MY MOVIE SHELF: We Are Marshall

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 143  Days to go: 96

Movie #295:  We Are Marshall

A little history here:  My first husband grew up in West Virginia, and he’s been a lifelong fan of Marshall football. When we were married, we visited Huntington quite a few times. We went to a lot of games, whenever we could. (I still tend to follow their seasons, because affection for a team can long outlast the relationship that spawned it.) We cheered them on and bought University gear and even ran into a player or two out in the wild from time to time. (When I was pregnant with my son, in fact, a week shy of my due date, we saw Byron Leftwich in a framing store of all places. He was a giant hulk of a man.) Huntington is a small city, a close community, a college town. It’s the kind of place that feels welcoming and serene, next to that big, wide Ohio River. It’s not much, really, and yet it’s beautiful.

In 1999, Marshall went undefeated. This was the second year of the BCS championship for Division 1-A teams, but there was no such thing as a BCS buster team back then. If you weren’t from a power conference, it was an impressive accomplishment to win all your games, but it wasn’t going to get you into a BCS bowl. Marshall finished the year ranked #10. It was enough. It was spectacular.

Marshall was in the Mid-American Conference then (the MAC), and the MAC Championship game was held on December 3, 1999 in Huntington, on Marshall’s home field. It was cold, and threatening rain. Western Michigan was up 20-0 when we went into halftime, and when the second half started, the rain did too. Nobody left their seats, though. Western Michigan then scored another 3, and with a 23-0 deficit, Marshall’s perfect season was seriously threatened. Then they started to score, but not quite enough. With a minute left in the game, the score was 30-27 and Marshall was still down. Quarterback Chad Pennington took the snap and ran thirty yards down the field to the Western Michigan 30, and with seven seconds left, he threw the winning touchdown. Marshall won 34-30, and everybody rushed the field. I mean everybody, including us. In the melee I ran into wide receiver Nate Poole and congratulated him on a good game. “Thanks, baby,” he said, and I felt like a blushing schoolgirl. Students cheered and celebrated and tore down the goal posts, and one of those posts wound up being carried off the field entirely. We half-followed, half-helped-carry that goal post all the way up campus, to the Memorial Fountain featured at the start and the end of this movie. And then these reveling college kids became reverent. They dedicated that game, that season, that legacy and maybe even that goalpost to their fallen brothers — the players, coaches and fans who perished in that awful plane crash almost 30 years earlier (before any of these students were even glimmers in their daddies’ eyes — even before I was). It was quite possibly the most spiritual and awe-inspiring moment of my life, and it was shared with everyone there, in body and in spirit. That’s what it’s like to be from Huntington, to be from Marshall. And that’s what this movie needed to achieve.

We Are Marshall starts just as that tragic night did, with a loss to East Carolina. Players, coaches, boosters and “voice of the Thundering Herd” Gene Morehouse got on the plane. Assistant coach Red Dawson (Matthew Fox) gave up his seat to a recruiter trying to get home to his granddaughter’s piano recital and took the recruiting trip himself. The cheerleaders, including one Annie Cantrell (Kate Mara), who was engaged to one of the players, had to drive home. Defensive back Nate Ruffin (Anthony Mackie) was injured and had stayed home. He went to see a movie that night. And then the announcements came, over the news, over the radio, by phone and even in the movie theater: there had been a plane crash. All 75 passengers perished. It was November 14, 1970.

It’s hard to imagine such a devastating loss. These were not only your team’s football players. They were your students, your friends, your sons. The entire town was broken, and it would’ve been completely reasonable and understandable to shut down the program in remembrance of all that was lost. People felt guilt over living, responsibility to honor the fallen, and an honest hesitation over whether or not football would ever feel right again. But if you love something, it can heal you. And that’s what football did for Marshall.

