DA: I’m trying to get you on a talk show.
RJ: What do you mean? What happened?
DA: I’m trying to get you on this talk show with me! It’s for Sportsnet. It’s the big wrestling show up there.
RJ: Sportsnet? You mean Aftermath??
DA: What? No, no, no. It’s Wrestle Central on Sportsnet 650.
RJ: Oh, okay. But David, this doesn’t count. There’s no couch! I can’t do this from my own couch.
DA: Okay, I’m sorry RJ. I’m still working on it.
RJ: You know the rules, I mean what am I even getting in the green room here? Is there grapes? I’ve got nothing in the fridge.
DA: Yeah, you need a Cobb salad.
RJ: Don’t just tell me “I’m trying to get you on a talk show.” I want to be introduced. And then people have me on and they say “I know you have to go, you have somewhere to be.” And then I get to leave early.
DA: That’s right. Okay, I’ll work it out right next time. I’m sorry RJ.
RJ: Yeah, well, thank you! Talk to Montel. I don’t think he’s changed his number.
DA: I will. I’ll get him. And I’ll call you in a little while, RJ. *hangs up*
JM: A cameo from RJ City!
DA: Sorry about that. I tried to get him on. A bad connection, I’m sorry.
JM: No, I appreciate it! One of my favorite moments in the documentary actually is watching you and RJ talk out how your match will go, intercut with watching it play out in the ring at the same time. And we don’t get to see that process for your match with Nick Gage in GCW. Nick obviously has his public persona as a killer but he’s sort of revealed himself during the pandemic to be a secret sweetie, I think.
DA: Has he really? That’s so funny.
JM: What was it like working with him?
DA: Nick Gage is really a talented wrestler. I mean, what happened in the ring that night was… I mean there’s a lot that went on in that ring that night but the specific of me getting stabbed in the neck was my fault. I pulled his legs when I wasn’t supposed to, and I learned a really important lesson for any wrestler out there: even if stuff’s going wrong in the ring, you have to stick to the plan because if you change something up without the other guy knowing, you can get stabbed in the neck yourself! *laughs* But Nick’s a really talented wrestler. He’s tough and he’s crazy and all that stuff, but I love that he’s revealed himself as kind of a nice guy. He is a nice guy! You know, everyone thought I was crazy for doing that match, and I was. But I’ve learned so much since then even that I think our match would be a lot better (if we did it now). Like, I got upset about something early on and when he was down not looking, I kicked him in the back. Which you’re not supposed to do! *laughs* So it set it all off in this over-the-top, people-getting-out-of-control sort of thing. But (to make amends) as a housewarming present, I did send him a Casper mattress afterward.
JM: I feel like you guys kind of blurred the line that night between fiction and reality, which is when wrestling is at its best, and that match feels like it should be the high point of your return. Right? You guys broke the internet that night and not just wrestling internet but mainstream media as well. In the film, it’s presented as an unraveling point for you as some of the media attention is not particularly kind, let’s say, but how do you look back on that night now
DA: Yeah, I mean, it was. Shortly after that, there was a lot of unraveling. I don’t know, it was a lot of stuff. I learned a lot of stuff through the whole process, and a big thing is that I had to stop beating myself up. Deathmatches are almost a personification of, like… In a deathmatch, anyone who does deathmatches in a way, has something that there’s a pain about inside of them, and they need these matches to either numb it, or… I don’t know. That’s sort of what I’ve noticed, but people have different reasons for doing it. For me, I just beat myself up and it was like a way of feeling pain to avoid pain kind of thing. But after that, I had these surgeries, you go on painkillers but you don’t want to do painkillers too much so you end up drinking too much. It’s this cycle and then… Then we lost Luke (Perry) and it was a very painful time in general. And it really took that, and a lot of therapy and working on myself and figuring out some of my underground trauma and pain that I’d had in the past, to learn how to deal with it in a healthy way. There’s this book called “Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It” and it’s kind of crazy. You actually end up telling yourself “I love myself, I love myself, I love myself” all the time. You do it in the morning, you do it at night, you can do it to meditation, you can do it in the mirror. But what you’re doing is you’re creating a neural pathway in your brain, and you want it to become really strong. And if it’s a neural pathway that your thoughts can go through, your negative thoughts can be redirected to the part of your mind that says “I love myself.” It actually works. It’s worked for me. I’ve been a lot easier on myself. And I did wake up this morning with extreme anxiety, but I went and worked out, and that has been really helpful to me. I’ve also gotten on some different amino acids and different homeopathic things that have helped a lot.
