Randy Williams
Special to CBSSports.com
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
So what are the best offerings in sports cinema that involve passing on to the hereafter? Be honest, which films had you reaching for a Kleenex? What titles have you watched home alone so no one would see your quivering lower lip and moist eyes? Is there a film you've sworn your lady, old man, or friends to secrecy because you broke down?
Filmmakers have known for a long time that sports are lively fields of the human experience, providing a full range of emotions that fill us with joy, despair, laughter and tears. They are jammed with inspiring stories that appeal to Hollywood but when the story involves death, that is a tricky twist. Still, when facing the final curtain, Hollywood has produced some outstanding titles.
Some of the better ones include: Titanic, The Green Mile, Braveheart, Philadelphia, Saving Private Ryan and Ghost. But on this heavy topic, sports movies have a league of their own.
"Our movies have been called chick flicks for guys," says Gordon Gray, co-producer of Miracle and The Rookie. "That's actually what they are. You get guys crying because sports films are emotional, with lots of drama and inspiration."
While some of the best sports movies use a humorous approach to a dark subject (Damn Yankees, Heaven Can Wait, Here Comes Mr. Jordan) most are dramas.
The latest drama opens this Friday as Universal hopes to bring the next great sports-and-mortality movie to the silver screen with its release of The Express. It is based on the true story of Ernie Davis. A Syracuse All-American running back, Davis was the first African-American to win the Heisman trophy (1961) and the first to be the No. 1-overall pick in an NFL Draft. Sadly, he died of leukemia in 1963 without ever playing a down in the pros.
When it comes to prose, which make the most compelling stories, those based on fact or fiction? Hollywood has proved adept at swinging from both sides of the plate. Here are examples of the best:
Based on a True Story
 |
1. Brian's Song (1971) Based on Gale Sayers' book, I Am Third, the story centers on the real-life relationship between teammates Brian Piccolo and Sayers and the bond established when Piccolo discovers that he is dying of cancer.
"Now you flatter me by giving me this award, but I say here to you now, Brian Piccolo is the man of courage who should receive the George S. Halas Award. It is mine tonight and Brian Piccolo's tomorrow. I love Brian Piccolo and I'd like all of you to love him too. And tonight, hit your knees, please ask God to love him." -- Billy Dee Williams as Sayers at an awards ceremony honoring him as the most courageous player coming back from a devastating knee injury. An amazing little made-for-TV-movie produced at a time when it was said sports pictures don't sell. Directed by Buzz Kulik, Brian's Song won three Emmys.
 |
2. The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
Nominated for 11 Oscars, Gary Cooper portrays baseball great Lou Gehrig. A symbol of strength and durability, setting a record for consecutive games played, Gehrig is cut down in the prime of life with a deadly disease.
Director Sam Wood might have had to reverse the film enabling Cooper to look like he could hit a baseball, but the brilliant actor hits a home run with his farewell speech.
"People all say that I've had a bad break. But today, today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth ... ."
 |
3. Without Limits (1998)
With a love of competition and drive to excel, Steve Prefontaine was an athlete with a heart of a lion.
"I'd like to work it out so that in the end it comes down to a pure guts race. If it is, I'm the only one that can win it." -- Billy Crudup as Steve Prefontaine
Crudup is terrific slipping into the skin of the great middle-distance runner from Oregon.
Only 24 when he died in an auto accident in 1975, the charismatic Prefontaine was cut from a unique cloth.
Co-written by accomplished runner and writer Kenny Moore, Without Limits deserves a lot of credit for going to great lengths to get the competition scenes right. Co-writer and director Robert Towne was adamant about achieving that.
"He (Pre) finally got it through my head that the real purpose of running isn't to win a race, it's to test the limit of the human heart. And that he did. Nobody did it more often. Nobody did it better." -- Donald Sutherland in his memorable portrayal of coach Bill Bowerman.
 |
4. Ruffian (2007)
Set in 1974-75 and based on sportswriter Bill Nack's book, A Racetrack Romance, this is a story primarily about the relationship between the legendary black-bay filly and her pragmatic trainer, Frank Whiteley (a fine turn by Sam Shepard, who rode broncos and bulls on the rodeo circuit before becoming an actor/writer).
Ruffian was undefeated, blazing her way onto the front pages as a legitimate Kentucky Derby threat by winning the filly version of the Triple Crown. Sadly her career came to a premature end, suffering a fatal breakdown in a match race at Belmont Park against a champion colt called Foolish Pleasure. (The event caught national attention and was hailed as a historical follow-up to tennis' "battle of the sexes" -- Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs a couple of years before).
Appropriately matching her status in the sport's pantheons, Ruffian was the first horse ever buried in the infield at Belmont Park. That is how special she was.
 |
5. Babe (1975)
Once again, working with a comparatively tiny budget in this made-for-TV picture, Brian's Song helmer Buzz Kulik directs another gem.
