"Red River" is on TV. Anybody whoever said anything the slightist bit negative about Wayne's acting ability never saw this movie.
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"Red River" is on TV. Anybody whoever said anything the slightist bit negative about Wayne's acting ability never saw this movie.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BRETTFAVRE
And what year was "Red River"?
Red River (1948) is a classic and complex western (and considered by many critics to be one of the ten best westerns ever made). It is a sweeping, epic story about a cattle drive (historically based on the opening of the Chisholm Trail in 1867) and a film of rivalry and rebellion, spanning a time period of fifteen years. Red River was Howard Hawks' first western, a story often compared to its parallel epic on the high seas, Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). Later westerns he directed included The Big Sky (1952), Rio Bravo (1952), El Dorado (1967), and Rio Lobo (1970). Hawks was well known for his storytelling and his versatility in film genres, spanning screwball comedies (Bringing Up Baby (1938) and His Girl Friday (1940)), romantic comedies (Twentieth Century (1934)), crime/gangster films (Scarface: Shame of the Nation (1932)), detective noirs (The Big Sleep (1946)), and war films (The Dawn Patrol (1930)), to name a few.
The film's well-written screenplay (by Borden Chase and Charles Schnee) was based on Chase's novel/Saturday Evening Post serialized story (in six installments from December 1946 through January 1947): The Chisholm Trail. This was one of producer/director Howard Hawks' most extravagant and ambitious films, and cost over $3 million (overbudget) at the time - an exorbitant sum, but became a top-grossing film of the year. Gary Cooper was originally chosen to portray Tom Dunson - ultimately played by John Wayne, but refused because of the character's ruthlessness and contemptibility.
The film, shot on location in Arizona (near Elgin) and Mexico, authentically chronicles an epic, bleak and tough journey, similar to the ones in The Odyssey or in Exodus (in the Old Testament), that is fraught with external dangers, threats, tests of strength, and internal tensions between its two conflicting leaders: a hard-nosed, bitter and tough commanding father (John Wayne in one of his best performances and his first film, of five, for Hawks) and his men, defiantly led by his less harsh, surrogate, adopted son (Montgomery Clift).
Its metaphoric title was deliberately chosen to evoke the Biblical exodus, another journey in which a group of Israelites leave their familiar homeland and cross the Red Sea into unknown territory. By film's conclusion, the cattle herd are successfully brought to market on the new Chisholm Trail, and the two men are reconciled after a brutal brawl. The tough woman in the film, Tess (Joanne Dru), steps in and breaks up their final fight to the death with a gun. [In the original novel, Dunson's wound - from Cherry - causes him to collapse, and he soon dies. Matt and Tess bury him in Texas beside the Red River.]
In the long run, this production brought both critical acclaim and financial success. Two Academy Award nominations were received: one for Borden Chase's story, the other for Christian Nyby's Film Editing. It was undervalued due to its being a western - John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, director Hawks, and score writer Dimitri Tiomkin should have - at least - received nominations. Wayne (and Walter Brennan as his sidekick) would go on to make another western with Hawks a decade later - Rio Bravo (1959).
RED RIVER
BY ROGER EBERT
When Peter Bogdanovich needed a movie to play as the final feature in the doomed small-town theater in ``The Last Picture Show,'' he chose Howard Hawks' ``Red River'' (1948). He selected the scene where John Wayne tells Montgomery Clift, ``Take 'em to Missouri, Matt!'' And then there is Hawks' famous montage of weathered cowboy faces in closeup and exaltation, as they cry ``Hee-yaw!'' and wave their hats in the air.
The moment is as quintessentially Western as any ever filmed, capturing the exhilaration of being on a horse under the big sky with a job to do and a paycheck at the other end. And ``Red River'' is one of the greatest of all Westerns when it stays with its central story about an older man and a younger one, and the first cattle drive down the Chisholm Trail. It is only in its few scenes involving women that it goes wrong.
The film's hero and villain is Tom Dunson (Wayne), who heads West with a wagon train in 1851 and then peels off for Texas to start a cattle ranch. He takes along only his wagon driver, Groot Nadine (Walter Brennan). Dunson's sweetheart, Fen (Coleen Gray), wants to join them, but he rejects her almost absentmindedly, promising to send for her later. Later, from miles away, Tom and Groot see smoke rising: Indians have destroyed the wagon train. Groot, a grizzled codger, fulminates about how Indians ``always want to be burning up good wagons,'' and Tom observes that it would take them too long to go back and try to help. Their manner is surprisingly distant, considering that Dunson has just lost the woman he loved.
Soon after, the men encounter a boy who survived the Indian attack. This is Matt Garth, who is adopted by Dunson and brought up as the eventual heir to his ranch. Played as an adult by Montgomery Clift (his first screen role), Matt goes away to school, but returns in 1866 just as Dunson is preparing an epic drive to take 9,000 head of cattle north to Missouri.