JM: You mentioned Luke Perry there, and I was curious because he does appear in the film. He’s in the car with you when you drive to the hospital after that Nick Gage match, and I believe Jungle Boy is actually the one who’s driving the car as well. Was wrestling something that brought you guys together? Because obviously with his son, he was going to shows quite a bit. Or did you guys have a pre-existing friendship before finding this common fandom?
DA: Yeah, it’s not in the film at all, and it’s a pretty interesting story. He actually did a movie with my sister Alexis called Terminal Bliss. And he was mentioning, “I’m thinking about coming out to Hollywood.” Alexis was like, “Don’t think about it, come out to Hollywood, you can stay at my mom’s house.” So he came out and he moved into our house and lived with us for a couple years. He got cast in 90210 when he was living there, and the rest is history, he just went on this rocket ship to stardom. We always stayed close, he would always come by and like, even after he got 90210 and was this big star, he’d come by and help my mom with some around-the-house chores, that kind of thing. He was such a sweet guy. He was really like salt of the earth, the guy loved going back to Tennessee. He had a ranch there and he would just get in nature, he had a pet pig and he’d love doing things around the farm. He was just such a stand-up guy. So when this wrestling thing came around and I was doing the documentary, he and Jack and his daughter Sophie came by the house and we all bonded and talked. And it really was a beautiful thing that we got to connect, and then we were all on (Joey Janela’s L.A. Confidential) together. And actually, when I got out of the ring that night and I thought I had been stabbed in the neck, I hear Luke’s voice but I don’t see him. He says, “Davey, it’s Luke!” I said, “Luke, is it pumping (blood)?” to check if my neck if I had cut my jugular. And he said it’s not pumping, so I knew I could go back in and finish the match.
JM: Was wrestling something that bonded you guys together even way back when he first came out to Hollywood or did he become a fan later in life through Jack’s involvement?
DA: No, we watched wrestling. We definitely watched wrestling. We loved wrestling. We would watch wrestling, Alexis would watch wrestling. Yeah, it was always this fun thing we enjoyed. Luke was like a real man’s man, you know? He loved rodeos. He loved wrestling. He just really loved tough guy kind of stuff. But I asked him, I said, “How do you feel about Jack wrestling? Is it really exciting when you watch him?” He said, “I’m so scared. Every time I watch him wrestle. I’m just like, aahhh! It’s really hard for me to watch. I mean, he’s my son.”
JM: Which seems to be your family’s reaction to watching you as well!
DA: Yeah, I get it now. I definitely get it. It’s scary. It’s a scary sport. It’s really dangerous. You need proper training if you’re ever gonna try it.
JM: You’ve gone through this redemption arc now and I do feel like fans have embraced you as an indie wrestler. Now that you have that redemption, are you done now? Or are you going to continue working matches here and there?
DA: I don’t know. I do love the business and I love meeting guys like RJ City, and Dalton Castle’s an incredible guy I’ve become friends with. So I don’t know if there’s ways of still being involved, I don’t know. I might. I’m not saying I’ll never do it again. But I do like that it lives in this film and that I’ve sort of answered the haters. It’s kind of cool to just walk away that way.
JM: If the bright lights came calling, I know you’ve conquered the indies, but if say a WWE were to reach out to you, would you be interested in something like that? Or is the sting of WCW hanging over you a little bit too much to want to go back to the major companies again.
DA: *laughing* I would never be in a match where a belt was on the line. I would never do that again. Unless it was a tag team belt or the 24/7 championship. I could be the 24/7 champ, they wouldn’t get mad at me for that. That might be a funny way to do it. I don’t know, I love WWE, I love AEW. I think they have a tremendous product and I love the wrestlers that they have on there. If I were to come back, it’d be in a way to try to shine somebody else up. If it was that way, I would be interested, but I don’t know. I also think maybe I should just go back to my thing and play it safe.
JM: Well ever since that night against Nick Gage, I have been personally salivating over the idea of a street fight at WrestleMania between you and Shane McMahon. Would you be interested in something like that?
DA: Oh my god. A street fight with me and Shane? Well, that’s a different story. He’s got his Raw Underground now, which looks pretty tough. I don’t know. I want to laugh more. I think I’ll stick to the 24/7 belt.
