HBO's 'Andre the Giant' humanizes a larger-than-life legend

There's a scene in HBO's upcoming Andre The Giant documentary - premiering Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET - when Vince McMahon and Hulk Hogan reminisce about one of the main subject's favorite hobbies: passing gas in public as a practical joke.

It's initially a standard boys-will-be-boys moment, but when Hogan starts describing the flatulence as a 30-second deep roar that came from his fellow wrestler's stomach, you realize everything about Andre The Giant was just a little bit different.

The man who was often referred to as "The Eighth Wonder of the World" was a spectacle, and any retelling of his life adds to his lore, and his mythology. As McMahon summed up in the film: "You could say anything about Andre and people would believe it."

Raised on the countryside in Molien, France, Andre Rene Roussimoff started to show symptoms of gigantism as an early teen. By the time he started wrestling locally in his home country as a 19-year-old, Roussimoff was 7-foot-1 and weighed 376 pounds.

In his early days, he played a lumberjack named Jean Ferre. From France, Roussimoff traveled to different wrestling circuits all around the world. His size made him a spectacle. During one match in Montreal, promoters called him "The Giant from the French Alps." Roussimoff started to sell out arenas across North America.

The first part of the documentary details Roussimoff's rise during the territorial era of professional wrestling, before the World Wrestling Federation turned him into a national star. Superstars existed in their own local circuits, and Roussimoff was a traveling road show. He would join different promotions for weeks at a time, and it became obvious right away he was a huge draw anywhere - not just for his sheer, brute force, but for the way crowds gravitated toward the gentle, playful nature of a giant amongst men.

While he was in the wrestling spotlight, and enjoying it, the documentary examines the tragic aspects of Roussimoff's life, and what it means to be a giant with no place to hide in this world. When you give yourself and your persona to the public, you are always someone else's entertainment. What happens when all of that stops being fun?

As McMahon said, you could spin any tall tale about Andre The Giant, and it would seem believable. In the documentary, friends of Roussimoff recall his historic alcohol binges - an entire case of wine to start the day was just another day for Andre The Giant. Ric Flair describes an evening out with Roussimoff when the two drank 106 beers. You don’t even bat an eye and question the validity of his claim.

It's all part of the mythology of Andre The Giant - a mythology that made him one of the most imposing and intriguing wrestling personalities ever - but beyond the ridiculousness of everything that was abnormal about his life, including the drinking, was a somber truth: Roussimoff only ever wanted to live a normal life, and being a giant was a physical and mental burden.

Roussimoff ultimately grew to be 7-foot-4 and over 500 pounds. His size combined with the hellish day-to-day grind of being a professional wrestler took a physical toll that started to wear down his body. His back bothered him daily, restricting his range of motion in the ring and out of it.

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Other aches and pains made day-to-day living a little less fun, and his job a little more painful. Roussimoff's life was full of inconveniences that no one else ever had to consider. He could never find a hotel bed that fit him. When he took long flights to wrestle overseas, he was unable to fit into the lavatory on airplanes.

But wrestling was a passion for Roussimoff, and a sport he treated with respect. As a beloved, baby-faced character, Andre The Giant went undefeated for over a decade, but that didn't mean every match was decidedly lopsided.

Roussimoff understood the unwritten rules of wrestling. Beating everyone to a pulp was bad for business. Main-event matches needed suspense, and Roussimoff was always conscious of needing to sell a few of his opponent's moves in the ring, in order for his fellow wrestlers to maintain some semblance of credibility.

There is no greater example of Roussimoff's unselfishness and respect for the industry than his iconic match against Hulk Hogan that headlined Wrestlemania 3 in 1987. Even casual wrestling fans might remember the showdown, especially the final moments when Hogan shocked the world by picking up Andre The Giant and delivering a body slam, which he followed up with a leg drop and a clean pin of Roussimoff.

The final part of the documentary pores over the details of this legendary match, when David slayed Goliath as Andre The Giant's undefeated streak came to an end. It required Roussimoff, who was physically deteriorating at that point, to turn heel and become a hated character to the fans. It was a move that Hogan and McMahon still appreciate years later, as it was an unselfish decision by Roussimoff, who recognized it was time to pass the torch with his time in wrestling - and in life - running short.

In 1993, Roussimoff died in his sleep of congestive heart failure in Paris. He was 46. And so, HBO's "Andre The Giant" tells two stories: It's the celebration of one of wrestling's greatest icons, and an examination of the at-times tragic existence of a giant who only ever wanted to be like everyone else. At the end of the documentary, you realize that regardless of his size, someone with Roussimoff’s charm, charisma, and wit was always destined to be larger than life, anyway.

Alex Wong is an NBA freelance writer whose work has appeared in GQ, The New Yorker, Vice Sports, and Complex, among other publications.