Not right away, of course. They had to start completely over, from the ground up. You see it played for comedy in movies all the time, a team having to assemble a rag-tag assortment of players from wherever they can find them, but Marshall had to do that for real. Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey) came over from Wooster to be the head coach (proving to be almost exactly what they needed by being sociable but not mournful and sort of colloquially single-minded, able to tell people what they needed to hear in the way they needed to hear it, and able to bring them around to his way of thinking). Red came back to be his assistant, but only for a year, to help with the transition. (His tearful “How am l supposed to look a mother in the eye and promise her anything ever again?” gets me right in the gut, and his breakdown after the Xavier game leaves me spent.) University president Dedmon (David Strathairn) petitioned the NCAA to allow them to play freshmen. And they recruited from other Marshall athletes — basketball players, baseball players, soccer players, whatever they could find. And they fielded a team. It wasn’t easy, and it didn’t fix them right away — in fact, their first loss of the 1971 season led to all those same doubts again, but amplified. But eventually it was cathartic. Eventually they won. And though they lost more games in the 1970s than any other program, eventually they became one of the most successful, winning two national championships in Division 1-AA, before fielding names like Pennington and Randy Moss, and winning almost every MAC championship they appeared in. They rose from those ashes, and even though a lot of the people at Marshall University weren’t even close to being around when that plane crashed, the memory of that tragedy is still with them, and it holds them together, and they still rise.

Director McG had sort of an impossible task ahead of him when he took on this film, because how could anyone outside this community understand it? He could handle the actual game play — his history of music videos and action movies kind of cemented that, and in fact he films movie football possibly better than I’ve ever seen it filmed (right there in the action, but not choppy or hard to follow — really smooth and intense and present). But there’s so much more to the film, and to the heart of the story, than football. Miraculously, and wonderfully, he understands that. And he conveys that heart, that community, that loss and that catharsis and that coming together. When Jack walks out of his house the morning of the Xavier game and sees the entire town heading toward the stadium, that’s exactly how it still feels today. He captured the true essence of those people.

Anthony Mackie, too, is magnificent as Ruffin. If you’re not a fan of him, I just don’t know what you’re doing with your life. Ruffin’s pained, tearful, gritty determination to play through the injury in his shoulder because he feels beholden to his fallen teammates is as devastating as it is inspiring. You’ve known all along why he’s fought for this team and for this game, but he gives it dimension in that moment, and makes it a thing you could almost reach out and touch.

The thing about death and loss is that no matter what you do, life continues on. Eventually you have to take the next step, go to the next place, drink that beer you bought. A son can lose his father but keep him too, by growing up to be the voice of the Thundering Herd himself, as Gene’s son Keith did. A man can lose 33 of the 42 games he coaches and still be a winner because he put a team on the field. The point is to do what you love, what you need to do, and to just keep doing it despite the losses and the heart aches and the setbacks. Life goes on, and so must we. We are Marshall.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Any Given Sunday

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #20: Any Given Sunday

There’s a crass joke that hangs out in bawdier environments, that if a man could suck his own dick, he’d never leave the house. This movie is two and a half hours of director Oliver Stone sucking his own dick, over and over and over and over.

Because I hardly even know where to start with this one, I will start with the description on IMDb: “A behind-the-scenes look at the life-and-death struggles of modern-day gladiators and those who lead them.” Jiminy Christmas.

This is a movie that takes itself way too seriously, that sees itself as a gritty actualization of a greedy, corrupt, morally bankrupt society, that purports to be an indictment of the world of professional football and all involved. What it actually is, however, is an overwrought, self-involved, overwhelmingly cynical yet hilariously clichéd, run-of-the-mill sports film. Not even a good sports film, or an emotionally satisfying sports film, just a boring, painfully average, unoriginal sports film.

