THE DEATH TOUR: An Interview With Executive Producer Chris Jericho

Introduction

The Death Tour follows wrestling hopefuls across remote Indigenous communities in Canada’s far North on ‘the most grueling tour in indie wrestling’. This test of strength and grit will show how far some are willing to go to live their dreams.

Synopsis

Each winter, when the lakes freeze over, a motley gang of professional wrestlers leaves Winnipeg on a one-of-a-kind wrestling trip through remote Indigenous communities of Northern Manitoba. Wrestling insiders call it ‘The Death Tour.’ This is both for the physical hardships endured on the road and the emotional toll it takes on those who experience it. Famous for its star-studded alumni, the trip offers wrestlers a rare taste of fame and a chance to see if they have what it takes to make it in professional wrestling.

The Death Tour is a road trip movie like none other. It takes viewers on an epic journey to a part of the world rarely captured on camera. We experience these remote communities through the wrestlers’ eyes as they drive through the tundra, sleep on ring mats after shows, and face their inner demons. Some hope that surviving the Death Tour will propel them to wrestling Superstardom. Others, their bodies battered and scarred, head North for one last chance to hear the roar of an adoring crowd.

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For the communities these wrestlers visit, The Death Tour is a not-to-be-missed event. The wrestlers are celebrities for kids in these towns. This is why they are invited to speak at schools about battles fought in their own lives. Sage “The Matriarch” Morin, talks about her struggles after the loss of her two-year-old son to a drunk driver. Wrestling brought her back from the brink and now performing for Indigenous youth gives her life a new purpose. Veteran wrestler Sean “Massive Damage” Dunster tears up as he tells local kids about his battle with painkillers. For years doctors have warned him his next match could be his last. But Sean’s not ready to give up his way of life just yet.

Dez “The Eskimofo” Loreen, a self-trained Inuit wrestler from Inuvik, had his own personal struggles with mental health and substance abuse before he decided to bring wrestling to the Arctic. He’s joined the tour to learn the moves he’ll need to wow crowds back home. Sara “The Scottish Warrior” McNicoll hopes wrestling will give her a chance at life as a pro athlete. The sport is a healthy outlet for the rage and regrets she feels at being forced to give up on her Olympic dream in her teens.

Keeping it all together is Tony Condello the tour’s promoter. At eighty-one, this will be his fiftieth Death Tour. Tony’s a wrestling icon who’s helped shape the careers of many wrestling greats. He hopes to continue putting on tours for Indigenous fans for years to come. The Death Tour is a meditation on the inner strength some discover when alone, exhausted, and pushed to the limit. This deeply personal documentary travels through Canada’s frozen North and into the wrestlers’ minds. They battle the elements, each other, and the impacts of our colonial past. The wrestlers and their fans will draw upon vastly different pasts to come together over their shared love of wrestling. They’re both fighting for their futures and searching to heal themselves along the way.

Chris Jericho: Executive Producer

Over his thirty-year career, Chris Jericho has cemented himself as one of pro wrestling’s most prolific and entertaining showmen. Often referred to as the Greatest Of All Time, Jericho is an eight-time world champion and one of the founders of All Elite Wrestling on Warner Bros Discovery. Beyond the ring, Chris has released eight studio albums and garnered a Gold record as the lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Fozzy.

He is also known for his work as a filmmaker and media personality. He produces and hosts the popular podcast Talk is Jericho, competed in Dancing with the Stars and The Masked Singer; hosted the ABC game show Downfall, narrated the acclaimed documentary series Dark Side of the Ring, and acted in films such as Terrifier 2 (2022), and the Country Hearts franchise. Behind the camera, Chris is the writer and producer of the feature documentary, I’m Too Old for This Sh*t: A Heavy Metal Fairy Tale, distributed by Gravitas Ventures. He’s also the Executive Producer of The Death Tour.

Interview

Cinema Scholars’ own Glen Dower recently sat down with Executive Producer and wrestling legend Chris Jericho to discuss his new documentary feature, The Death Tour. They talk about Chris’s introduction to the Death Tour in the late 1980s, debuting the documentary at Slam Dance, and how pro wrestling can make your dreams come true, among other topics.

(Edited for content and clarity)

Glen Dower:

Mr. Jericho, how are you Good Sir.

Chris Jericho:

Awesome. I’m doing great. Thanks.

Glen Dower:

It’s great to meet you at last, and we are here to talk about The Death Tour. At first glance, it would seem like, ‘Oh, a serial killer movie’…

Chris Jericho:

Right!

Glen Dower:

However, it could be further from the truth. Can you tell us how you became involved?

Chris Jericho:

Well, I became involved in The Death Tour when I did one way back on my very first pro wrestling tour in 89. And then hearing about it over the years, and everybody that ever made it out of Canada or didn’t make it have done one of these tours. There are no serial killers involved. No one’s dying. But mentally you could die on the road. Your testicular fortitude, as we say in the business could die because it is so hard to do one of these tours. But why would someone want to do it?

And the reason is because it is almost a badge of honor. If you come up in Canadian wrestling or even in the States. I mean, there’s been a lot of people that have come up from America to do a death tour. It gives you a chance to get the reps that you need when you’re first starting. But more importantly, there is such a legacy and a legend behind this tour that if you can do one and survive it and get a little bit of name recognition from it, it could help you in your overall career. And like I said, it is almost a badge of honor to do one and to thrive on it.