I mentioned that Dunson is both hero and villain. It's a sign of the movie's complexity that John Wayne, often typecast, is given a tortured, conflicted character to play. He starts with ``a boy with a cow and a man with a bull,'' and builds up a great herd. But then he faces ruin; he must drive the cattle north or go bankrupt.
He's a stubborn man; all through the movie people tell him he's wrong, and usually they're right. They're especially right in wanting to take the cattle to Abilene, which is closer and reportedly has a railroad line, instead of on the longer trek to Missouri. As the cattle drive grows grueling, Dunson grows irascible, and finally whiskey and lack of sleep drive him a little mad; there are attempted mutinies before Matt finally rebels and takes the cattle to Abilene.
The critic Tim Dirks has pointed out the parallels between their conflict and the standoff between Capt. Bligh and Fletcher Christian in ``Mutiny on the Bounty.'' And indeed, the Borden Chase screenplay makes much of the older man's pride and the younger one's need to prove himself.
Also established, but never really developed, is a rivalry between young Matt and a tough cowboy named Cherry Valance (John Ireland), who signs up for the cattle drive and becomes Matt's rival. There's gonna be trouble between those two, old Groot predicts, but the film never delivers, leaving them stranded in the middle of a peculiar ambivalence that drew the attention of ``The Celluloid Closet,'' a documentary about hidden homosexuality in the movies. (``You know,'' Cherry says, handling Matt's gun, ``there are only two things more beautiful than a good gun: a Swiss watch or a woman from anywhere. You ever had a Swiss watch?'')
The shifting emotional attachments are tracked by a silver bracelet, which Dunson gives to Fen before leaving her. It later turns up on the wrist of an Indian he kills, and Dunson then gives it to Matt, who later gives it to Tess Millay (Joanne Dru), a woman he rescues and falls in love with. The three scenes with Tess are the movie's low points, in part because of her prattle (listen to how she chats distractingly with Matt during an Indian attack), in part because she is all too obviously the deus ex machina the plot needs to avoid an unhappy ending. The final scene is the weakest in the film, and Borden Chase reportedly hated it, with good reason: Two men act out a fierce psychological rivalry for two hours, only to cave in instantly to a female's glib tongue-lashing.
What we remember with ``Red River'' is not, however, the silly ending, but the setup and the majestic central portions. The tragic rivalry is so well established that somehow it keeps its weight and dignity in our memories, even though the ending undercuts it.
Just as memorable are the scenes of the cattle drive itself, as a handful of men control a herd so large it takes all night to ford a river. Russell Harlan's cinematography finds classical compositions in the drive, arrangements of men, sky and trees, and then in the famous stampede scene he shows a river of cattle flowing down a hill. It is an outdoor movie (we never go inside the ranch house Dunson must have built), and when young Matt steps inside the cattle buyer's office in Abilene, he ducks, observing how long it's been since he was under a roof.
Hawks is wonderful at setting moods. Notice the ominous atmosphere he brews on the night of the stampede--the silence, the restlessness of the cattle, the lowered voices. Notice Matt's nervousness during a night of thick fog, when every shadow may be Tom, come to kill him. And the tension earlier, when Dunson holds a kangaroo court.
And watch the subtle way Hawks modulates Tom Dunson's gradual collapse. John Wayne is tall and steady at the beginning of the picture, but by the end his hair is gray and lank, and his eyes are haunted; the transition is so gradual we might not even notice he wears a white hat at the outset but a black one at the end. Wayne is sometimes considered more of a natural force than an actor, but here his understated acting is right on the money; the critic Joseph McBride says John Ford, who had directed Wayne many times, saw ``Red River'' and told Hawks, ``I never knew the big son of a ***** could act.''
Between Wayne and Clift there is a clear tension, not only between an older man and a younger one, but between an actor who started in 1929 and another who represented the leading edge of the Method. It's almost as if Wayne, who could go over a flamboyant actor, was trying to go under a quiet one: He meets the challenge, and matches it.
The theme of ``Red River'' is from classical tragedy: the need of the son to slay the father, literally or symbolically, in order to clear the way for his own ascendancy. And the father's desire to gain immortality through a child (the one moment with a woman that does work is when Dunson asks Tess to bear a son for him). The majesty of the cattle drive, and all of its expert details about ``taking the point'' and keeping the cowhands fed and happy, is atmosphere surrounding these themes.
Underlying everything else is an attitude that must have been invisible to the filmmakers at the time: the unstated assumption that it is the white man's right to take what he wants. Dunson shoots a Mexican who comes to tell him ``Don Diego'' owns the land. Told the land had been granted to Diego by the king of Spain, Dunson says, ``You mean he took it away from whoever was here before--Indians, maybe. Well, I'm takin' it away from him.'' In throwaway dialogue, we learn of seven more men Dunson has killed for his ranch, and there's a grimly humorous motif as he shoots people and then ``reads over 'em'' from the Bible.