JM: Much more interested in working with R Truth than Shane McMahon then?
DA: I love R Truth, I think R Truth is one of the best in the business right now. I’m such a huge fan of his.
JM: Well, David, before I let you go, I do have to ask because the show is based out of Vancouver, and a few weeks ago, we actually saw the 20th anniversary of New Blood Rising which is the last time our city hosted a pay-per-view from any wrestling company. You appeared on that show as you were in town I believe filming See Spot Run at the time. What do you remember about that night?
DA: I didn’t remember anything about it until I saw it on the internet (a few weeks ago) and I’m there with Anthony Anderson because we were doing the film together. And I think I had a Lucha mask on or something? Yeah, I don’t even remember the match. I love Vancouver. I loved going to see wrestling there. But I don’t remember the match. Do you have any intel on who was in it? [Editor’s note: David interferes in the finish of Kanyon vs Buff Bagwell’s infamous Judy Bagwell On A Pole match, inadvertently costing Kanyon the match and taking a cutter for his troubles.]
JM: I don’t recall. I haven’t seen the show in quite a few years now. But I do remember you being involved on the telecast, which I think was a return for you because you probably hadn’t been on WCW TV in a few months. It was a little while after Ready To Rumble.
DA: Yeah. *laughs* Yeah. I’m sure people were thrilled to see me.
JM: Well David, I have been thrilled to talk to you about this movie and just in general. I was really profoundly moved by watching it. And if wrestling has felt like something that has been a burden on you for the last couple decades, I do want you to know that at least there’s one person in Vancouver right now who views you as a genuine white meat babyface. You could not be more sympathetic and likable in this film and you seem like just the greatest guy. Thank you so much.
DA: Thank you so much. I really appreciate that.
JM: And I’m serious. I would love to talk to RJ City. So if you can make that happen for me, I would love to talk to him about his involvement in the film.
DA: Absolutely I can. We’ll do that immediately. Like, right now.
JM: Incredible! I wanted to tell you too, I understand why you wouldn’t publicize this yourself. But the moment at the end of the movie when Brian Pillman Jr. reveals that every single penny that you made from your WCW run went to his family and the family of Owen Hart… I feel like you could have saved yourself a lot of hurts, because if wrestling fans had known that for the last 20 years, they probably would have loved you the entire time.
DA: I know. You know, it’s funny, they were gonna cut that out and I wanted them just to use the end portion where he says we’re family. But I really wanted Bulletproof Brian Pillman to be in the documentary because he’s such a talented wrestler. And, you know, part of it was just getting some of these guys out there. You know what I mean? Like King Brian Anthony, the guy I wrestled in Northeast Wrestling, just getting some people in the spotlight. … Oh, RJ City’s here!
RJ: Yes? Hello?
DA: Hello RJ!
RJ: Hey, what’s going on everybody?
DA: RJ, this is Justin. Introduce yourself, Justin.
JM: My name is Justin Morissette, and RJ, welcome to Wrestle Central on Sportsnet 650.
RJ: Well, thank you, I myself feel like somewhat of a hub of wrestling knowledge. So it’s nice that my center has met your center.
JM: I wanted to help David fulfill his obligation to you by getting you on a talk show. I understand this is not TV. There’s no green room and everything like that. But I’m happy to have you here.
RJ: Thank you, and I’m really touched. I’m tremendously honored. I also want to specify that this doesn’t really count. You know, it’s certainly a gesture and it tells me that David’s still trying. He just hasn’t quite gotten there. And no offense to your show, which is a fine program, which sounds like judging by the breathiness of your voice, the NPR of wrestling. But I want something a little more. I wanted a green room with grapes and I wanted to be announced, I wanted to wear the hard black shiny shoes. I’m barefoot right now, this is a disgrace.
JM: I’m happy to send you a care package of some kind if that makes the experience complete.
RJ: You know what? Send mine to David. I think he’s gonna need both of them.
JM: Something that I asked David about, and I would be happy to ask you about now as well, is how the connection between the two of you came together. Because it seems like in the early going of his return to wrestling, it’s a lot of people who are kind of eager to maybe take advantage of him and the opportunity to just beat him up a little bit.