The opening scene sets the tone immediately. We’re near the end of the first half of a game between the Miami Sharks and the Minnesota Americans (my hand to God, those are the team names — either the NFL wanted nothing to do with this movie or Oliver Stone didn’t want to compromise his “artistic integrity” by kowtowing to the corporate machine). Seasoned (read: old) quarterback Jack “Cap” Rooney (Dennis Quaid) takes the snap, can’t find an open receiver, and gets sandwiched between two defenders before falling hard to the ground. He fumbles the ball, and the Americans (seriously, the dumbest name) scoop and score. To make matters worse, Rooney is on the ground, writhing in pain. Team doctor James Woods (as Dr. Harvey Mandrake — who thought these up??) comes out onto the field and berates Rooney for not getting up, for being a pussy, for playing to the cameras, and for being a pussy some more. He pretty much does everything but kick the poor guy in the balls, never once even remotely acting like a doctor — not even for the cameras, as he so cynically assumed his player would be. So five minutes in, not only is it perfectly clear this movie is only going through the motions of actual athletic competition drama, simply rehashing by rote every scene from every football movie ever made, it also hates football and has nothing but disdain for everyone and everything associated with football, up to and including its fans.

The entire film is like this — every negative stereotype you could ever come up with about football players, coaches, owners, fans, or families, is put into play. Somehow, every character is both inept and cocky.

The coach (Al Pacino) is old and out of his league, making bad calls and getting out-coached at every turn, but he’s also an arrogant blowhard who’s disrespectful and misogynistic towards the team’s owner (Cameron Diaz, playing the daughter who inherited her father’s team upon his death), petty and vindictive with both his players and his staff, not to mention sad and pathetic because he pays $5000 a night for a hooker (Elizabeth Berkley, of course) and then wants her to be his girlfriend for real because he’s so lonely and washed up. Honestly, I don’t think it would be possible to throw more distasteful characteristics his way, but just for good measure he also shouts everything in that grating Al Pacino manner until your ears bleed.

In the exact same vein, Diaz’s character is a greedy ballbuster — like Rachel Phelps in Major League, except not funny or cartoonishly villainous or anything remotely interesting. She’s the clichéd daughter of a man who wanted a son, always trying to run with the big boys and prove her worth, but she’s also conducting some nefarious machinations behind the scenes to move the team (literally, she’s the boring and even more awful Rachel Phelps), so she’s mean and unlikable, while also being the target of every piece of sexist condescension they could think of, coming from every man she interacts with. The coach hates her, the players undermine her, the mayor talks down to her, her father’s associates patronize her, and somehow she has to wind up apologizing to her drunk fool mother (Ann-Margret) for … something, I don’t know. Being a hard-nosed bitch, I think. It’s insulting.

The players, too, are caricatures of actual football players. They have a drunken cocaine hooker party at a D.A.R.E charity event, for crying out loud. They have no team unity, and only look out for themselves — a trait that surely exists with some players, but not all the players on a single team. L.L. Cool J plays a running back all about endorsement deals. Bill Bellamy is a coked out wide receiver. Lawrence Taylor is the “heart” of the defense whose health is in serious danger but who keeps playing despite the risks so he gets his million dollar bonus (on the same play that he likely paralyzes himself, but hey — a million dollars!).  And Jamie Foxx is third string quarterback Willie Beaman, thrust into that first game against the Americans (ugh) when Rooney and then Rooney’s backup are injured in back-to-back plays. Despite being a vomiting mess who doesn’t know half the plays in the playbook, he does a few athletic things, wins a game (not that first one, but one, eventually, and then some more) and suddenly is an arrogant jerk talking about how great he is, how he has “invisible juice” so defenses can’t get him (before he’s predictably destroyed by a defense — like I said, somehow both inept and cocky), how he doesn’t need his linemen or his offensive teammates or his defensive teammates, how something something racial is going on, and recording his own music video in which he states his name is Willie Beaman and he “leaves the girls creamin’.” Gross.