Dunson is a law of his own, until Matt stops a hanging and ends his reign. If all Westerns are about the inevitable encroachment of civilization, this is one where it seems like a pretty good idea.
Red River
Tom Dunson: John Wayne
Matt Garth: Montgomery Clift
Tess Millay: Joanne Dru Groot
Nadine: Walter Brennan
Fen: Coleen Gray
Cherry Valance: John Ireland
Buster McGee: Noah Beery Jr.
It appears Puffys word count lead is going out the window :MandJ:
Good morning everyone :thumbup:
Don't mess with a winning streak :DQuote:
Originally Posted by RosieRed
This is a great line!Quote:
Originally Posted by 2844
Some names of people who were bantied about for the lead roles in Grease. For Sandy the producers first wanted Susan Dey (but she wanted to get her image away from the Partridge Family goody too shoes type) and Linda Ronstadt.
Henry Winkler turned down the part of Danny, fearing it was too much like the Fonz and he would continue to be typecast.
Diana Manoff, who played Marty, was hard after the part of Rizzo, but the director felt that her "endowments" lent her better to Marty.
Juice is the expressed liquid from fruits or vegetables. As a highly concentrated source of nutrition—including vitamins, minerals, natural sugars, and healing phytochemicals—juice is an easy way to add more fruits and vegetables to any diet. But the term “juice” can be used loosely: many packaged, processed “juice drinks” or “fruit nectars” are loaded with artificial ingredients and sugar—you might as well drink soda.
Sherwood Schwartz's first choice to play Mike Brady was an unknown actor named Gene Hackman. However, the network wanted a name actor to play the part as they felt that six unknown child actors caused them to need a name.
Therefore, they decided on a Robert Reed, who was a big time broadway actor and also had been on TV in such TV shows as "The Lawman," "The Danny Thomas Show," "Father Knows Best" and "The Defenders"
Lucky break for Hackman
over 1200 kids were interviewed for before deciding on Maureen McCormick, Eve Plumb, Susan Oleson, Barry Williams, Chris Knight, and Mike Lookinland as the Brady kids. Schwartz interviewed 464 of them
South Park became such a hit so fast that celebrities were lining up to voice characters. The first name actor to appear in an episode was George Clooney. Clooney went to Trey Parker and Matt Stone and told them he'd love to be on the show. So Trey and Matt gave him the part of Sparky, Stan's gay dog. Clooney's only lines in the episode were "bark" and "woof" - but Clooney thought it was funny and he readily did it. He also has a brief part in the movie "Bigger, Longer, Uncut," as the doctor who accidently replaces Kenny's heart with a baked potato.
Soon after Clooney's role as Sparky the gay dog, Jerry Seinfeld wanted to voice a role. Seinfeld's agent called and told Matt and Trey that Seinfeld wanted to be on the show, so they offered him the part of Turkey #4 in their thanksgiving episode. Seinfeld's lines would have been "gobble gobble" - Seinfeld did not get the joke as Clooney did and passed on the role.
The Potato is a food staple in most countries of world. The plant is grown as an annual herb. The stem attains a length of one to three feet, with odd pinnate leaves and white to purple flowers.
The fruit is about the size of a cherry. The plant is native to the Peruvian Andes and was brought to in the 16th Century by Spanish explorers.
Early in the 18th Century the plant was reintroduced into the Americas, the earliest authentic record of its cultivation in the United States being dated 1719 at Londonderry, New Hampshire. The U.S. yield about 12 million tons of potatoes annually.
The principal potato producing states are: Maine, Idaho, California, New York and Minnesota. Rich, sandy loams are most suitable for producing types favored by American, Oriental and European taste. Named varieties popular in the U.S. includes: Rose, Idaho, Cobber, Early Ohio, Green Mountain, Hebron Rural and Burbank.
Freshly dug potatoes contain 78% water, 18% starch, 2.2% protein, 1% ash and .1% fat!
Ireland lost millions of people to the Great Potato Famine. Many, many more came to the U.S. because of the famine.
hey Ireland - you are surrounded by water!!! Go fishing and you wouldn't starve!!!
"Hey, Seamus, we have no potatoes! We're going to starve to death! What in the world can we eat if there are no potatoes??? I mean, if only there was other food readily available for us to eat...... Gawd, what are we going to do without potatoes!!!!!"
You can enjoy coarse fishing all year round in Ireland which has long been recognized as one of Europe's best regions for the coarse angler.Two particularly notable venues for big matches are Lough Erne in Fermanagh and the Upper Bann river which flows into the vast inland sea of Lough Neagh. Both have held innumerable match fishing world records.
August 2-On this date in history:
1876
Wild Bill Hickok was murdered in Deadwood, S.D.