RJ: Yes, and also in the middle and end of his wrestling run, too. It was a constant theme. But like all bad things, it started on Twitter. A friend of his was a fan of mine and recommended that David follow me on Twitter. And that’s what he did. And then he started — see if this sounds familiar — he started to respond to my tweets, but in a way where he was kind of siphoning the likes? He would just restate the punchline in his own words, and then people would be liking his tweet, and he’s kind of stepping on my toes a little. And I take my tweets very seriously. I’m not only a wrestler, I’m a raconteur. So I do this thing every Sunday morning, I make coffee in my underwear on YouTube, which is a story for another day. That’s another Central completely. And on it, I called him out for doing that, thinking he’s not gonna respond, not knowing that he really wanted to get back into wrestling. I just thought this guy has bad Twitter etiquette. And then he responded with a video of his own, and all of a sudden we’re going back and forth, and his sister got involved, and as you’ll see in the documentary it blew up into this whole fracas.
JM: Do you view David as a friend now? Or is he still one of your Twitter reply guys?
RJ: I try not to view David as much as possible. You know, what happened was we ended up wrestling, and it was a tough match. I will credit him on his toughness, I haven’t seen anyone give themselves so willingly to the wrestling business. But after I won, I think he was so moved by my oeuvre and my talent that he said, “Let’s team together, and I’ll get you on a talk show.” So that’s why I’ve been teaming with him all over, a bunch of different places, all over the country. And I haven’t gotten on one talk show! So in many ways, this is my own personal Twilight Zone episode. That I’ve made this deal with this man who I thought, you know, listen. He has great intentions. It’s the execution he needs to work on.
JM: That’s such a great moment in the movie, the end of your match in Championship Wrestling from Hollywood. The crowd is just showering boos on the finish, and even though it’s a negative reaction, it’s really a positive reaction for David because everyone is furious that he didn’t win. Which is funny, because boos are all he heard in WCW. And he heard them again that night, but it was in a completely different context. There’s something beautifully poetic about that.
RJ: There is! And that was a challenge. You know, everyone hated this guy. No one took him seriously. No one respected him. How do we structure the match and the story in such a way where they now respect him and they want to see him win? Luckily, I happen to be a far worse person than David. So it was a lot easier for that crowd, including his wife and daughter, to put their anger towards me.
JM: You do seem though like the first person in the documentary who seems genuinely enthused about working with him, both inside and outside of the ring. I know that you don’t want to play up the sincerity of this connection, but is there some honor that you find in helping him find redemption within this business?
RJ: There is. We have a weird kind of connection that really goes beyond wrestling. His father was an actor who I was a fan of, his grandfather was an actor who I was a fan of, and we really seem to bond over old show business and people like that. And especially when we teamed and did the promos and stuff, we really came to view it as our own vaudeville act. It was like Laurel and Hardy in tights. And I think that’s kind of what we bonded over. But I will always be baffled that he decided to look for respect in the least respectful industry I have ever been a part of in my life. I don’t know why he would ask for that. I really think he is like the other side of the human psyche to me. I feel like together we balance each other out.
JM: David, your response?
DA: *laughing* We do bond over Laurel and Hardy and stuff like that, for sure. And it really is fun when we get in the ring together. But yeah, I am the most gullible person in the world, and to be in the wrestling business that’s a really bad thing because I’m literally what a mark is. I’m the kind of guy you pat on the back with chalk on your hand and then when you go to the other rides in the circus, they know they can get you to play the dart game or any kind of rigged game they could get you to join. So yeah, I’m a mark and he’s a heel.
RJ: And he really did this trust fall into the entire wrestling business. And then he hit the ground and landed near me and I basically went, “What the hell was that?” That’s our story in a nutshell.
JM: I asked David earlier if he felt done with wrestling now that he has been redeemed in the eyes of the fans that so loathed him for many years. And he didn’t exactly give a direct answer, but he did sort of say that if he did continue wrestling, it would be in a tag team with you, which is the most fun that he claims to have in the ring. Do you see a future between the two of you as tag partners as well, RJ?
RJ: Yeah, you know how good wrestlers are at staying retired. *laughter from David* It’s certainly a possibility. I mean, there’s always a lot of options on the table in different places in different ways with different teams. I would say that’s probably easily the most fun I think I’ve had in wrestling, despite my best efforts, and I don’t know, maybe. Is he done? I don’t know. There’s a thing about wrestling where it’s satisfying and it hooks you but it’s ultimately somehow unsatisfying enough that you want to keep coming back. It’s very hard to have the perfect match and the perfect performance, which obviously you can tell how hard that is when you watch his acting. *more laughter from David* I don’t know. Will his body hold out? I do not know. Will his children approve? They’ve already seemed to disown him. So at this point, it’s really anyone’s guess, but I may be standing behind him hanging my head in shame regardless of what his decision is.
