'Barbed Wire City' movie about ECW wrestling, produced by Allentown natives, ready for debut

Allentown native John Philapavage walks into McCusker's Tavern at 2601 S. 17th St.

He sits down and begins to talk about his new film that he is debuting to the world on April 20.

South Philadelphia native Brian Heffron, better known to the world as The Blue Meanie, soon joined him.

Upon noticing Philapavage's body language, it easy to see that he is very antsy, fidgety even.

But it's not in a paranoid way, it's in an exciting way.

Now, it's completely normal for a filmmaker to be excited for the debut of a film that he worked hard on. But for Philapavage, this is a different form of excitement. It's the excitement of knowing that 13 years of hard and sometimes painstaking work will finally pay off.

On April 20, Philapavage will finally show to the world the finished version of his documentary "Barbed Wire City." The film tells the story of the now-defunct Philadelphia-based promotion Extreme Championship Wrestling. Heffron was main player in the extreme promotion.

"ECW was the Halley's Comet of professional wrestling," Heffron said. "It's something you'll see once in a very rare time, but when you see it you'll recognize it for what it is - and you miss it when it's gone."

The premiere takes place at the old ECW Arena, at 7 West Ritner Street. Doors are scheduled to open at 5 p.m., followed by a showing of the film at 7 p.m. and a question and answer session afterward.

For more information on the premiere, visit the film's web site HERE.

Philapavage and his childhood friend Kevin Kiernan (who's also from Allentown) started production on the film more than a decade ago. Their work will finally culminate Saturday.

"Hopefully it's the best day ever," Philapavage said. "I hope it lives up to something after 13 years."

Larger companies with larger budgets have told the story of ECW before. But Philapavage promises this film will stand apart from those in the past, mainly because of the stories that are told within it.

But the story of how the film became to be is a story unto itself. It's a story of sacrifice and determination over the course of a decade.

Let's start from the beginning.

Philapavage had a mostly isolated childhood. He admittedly wasn't very close to his parents and had no blood siblings.

When Philapavage wanted to escape his isolated lifestyle at home, he would go over to Kiernan's house. Over the years Kevin became more than just a childhood friend. He became the one true brother Philapavage has ever had.

As distant as he may have been with his own parents, Philapavage was that close to Kiernan's parents, making the Kiernans his second family.

Despite their kindred friendship that has lasted their entire lives, the two, according to Philapavage couldn't be more opposite.

Kiernan is more reserved, to the point of being downright shy - especially when it comes to media types. Kiernan is the yin to Phialapavage's yang.

Philapavage wears his emotions on his sleeves, sometimes to the point of having bad anxiety, which explains his emotional state at McCusker's.

Philapavage wasn't to the point of shedding tears, but he was about four or five emotions wrapped all in one. He was nervous, anxious, happy, excited, worried and fulfilled all in one 32-year-old body.

Despite making a documentary based around professional wrestling for the last 13 years, Kiernan was never a huge wrestling fan. The same couldn't be said for Philapavage.

Philapavage has wanted to do something creative on this level ever since he was a kid. He credited two things for being his inspirations for his creativity: professional wrestling and General Hospital.

That's right, General Hospital. Philapavage loved the athleticism and action of professional wrestling, but when his mother watched General Hospital, he would enjoy the drama that was showcased on a daily basis.

"I saw these two very dramatic products and said 'I want to do something that makes people laugh and cry and feel all of these emotions,' " Philapavage said.

What really drew Philapavage to wrestling, however, were wrestling magazines. In the 1980s and 90s, Bill Apter was a writer and photographer for a number of different wrestling publications, which were commonly referred to as the "Apter Mags."

It was these magazines, which depicted wrestling in a serious light and showed the pictures of bloodied wrestlers, that hooked Philapavage for good into professional wrestling. It also helped him become more of a sophisticated fan.

Becoming more sophisticated came with a caveat, however. Philapavage eventually found out that professional wrestling wasn't as real as it seemed, at least from an outcome standpoint.