1909
The first Lincoln penny was issued
1923
Warren G. Harding, the 29th president of the United States, died in San Francisco
1943
PT-109, a torpedo boat commanded by Lt. John F. Kennedy, was sunk off the Solomon Islands by a Japanese destroyer
1945
The Potsdam Conference, in which Allied leaders planned the postwar governance of Germany, ended
1990
The Persian Gulf War broke out when Iraq invaded Kuwait
"Hoosiers" ranks No. 1 on The Sports Guy's list of his all-time favorite sports movies.
I always thought it was fitting that "Hoosiers" was released during my most memorable year as a sports fan -- 1986 -- which featured the Basketball Jesus at the absolute zenith of his powers (playing for the '86 Celts, maybe the greatest NBA team of all-time), the Patriots improbably making the Super Bowl, a glorious roller-coaster ride of a Red Sox season (including Dave Henderson's homer in Anaheim, one of my Top 5 fan moments), Jack Nicklaus winning the Masters (another Top 5 moment), and the Red Sox blowing the '86 World Series four months after Lenny Bias dropped dead (my worst two moments ever). Quite a year.
"Hoosiers" actually snuck up on me. During November of '86, my buddy Bish and I went to see it on a Sunday afternoon, knowing nothing about it other than "It's a basketball movie." We ended up skipping out of the theater two hours later, setting the land-speed record driving back to my house, then playing two consecutive hours of inspired hoops. True story. When you think about it, how many movies were so memorable, you actually remember everything about the day when you watched it for the first time? That never happens.
Anyway, to celebrate my 250th viewing, I kept a running diary. Here's what transpired ...
Noon: As Brent Musberger would say, you're looking liiiiiiive at the Sports Guy Mansion! I'm joined by a large Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee, as well as some Baked Lays sour cream & onion chips and my game-worn Rade Butcher jersey from the '52 state finals.
Just pushed the "Hoosiers" DVD into the DVD player. ... I'm already getting chills just from the music on the Main Menu. Nah na-na-na, nahh nuhh nahhhhh ... nah na-na-na, na nuh-nuh nuh nahhhhh. Feel free to sing along at home.
12:01: There's Norman Dale driving through backwoods Indiana in the early a.m. -- sipping coffee, headed toward his first day at work -- as the opening credits roll, the soundtrack quietly hums in the background and the sun rises through the clouds. Just gets you fired up. Indiana, 1951. 'Nuff said.
12:05: Once the Coach finds Hickory High, Barbara Hershey immediately gives him the third degree. She's a charter member of the Adrian Balboa Hall of Fame -- a k a "the token female character in a sports movie who throws a wet blanket on the leading male character and basically ruins his will to live." Somehow they always end up coming around just when the team/player/coach starts winning. You'll see.
No coach in movie history brings his team together like Gene Hackman in "Hoosiers."
12:06: Jimmy Chitwood makes his first appearance (shooting hoops in an empty gym and ignoring coach Dale). Do you realize that, in the entire movie, they only show Jimmy missing four shots? Right now he's 3-for-4. The school principal (Cletus) tells coach that Jimmy hasn't played for Hickory since the old coach died, but he has never seen a better ballplayer in 40 years. Translation: Jimmy's a head case.
12:12: "Look mister, there's two kinds of dumb ... the guy that gets naked and runs out in the snow and barks at the moon, and the guy who does the same thing in my living room. The first one don't matter, and the second one you're kinda forced to deal with."
(Yup, it's That Guy from "Major League" trying to stage a coup d'etat with Coach Dale's first practice! Leave the ball, will ya, George?)
12:14: "Let's see what kind of hand I've been dealt here."
(Here's the hand, Coach: Seven players on your team, 64 kids in the whole school, and your best player is MIA. Also, everyone in the town already hates you. Good luck.)
12:15: Coach lays down the law early, kicking Buddy and Whit off the team for disrespecting him. Two important notes here:
Buddy mysteriously re-joins the team midway through the movie, with no explanation given. Was the "Buddy returns and asks forgiveness scene" simply cut from the movie? Was it ever written in the first place? Did the director think that we wouldn't notice that a seven-man roster inexplicably went back to eight? This one's been bothering me for 16 years.
Whit and Rade (the point guard who gets in trouble during the opening game for shooting too much) are actually brothers: the Butcher brothers. Subtle plot nuance, the kind of thing that takes nearly 180 viewings to pick up. That's why I'm here, folks.
12:16: Time for some dribbling/passing/rebounding/conditioning drills, as the coach says things like "Five players on the floor functioning as one single unit ... team, team, team ... no one more important than the other."
Also, Whit apologizes and rejoins the team (here's where we find out from his father that Rade and Whit are brothers), followed by Mr. Butcher ushering the disgruntled Hickory residents out of the gym so coach can run an uninterrupted practice. It doesn't get much better than Mr. Butcher as the random "Underrated supporting character in a sports movie who only brings good things to the table." He's right up there with Gazzo's sarcastic driver in "Rocky" and the chef from "Vision Quest."
