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Elite Fan
Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 26,324
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Since I just saw Rocky Balboa tonight:
Quote:
‘Rocky’, ‘Hoosiers’ lead top 10 sports movies
One man's list of the best — including 'Slap Shot’ and ‘Caddyshack’
By Bob Cook
MSNBC
Updated: 9:37 p.m. ET Dec 20, 2006
“Rocky Balboa,” the sixth and presumably final installment in the 30-year saga of a Philadelphia boxer, got serious advance buzz because its doddering-boxer plotline, sight unseen, clues everybody that unlike the other “Rocky” sequels, it contains at least three of the five essential factors of a classic sports movie.
Those factors are: Feature an Underdog or Underdogs, Stick it to the Man, Make Men Cry, Provide Memorable Quotes and Inspire Real Athletes. Hit three out of those five factors, and you’ve made a good sports movie. Hit four, you’ve made a great one. Hit five, as the original “Rocky” did, and you still have a large reservoir of goodwill even as your sequels go, in order, from boring to cheesy to unintentionally hilarious to plumbing unfathomable depths of awfulness.
The top 10 sports movies listed below hit either four or five of these factors. Or if they hit only three, they hit No. 3 so hard it makes up for not including factors four and five. But first, an explanation of what these factors are, and why they matter.
The Underdog and Stick It to the Man factors are mostly a given, because without them, it’s hard to build dramatic tension. That’s why no one is going to make movies based on the 1998 Chicago Bulls (movie-trailer voice guy: “They were expected to win — and they did”). The Man doesn’t have to be an authority figure. The Man could be a disease, another player, an astrological system out of alignment, or whatever is keeping the main character an Underdog.
Any hack filmmaker, except for Stallone in Rockys II-V, can come up with a Man that needs to be Stuck by an Underdog. It’s the other three factors that are tricky. Making Men Cry is a big achievement. As much as sports-movie fans profess to hate romantic movies in which a dying character or a love fulfilled is supposed to bring a tear to the eye, men can cry like Adam Morrison at stories of an athlete cut down in his prime or overcoming the odds to win a title. (Sorry to be man-centric here, but getting a man to cry about anything is usually a great accomplishment.) Men will Cry at “Rocky Balboa” because watching this old Underdog Stick It to the Man (old age) will cause many of them to weep with nostalgia over the end of a character they’ve known longer than anybody but their parents.
Men who would shout, “NERDS!” at some geek spouting Monty Python lines relish the opportunity to do the same with their favorite sports movie, which is why Provide Memorable Quotes is a necessary factor for greatness. And if you have Real Athletes who claim to be inspired by the movie you have a big-time endorsement of legendary status. These two factors need time to develop, so we won’t know for at least a few more years whether “Rocky Balboa” will meet them.
One more note on this list. I have discounted documentaries, because it’s much harder to pull off these five factors in works of fiction, or even a biopic. Also, this list also reflects my biases. That means any melodramatic film about how baseball is the soul of our country uniting generations that would otherwise be set apart by their own differences immediately gets taken off the list. I am not George Will.
10. MIRACLE (2004)
“Miracle” has a serious disadvantage in the Inspire-Real-Athletes department: the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team on which the movie is based was so inspiring on its own, it doesn’t take a movie to make their story any more compelling. Still, Kurt Russell channels coach Herb Brooks right down to his plaid jacket in an emotional case study of how one man’s belief was strong enough to drive a ragtag group of collegians into crushing the Soviet hockey machine, thus doing more for winning the Cold War than Ronald Reagan ever did.
If that isn’t enough to Make Men Cry, then watching the scene in which Brooks, the last cut from the gold-medal winning 1960 U.S. Olympic team, cuts the last guy from the 1980 team is excruciating to watch. As for Memorable Quotes, maybe not enough time has passed, but a clipped “again” (Brooks’ stoic order for his beyond-exhausted team to do more sprints immediately after a sloppily played game) has potential.
9. SOMETHING FOR JOEY (1977)
The story of football star John Cappelletti and his leukemia-stricken brother is so off-the-charts gut-wrenching, it would make even Dick Cheney cry. The Underdog trying to Stick It to the Man is Joey, an 11-year-old going through excruciating treatments to get to his brother John’s Penn State games on Saturdays. Just when it seems like Joey is going to get better, just as John is fulfilling his little brother’s request to score four touchdowns for him in one game, just as you feel like the happy ending is coming … well, Joey doesn’t die, but you know he’s gonna get it.
And the waterworks really open up when future Beastmaster Marc Singer, as John, accepts his Heisman Trophy, gives it to Joey, and says: “They say I’ve shown courage on the football field, but for me it’s only on the field, and only in the fall. Joey lives with pain all the time. His courage is ‘round the clock.” (Joey never saw this movie — he died in 1976, at the age of 14.) The movie has gone beyond Inspiring Real Athletes — John Cappelletti and “Something For Joey” Inspired Real People.