The assistant coaches are all raging madmen or scowling their disapproval of how the team’s being managed. The fans are prototypical fat assholes, fighting in the stands. The players’ wives are all either snotty, greedy mean girls or beaten down doormats, and Beaman’s long-standing girlfriend (Lela Rochon) flies off the handle at Beaman when the Mean Girl wives are bitchy to her, at which point he calls her a dyke and screams at her to leave. (All the players scream at all the women, at all times. You know, because women are greedy bitches or whores or bitches and whores and all men treat them as such.) The opposing players (on teams just as ludicrously named as the Americans — the Chicago Rhinos, anyone? And don’t even get me started on the freaking Pantheon Cup nonsense) are all hostile and violent — motherfucker this and that is pretty bland, but early on one of them yells that one of the Sharks is going to be “pulling pieces of dick out of his ass” and at another point near the end of the film a man’s eyeball gets ripped out on the field. I hate it when that happens. There’s even an extended game-time montage set to a song, the primary lyrics of which are “my niggers,” on repeat, ad infinitum.

As for the game itself, it’s so far outside how basic football works I can’t decide if the filmmakers don’t watch and/or understand football at all, or if the NFL was so opposed to this movie they made them change weirdly inconsequential things like uniforms and TV graphics and whatnot. The Sharks have the most basic uniform of all, all black with white lettering and numbers, but all the other teams are in these garish colors with massive designs on them. (The Dallas Knights, for example, are in gold with giant red crosses on their chests.) And no team has a different uniform for away games at all. Home or away, it’s the same every time. I never did catch the initialism for the league that these teams are in, but on the TV broadcasts, the team with the higher score gets listed on top, rather than listing the visiting team on top, so there are times when it switches which team is listed first. The commentators and sports writers are also incredibly trite  — even worse than the real life ones. At one point Oliver Stone, making a cameo as one of the TV announcers, says of Jamie Foxx, “He’s got genius ankles.” I swear, I could not make that up. The sports writer, played by John C. McGinley in an awful haircut, refers to Beaman as a “warrior poet,” of all things. And it’s a nitpicky football complaint, but there’s a point at which the Knights have the ball and the Sharks need a stop. The Knights are up 35-31 on fourth down, and instead of kicking a field goal, they decide to go for a touchdown, at which point the announcers say they’re “going for the win instead of the tie.” This is not what’s happening. They are already winning. Even if they do nothing, the Sharks will need a touchdown, because a field goal will still leave them a point shy. All the Knights are doing at this point is trying to keep the ball and run out the clock. That’s it. If it weren’t such a clichéd trope, it would be an emotionally significant stop either way.

Hilariously, though, at some point someone must’ve told Stone that sports movies have to have uplifting and celebratory endings, because literally out of nowhere, during the final game sequence, there is suddenly soaring music and slo-motion action. Foxx and Pacino share a hackneyed joke on the sidelines, Diaz chooses this time to apologize to her mother for … something, and everyone has learned a very valuable lesson probably, or at the very least their hearts grew three sizes that day.

Of course, the forced agenda of the film isn’t the only thing that makes it self-indulgent. The camera work and editing actually accomplishes that all on its own. Repeatedly, throughout the film, as a scene of game footage plays out, it is intercut with conversations of various other characters — Diaz in the owner’s booth, the coaches on the sidelines, whatever. When two characters are in the middle of a conversation, the camera jumps from them to close-ups of various knickknacks and photos and game paraphernalia, while they’re still talking. When the team loses, and Pacino’s character is feeling downtrodden, there are quick fades to other random people in the bar, players around town, and whoever else, just to show how sad everyone is. And every single scene is shot with at least half a dozen cameras, so one second you’re in tight close-up, the next you’re looking down from an awkward angle filmed by a camera in the ceiling, the next moment everything is off-tilt in a different direction coming from a two-shot. If it’s not the schizophrenic editing, it’s blurred pans to convey a dizzy or concussed player or perhaps the coach having a sepia-toned vision of football games gone by (not sure at all what’s going on there, but the players have leather helmets?). My favorite parts, though, are the random hard cuts to rapid lightning flashes in a cloudy night sky. No rhyme or reason for them to be there, but maybe Stone wants to let his audience know how emotionally stormy everything is. And if you can’t see me rolling my eyes from here, then you’re not paying attention.