12:20: A drunken Dennis Hopper makes his first appearance (as Shooter, Flatch's dad, in Hopper's last big-time performance other than "True Romance"). In the "I'm Just Plain Killing My Son" Pantheon of Sports Movie characters, Shooter ranks just behind Arthur's father from "Hoop Dreams."
It takes the people of Hickory quite a while to warm up to coach Norman Dale.
12:21: Coach visits Jimmy (shooting hoops in his backyard), then tries to win him over with this beauty: "I don't care if you play or not." Jimmy makes his first 13 shots in the sequence, missing only the final one. He's 15-for-17 right now; only Bob Cousy's shooting percentage during the surreal free-throw shooting scene in "Blue Chips" was better (done in one take, no less).
And while we're here, let the record show that the guy who played Jimmy (Maris Valainis, now a golf pro in California) places third on "Best Jump Shot Form of All-Time" list, right behind Mike Miller and Ray Allen. I would give five years off my life to have Mike Miller's jumper. And you think I'm kidding.
12:23: If every female on the planet were like Barbara Hershey in "Hoosiers," the murder-suicide rate in this country would go through the roof. She just gave coach the "Stay away from Jimmy, I don't want him coaching in Hickory when he's 50" dig. She's a delight. I can't believe she's single.
(Here's a good trivia question: What is Barbara Hershey's character's name in this movie? Even I had to look this up. Answer in the second half of the column.)
12:25: "We want Jim-my! We want Jim-my! We want Jim-my!"
12:26: "This is your team."
12:27: The first chink in coach Dale's armor -- the "pass four times before every shot" rule. That was even dumber than Jim Cleamons putting Jason Kidd in the triangle offense back in '96. Ever since one of my readers pointed out that coach Dale was a little shaky as a game coach, it has changed the way I watched this movie. More to come.
12:32: Oolitic High wipes out Hickory in Game 1, marred by Rade violating the "four passes" rule and getting benched. And since Hickory played with four players down the stretch, everyone really hates the coach now. Not good times.
(By the way, was there a more underrated sports movie athlete than Rade Butcher? You think it's easy to shoot that one-legged set shot? He was like a young Danny Ainge. Also, did you know that everyone in the "Hoosiers" cast played college ball in real life except ... Jimmy Chitwood? It's true. See, you worried that this column might not work, but you're enjoying it, aren't you?)
12:36: "All of you have the weekend to think about whether you want to be on the team or not, under the following conditions: What I say, when it comes to this basketball team, is the law ... absolutely and without discussion!
12:39: I like this exchange:
Coach: All those years, you ever think about getting married?
Barbara: Are you kidding? Nobody would marry me. I'm mean as a snake.
Coach: Don't you know that you're supposed to become mean and vicious after you get married?
Barbara: You're probably right. Who's up for some hate sex?
(All right, I made that up ... sorry about that.)
12:44 p.m. Another loss in Game 2, highlighted by Rade defending the coach by sucker-punching somebody on the other team. This team is coming together, baby!
(Unfortunately, Cletus is having heart problems ... I think he's making them up because he's trying to distance himself from the coach: "Um, yeah, I'm not feeling well ... maybe you should get a new assistant ... um ...")
12:47: Coach hires Shooter as his new assistant. Another savvy move from coach Dale. Hey, let's bring the town drunk aboard!
Dale probably got most of his strategy from his assistant coach, Shooter.
12:52: Flatch sums up everyone's feelings: "Coach, what you're doing with my Dad ... I'm just not seeing it."
(I always liked Flatch. I'll never forget flicking channels one night and seeing him as a cop in an Skinemax erotic thriller ... wildly disturbing. They could have at least thrown in a scene when he was lounging around after a sex scene, wearing a Hickory High jersey.)
12:56: Time for the "Should we fire coach Dale?" town hearing, the pivotal scene in the movie, which includes ...
Barbara telling everyone "I think it would be a mistake to let him go ... give him a chance," even though she could have buried him with her "I know you were banned from college coaching because you punched a player" info. She's officially digging Norm. If this were an episode of "Dismissed," her competitor would be using a timeout card right now to cool her off.
Jimmy's dramatic entrance, capped off by his first three lines of the movie: "I got something to say," "I don't know if it'll make any change, but I figure it's time for me to start playing ball," and "One other thing ... I play, coach stays, he goes, I go." In the history of sports movies, only Ivan Drago did more with less.
Mr. Butcher ripping up the votes, smiling and simply saying, "Coach stays." Always fun to imitate at a bar with your friends ... after you pay for the check, quietly grab the slip, stand up, rip the bill in half, pause for a second, then say, "Coach stays." Everyone will enjoy it. And no, I'm not drunk again.
