In a very strange turn-of-events, Mark Schultz, the Olympic wrestler at the center of the Academy Award-nominated Foxcatcher, has gone from loving the film, to exploding with hate on it through social media to now, once again, loving the film. In fact, he went as far as to call it "a masterpiece."
Schultz, a key member of the film's inception and presence at the film's festival premieres, took a 180-turn on the film at the tail-end of last year. Tweeting remarks like, "“Everything I've ever said positive about the movie I take back. I hate it. i hate it. i hate it. I hate it. i hate it. i hate it. I hate it" and “I HATE BENNETT MILLER," then calling the filmmaker a "punk," "liar," and "p**y," he also exploded with a longer explanation on his Facebook about how inaccurate he felt the final film was.
While Schultz would calm down a couple days later, he continued to be against the movie, saying "I in no way regret standing up for myself, nor do I regret calling out the only other man who has had decision making power concerning my image and legacy these past years. I apologize for the harshness of my language, but I am firm in where I stand."
But just a mere few days after the Oscar nominations, however, where Foxcatcher came out with five, including Best Director for Miller, Best Actor for Steve Carrell and Best Supporting Actor for Mark Ruffalo, Schultz now abruptly has a new tune. He started out by congratulation Foxcatcher for all its nominations, before tweeting these thoughts:
After retweeting a lot of promotional tweets for Foxcatcher and also saying he is "praying so hard" that the movie and Miller, Ruffalo and Carrell win, he also had this fairly baffling tweet to end the tirade later.
Some believe this whole tirade was just Scultz's trying to promote his book Foxcatcher: The True Story of My Brother's Murder, John du Pont's Madness, and the Quest for Olympic Gold which he wrote alongside David Thomas. The book came out November 18, 2014.