Andre the Giant Documentary Director on Andre, WWE and More

TV Insider held a recent interview with the director of Andre the Giant documentary, Jason Hehir, discussing Andre the Giant and HBO’s upcoming documentary on his life and career.

On the topic of working with Bill Simmons, Hehir stated he initially did not feel he was the right person to direct the film but changed his mind after a meeting he had with Simmons.

“It turned out we had the exact sensibilities for this story. The goals of the story we wanted to tell, which was to demythologize this mythical figure and tell the story of Andre Roussimoff the human being rather than Andre the Giant the wrestling character.”

On the topic of his lack of WWE knowledge, Hehir stated it actually gave him a better level of objectivity for the film’s direction. It allowed him to look at the myth of Andre from a different perspective than the one WWE has promoted for decades.

“I wasn’t aware of all the details of his mythology and it enabled me and my team to go in there with more of a different pair of eyes. Was he really 7-foot-4? Was he really 500 pounds? The first line in his Wikipedia page, when we started researching, was that he was from Grenoble, France, which turns out to be six hours south of where he is from.

Even the most basic details of this man were called into question as soon as we started making this film. That was challenging but really fun because you couldn’t rely on things that we’ve come to rely on as filmmakers now. Google and Wikipedia are out because all the facts coming up there turned out to be false, so we really had to do literally on-the-ground research.

We were going door to door in the village he grew up in France with old black and white photos of him as a child and asking if they knew any of the other people in the photos. We wanted to get the true story of his childhood rather than the mythologize version.”

On the topic of getting WWE’s support for this project, Hehir stated Vince McMahon wanted Andre’s story to be handled with the upmost respect possible due to the reverence of his legacy in the company.

“He was a lot more subdued than I expected. I didn’t know what to expect, but I’ve seen Vince McMahon the character. I’ve seen him being interviewed on television and in action at WWE events and on TV. I know what his public persona is. He was a lot more subdued, a lot more quiet, a lot more solemn.

It was clear from the moment I stepped foot in his office how deadly serious he was of the story of Andre being told the right way. He has an enormous amount of reverence for Andre the Giant. I think part of that is due to the fact that his father, Vince McMahon Sr., was one of Andre’s best friends. I think Vince is very cognizant that we have one chance to tell this story, and it has to be told the right way.

It’s not going to be a puff piece. It’s not going to be a love letter to Andre. We also have to tell it with respect and reverence for a guy who, in Vince’s eyes, helped make pro wrestling what it is today. Andre was a huge cog in the early machine of WWF, now WWE. Vince, even today, feels a great debt of gratitude to Andre and what he did to the business.”

On the topic of interviewing Andre’s family for the documentary, Hehir stated it was his proudest work and only needed a bottle of wine to bribe Andre’s brother to work on the project.

“We had to go to his house with a bottle of wine basically to bribe him to sit down for an interview with us the next day because we couldn’t reach him by phone before we got over to Paris.

We were told the family would probably be difficult to sit down with for a variety of reasons. We were told they’d be tough to track down. They spoke no English whatsoever. They are from rural France. The brother finally agreed to do it. We did the interview in front of their childhood home where Andre and his family grew up. He opened up the house to us, and we found this treasure trove of mementos and memorabilia—the house has largely been unoccupied for two decades.

[His brother] opened the house for us with things in there nobody has ever seen before: baby pictures, child pictures, old flyers, and programs from his early days in wrestling. These are things they are sitting on that they don’t realize are gold to someone like me who is making film about a subject. I’m very happy we can get people who knew him that well.

Other topics discussed during the interview included Heir mentioning the film contains interviews from several notable people from Andre’s career and being very excited to show the film soon to audiences.