Flak Magazine: Kick Out the Sports! 05.17.04

With Miracle, the biopic of the 1980 US Olympic hockey team, out on DVD, it's time to begin assessing whether it will join the sports-movie pantheon. A film gets into the sports-movie pantheon in the same way one would get into the pantheon of any genre with way-too-intense aficionados — be it splatter, chick flick, chopsocky or Bruce Campbell. It adheres to implicit, strict guidelines set aside for that sub-category.

In the case of sports, there are five factors. Movies must: Feature an Underdog or Underdogs, Stick it to the Man, Make Men Cry, Provide Memorable Quotes and Inspire Real Athletes. Hit three of those five, and you're most likely in.

(Let me pause here to mention something I call the Karate Kid Konundrum — please don't abbreviate that. Fans are bitterly divided over whether films like The Karate Kid, which includes a sport but doesn't seem to really be about sports, should be considered a sports movie. I would put Field of Dreams and Vision Quest among the movies in this Konundrum, but I won't rule on their sports-worthiness. However, any sports movie starring Tom Cruise is not a sports movie.)

The reason a movie must hit three of five components is because two of them — Underdog and Stick it to the Man — are found in even the lousiest sports movie. The team no one expects to win using strange methods to overcome its handicaps is a clichÈ, but without those points, there would be no dramatic tension. That's why no one has made a film based on the 1998 New York Yankees. What would be the tagline — "They were expected to win ... and they did?" A sports movie that only contains Underdog and Stick it to the Man has to be off the charts on each — like North Dallas Forty or The Longest Yard — to even have a hope of reaching the pantheon.

Sometimes the Underdog is a player fighting for his life, trying to Stick it to the Man upstairs who seems to want him off the field of life, which brings us to movies that Make Men Cry. As much as sports-movie fans profess to hate weepy romantic movies in which a dying character has the strength only to tug at your heart-strings, they are suckers for stories of an athlete cut down in his prime. If you don't believe me, 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.

A pantheon-level story that Makes Men Cry must be true. Brian's Song was about doomed Bears running back Brian Piccolo, who died of cancer. Sports-movie fans have a harder time getting worked up over fictional deaths like Robert DeNiro's in Bang the Drum Slowly — such tragedies just seem too Steel Magnolias. That, and it's a bit jarring after 30 years' worth of tough-guy work to see DeNiro as someone who would die without having somebody whacked first.

The true-life character who Makes Men Cry doesn't have to be the athlete — the image of John Cappeletti giving his Heisman Trophy to his 8-year-old, leukemia-stricken brother at the end of Something for Joey isÖ isÖ oh, I can't hold it in anymore!

(Sorry for that uncontrollable-sobbing break.)

But Pride of the Yankees, with Gary Cooper portraying Lou Gehrig as he morphs from baseball player to disease namesake, has a higher place in the pantheon, because it fulfills a fourth component; it Provides Memorable Quotes. Simply, quotability means people ceaselessly recite lines from a movie, whether you want them to or not. The enduring influence of Pride of the Yankees, for example, is that most everyone who steps in front of a microphone has the urge to repeat the movie's echo-laden speech: "Today-today-day-day-day, I consider myself-myself-self-self-self, the luckiest man-man-man-man-man on the face of the earth-earth-earth-earth-earth."

Dialogue need not provide the memorable quote. For example, whenever youth league baseball uniforms are handed out, some parent invariably makes a reference to Chico's Bail Bonds, the uniform sponsor for The Bad News Bears. This happens particularly when your kid's team gets a somewhat disgusting sponsor, like my 6-year-old son's did. His Chicago Cubs replica pitches "sewer cleaning and televising."

Quotability takes on a new dimension if you have real athletes citing the movie, which leads us to the ability to Inspire Real Athletes. This is the hardest nut to crack. Breaking Away hits four components, but until Lance Armstrong jokes about the jerks at Cinzano or how he trains by drafting his bicycle behind a semi-truck, or people actually care about cycling beyond Armstrong, it won't fulfill this category.

The original Rocky might have hit all five categories, too. But what with all the sequels and Sylvester Stallone generally making himself into a joke (as the sport of boxing was making itself into a joke) in the intervening years, it's hard to imagine Rocky inspiring any real athletes. That is, unless you count the palookas who want to appear on Sly's planned boxing reality show.

Bull Durham, Slap Shot and Caddyshack certainly qualify as inspirations, though. Bull Durham taught us to respect the streak and how to give lame "Bull Durham quotes" to sportswriters. Slap Shot is the quintessential hockey movie — you won't find a hockey player who hasn't memorized every filthy word, studied every goon's punch or shouted out "old time hockey!" as a goof. And if it wasn't enough that most every hacker recites the words of Caddyshack groundskeeper Carl Spackler ad nauseum, even on a miniature golf course, Tiger Woods doing an homage to him in a commercial should further cement that movie's permanent place in the pantheon.

However, none of those movies Make Men Cry, which leaves us with only one sports movie that hits all five components — Hoosiers. The story of the plucky small-town team that beats the odds to win a state basketball title (hope I didn't ruin the ending there) knocks out four of them in one line: "Let's win this one for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here." It's a Memorable Quote; it's Underdog; it Sticks it to the Man; and my throat tightens when I hear it. This despite my graduating class having 10 times as many students as all of Hickory High.

As far as Inspiring Real Athletes, here's the best story I've heard of many regarding Hoosiers: All-American center Ruth Riley, after her Notre Dame team won the 2001 NCAA women's basketball title, told reporters that when she went to the free-throw line with a few seconds left to hit what would be the game-winning points, she was thinking of little Ollie, who granny-styled game-winning free throws in Hoosiers.

So will Miracle make it?

Let's go down the list. Team not expected to win? Check off Underdog. Coach uses unorthodox methods, against the advice of his bosses? Check off Stick it to the Man. As for Memorable Quotes, maybe not enough time has passed, but "again" (Coach Herb Brooks' stoic order for his beyond-exhausted team to do more sprints) and "I play for the USA!" have potential. There are plenty of heartwarming scenes that Make Men Cry, but the worst (or best) is the one showing Herb Brooks, the last guy cut from the 1960 US Olympic hockey team, cutting the last guy from his 1980 US Olympic hockey team. Excruciating.

But will it Inspire Real Athletes? In that, it may fall short, if only because Slap Shot has such a hold on hockey players already; plus, the real Olympic team was so inspiring, it's hard to be inspired by the movie version.

Still, that's three (or four, if you want to bet on its quotes) out of five already, before people watch it over and over on DVD. So it's chances for reaching the pantheon are very good indeed.

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.