That obviously didn't deter Philapavage, as he didn't care - even when his father, annoyed by the fact his son was so fascinated by it, would tell him that it wasn't all real. That things were planned, scripted and mapped out. Philapavage kept the blinders on and kept falling more and more in love with the sport.

As much of a fan as Philapavage was as a kid, by his teenage years he had begun to grow out of it. Not that he wasn't a fan anymore, but his fandom began to wear on him, as the product wasn't what it used to be.

Philapavage said wrestling fans are all like that. They hang on for years watching the program despite their negative feelings toward it just hoping for that one moment to to remind them why they were fans to begin with.

For Philapavage, that moment was his introduction to ECW. It was seeing "The Franchise" Shane Douglas ragging on the legendary Ric Flair during his promos. It was the Public Enemy, the preeminent tag team of the early days of ECW, cutting promos in the middle of streets in South Philadelphia.

Philapavage was again fascinated. Not by the drama, but by the uniqueness of the presentation and by the unabashed violence.

It was something he had nothing never seen before, but it would become woven into the very fabric of his life.

When he first saw ECW, he had no idea that the main hub was in Philadelphia. To him, all of this madness and chaos was taking place in a mythical place unknown to him.

But once he caught wind of it being right next door to Allentown, his love for the product only grew.

The original ECW emanated from 7 West Ritner Street. The outside is not overly impressive. When watching on television, the inside isn't either. It's a warehouse that that occasionally was used for bingo and a revolution. It eventually became to be known as the ECW Arena.

The unimpressive warehouse/bingo hall is hallowed ground to Philapavage and he's not the only one that feels that way.

"When I first went, I wanted to walk in and kiss the floor and do all of these silly things," he said.

Heffron's introduction to wrestling was a lot less complex. He was born in South Philadelphia, and lived there until his mother and grandparents moved to Gloucester, then Atlantic City when he was 10.

When Heffron was seven years old, a friend invited him to watch some wrestling action from the old World Wide Wrestling Federation, which eventually became the WWF and now the WWE.

Heffron didn't know what wrestling was until this point, but all it took was one match where Mr. Saito and Mr. Fuji defeated Tony Garea and Rick Martel to win the WWWF tag team championships.

Heffron had two words to describe what he just saw: "That's awesome." Wrestling has been his life ever since.

Heffron became more a sophisticated fan also reading the "Apter Mags."

"I used to stare the ink of the pages as a kid," Heffron said pertaining to the amount of time he spent reading those publications.

Heffron graduated from Atlantic City High School in 1993. While most kids were planning on getting jobs or attending college after high school, Heffron had a singular goal in mind: become a professional wrestler.

That was his only focus. He made no secrets about it either. Everyone knew that Heffron's dream was to become a professional wrestler, and they all wished him luck in the then WWF in his senior yearbook.

"All throughout my childhood years, people were going to career day and I was like 'I'm going to be a wrestler,'" Heffron said.

Although he wanted to become a wrestler, Heffron couldn't participate in any athletic activities for a good portion of his childhood due to severe asthma. The severity of his asthma made for frequent trips to the emergency room for shots of adrenaline.

Once he was properly diagnosed by a doctor who helped strengthen his lungs, Heffron was finally able to chase his childhood dream.

The day after Wrestlemania X in 1994, Heffron decided to pack up his bags and headed for Lima, Ohio and Bodyslammers Wrestling Academy headed up by Al Snow.

After working for various independent promotions around the country, Heffron eventually found his home in ECW. Ironically, it was right back where his orginal home was, south Philadelphia.

"Just the fact that this wrestling promotion was in my hometown, I had no choice. I had to support it," Heffron said.

While Heffron was in the ring putting his body on the line and making history, Philapavage was in love. He was in love not only with the product ECW presented in the ring, but the sub-culture that surrounded it.

By this point Philapavage was knee-deep in ECW fandom. He had regularly attended events at the ECW Arena and wanted to pay homage to his experience and the experiences of others in the midst of this sub-culture.