A quick switch to a "Hickory High kicking butt with Jimmy" sequence. Good God. This might be my favorite 10 minutes in the middle of any sports movie. Would anyone like some extra goosebumps? And yes, the "four passes before every shot" rule has officially been thrown out the window. It's Jimmy Time!
1:02: My favorite line of the movie: "I didn't think I could cut it the other night, either, but after what Jimmy did, it would take the Indiana National Guard to get me out of here."
(Yessir. It's a little Chili Davis at the Sports Guy Mansion right now.)
1:06: Welcome back, Buddy. Apparently he rejoined the team, because he just made a big steal in the final seconds of the game we're watching. Maybe he just showed up for practice that week and nobody noticed. Anyway, with coach Dale already kicked out, Shooter needs to come up with the winning play ... and I think we all know what's coming next:
"We're gonna run the picket fence at 'em. ... Merle should be open swinging around the end of that fence. Boys, don't get caught watching the paint dry!"
(I think this might work ...)
1:06: It's good! Hickory wins!
1:07: "You did good, Pop. You did real good."
(Uh-oh ... it's getting a little dusty in here. I think my hay fever might be acting up again.)
1:08: Hickory rides an eight-game winning streak into the sectional finals against Terhune. A drunken Shooter arrives and wanders on the court, followed by coach Dale telling the ref, "That's OK, he's an assistant coach" and earning a technical foul, then telling a bummed-out Flatch, "You keep in the game!" Not his strongest night. By the way, coach Dale never would have come up with the picket-fence play. Shooter was the driving force on that coaching staff. He was like a drunken Tex Winter.
1:09: Time for an entertaining bench-clearing brawl, kicked off by Jimmy's breakaway layup where he gets cheap-shotted from behind (no flagrant fouls back in the '50s), followed by Flatch pulling a Kermit Washington on the offending Terhune player, then getting shoved into a glass trophy case (busting open his shoulder), and culminating in a classic Hackman moment:
"That's a gutless way to win! That's a gutless way to win!"
(Has anyone ever done a better job doing "basketball coach" things in a sports movie? When you think about it, who else could have played coach Dale? Harrison Ford? Nick Nolte? Clint Eastwood? Burt Reynolds? I mean, it had to be Hackman, didn't it? Quite simply, this was his defining movie.)
1:12: Jimmy bounces back from the cheap shot to drain the go-ahead basket (he's 24-for-26 in the movie right now), followed by another game-saving steal from Buddy. Hickory wins by two. Meanwhile, poor Shooter ends up in the Betty Ford Center, as Hopper is gunning for an Oscar right now.
(Note: That's the easy way to get an Oscar nomination -- either play a drunk or play somebody who's mentally handicapped. And if you're playing a mentally handicapped drunk, they simply mail the Oscar to your house as soon as the movie is released. These are the facts.)
REEL LIFE
For a look at how "Hoosiers" compares to the true story of the 1954 Milan, Ind., high school basketball team, check out Page 2's Reel Life examination of the film.
1:16: Regional finals, Jasper, Indiana. And we're in the locker room.
"If you put your effort and concentration into playing to your potential, I don't care what the scoreboard says at the end of the game. In my book, we're gonna be winners! OK?"
Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.
"Let me hear it!"
Clap.Clap.Clap.Clap.Clap.Clap.Clap.Clapclapclapcla p ...
(Maybe he wasn't the best game coach, but nobody belted out those pregame speeches like Norman Dale. Has anyone ever appeared on more Jumbotrons during NBA games, with the possible exception of Sen. John Blutarski?)
1:18: "Buddy, 41 is killing us. Just killing us. Stick with him! Think of chewing gum ... if he's chewing some, by the end of the game, I want to know what flavor it is!"
(And I think we all know what flavor it was ... that's right, Dentyne. How come they haven't bought the rights to this scene for a Dentyne commercial? I've always wondered about that. Meanwhile, Flatch's stitches just got busted open again, which raises the question, "How was he cleared to play in the state finals after this game?" Was there like 10 days between games? I'm brimming with questions right now.)
1:20: Trailing with two minutes to play, coach Dale tells the team for the 370th time in two months, "Be patient, look for the good shot!" Then he redeems himself by putting Strap in, telling him, "God wants you on the floor." Savvy. Strap proceeds to light it up. Phil Jackson should try this move with Mark Madsen next season.
1:23: Here comes Ollie the Manager ... and did you ever notice that he's wearing 13? This is like seeing Tony Clark come up for the Red Sox with the bases loaded. Needless to say, Hickory immediately blows the five-point lead. This has all the makings of a Level One "Stomach Punch" game. Until ...
1:25: "One more, Ollie! One more and we're going all the way!"
1:26: It's good! It's good! Hickory's going to the state finals!
