Joe Marino/New York Daily News
Chris Schoeck is in training to be an old-time, carny-style strongman. He bends a variety of objects such as steel rods and nails. He demonstrates for the Daily News in Times Square Wednesday.
Film director Dave Carroll was doing laundry in the basement of his Long Island City apartment building a few years back when he heard unusual noises, what sounded like strained grunts and clanging metal. His dog, Gizmo, heard the noises, too, and when she dashed off to check it out, Carroll followed.
Carroll and Gizmo turned a corner and saw Chris Schoeck, a short, muscular man whose cropped strawberry blond hair and a gymnast’s build that make him look like a musclebound Opie, standing near a caged storage space, surrounded by piles of torn telephone books, twisted horseshoes and bent nails. Carroll recognized Schoeck as the uncomfortable neighbor who never made eye contact when they rode the elevator together.
Carroll picked up his dog, apologized for interrupting Schoeck, and backed away, but all that twisted metal made an impression — and sparked a friendship that resulted in “Bending Steel,” a deeply moving documentary that is one of the surprise hits of the Tribeca Film Festival.
The film explores Schoeck’s drive to become an old-time strongman, just like the vaudeville characters who performed feats of strength for huge crowds at Coney Island at the turn of the 20th century. But Carroll and producer Ryan Scafuro — both first-time filmmakers — have made a deeply personal documentary that is as much about a man breaking free from an isolated and unfulfilling life as it is about twisting steel bars.
“I related to Chris because I felt stagnant professionally when I first met him,” Carroll says. “I know other people could relate to this, too. How many of us walking around are truly content? How many of us are fooling ourselves when we say we are content with our lives?”
Schoeck, a personal trainer, admits he had no friends — and no desire to have any — when he first met Carroll. Relationships, he says in the film, weren’t worth pursuing. He had spent his entire life in New York City, but he always felt odd, different, like he was from another planet.
Schoeck says he began drinking heavily as a 12-year-old, and although he gave up alcohol in his early 20s, he never learned social or coping skills. “I got rid of the alcohol, but nothing else changed,” he says.
The only relationship Schoeck has that appears in the film is with his parents, who seem skeptical about this strongman business. They are good people, Schoeck says. “But there is a tragic disconnect,” he adds. “We are three different people.”
Schoeck’s drive to become a strongman leads him to a group of like-minded men, guys who are as odd and obsessed with preserving a weird old performing art as he is. His mentor, Chris (Haircules) Rider, pulls trucks with his pigtails; another performer bends coins with his teeth.
The strongmen teach Schoeck to dig deep to overcome the obstacles in his life — everything from a two-inch steel bar he struggles to bend to his fear of performing in front of crowds at Coney Island’s first Strongman Spectacular. The strongmen become a surrogate family and support group to a longtime lone wolf.
“Through this journey I discovered something powerful in me, and it wasn’t just physical,” says Schoeck, 45. “I felt something in me that was good and powerful. This group helped me understand that I want to be around the good things that life has to offer. When you have a passion for something, people root for you.”
The strongmen — they call themselves the Steel Nuts — dub Schoeck “Wonder” because he’s short, slight and doesn’t look like the type of guy who could wow crowds by twisting monkey wrenches.
“It’s like a guild,” Schoeck says. “They have all this knowledge and they want to pass it on.”
