Jake 'The Snake' Roberts’ resurrection documented

The man sitting in the movie theater is confident, optimistic and enjoys peace of mind.

The man he watches on the movie screen makes him sick to his stomach. He hates that man and all the pain he caused himself and others.

The problem for the man sitting in the movie theater is that he knows the man on the movie screen all too well. That's because he is the man on the screen.

The man on the screen represents what the man in the theater used to be – a man who was once held in high regard but was dragged down into a pit of despair by addiction, self-hatred and self-pity.

The man in the theater wrestles with emotions as he watches himself living in shambles.

As Jake "The Snake" Roberts, Aurelian Smith Jr. captivated wrestling fans as both a hero and a villain, but he was also an antagonist to himself, slowly self-destructing as he got farther and farther away from the limelight. As much as Roberts consumed himself with being the character he played in the ring, the lifestyle consumed him as well. Eventually, it swallowed him whole.

With the help of his friend and fellow wrestling legend Diamond Dallas Page, Roberts has turned his life around. He has been clean and sober for two years, has the support of his family again, and is truly happy with himself for the first time in a very long while.

Roberts isn't the first person Page has lent a helping hand to. In fact, it's what he does for a living with his DDP Yoga program.

Due to multiple injuries during his own wrestling career, Page developed his own workout regimen to help him stay in the ring. After changing the lives of people he barely even knew, Page decided to reach out to his friend in Roberts.

When Page was beginning his own legendary wrestling career, one of the people that taught him the ins and outs of the business was Roberts. Page parlayed that knowledge into three world championship reigns in World Championship Wrestling.

Upon seeing his friend struggling to get his life back on track, Page decided to return the favor and bring him into his home outside of Atlanta, hoping to resurrect the once proud man nicknamed the "Snake."

Roberts' journey from an overweight, out-of-shape substance abuser to the complete opposite is chronicled in a documentary, The Resurrection of Jake the Snake.

Over the course of 91 minutes, The Resurrection of Jake the Snake chronicles Roberts' road to recovery. The film was shown at the 2015 Slamdance Film Festival and has had theatrical releases in Portland, Ore. and Atlanta.

It will be released in Philadelphia at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1 at the Landmark Ritz 5 at 214 Walnut St. After making a stop in Philadelphia, the film will be released in New York, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Chicago and Los Angeles.

In each and every one of those cities, Roberts will sit in a theater and relive the pain and suffering he endured. Roberts doesn't like to relive those days, but does it anyway, with the hope that it changes someone's life for the better.

"It's pretty hard to look at yourself when you're not behaving properly and you're quite a mess," Roberts said in an interview. "The greater good is what it's all about for me. My hope is that people can see this and they'll understand addiction and alcoholism better and maybe they'll reach out to somebody that they know. It took a hell of a man in Diamond Dallas Page to reach out and save my butt. Without it, I'd be dead right now.

"Instead, I've got a wonderful life and I'm enjoying being a grandfather, one that's respected and one that's loved, but it's still tough to watch it. Nobody wants to see themselves like that."

The biggest difference from the man sitting in the theater today and the sad shell of a man slumped down in a recliner in the beginning of the film is the story that they tell themselves.

For Roberts, he no longer looks at himself as a failure. Sure, he has had a few bumps in the road, but the man sitting in the theater is strong and capable of overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds.

"When you've been an addict as long as they have, there's a lot of things you have to forgive yourself for," Page said. "You've got to forgive yourself and move on and understand that you're a good person by being a good person."

Roberts and Scott Hall, another legendary wrestler who grappled with addiction before seeking the help of Page, had both been to about a dozen rehabilitation facilities throughout the years, but none of them seemingly worked.

"I got used to doing things a different way," Roberts said. "Sometimes you take it better from a friend than you can take it from somebody in a rehab. Maybe rehab works for some people, but it never worked for me and it's never worked for Scott."

When Roberts and Hall finally landed in Page's house, the main thing Page preached was to change the story that they told themselves.

Roberts' road to a new lease on life makes for a great movie script. Unfortunately, this story is not your typical Hollywood epic. This is real life, and real life doesn't always abide by the script.

Roberts went off script numerous times on his road to recovery. He had a few missteps, and these are depicted in the film. These scenes are hard to watch, but they were even harder for Roberts and Page to live through.

For Roberts, it represented another slip-up among the many in his life. For Page, it was not only another obstacle in Roberts' way, but it was also another obstacle in the film's way.

Page wanted to release the film under two conditions: First and most important was that Roberts actually fended off his demons. The second was that Roberts himself approved it.

"I can't tell you how many times Steve Yu (the film's director) and I sat in the same room after going through one of those things where we had to tell Jake to get his stuff together, and look at each other and basically say, 'Do you think anybody will ever see this movie?' " Page said. "I wasn't sure at any point in time that they would until he finally got to that spot.

"I knew he was going to fall," Page added. "The times that [ticked] me off that he fell were when I was away. The couple times that I was here, we could deal with it head-on, but when he's doing it and I'm gone, it was wearing me out, man. You can see toward the end, I'm pretty frazzled. I had no idea that he was going to eventually kick out and stay sober and I wasn't releasing the movie or letting anybody know about it."

Now that people know about the film, they get to see the stark contrast between sober Roberts and inebriated Roberts. That includes Roberts himself.

By watching the film, it opened his eyes to just how much his addiction affected not only him, but also the people around him.

"Dallas has always told me, 'Jake, people love you, man, but they don't love you when you drink,' and I never saw that until I saw this film," Roberts said.

"It's a disease, no doubt about it," he added. "We paint it differently because it's not cancer, but this is cancer to me. Every time I take a drink, it might as well be cancer. Some horrible things happen to me. The transformation is quick and it's not pretty."

"One of the things he would always say to himself," Page said, "was, 'I'm doing good. I'm on the right path. I'm a man. I deserve a beer, just a beer.' A beer turns into whatever, but the bottom line is that when I finally got him to understand that 'Dude, you're a man when you don't take the drink. That's when you are owning it. That's when you're as good as you're going to get because you're never going to get your family back and keep your family back the other way.' "

The man sitting in the theater hates what he sees on the big screen, but he does not hate who he is today.

That man walks out of the darkness of a movie theater and into the light of day, much as he did in life.