The ball began to roll on the documentary in March of 2000. Philapavage and Kiernan were on their way to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. They both worked at a car wash by day and a video store by night to make some money.

The documentary was originally meant to showcase just the sub-culture of ECW. It was meant to be a short-term project that would take no more than three months to complete. Philapavage and Kiernan wanted to interview handfull of people and put out something creative celebrating ECW.

They wanted to interview Todd Gordon, the founder of Eastern Championship Wrestling, which eventually became Extreme Championship Wrestling; Joey Styles, the voice of ECW; Dave Scherer, a journalist who helped run the ECW web site; and Bob Ryder, the man who created and owned ECW's first web site, ECWWrestling.com.

Philapavage's first major interview was with Gordon, whom he bugged for months just to get to sit down in front of the camera. Gordon was reluctant about doing interviews because he rarely did them, but he eventually gave in to the many requests from Philapavage and Kiernan in 2001.

"I was one [mean person] to some of these people," Philapavage said.

Philapavage and Kiernan eventually sat down with Gordon in his office at 10th and Sansom to record his interview. It took two and a half hours to complete, with many interruptions - from Gordon's wife who called wondering where he was, to Kiernan's uncontrollable cough.

But it was a success, and Philapavage and Kiernan seemed to be well on their way to documenting their fan experience.

A major problem occurred three days later: ECW closed its doors. After the cancellation of its weekly program from what was then known as The Nashville Network (TNN), money problems began to run rampant. That forced the company to file for bankruptcy and fold up shop. The World Wrestling Federation purchased ECW's assets.

The end of ECW changed the direction of the documentary. Instead of a fluff piece celebrating how great ECW was, it became a story of the people in front of the cameras and behind the scenes that were effected by suddenly having to look for work elsewhere.

Heffron was one of those people.

Because he did not receive a job offer from the WWE, Heffron was forced to search for work on the independent circuit. He didn't expect this to be a bad option. Heffron had made a good name for himself as the Blue Meanie, and could command a sizeable pay check from promoters based off his name alone.

But with two major companies, the other being World Championship Wrestling, suddenly closing around the same time, independents became flooded with names as big as Heffron's, and in some cases bigger.

For Philapavage, it became a lot harder to track down a lot of people that were instrumental in the success of ECW. A lot of the people Philapavage and Kiernan wanted to talk to had been under one roof. Now they were scattered around the country.

In addition, the rest of life got in the way of Philapavage and Kiernan on a number of occasions.

First, it was Kiernan dropping out of the University of the Arts in 2001, forcing Philapavage do some of the work on his own that year.

Even with those obstacles in front of them, Philapavage and Kiernan wanted to have the documentary done and released by the fall of 2002. That did not come to fruition.

Then Philapavage dropped out of the University of the Arts, forcing both men to get real jobs to make ends meet.

With life and other projects getting in the way, "Barbed Wire City" was temporarily put on the shelf.

Philapavage and Kiernan would occasionally do interviews, but they didn't nearly enough work for a fall 2002 release.

The story jumps to 2004 and 2005, where Philapavage and Kiernan received an offer from RF Video, a wrestling merchandise and video distributor, to finish the film so that they could buy it and distribute it.

Philapavage said the deal wouldn't have been a good one. But the duo considered it anyway, feeling that they would not receive a better one from anywhere else.

While they were considering the offer from RF Video, WWE released "The Rise and Fall of ECW," which chronicles the history of the company.

It was the first DVD to tell the story of ECW, and did so in a timeline fashion. To this day, it is one of the highest selling WWE DVDs ever released.

It was a critical success as well, drawing universal praise from wrestling fans.

This threw an unexpected monkey wrench into Philapavage and Kiernan's plans. Out the window was a timeline chronicling the events of ECW. The duo now had to change its approach and style to the film. In hindsight, Philapavage said it was the best thing that ever happened to the project.

