My Football Movie Idea
It's called "The Price."
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Scene: Camera in a tight shot on long, bony, bent beyond belief black fingers that belong to an "old before his time" black man in his 60s. The man is talking about his experiences playing in the National Football League in the 1960s and 1970s.
"You ever get cheered by 70,000 people? It's a rush, man. We were brothers out there. Warriors. No, I don't regret a minute of it. Not one minute, not one play, never."
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My new movie idea is a mashup of two fairly recent sports biographies, "Namath" by Mark Kreigel, and "Johnny U" by Tom Callahan. Both are fantastic reads that fairly drip with drama and emotion. Johnny Unitas is dead and Joe Namath is so iconic as to be unfilmable straight up. But can a fictional drama be made of some combination of their lives that would represent, with honor, humor, and integrity, the warriors that play professional football in this country?
I think it can. In fact, I'm certain that a great, great movie can be made about the subject. "The Blind Side" and "The Help" are recent hits with somewhat similar subject matter. And what's more, we as a nation owe the men who serviced our national obsession during the prime years of their lives and paid, and are continuing to pay, the price for their careers with ill health and financial headaches. Earl Campbell and John Mackey and Dave Duerson and Lawrence Taylor and Alan fucking Page paid a big price for what they did, and what's more, it's very cinematic.
Ken Burns "Baseball" film did quite a bit of good for retired Negro League players twenty or so years ago. I believe a film like this could be of similar value, with the difference being that most of the black baseball players were dead or close to it when "Baseball" came out in 1994. There are hundreds (thousands?) of large men in need of care and dollars and someone to listen to their stories.
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Interesting?
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Scene: Camera in a tight shot on long, bony, bent beyond belief black fingers that belong to an "old before his time" black man in his 60s. The man is talking about his experiences playing in the National Football League in the 1960s and 1970s.
"You ever get cheered by 70,000 people? It's a rush, man. We were brothers out there. Warriors. No, I don't regret a minute of it. Not one minute, not one play, never."
==============
My new movie idea is a mashup of two fairly recent sports biographies, "Namath" by Mark Kreigel, and "Johnny U" by Tom Callahan. Both are fantastic reads that fairly drip with drama and emotion. Johnny Unitas is dead and Joe Namath is so iconic as to be unfilmable straight up. But can a fictional drama be made of some combination of their lives that would represent, with honor, humor, and integrity, the warriors that play professional football in this country?
I think it can. In fact, I'm certain that a great, great movie can be made about the subject. "The Blind Side" and "The Help" are recent hits with somewhat similar subject matter. And what's more, we as a nation owe the men who serviced our national obsession during the prime years of their lives and paid, and are continuing to pay, the price for their careers with ill health and financial headaches. Earl Campbell and John Mackey and Dave Duerson and Lawrence Taylor and Alan fucking Page paid a big price for what they did, and what's more, it's very cinematic.
Ken Burns "Baseball" film did quite a bit of good for retired Negro League players twenty or so years ago. I believe a film like this could be of similar value, with the difference being that most of the black baseball players were dead or close to it when "Baseball" came out in 1994. There are hundreds (thousands?) of large men in need of care and dollars and someone to listen to their stories.
==============
Interesting?
posted by joe sweeney at 1:01 PM
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