FROM ‘MURDERBALL’ TO RELUCTANT MOVIE STAR

By DONNA FREYDKIN
USA Today, 7/8/05

Mark Zupan swigs beer. Spews out four-letter words. Sweats up a storm in the gym. Wrestles with his dog. Has crowd-surfed at a Pearl Jam show. And enjoys an active sex life with his live-in girlfriend, Jessica Wampler.

Oh yeah, and he happens to be a quadriplegic who has been in a wheelchair since he was 18. That was when he was thrown from the bed of the pickup of his best friend, Christopher Igoe, and broke his neck.

Spend two minutes with Zupan and you forget he's sitting in a beat-up chair that's both an extension of himself and at the same time completely overshadowed by his piercing intelligence, sharp-edged humor and outspoken, trash-talking personality.

Yet his accident, Zupan says, is "the best thing that's ever happened to me."

He means it.

Zupan, 30, is the captain of the U.S. quadriplegic rugby team, which competes in the Paralympics and took home a bronze medal at the Athens games. Also known as "murderball," it's a brutal, sometimes bloody sport that has wheelchair athletes pounding and slamming the living daylights out of each other. It's the subject of Murderball, a film that won the Documentary Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and opens today in New York and L.A.

All the hoopla surrounding the film has left Zupan, an Austin-based civil engineer, dazed.

"We're just a bunch of gimps playing a sport," he says. "It's really strange to get stopped at the airport and be asked, 'So, you're in that movie?' You wake up and think you're in some sick, twisted dream. We never thought it would amount to this."

This has been glowing reviews. Oscar talk. Media coverage, MTV and Zupan's "I Am What I Am" Reebok ad.

Zupan says he doesn't feel like a star. But he has encountered his share of big names along the way; actress Winona Ryder attended the movie's Manhattan premiere.

"I met Evan Rachel Wood, James Woods, Kevin Bacon at Sundance. Steve Buscemi is pretty laid-back. I met Judy Greer in Vegas, and she was cool," he says.

But most of all, Zupan is grateful that "the movie's good about killing the misconceptions and answering questions people won't ask. It's a big misconception that people in chairs can't do anything."

Yes, Zupan has sex. Yes, he drives an SUV. (It has a special lever that allows him to operate the gas and brake pedals with his hand.) And yes, he's still tight with Igoe, who didn't know that Zupan was passed out in the back of his truck when he crashed. Zupan calls Igoe his "quadfather," because "life's too short not to laugh about yourself and the cards you're dealt."

The only downside of all the attention? His promotional duties have kept him on the road so much that Wampler "gets annoyed that I'm not home," Zupan says.

Even though Zupan, with his brawny arms, goatee and tattoos, is the consummate tough guy, people treat him with kid gloves once they see he's in a chair — much to his aggravation.

"Like today, I went to the gym and dropped a glove. And a woman says, 'Oh, let me get that for you.' I'm at the gym. I lift weights. If I can't pick the glove up off the floor, what am I doing here?"