To pile on to the list of set backs was the release of "Forever Hardcore," an independently produced film from Jeremy Borash (who works for Total Nonstop Action Wrestling) in 2005.

The release and success of both of these documentaries only added to Philapavage's already high anxiety issues.

Philapavage became very discouraged, lying in bed for days on in and feeling that he would never amount to anything. This affected his health and life in general.

Philapavage was brought back to his normal self with the help of his best friend Jenny, whom he calls his sister. Jenny had recently had her second child and wanted to go back to work. So she allowed Philapavage to move in with her family for nothing. All he had to do was watch her children while she was at work.

Philapavage accepted the offer and began putting the pieces of his life back together. "Barbed Wire City" was no longer a priority in Philapavage's life, but it still lingered in the back of his mind.

It represented his untapped potential. It was that stone left unturned. It was what he could be if he had kept his life together.

Philapavage then attended an event that billed as the ECW Arena's final professional wrestling event back on Jan. 14, 2012. It was a show co-promoted by Dragon Gate USA and EVOLVE.

Philapavage avoided people he had talked to and interviewed for the film just so he wouldn't have to hear the questions of whatever happened to it.

He then got a call from his project manager, who encouraged him to re-start production on the documentary. Philapavage made a list of demands that he didn't think his product manager would allow, but he did. Thus, the production of "Barbed Wire City" was back on.

But the biggest thing Philapavage needed was a reunion with best friend Kiernan. Kiernan had completely separated himself from the project, but Philapavage needed someone to edit the film.

Philapavage didn't want someone new on the project with who wouldn't object to what he wanted. He wanted Kiernan specifically because Kiernan would not always agree with him.

Kiernan agreed to come back because he too wanted to finish the project, but also because of his loyalty to his childhood friend.

Philapavage also needed music for the film, which Kiernan also agreed to do. Every note of music in "Barbed Wire City" was written, produced and recorded by Kiernan.

As fate would have it, the timing couldn't be more right. Shane Douglas was starting up a new promotion that was in the same vein of ECW as far as presentation, characters and of course, the violence.

The promotion's first show was April 28, 2012 was in Philadelphia at the National Guard Armory at 2700 Southampton Road. It was dubbed "Extreme Reunion."

The show gave Philapavage and Kiernan an opportunity to catch up with some people they hadn't talked to since they started production of the film back in 2000.

It was at this show that Philapavage initially approached Heffron about giving his thoughts of the old ECW on the film.

Heffron, who was an ECW mainstay, hadn't even heard about Philapavage and Kiernan's endeavor until the Extreme Reunion show. But he was immediately intrigued.

He began to ask around the locker room about the duo when the head referee of ECW, John Finnegan, told him that they were good guys.

That was enough for Heffron to not only take part in the film, but to lend a helping hand in promoting it.

"Somewhere in my career somebody helped me out," Heffron said. "I wouldn't be here if someone didn't go 'Hey this guy Brian, give him a try. Give him a chance.' "

"I haven't received anything out of this except for the satisfaction of helping somebody do something artistic," he added.

That interview sparked a friendship that lasts between Philapavage and Heffron until this day.

"I love Brian," Philapavage said. "I have this great friendship with him now. Hopefully one day I'll get married and I'll have kids and Brian can come play with my kids. That's a friendship I want to be able to keep."

Heffron became one of the large catalogue of former ECW talents and employees featured in the film.

The film ballooned from a handful of interviews to nearly 70 over the course of the last 13 years.

That's only counting the people that Philapavage and Kiernan interviewed on the record in front of a camera. Off the record, Philapavage said he's talked to around 90 people.

While the ball was rolling again, the film was still not finished. What was needed was some major funding. Fortunately for Philapavage and Kiernan, a relatively new platform for raising money for projects caught their attention.

Kickstarter was something that wasn't available back in 2000. But it was available on August 20, 2012. That's the day Philapvage and Kiernan launched their campaign.