Let's be honest: Whoever thought of the "Ollie should come off the bench, nearly blow the game, then make two improbable free throws to send Hickory to the state finals" idea has to be considered a full-fledged genius (I'm assuming it was the writer of "Hoosiers," Angelo Pizzo). One of the all-time great sports movie ideas, right up there with the Convicts taking on the Guards in "The Longest Yard," Rocky losing to Creed in "Rocky," and the Good Nazi standing up to applaud Pele's bicycle kick goal in "Victory." Didn't you love the Good Nazi? All right, I'm babbling.
1:29: Yikes. Hackman and Hershey just had the most awkward, uncomfortable kissing scene in movie history, even worse than Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve french-kissing in "Death Trap." It's like watching your grandparents make out. I feel physically ill. Of course, she's officially on the coach Dale bandwagon now that they're headed to the state finals.
(Note: I'm currently writing the script for "Hoosiers 2," where Hickory loses to Holland in state quarters and Barbara immediately leaves Norm for the South Bend Central coach. By the way, her name was "Myra Fleener" in the movie. There you go.)
1:31: Flatch visits Shooter in the hospital ... apparently, we're in the "ABC After-School Special" portion of the movie. Tough stretch here. Couldn't they have thrown in a scene where Jimmy Chitwood has a threesome in the back of a '47 Chrysler with two Hickory High groupies?
1:34: Coach Dale's finest brainstorm: "I think you'll find these exact same measurements as our gym back in Hickory." Just brilliant.
1:36: Time for the 1951 state finals: Hickory against South Bend Central (enrollment: 2,800). Spike Lee tainted this game for me in his book "Best Seat in the House" (written with Page 2's Ralph Wiley) with his theory that "Hoosiers" was racist because South Bend's roster included black players ... perpetuating a "Band of overachieving white guys band together to topple the bigger, more talented black players" gimmick.
(Like most of Spike's theories, it makes just enough sense that it makes you say, "Hmmmm." So I always end up thinking about him during the final 15 minutes of "Hoosiers." Damn him.)
1:38: The Goosebump Train just came rolling into Chill Scene Station.
Coach: "We're way past big speech time. I want to thank you for the last few months. They've been very special to me. Anybody have anything they want to say?"
Merle: "Let's win this one for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here."
Flatch: "I want to win for my Dad."
Buddy (completing his 180-degree turn): "Let's win for coach, who got us here."
Reverend: "... and David put his hand in the bag and took out a stone and flung it, and it struck the Philistine in the head, and he fell to the ground. Amen."
Coach: "I love you guys."
Everybody: "Team!"
1:41: After falling behind 16-6, one of the Hickory players has to point out to coach Dale that Jimmy -- the prodigy, the franchise, the guy who's currently 26-for-29 just in the movie alone -- could "probably take the guy who's guarding him if we set him up."
Novel concept. Hmmm ... we could feed the ball to our best guy ... maybe this will work. Jimmy responds by scoring the next three baskets and six of the next eight, which raises the question, "How many points did Jimmy score in the finals?" That's right up there with "What were Roy Hobbs' stats during his season with the New York Knights?"
Here's what we know:
With the team down 16-6, we haven't seen Hickory score yet, but the clock reads 7:34 ... which means that these are eight-minute quarters, we're in the second quarter, and everyone but Jimmy was ice-cold in the first quarter (Jimmy couldn't have been ice-cold because, I mean ... he's Jimmy Chitwood, for God's sake).
We see Jimmy score 26 of the next 36 Hickory points, all field goals (including the winning basket, with Hickory winning 42-40). We also see Flatch score twice, and Wade and Buddy each scoring once, so we see 34 of the 42 points in all. So I'm guessing the box score for Hickory's starting five looked something like this:
The Sports Guy's projected box score
Player Min FG-A FT Reb Ast Stl Pts
Jimmy 32 14-18 2 6 0 2 30
Buddy 32 1-3 2 3 4 4 4
Rade 32 2-5 0 3 2 2 4
Merle 29 0-3 0 4 3 1 0
Flatch 28 2-7 0 9 1 1 4
(See, that's why I'm here, for dumb things like that.)
1:45: Up by four in the final minute, needing only to dribble out the clock, South Bend's coach (wearing an overmatched, "I'm just happy to be here" look all movie) inexplicably calls a play, leading to a missed shot and a Hickory rebound.
After Hickory scores, the South Bend coach never calls timeout, leading to another turnover. After another Hickory basket, no timeout ... and they turn the ball over again! Tie game! Then they turn the turn the ball over again (no timeout). Who was coaching South Bend, Rick Adelman's black grandfather? No wonder Spike hates this movie.
1:47: Tie game, 20 seconds to play, and we've already established that A) Jimmy has scored roughly 30 of Hickory's 40 points, and B) he's hotter than the Equator.