The fact of the matter is, I really like sports movies. I own quite a few, and I probably own more football movies than any other sport-related film because I’m such a huge fan of the game. I think that might be what disappoints me most about this one. I remember going to see it in the theater and just instantly, vociferously hating it (this is one of the ones my husband owned when we met) — not because it’s exposing a side of football people are uncomfortable with, but because it’s so wrapped up in its predetermined mission statement and utterly negatively stereotyped substance that it loses all credibility and feeling of authenticity. It wants so badly to be taken seriously that I can’t possibly take it seriously.

Also, it’s just a really terrible film.

YATA, YATA, YATA

Fantasy football sucks. I used to spend hours analyzing spreadsheets and trying to identify trends and hoping for that one little nugget that would net me 3 more points on game day. Then I’d get beat by some idiot who forgot to put a kicker in his starting lineup because he got 27 points out of a player that I wouldn’t even allow on my team. It doesn’t matter how much time and effort you put into fantasy football; the end result is often a matter of luck. There are just too many unquantifiable factors. What can you do? Well, if you’re me, you try to quantify them. Usually it doesn’t work out. I think this one worked out pretty well.

I’m calling It YATA: Yards Against the Average. It shows how well a defense performs by indicating the percentage of an opponent’s average that they allow. In hindsight, I should have used total points instead of just yards, but I was nearly finished by the time that occurred to me. So that will be a project for another day.

Example: You have two quarterbacks on your roster, QB1 – who is playing against Kansas City – and QB2 – who is playing against Cincinnati. Both score about the same amount of points every week, passing for around 250 yards per game each. The traditional way to choose a starter in this instance is to see which player is going up against the weaker pass defense. Kansas City ranks 3rd against the pass, Cincinnati ranks 9th and has allowed 156 more passing yards. So you go with QB2, because he has the better match up. On Sunday, QB1 gains 250 passing yards. QB2 only gains 217 passing yards, costing you 2 points in a game that you lost by 1.

Had you used YATA, you would have won the game. While KC appeared to have the better pass defense on the surface, the reality is that half of their opponents have had passing offenses ranked in the league’s 10 worst – two are in the bottom 4. Cincinnati, on the other hand, has played only one of the bottom 10 passing offenses and has also played 2 of the ten best. Essentially, YATA is a complicated means of putting a number to the “Yeah, but they haven’t played anybody” argument.

Here is the complete YATA ranking through Week 6:

1. Houston 61.3

2. Cleveland 83.3

3. Pittsburgh 83.4

4. San Francisco 85.5

5. Cincinnati 86.3

6. Jacksonville 87.2

7. New Orleans 94.2

8. New England 94.7

9. New York Jets 96.2

10. Indianapolis 96.7

T-11. Oakland 97.3

T-11. Baltimore 97.3

13. Seattle 97.5

T-14. Kansas City 97.6

T-14. St. Louis 97.6

16. Tennessee 98.2

17. Chicago 99.5

18. New York Giants 100.6

T-19. Carolina 102.6

T-19. Tampa Bay 102.6

21. Detroit 105.2

T-22. Miami 110.0

T-22. Atlanta 110.0

24. Arizona 111.3

25. Dallas 114.3

26. Minnesota 114.6

27. Philadelphia 115.8

28. Washington 121.6

29. Buffalo 121.8

30. Green Bay 122.4

31. San Diego 127.0

32. Denver 139.5

The number after each team indicates the percentage of yards each team allows compared to their opponents’ averages. The higher a team’s YATA, the better a quarterback is likely to fare against that team. A quarterback who averages 250 yards per game will likely throw for around 244 yards (97.6% of 250) against Kansas City. That same quarterback – or one with a similar average – will likely throw for around 216 yards (86.3% of 250) against Cincinnati.

So tomorrow when you’re setting up your lineups, consider the YATA when choosing a quarterback.

This could potentially also be applied to all positions in fantasy football, including kickers and team defenses, but it would require a little more research. At any rate, good luck in your match-ups this week, unless you’re playing me.

 

/michael

Shut Up, I’m Watching the Game

I love football.

I particularly love college football.

I really truly totally love Ohio State football.

But I hate Ohio State fans.