8. CADDYSHACK (1980)
“Caddyshack” is the gold standard of Providing Memorable Quotes. How many times on the golf course, even the miniature golf course, have you heard someone shout out, Carl Spackler-sty le: “Cinderella story!” or “It’s in the hole!” Or you’ve had someone advise you to “be the ball.” But even if you’ve heard your friends do their Rodney Dangerfield impersonation (“This steak still has marks from where the jockey was hitting it!”) a million times over, the movie is still funny.
I guess caddy Danny Noonan would be the Underdog trying to Stick It to the Man, but who cares, when there’s so much great stuff to quote?
“You’ll get nothing, and like it.” “While we’re young.” The Carl Spackler Dalai Lama speech…
FIRST INTERMISSION
Did you know that “Caddyshack 2” is still the worst sports movie sequel ever? And I’m counting “Slap Shot 2?”
7. THE TOURNAMENT (2005)
Technically, “The Tournament” is a not a movie. It was a Canadian TV series whose only airing on an American network was on whatever the heck that channel is that carries the NHL. But “The Tournament” is the funniest, most honest portrayal of sports parents ever. Fortunately, it is scheduled for DVD release early next year, so it’s kind of like a movie, right? The first six episodes, if you cut out the promos and commercials, would be an incredible two-hour movie on its own, and should be watched in that way.
“The Tournament” is a Christopher Guest/”The Office”-style mockumentary, nominally about the Farqueson Funeral Home Warriors of fictional Briarside, Ont., a squad of plucky 10-year-olds heading off to a national hockey tournament. But the show takes John Wooden’s dictum that sports does not create character, but reveals it, and tests it on those kids’ parents. Of course, they fail.
The series’ brilliance is recognizing how parents’ love and dreams for their children can be motivated as much by their need to look good, and their realization that it is too late in life to have hopes and dreams about their own future, as it is the children’s actual well-being.
Everyone ends up looking like a cad in “The Tournament,” including special guest star Phil Esposito, who appears at the tournament to big-time the dads and hit on one of the moms. In America, a very small cult audience will remember the show’s Memorable Quotes, Cry with laughter and get Inspired — to do the opposite of everything these Canuck-leheads do. (By the way, word out of Canada is that Fox wants to adapt “The Tournament,” except to have the kids play baseball instead of hockey.)
6. SLAP SHOT (1977)
Three hockey movies in the top 10? Either hockey is a natural for filmmaking, or the only way to have a hockey movie made is to have a great script. (“Youngblood” being a notable exception.)
The Hanson Brothers are still making public appearances 30 years after “Slap Shot?” Either the dumb-but-lovable goons have had a grand cultural impact (“Old-time hockey!”), or they, and those who hire them, have nothing better to do.
“Slap Shot” is still hockey players’ favorite movie. Either it’s a testament to the hilarious, vulgar tale’s resonance about life in the minors, or it’s a testament to just how much “Youngblood” stunk.
5. BREAKING AWAY (1979)
The drama about four college-town nobodies using Indiana University’s Little 500 bicycle race as their ultimate town-gown battle has Underdog and Stick It to the Man to the max, as well as the ability to Make Men Cry through stone inspiration. For example, the scene in which Dennis Christopher drafts behind a semi-truck. That is second, behind the “Rocky” run up the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps, in the list of best training scenes in a sports film.
The most Memorable Quote from the movie came was the derogatory nickname the collegians gave the townies – “Cutters.” (So named because limestone-cutting is a big industry in the area—see what I mean by stone inspiration?) One of the most dominating teams in the real-life Little 500 over the last decade or so is called the Cutters – though they are students not affiliated with a fraternity, rather than real Bloomingtonians.
SECOND INTERMISSION
Want to make a memorable sports movie? Set it, or film it, in Indiana. “Hoosiers,” “Breaking Away,” “Rudy,” “Knute Rockne: All-American,” “A League of Their Own,” “Eight Men Out” – all worth repeated viewings. Caveat: the film cannot involve Bob Knight (see, or better yet don’t see, “Blue Chips” and “Season on the Brink.”)
4. BRIAN’S SONG (1971)
For cruel fun, go up to any crowd of tailgaters outside Soldier Field before a Chicago Bears’ game, say “Brian’s Song,” and watch tough-looking men suddenly collapse and weep into their beef sandwiches and kielbasa.
“Pride of the Yankees,” “Bang the Drum Slowly,” “Million Dollar Baby” – there’s a long line of movies that have detailed the painful deaths of athletes to the sounds of a sobbing audience. But “Brian’s Song,” the story of Brian Piccolo’s ascent from training-camp nobody to Chicago Bears running back, and his descent to death at the hands of cancer in 1969 at age 26, is the King of the Sports Weepers. In part, that’s due to the notable friendship between Piccolo and Bears star Gale Sayers, the NFL’s first interracial roommates.
“I love Brian Piccolo, and I’d like all of you to love him,” Sayers said in 1970 as he accepted the NFL’s Most Courageous Player Award, a speech delivered by a pre-Colt 45 loverman Billy Dee Williams, who played Sayers in the movie. “When you hit your knees to pray tonight, please ask God to love him, too.”
Caution: Do not view “Brian’s Song” and “Something for Joey” in the same night, unless you have plenty of tissue paper and Gatorade (for fluid replenishment) available.
