Clicking through the Toronto International Film Festival’s recently announced slate of premieres for 2011, I chuckled when I saw the upcoming Brad Pitt-starring adaptation of Moneyballdescribed as a “compelling work of sports realism.”
Obviously one of the big gets for the festival — more for the heartthrob actor’s red-carpet presence than any other reason — the film looks to be the year’s potential sports-based blockbuster and gives us a chance to take a look at how TV and movies are depicting sports right now.
What’s clear is that these packaged sports broadcast entities are very hot at the moment.
Moneyball, based on the bestselling book by Michael Lewis on the Oakland A’s, is part of the trend of non-fiction books getting fictionalized treatments. This summer’s must-read tell-all about ESPN, Those Guys Have All the Fun, is also getting a Hollywood stylization.
Anyone else find that weird, considering there are more than 30 years of potential archival footage for a documentary?
Sports are the ultimate reality television, and these decisions prove that by adding some sugar — big-name stars and directors, and never letting the facts get in the way of a good story — the goal is a crossover flick that can trick non-sports fans onto the bandwagon and into a theatre alongside the jersey-wearing faithful.
I’m the wrong guy to ask about these sorts of adaptations, because I personally still feel burned that Hollywood managed to turn Lewis’s The Blind Side, a perfect football fan’s book (that I loved) about the evolution of the left tackle into a Sandra Bullock chick flick. Both of these based-on books are also sports nerd delicacies, but the results look to be candy-coated adaptations of their cores.
I’m baffled by the production questions — how do you turn 700-plus pages of These Guys into a palatable movie? — but I was not surprised to learn that Moneyball started out as a near-documentary that almost died in development until it was resurrected in its new cinematic interpretation. You can tell the studio heads fear a film falling into the “too sporty” niche category.
That’s easy to chalk up to the ongoing reality-TV-ification of sports content, seen in fluffy series based upon people like Terrell Owens and horrible series like Basketball Wives, as well as the current fascination with in-season instant docu-series or specials. HBO aired Derek Jeter 3Kthis past week and Rogers Sportsnet aired the Roberto Alomar doc special, The Journey to Cooperstown, after Sunday’s game honouring the player.
One of the few casualties of the NFL lockout is this year’s iteration of Hard Knocks, which is the American Idol of sports reality shows. HBO’s pre-season reality show would have been celebrating its 10th season, but the post-lockout time crunch meant that no team would allow the cameras in — which is too bad, because the vigorous pace would have made absolutely great television.
For those feeling starved for behind-the-scenes looks, this Thursday at 10:30 p.m. on TSN (after the Montreal-Toronto game), the second episode of The Extra Yard: Inside the 2011 Toronto Argonauts airs, and I’m hoping there’s a little more drama than in the first episode. There was a fun moment about players toasting cookies, but the first episode focused a little too much on coach Jim Barker, and had a horrendous musical montage over players getting cut.
The thing that irks me is that these are authorized productions — and so far, they feel like it. I tend to wonder what we are missing out on because of the permissions needed to get access. The Argos have already praised the production for its respectful look. But as a viewer, I’m hoping the team’s rough start will add another dimension to the drama — although, it is funny to call it drama, considering we know how things have turned out on the field.
We are living in what’s been called the golden age of documentary, so it’s fitting that ESPN recently announced seven new upcoming documentaries coming this fall. They’re a continuation of its excellent 30 for 30 series, although they will not be produced under that name.
Of the upcoming ESPN productions, three — Catching Hell, about Steve Bartman, the infamous Cubs fan who is blamed for costing them a trip to the World Series, The Real Rocky, about Chuck Wepner, who inspired Sylvester Stallone, and The Dotted Line, Morgan Spurlock’s look at two agents — appear to be ones not to miss, though with the overall quality of ESPN’s productions, I’m hoping to be surprised by the others.
I love docs that shine a light on sports I don’t know about, which makes Senna sound perfect for me. Dave Feschuk waxed eloquently about it in these pages on Sunday. The film, which opens here on Aug. 12, tells the story of F1 legend Ayrton Senna and, incredibly, includes footage of the artful driver’s final lap.
There remains a lack of Canadian sports documentaries out there, but an interesting one that has production ties here, and also recently received funding from Hot Docs, is Buzkashi!
Set in Tajikistan, the film is about a sport that is a precursor to polo, where hundreds of horse-riding players using a goat carcass as the equivalent of the ball. No, really. The online teaser clip shows the focus is on four regional champions, and the on-field action looks insane.
It just goes to show that, with most sports, no matter how it is packaged, unvarnished reality tends to trump fiction any day.
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