Philapavage and Kiernan asked for $23,200 from those who wished to see the film completed.

With the help of Heffron and many others, "Barbed Wire City" reached its goal on Sept. 19, 2012 - one day short of a month. When it was all said and done, the film was backed by 480 people who pledged total of $31,140.

The biggest backer was a man named Conrad from Alabama. He pledged $4,000 to the film, a moment which Philapavage still gets emotional about when talking about until this day.

"I'll remember that moment forever," Philapavage said with his voice trembling with emotion.

According to Philapavage's Kickstarter page, Conrad from Alabama was due some perks for donating that amount of money. Among those perks was a large prize pack including a DVD copy of the film, tickets to the premier and Philapavage and a wrestler of his choice to view the final cut of the documentary in of all places his living room.

Conrad chose Shane Douglas.

"I couldn't wait to go see and Conrad just to thank him," Philapavage said. "This is like a dream come true. I can't explain it. It means the world to me. This whole week I've been so emotional."

Much like ECW itself, the buzz surrounding "Barbed Wire City" began to have a meteoric rise in the wrestling community. The rise of ECW reached its zenith with its first pay-per-view April 13, 1997 titled "Barely Legal." Saturday for Philapavage will be his "Barely Legal."

The preparation for the premier is still ongoing and will probably continue right up until showtime.

Philapavage and Kiernan don't have a staff working around the clock to make sure the word has gotten about film or the premier. Nor has it bought any advertising for it.

The only advertising that has been purchased for the film came out of one fan's own pockets. The fan volunteered to pay for two promotional spot on the "Art of Wrestling Podcast" hosted by independent wrestling star Colt Cabana.

In hindsight, the 13-year wait turned out to be a good thing for "Barbed Wire City."

The story of the film has become more compelling since 2000. From the closing of ECW itself, to the number of reunion shows either by WWE or independently run, the reincarnation of the brand by ECW by WWE then the changing of it all gave the film more layers.

The technology that exists today is leaps and bounds ahead of where it was back in 2000. Back then, Kickstarter didn't exist for people to raise funding for their projects. Social media didn't exist for people to promote the project. DVDs weren't being released in a digital format nearly as much as they are today.

Above all, the story of how the documentary was made wouldn't be nearly as interesting. The story of how "Barbed Wire City" is made has become as much a part of the story as the story that is being told in the film itself.

The film has taken Philapavage and Kiernan to one corner of the country to the next, including one wild night of being led around Boston by ECW stalwart Bill Alfonso while Philapavage was stricken with mononucleosis.

Heffron lived the ECW sub-culture. He was a part of the show. But upon watching the final version of "Barbed Wire City," he said he was drawn in as if he had never stepped foot in ECW as a wrestler.

"We were the land of the misfit toys," Heffron said. "We were the wrestlers nobody else wanted, but when we got together it all made sense."

For those who may not understand what Heffron means by that, he created an analogy of the old ECW. To him, the old ECW reminded him of the 1993 Phillies.

In 1993, the Phillies, consisting of a bunch of players no one else really wanted, made an improbable run to the World Series. For ECW, the World Series was pay-per-view and national television.

Like the '93 Phillies, however, ECW didn't win the ultimate prize. They both fell to teams with bigger budgets and a better pedigree. For the Phils, it was the Toronto Blue Jays. For ECW, it was the WWE and the now-defunct World Championship Wrestling.

Philapavage doesn't just want wrestling fans to sit and watch "Bared Wire City." He wants people who have no idea or care about wrestling to watch, because it's not a pro wrestling documentary. It's a documentary that happens to be about pro wrestling. It's a human-interest story with people and their stories that could give any number of emotions. It could make you laugh, cry, stand up and cheer or get angry.

"I didn't want to just be a history piece," Philapavage said. "This is very powerful."

After all of the emotion, expended energy and hard work, Saturday is as much about Philapavage and Kiernan as it is about ECW.

VIDEO: Philapavage talks about the premiere of "Barbed Wire City."