JM: You guys seem like the perfect pair to work together on one of those late-night WrestleMania weekend shows and of course that whole festival that surrounds WrestleMania didn’t get to happen this year. But will we see perhaps a main event match next year, or whenever crowds are allowed to happen, involving the two of you?
RJ: Even more than that we were supposed to debut the doc at South by Southwest and we were gonna wrestle at the after-party. That was really the first thing during the pandemic that got canceled, right at the beginning of it. And then that whole WrestleMania weekend got wiped, but I say we go bigger than that. I say let’s try to wrestle on Kimmel or something. I think we can go beyond wrestling here. I think we can marry the wrestling world and the talk show world and perhaps that’ll result in the great Rock ‘n’ Wrestling boom again.
DA: You know what the problem is, is, it’s me. I may have done all this work at bringing the wrestling world back (on my side) but the Hollywood world is still definitely not back. *laughs* Like Jimmy Kimmel, all of these guys, they rejected me on coming out to promote this film on their shows. So if this movie does well, there might be like a second round, at which point all these bloodsuckers would be like, “Hey, love to have you on now! Blah blah blah.” So then we’d have to have a talk. I mean, I guess I’m required to get you on a talk show, RJ. So if that does happen, then we might finally be able to get on a talk show.
RJ: Well then, we’ll wrestle then and it’ll all come full circle, and then we’ll split up like Dean and Jerry and we’ll never speak again.
DA: Wow, that’s not nice.
JM: Well, you guys had that match in the film, and you’ve tagged together a number of times as well. Have you wrestled against each other again beyond just that one evening that we see in the documentary?
RJ: Well, when we’ve teamed together, it can be so contemptuous that we often end up wrestling against each other, even though we’re on the same team.
JM: I’m just wondering because I do feel like every great pairing in wrestling history gets a trilogy of matches. Do we have two more chapters yet to be written in the saga of David Arquette and RJ City?
DA: Wow.
RJ: It’s certainly possible. We also have a gripe with Mark Ruffalo, I don’t think he’s a nice person. That’s a common area that me and David have, is not liking Mark Ruffalo. So perhaps if he can wrangle up a partner of his choosing, I’d be happy to have a real all-star tag match to end this trilogy for the good of everyone.
JM: Well, David, maybe we can loop that into what we were talking about earlier. It’ll be you and RJ against Mark Ruffalo and Shane McMahon. What do you think?
DA: I’m into it. I like that idea.
RJ: Oh boy, just gruff men.
DA: Yeah, exactly.
JM: Well boys I will not take offense, RJ, at the fact that you do not view this as a joint talk show appearance for the two of you. I understand the lowly stature of my show here, but I do appreciate you both gracing yourselves on these airwaves.
DA: Not at all. He’s a snob. He’s a snob! He’s an entertainment snob. It’s the worst kind of snob. How can you be snobby about entertainment?
RJ: Well certainly, especially if I’m hanging out with you, David. This is a fine program. And I want to thank you for having me on even though it does not meet the terms of my deal.
JM: Well RJ, I do want you to know as well, having watched the video series that you have been putting out during the pandemic — just fabulously entertaining little animated shorts — that as this show continues to grow, we can look back on this appearance and I will give you permission in the future to tell everyone that you taught me everything that I know about hosting a wrestling talk show.
RJ: I admire your humility, Justin.
DA: And I admire your humility, RJ.
RJ: And I am humiliated, so thank you.
You Cannot Kill David Arquette is available to rent or own across all digital and on-demand platforms as of August 28th, 2020.
Justin Morissette is the host and producer of Sportsnet’s Wrestle Central, typically heard Sundays at 10 PM PST on Sportsnet 650 Radio in Vancouver. The show is currently on hiatus as he recovers in hospital from a broken leg following a vicious assault at the hands of anti-LGBTQ street demonstrators in the heart of Vancouver’s Davie Village. To learn more about his story, or to contribute to his recovery fund, visit the GoFundMe set up in his name here.