Have you ever watched a sporting event with someone who, the instant his team failed to score, or turned the ball over, or even just didn’t execute a play perfectly, began griping loudly and repeatedly about how much this team – a team he is utterly devoted to – completely sucks? Until the entire room becomes a fog of negativity and even the players themselves, through the television screen, seem to feel it pressing on them? That’s what Ohio State fans are like, almost without exception.

A lot of this has to do with insanely high expectations coupled with the snarling defensiveness that comes from years of not getting national “respect.” The latter we’ll get to in a moment, but the former was spurred most recently in the current issue of ESPN The Magazine’s 2013 College Football Preview, wherein Ohio State, coming off an undefeated season marred only by an NCAA-violation-mandated postseason ban, is ranked number 2 behind Alabama and in talking about the Buckeyes, ESPN’s lede is “National Title or Bust.” National Title or Bust — the absolute pinnacle of NCAA football achievement, or the entire season is a failure. Now, I know this is somewhat hyperbole, a slight exaggeration of the reality that success is the ultimate goal. I know a title game is what the Buckeyes are reaching for — it’s what every team is reaching for, every year. And it’s absolutely doable. Ohio State is strong and ready, they’ve got a great coach, a talented QB that gets better every year (this is his third), a 12-game winning streak and something to prove. But to suggest they will have accomplished nothing if they don’t walk away with the crystal football come January is ludicrous. Wildly reaching blanket statements like that are the media’s stock-in-trade, but Buckeye fans take it to heart. Every week leading up to Game Day you’ll hear Ohio State fans discussing the upcoming match, predicting scores and analyzing the competition. This is standard practice for any fan of any team, but an OSU fan’s predictions will be astronomical and nothing short of a blowout will suffice. Obviously there is already plenty of talk surrounding tomorrow’s season opener against Buffalo and the most conservative score I saw floated on the morning news broadcast was 41-10. That’s a 4-touchdowns-and-a-field-goal margin. That’s a lot. And I know Buffalo isn’t a strong team, but those same predictions will inevitably follow the Buckeyes to San Diego State and on into conference play. And as soon as the predictions inevitably – for inevitable it is – fail to come exactly true, Ohio State fans will commence cussing out their own team, players and coaches. It’s an unavoidable outcome, and in knowing that it’s unavoidable, the fans are in essence looking forward to trashing their own team. It’s at this point that I no longer want to watch a football game with any other human anywhere.

The other thing about Ohio State fans is that they constantly feel slighted by the media, by the polls, by other teams and other teams’ fans, which creates a belligerence and a constant defensiveness. Ohio State fans are always at the ready to go off – often profanely and crudely – on whatever and whomever disrespects them. There’s a certain amount of normal fan-centered bravado to this, and not a small amount of justification when players like Johnny Manziel sells his autograph and is suspended for one-half of one game while the entire Ohio State program was decimated in the spring of 2011 (and continued to pay for it in 2012) for similar activities. Ohio State fans notice all these injustices; they catalog them and index them and carry them around like gargantuan chips on their shoulders until the end of time, whether it’s the inequality of the polls or the staunch refusal of ESPN’s Mark May to give the Buckeyes any kind of praise while they’re suspended (I don’t know). They obsess about these things, and they do not let them go. The irony, of course, is that they feed into this same conversation. If the Buckeyes don’t get 500 rushing yards or don’t run up the score by 30 points, then they’re losers that can’t compete, according to their own fan base. So why should anybody else care?

I love my Buckeyes. I want them to do well, I want them to win games, I want to cheer for them. I get disappointed for them when they lose (NOTE: for them, not with them). And I do get frustrated when they can win every single game they play (as they did in the ’02 season) and still get held up as a fluke, or as undeserving of their success. But I will continue to cheer them on, and I will never trash talk them.

And anyone who wants to get pissed if tomorrow OSU only beats Buffalo by a single touchdown can go watch the game somewhere else, thanks. I’ll be alone in my house eating Tostitos scoops and salsa.

/jessica