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: 135 Days to go: 92
Movie #305: Wildcats
I don’t think anyone could guess how much of my very character was framed by watching Wildcats as a kid. It’s a big part of who I am, I don’t even think I’m exaggerating about that. I don’t even know what drew me to it so much as a kid, except that it’s AWESOME. It’s super funny, and it was taboo, and it’s about football and feminism and I love every single solitary thing about it, oh my god. It’s so great. I’m not sure how I came to know of its existence, even, I only know that I was compelled to watch it by my very being. It was on HBO a lot, and I would sneak out of my room at night to watch it after my parents went to sleep (back then HBO didn’t show R-rated films until after like 9pm or something). If I were to throw out a rough estimate, I’d say I saw Wildcats 5743 times in this manner. Everything about it impressed me, and I wanted to be cool like these people. I even, while venting to my mom once, called my stepfather a dumb dildo because I heard it in this movie and thought dildo sounded like a silly nonsense word you use for someone stupid — like bozo or dingleberry (which I also didn’t know was a real thing) or something along those lines. My mother, bless her poor, unappreciated heart, very calmly and rationally asked me if I knew what that word meant and, when I admitted I didn’t, explained it to me in, again, the most reasonable, PG way imaginable. Of all the things she should get a lot more credit for, that’s at the top of the list. She probably doesn’t remember that ever happened, but I will never forget it. Kids say the darndest things.
Wildcats is about a girls’ track coach at a cushy suburban high school named Molly McGrath (Goldie Hawn) who loves football more than anything. Her dad was a football coach, and she grew up with the game. Knows it as well as anybody. When the junior varsity coaching position comes open at her school — Prescott High — she asks for the job. But since a woman coaching football is just too weird or too inappropriate as far as the principal is concerned, he dodges the question and tells her instead to get the approval of the varsity coach, Dan Darwell (Bruce McGill). Dan is a chauvinist dickhead, though, so of course she has to go out with him in a social setting (they play racquetball) in order to discuss it with him, and of course he has to blow her off and harangue her into dinner and basically just refuse to take her seriously, then get all pissy because she’s better than him at racquetball too. So he hires some scrawny little joke of a home-ec teacher to coach football — even though this dude can’t answer a single question about the game — and, because he’s an obnoxious jerk who thinks he’s fucking hilarious, sets Molly up with a job coaching varsity at Central High — a rundown, pitiful program at an inner city school — as a joke. Because he’s a jerk.
Ben Edwards (Nipsey Russell), the principal of Central, hires her on, despite his general skepticism of the idea — not because he doesn’t believe she’s committed or qualified, but because he’s dealt with the kids in this school (and the lack of funds, and the lack of interest, etc.) long enough and is certain she has no idea what she’s getting into. And he’s not wrong. The players hate her, don’t respect or follow her, harass the hell out of her, and she’s lost all control of the program before she even starts it. Despite making real progress with a few of her players and showing up her biggest detractors, she’s already ready to quit. But when a bunch of guys trash her office and break the stop watch her sister Verna (Swoosie Kurtz) and daughters gave her, she challenges them to a run. She out lasts them all, of course, and calls them out as pussies afterward. “Fuck you,” one of them shouts. “Fuck you, WHAT,” she responds. “Fuck you, Coach McGrath.” “Better.” (Later, if there’s a better watch inscription than “Coach, we owe you. Love, from your pussies,” I haven’t heard it.)
She manages to build a strong, successful team, but of course some guys just can’t handle women making their own decisions, so now her d-bag of an ex-husband — Frank, played by James Keach — gets his panties in a wad over what’s appropriate for their children, despite his never being there for them in the past, and threatens to take them away from her if she doesn’t quit Central. (Not to mention that he thinks he still has a right to walk in on her in the tub or try to find her a more “suitable,” womanly job.) It’s a shitty, underhanded move, and it’s just one more piece of judgmental bullshit women have to deal with every single day of their lives. Molly can’t do one thing on her own, or be successful in her own right on her own terms, without some asshole trying to undermine her abilities or her parenting or whatever. It’s honest-to-god insulting, and yet the movie handles it in such a smart, funny way.
Goldie Hawn is a really funny actress, in case you’ve forgotten. And her whiny middle school daughter is played by Teen Witch herself, Robin Lively, whose major act of rebellion is to dye her hair magenta while still wearing giant dangling strawberry earrings, and who honestly thinks her kid sister can’t be a helicopter pilot because 1986 wasn’t as liberated as you’d think. Meanwhile, the football players are a (sometimes literal) gas. There’s Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson, as Trumaine and Krushinski, a good six years before they rocked the world in White Men Can’t Jump. Trumaine is a lothario, but he’s not a bad guy, and Krushinski’s best quality as quarterback is that his snap count is some variation of “Blue 32, FUCK YOU,” so he steps down to allow Molly to bring back Bird (Mykelti Williamson) — a local hustler and small time crook — to the position. (He’s reluctant, but she uses extortion to convince him.) “That’s an ugly charge, Bird. True, but ugly.” And when the head-butting Cerulo (Jsu Garcia) gets a concussion, she brings on Finch (Tab Thacker), a giant academic and a businessman, who claims to only play for money, but will put a good hit on someone free of charge if they call him fat.
I love this movie, because even when Molly wants to quit, she finds a way to power through. And when fuckface Frank basically forces her to quit because otherwise he’s going to take her kids away and not even let her see them during the season, she agrees to it not because she wants to but because her daughters are even more important than football, OF COURSE. But then she stands up to him and his stick-up-her-ass new wife Stephanie (the luminous Jan Hooks, may she rest in peace), and says she’s not going to quit anymore because she doesn’t want her daughters to grow up thinking quitting is okay. IT’S AMAZING AND GREAT AND I LOVE IT SO MUCH. She even gets him to cheer at the final game against the blowhards at Prescott. (I also love the touching, heartfelt pride Principal Edwards exhibits when he sees his students actually coming together with school spirit and pride, because it’s so unexpected from Russell and so loving. Plus he becomes kind of a wonderful co-conspirator with Molly, which is great.)
There’s even baby L.L. Cool J rapping about football. It is my favorite sports movie of all time, and it’s become part of my heart and my soul. Love, love, love.
“It’s the sport of kings — better than diamond rings — FOOTBALL!”
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