3. BULL DURHAM (1988)
Among the few baseball movies I enjoy are “The Bad News Bears” and “Bull Durham,” because each doesn’t treat baseball like God handed it down in a box wrapped with the American flag. “Bull Durham” doesn’t Make Men Cry, but it’s got the other four factors in huge quantities. In particular, the movie gave athletes a name for their usual postgame “I’m-just-trying-to-do-my-best-for-the-team” dreck: “Bull Durham” quotes, as in the boring answers to reporters’ questions Crash Davis taught Nuke LaLoosh to deliver. In one scene, “Bull Durham” pulls the trick of Providing Memorable Quotes in the form of unmemorable quotes, and Inspires Real Athletes to give a name to what they’re not saying. Genius.
And who didn’t learn from this movie how to “respect the streak?” I coach my son’s fourth-grade basketball team, and I’ve even figured that out. For example, before my team’s first three games, I got coffee from Starbucks. But because my team lost its third game, I switched to getting coffee after the game. We followed with another two-game winning streak, but then lost our third game again. So now I have to go back to getting coffee before the game. Does that make sense? It does to me. The lesson from “Bull Durham” is, if we’re winning because I got, or did not get, coffee, than that indeed is the reason we’re winning.
2. ROCKY (1976)
My 9-year-old son surprised me when he said he wanted to see “Rocky Balboa.” So I recommended maybe we rent a few of the earlier “Rocky” movies to catch up on the story. Thanks to his being struck with the flu, and thanks to my local cable provider’ s movie service, my son took it upon himself to watch every all five “Rocky” movies, like he was Peyton Manning preparing for New England.
I joined my son in watching the first “Rocky.” I hadn’t seen it in quite some time, and my view of Stallone and “Rocky” had been jaundiced by the lousy sequels and by Stallone’s lousy movies outside the franchise. So I was shocked at how good “Rocky” really was, and how empathetic Stallone was as the character. A bum on the end of his rope looking for one last chance sounds like a cliché, but “Rocky” comes across as anything but contrived. Imitating Stallone saying “Yo, Adrian” has long been pulverized into submission, but seeing him at the end of “Rocky” yelling for his mousy yet misunderstood girlfriend after the Apollo Creed fight was incredibly touching — and tear-inducing. It made me remember why, on a visit to Philadelphia in 1995, my wife and I got so giddy over seeing the Rocky statue outside the Spectrum. (The statue has since been moved to the art museum steps.)
Stallone and “Rocky” were never-weres. Stallone and “Rocky Balboa” are has-beens. That means for the first time since the original “Rocky,” both Stallone and the character have a true sense of desperation. I’m getting a good feeling about this new movie.
1. HOOSIERS (1986)
What can I say? I grew up in Indiana. I’ve even shot baskets on the Hickory home floor (in Knightstown, Ind. — the “Hoosiers” gym is available for rental.) Still, you don’t have to be a Hoosier to see that
“Hoosiers” bats five-for-five in the factors that make up a great sports movie. You’ve got your Underdog (the coach with the bad reputation, the farm boy players) Sticking It to the Man (his checkered past, big schools). The film has so much emotion, Men can’t even predict when they might Cry. It’s chock full of Memorable Quotes—for years afterward, as I played pickup ball, invariably someone would say something about running the picket fence. As for Inspired Real Athletes, it’s still common for coaches of presumably overmatched teams to show the movie to their players soon before a big game.
But makes this movie great is the sense of melancholy behind Hickory’s run to the state title. Many people, including many in Indiana, interpret “Hoosiers” as a tale of inspiration. But I see behind it a sense of dread and melancholy. The 1951 Huskers championship run is special not only because a small school will never be able to do it again, but it also special because the outside world is getting ready to come crashing down on a small community that hasn’t had much need for it. For evidence, listen to Ollie’s oral report in history class on the definition of progress – it’s the antithesis to everything Hickory. Or view who is coaching South Bend Central in the final game. It’s Ray Crowe, whose Oscar Robertson-led Indianapolis Crispus Attucks teams won the next two titles after Milan’s 1954 run (the inspiration for “Hoosiers”), serving notice that Indiana’s rural basketball tradition would soon exist in spirit only.
Unfortunately, some of the greatest melancholy comes from knowing the real-life fate of one of the Hickory players: Kent Poole, who hanged himself in his Crawfordsville, Ind., driveway in 2003, as the world was crashing down on him. (His farming business and his marriage were in trouble.) Poole, as Merle, delivered the movie’s signature line about winning the title for all the small schools. It’s hard to reconcile that message of hope with Poole’s suicide.
Makes you want to run out and rent “Hoosiers,” huh? But all of this killjoying is to illustrate that if “Hoosiers” were merely a rah-rah tale, it wouldn’t endure as it has. You can’t Feature an Underdog or Underdogs, Stick it to the Man, Make Men Cry, Provide Memorable Quotes and Inspire Real Athletes just by writing a script that gets the team, or a player, to the big game.
Opinion: Top 10 sports movies of all time - Fan Zone - MSNBC.com
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