Undisputed_ How to Become the World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps - Chris Jericho [29]
Another one of the stars of the documentary was our pig-faced mascot Arthur. During our very first rehearsal for Fozzy Osbourne, I found a pig mask on the floor of the studio and told Rich that the pig would make a great mascot for us, in the fine tradition of Iron Maiden’s Eddie and Dio’s Murray. The idea was that Arthur wasn’t a guy wearing a mask, but a human being stricken with swinus, a very rare disease that transforms the face of its victims into that of a pig. So we put Arthur in a Boy Scout outfit, gave him a metal hook for a hand, and voilà: instant mascot.
The director of the electronic press kit was Lawrence O’Flavin, whom we quickly renamed Lawrence Awful Haven. His sole claim to fame was making a Volkswagen commercial. Rich and I had specific ideas of what we wanted to do with the film, while Lawrence had his own thoughts. But he was so pompous and arrogant in conveying them that we totally ignored him, blowing off pretty much all of his suggestions. We ended up getting into a lot of disagreements about what was and what wasn’t funny, disagreements exacerbated by the fact that we had a much wider sense of humor than he did.
Take the famous Monty Python cheese skit, where an obsessed fromage aficionado names a staggering list of cheeses in one breath: “White Stilton, Danish Blue, Double Gloucester, Cheshire, Dorset Blue Vinney, Brie, Roquefort, Pont l’Évêque,” et cetera. Frank knew the entire bit by heart and decided that K.K. had worked in a cheese shop while stranded in Japan and would go off about how much he loved cheese and name them all. Rich and I thought it was hilarious, but O’Flavin wouldn’t have it.
“We’re not going to do that. It’s too esoteric for our demographic.”
Too esoteric for our demographic? We were the demographic!
After a giant fight the cheese bit stayed, but O’Flavin’s pretentiousness and incompetence continued when he set off $10,000 worth of pyro for a scene with no cameras rolling. Les Grossman was not happy and told him to fuck his own face.
Our Spinal Tap homage was turning into the real thing.
When it was all said and done, Fozzy—Unleashed, Uncensored, Unknown turned out better than it had any right to. MTV bought the rights to air the movie, and MuchMusic in Canada ran it a few dozen times as well. Zakk loved it and could quote most of it by heart and even turned Ozzy on to it. Sadly, Megaforce decided not to release it on DVD and it just kind of disappeared. A few years later I bought a DVD-making machine and made a thousand copies to sell on my own, not for the money, but for the fans who’d heard about it and had never gotten the chance to see it. I sold it until I was served a cease-and-desist order from Megaforce. If you’re a huge Fozzy fan (and who isn’t?) and you don’t have the DVD, I bet you can find it on eBay—or you can pick one up Sundays between 4 and 6 p.m., when I’m selling them from the back of my trunk on the corner of 53rd and 3rd. See ya then.
CHAPTER 8
Heeeeere’s Belding!
WrestleMania is the biggest show of the year for the WWE.
It’s the night when every performer vies to steal the show and where careers are made or broken. I would never be a true WWE Superstar until I had been a part of WrestleMania, and on April 2, 2000, I finally got my chance. My debut Mania match was a Triple Threat vs. Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit, in a Two-Fall match for both the Intercontinental and European titles. Angle had just arrived in the WWE a few months earlier and was getting a huge push by holding both titles. It was decided that Benoit would pin me to win the Intercontinental