Bret Hart's ex-wife talks Montreal Theory, why Bret didn't work in WCW

Julie Hart joined Inside The Ropes this past Thursday to talk about her book, Hart Strings. Here are some highlights:

Why she wrote the book: “I started writing journals many years ago, much like Bret was writing his stuff in like 91 or 92, and I kept writing and writing and eventually thought ya know, one day this could make for a really interesting book. But I thought, I’ll never get to publish anything like this. But You really open yourself up to criticism or negative things when you write about certain situations. The hardest part was to sit my kids down and tell them I was going to talk about things they’d never heard about. But they were great and told me, ‘it’s your life, good for you’. We raised them to not be judgmental and that you know, one day you can have everything and the next minute it can be taken away from you. It’s not written like a Linda Hogan book. The book is sad, it’s a tragedy, almost like a Shakespeare play.”

Thoughts on the Montreal Theory DVD: “It’s funny, two weeks ago my son Blade and I saw this post that someone had put up about it. I was like ‘Oh my god, are you serious?!’ It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. You shouldn’t have wasted your money producing this conspiracy theory. I think those people should have interviewed the people who were around Bret like me or my kids. If they had interviewed us and asked us what it was like after Montreal happened…. There’s no way it was a work, not afterwards, not the way Bret reacted, the way he was, when he went to WCW. You could see the change in him, Bret’s not that good an actor, he’s not Robert De Niro. There’s no way he could’ve hidden it.”

Why she thinks Bret didn’t work in WCW: “Because of what happened in Montreal. His spirit was broken. And we were going through the whole separation thing at the same time. So you add that on, the relationship ending. How much could a person take. That’s what pisses me off so much about that DVD, you know, they didn’t go to the right people to ask. If they’d spoken to us, they wouldn’t have a DVD. I know when I read it with my son Blade, Blade was just beside himself because you know it affected Blade a lot, it affected our family. The impact from Montreal affected our family in many, many, many ways and I don’t think people really understand how much.”

On her reaction to reading Bret’s book: “I was gonna change the focus of my book. After I read Bret’s manuscript. We were in Hawaii when I read it. You know Bret said, ‘read it with an open mind’. I wanted to read it. I wanted to remember all those stories too. Y’know I thought I was gonna read all these stories about Stampede Wrestling and him travelling with me not there. (laughs) I remember being on the beach reading it and Bret was reminding me, ‘that was then, this is now.’ I just remember starting reading it and seeing some of the stuff that I didn’t even know about, and as it keeps going, I’m like, ‘Wow, oh my god.’ I shut the book and told him I didn’t wanna read any more. He said I had to read it and I just wanted to read the Stampede stuff and his experiences on the road, but I said ‘No.’ Eventually he told me I had to read it and eventually I had to. I even ended up defending him. Because when you do an autobiography you have to open yourself up and expose yourself.”