Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Jack Victory [RF Video Shoot Interview]

The Good
One of the early RF Video shoot interviews as Jack Victory on the shelf during his ECW run talks about his early years in Mid-South and World Class, his peak years in the UWF, his time in WCW and finally his return with ECW. It is your standard RF Video shoot, but because it is an early on it seems less formulaic and more open. When Jack shares a couple Von Erich stories, they egg him on to tell more! This is likely the start of RF's fascination with the erratic behavior of the Von Erichs. Tales of murdering cats, openly abusing drugs, no-showing small towns and other shenanigans are all detailed by Jack Victory more than a decade ago. Jack has endless road stories about Missy Hyatt, Buddy Roberts, the Samoan Swat Team and John Tatum. I don't really know a lot about the timeline of RF Video shoot interviews, but this seems to really be early on and sets some standards of wanting to hear about road stories and ribs. Jack Victory seems to have them right at his fingertips and is a shockingly good storyteller, so this is a success in many ways.

The Bad
I guess if you know the RF Video formula than you can pretty much expect the linear discussion that happens. What's worse is this is back when they used to have call-in questions that were just awful because they had often just gone over those things in question. Jack is funny and has a million stories, but there is not much depth to this and it seems to set RF Video shoots on the wrong path. Road stories and ribs are entertaining, but once you've heard them, that's all there is. Discussions about psychology, the inner workings of the business and how people developed is always a preferable narrative. That is why the shoots with Bill Watts, Jim Cornette, Raven and even Lanny Poffo are great and interviews with WWF midcarders who just answer questions one-by-one are not great.

The Rating: ***1/2