With this info at his disposal, coach Dale calls a play using Jimmy as a decoy, practically begging for Jimmy to pull a Pippen (which he kinda does, when you think about it), leading to Jimmy's fourth and final line of the movie: "I'll make it."
(Yeah, I know, it's Hollywood ... but Jimmy was in the zone! As Dick Vitale would say, you gotta give him the rock, baby!)
1:48: Hickory isolates Jimmy at the top of the key, MJ-style ...
... of course, South Bend doesn't bring over the double-team, because their coach apparently passed out about 10 minutes ago ...
... Jimmy takes two dribbles, crosses over, goes up with it ...
Swish. Game. Pandemonium.
(My favorite part of the ensuing chaos: As Jimmy is carried around the court, the cameras cut to the losing bench, where one of the big guys on South Bend is hugging a distraught cheerleader, finally glancing out to the court at Jimmy, pointing, and saying something that was undoubtedly the 1951 equivalent of "That's one bad mother------." That always kills me for some reason. By the way, it's getting dusty in here again.)
1:50: Cut to the cornfields, the setting sun, some sound bites and a little kid shooting at the gym, followed by the camera slowly honing in on the 1952 State Championship Team photo, and then coach Dale's words ...
"I love you guys."
And I love this movie ... even on the 250th viewing.
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the dancing queen
Friday night and the lights are low
Looking out for the place to go
Where they play the right music, getting in the swing
You come in to look for a king
Anybody could be that guy
Night is young and the music’s high
With a bit of rock music, everything is fine
You’re in the mood for a dance
And when you get the chance...
You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the dancing queen
You’re a teaser, you turn ’em on
Leave them burning and then you’re gone
Looking out for another, anyone will do
You’re in the mood for a dance
And when you get the chance...
You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the dancing queen
You can't build boats out of bog and stone.Quote:
Originally Posted by Puffy
Woohoo, posting my 2,000th Redszone post, in the Thread that time forgot.
Congradulations..how bout a song :D
--
I just ran away from home
Now I'm going to Disneyland
I just crashed my car again
Now I'm going to Disneyland
I just robbed a grocery store
I'm going to Disneyland
I just flipped off President George
I'm going to Disneyland
I just tossed a fifth of gin
Now I'm going to Disneyland
I just got cuffed a gin
Now I'm going to Disneyland
Shot my gun into the night
I'm going to Disneyland
I just saw a good man die
I'm going to Disneyland
Hey
Kicked my ass out of school
Rolled me out into the street
Hitched a ride on a monkey's back
Headed west into the black
I'm going to Disneyland
I haven't read any of this thread.
I feel sorry for you, this is the most informative thread..ever
:D
I'm thinking of taking my wife to White Castle for supper tonight. Shhhhh, it's a surprise. :yipee:
I bet that if I let my 5 year old read this whole thread, word for word, he'd be set for life in any trivia game he would face. He'd also realize that people do a lot more than work when they are at work. :MandJ:Quote:
Originally Posted by TeamCasey
On this date in 1906: Doc White hurls a shutout as the White Sox beat the Red Sox, 3-0. The win starts Chicago on a 19-game winning streak, lifting them from fourth place to first en route to the American League pennant.
I wouldn't spend too much time in this thread.
Your IQ decreases exponentially for every 5 minutes spent here.
On this date in 1876, one of my own ancestors Wild Bill Hickok was murdered.
Surprisingly, Nicole Eggert never won an emmy for her role on "Charles in Charge."
However, she remains really, really hot to this day.
And I thought I was learning things from this thread. :(Quote:
Originally Posted by jmcclain19
;)
Baby robins eat 14 feet of earthworms every day
In 1982, Yale University offered a 14-week course entitled "how to master the Rubik's Cube"
In the year 2000, Pope John Paul II was named an "Honorary Harlem Globetrotter
In 1875 the Keokuk Westerns and the St. Louis Red Stockings of the National Association played the only major league game in history with two left handed shortstops opposing each other.
"All in the Family" had more spin-offs than any show in history. It lasted from 1972-1978. From it "Maude" spun off, which begat "Good Times" in 1974. The Jeffersons, straight from "All in the Family," came in 1975. The Jeffersons begat "Checkin" in 1981. "Archie Bunker's Place" ran from 1979-1983, "Gloria" from 1982-1983. So "All in the Family" lasted 15 years in a row. Then in 1994, they used the All in the Family set for "704 Hauser," a show that lasted for three weeks.
Before the movie "Airplane" Leslie Nielson was considered a serious actor and not a comedian. However, Abrams and Zucker decided to take a chance, especially after seeing how funny Mr. Nielson was in person, and cast him as the Doctor.
He did not disappoint, and it has led Nielson into such comedy gold as Police Squad, The Naked Gun and beyond.
On August 2nd 2004, KronoRed went to the store and bought 8 bottles of apple juice
On August 1st 2004, KronoRed drove to Tri County Mall and back again