Glen Dower:

Yes indeed. We follow a group throughout the film, and as you said, they are finding what an audience is like. They’re finding how to present themselves. They’re finding a character. Do you think ‘Chris Jericho’ was formed on the first Death Tour?

Chris Jericho:

There was nothing formed on it at all. It was more along the lines of, I think when you’re first starting, there’s a lot of glamor that you expect. And it’s one of the reasons, and I think the audience watching figures out as well that you get into wrestling and it’s instantly working in front of thousands of people and millions on national television and making all this money and all this fame and fortune and glory. It’s not really like that.

There’s a long process to get there. And I think that when you go through a tour like this where there’s so many matches in a short period. But more importantly, there’s so much traveling and you got to deal with the elements and it’s frozen and it’s storming and it’s cold, and you got to set up the ring and take down the ring. And then you’re sleeping on, basically, the gym floor and buying peanut butter for $35 a jar.

I don’t think people expect that. This is one that wasn’t what I signed up with when I ordered the Pay-per-View last week, and it does weed out the pretenders quickly. Do you want to do this? And you could see all the time, not just in death tour situations, but all small-time wrestling where guys and girls are like, this is not what I thought was going to happen, and this is part of paying your dues. So I think that’s why we were intrigued to make the Death Tour, to tell that side of the story.

And then also not just from a professional standpoint, from a personal standpoint, why do people want to even get into wrestling in the first place? And there’s a lot of interesting personal stories being told in the documentary as well. So I think we’re able to kind of serve both masters for what we all wanted to do and what we all wanted to show in this documentary that stems from, once again, do you have the mental resolve to be a part of this tour to understand what you’re getting into and to come out the other side?

Glen Dower:

When you saw the finished product, were you taken back in time and thought, ‘I remember that.’

Chris Jericho:

I think it’s all part of your body of work. And I think when we were watching this film, the cool thing about doing a documentary like this if you’re doing a Beatles documentary, you have all the footage and the story’s been told. For Death Tour, the story is unfolding in front of your eyes. And I think that’s something when you’re doing a documentary and I’ve done a few, now, you want to look at it from a storyteller standpoint. It’s like having a conversation, even if you want to go over here with the conversation, but it’s not going there. It is kind of a dead end over there, but it’s really flourishing over that way, and you never really expected it. You have to pay attention to what’s going on over here.

So I took my own experience out of it and the experiences that all of my peers have had. It’s not about that. It’s about what experiences are these people having. And there are some similarities, but there’s also, everybody’s got their own story and everyone’s got their own journey, and every death tour is different. They’ve been going on for decades. And this just happens to be the documentation of the tour that was going on while our cameras were there, and just all the interesting stories and the trials and tribulations that unfolded that we were able to capture on film and edit in a certain way that made this tale very riveting.

Glen Dower:

It is so watchable and such a human story as well. It’s like you say, you’ve worked on many documentaries now, and what our readers may not know is that you are a big movie fan, dare I say, a Film Geek. And you’ve been on several shows like Collider and of course the Movie Trivia Schmoedown. We’ll not bring up your match with Kevin Smith, but I just wanted to ask you, what have been your film highlights of 2023?

Chris Jericho:

I think one of the major highlights is having a documentary debut at Slam Dance. That’s huge. I can’t even imagine the thousands of movies that were submitted getting selected first-round selection. You see that on all First Round selections at Slam Dance Festival, and that’s a stamp of honor. You know what I mean? So I think there’s a lot of highlights and there’s a lot of things that I do throughout the year, but this is something that I’ve never done before. I’ve never had a documentary make its debut at Slam Dance. I mean, the last documentary I did, I’m too old for this shit, about an obscure metal band that had a huge fan base in Germany. That one we didn’t go to the festivals. It is on Amazon Prime now, which is really cool.

But this takes that to the next step of actually being this festival-type of movie. I’m working on five documentaries now, this one being the second one that I’ve done. I mean, that’s a pretty good track record as a documentarian producing documentaries. This is once again, something you probably wouldn’t expect Chris Jericho to do, but yet it’s such a ‘Chris Jericho Thing.’ Why wouldn’t I produce documentaries? Might as well! So I’m just really excited about that and it is a huge highlight for me on a mountain of many highlights!

Glen Dower:

As it should be. What are you looking forward to most in 2024, you have your band, podcast, the AEW, and The Terrifier franchise continuing, and you have a lot coming up.

Chris Jericho:

Well, we just filmed a documentary about wrestling in Vietnam, which I think is going to be amazing for the same reason why The Death Tour is amazing, which is pro wrestling can make dreams come true no matter what level you’re at. And whether you’re in a tundra in northern Manitoba, or whether you’re in a sweltering jungle like Vietnam Pro wrestling is kind of the bridge that connects cultures, which you would never expect.

That’s getting pretty deep as to what on the surface wrestling is. But it’s so addictive to so many people. And like I said, your dream can come true even if it’s just for a night. We can be heroes, even just for one day, as David Bowie said. And that’s what we get with the documentary I just filmed in Vietnam and the documentary that we did right now The Death Tour, is that it doesn’t matter the size of the show. When you go somewhere and people are cheering you, whether it’s 50 people or 50,000, you’re a hero. You’re a superhero. And to get that on camera was just an amazing moment.