Susan Clark won an Emmy playing the title role of Babe Didrikson, one of the greatest female athletes of all-time. A double Olympic gold medalist in track and a champion golfer, Babe had her battles to be accepted as a woman in a man's sports world. Former NFL star-turned actor Alex Karras plays Babe's husband who sees his wife lose her greatest challenge, cancer.
 |
6. Knute Rockne All-American (1940)
Capitalizing on people's hunger for escapist fare after a lingering Depression and a world at war, Hollywood's myth-building abilities were hitting their stride with this story of the popular Notre Dame football coach (portrayed by Pat O'Brien) who died in a plane crash.
Future President Ronald Reagan's deathbed "Win One for the Gipper" speech has a special place in the annals of sports cinema.
Fiction
 |
1. The Champ (1931) This father/son boxing tale stars Jackie Cooper as Dink Purcell who loves his alcoholic father, ex-heavyweight champion Andy "Champ" Purcell (Wallace Beery), despite his frequent binges, gambling and their squalid living conditions. And there's nothing Andy wouldn't do for Dink. The first sports movie to win an Academy Award, The Champ was written by a woman. Frances Marion won an Oscar for her screenplay and Beery as Lead Actor.
The movie was remade in 1979 starring Jon Voight and Ricky Schroder.
 |
2. Field of Dreams (1989)
A quirky but engaging premise using baseball for an exploration of passion, love, and life. Kevin Costner pulls off a tough role that could easily have veered off into hokum as a young man petrified of becoming like his late father, who he feels led a dreary existence foregoing a career in baseball for a more stable gig.
After hearing a voice telling him "If you build it, he will come", and supported by his wife (Amy Madigan), Ray Kinsella (Costner) risks bankruptcy for a leap of faith, plowing under some of his corn fields to build a baseball diamond so his father's hero, Shoeless Joe Jackson from the disgraced Chicago team of the 1919 World Series, can come to play.
"Hey dad, want to have a catch?"
Like the slogan from Tug McGraw and the 1969 Amazing Mets, "You Gotta Believe".
 |
3. Bang the Drum Slowly (1973)
"Everybody knows everybody is dying; that's why people are as good as they are" -- New York Mammoths pitcher Henry Wiggen (Michael Moriarty) to his terminally ill teammate and friend, catcher Bruce Pearson (Robert DeNiro).
A star player, Wiggen protects his hayseed friend of limited talent who eventually gets support from his other teammates only after they learn of his impending demise.
Based on the novel from Mark Harris, this story had previously been presented on TV with Paul Newman and Albert Salmi in the lead roles.
 |
4. Gladiator (2000)
Taking a bloodsport to Matrix-like levels in terms of cutting-edge technology, Ridley Scott and David Franzoni still bring good old-fashioned storytelling into play largely through the gigantic performance of Russell Crowe. As Roman general Maximus betrayed by the new emperor (Joaquin Phoenix), Crowe must fight his way through the ranks of the gladiatorial leagues, using all his athleticism, until his chance comes on the killings floors of the Colosseum.
With a sold-out crowd looking on, the general ultimately gets his revenge but as he lies dying, visions of his family in the afterlife sweep over him.
 |
5. Million Dollar Baby (2004)
The unforgiving fight game seen through an unusual prism makes this ironic twist of dreams a compelling story. Maggie, a determined woman (Hilary Swank) persistently goes after Frankie, a hardened trainer/manager (Clint Eastwood) to help her become a boxer.
Despite his distaste for "the latest freak show out there", Eastwood builds Swank into a winning boxer. But an incident inside the ring paralyzes her, something she'd rather not live with so she asks him to put her out of her misery.
Wrestling with his conscience, Frankie is told by his assistant and former fighter Scrap (Morgan Freeman), "...People die every day, Frankie. Mopping floors, washing dishes. And you know what their last thought was? 'I never got my shot'. Because of you, Maggie got her shot. If she dies today, you know what her last thought will be? 'I think I did all right.'... I know I could rest with that."
 |
6. Grand Prix (1966)
One of the best auto racing films of all time features a lead character that is comparatively invisible but always lurking. Palpable in the press box, along the pits, grandstands, out on the track and perhaps most dangerously, in the back of each racer's mind ... death.
James Garner stars as American racer Pete Aron who, when asked why he races says, "Maybe to do something that brings you so close to the possibility of death and to survive it is to feel life and living so much more intensely."
French star Yves Montaud's character when asked if he thinks about the perils of his profession says, "The danger? Well, of course. But you are missing a very important point. I think if any of us imagined -– really imagined -- what it would be like to go into a tree at 150 miles per hour we would probably never get into the cars at all, none of us. So it has always seemed to me that to do something very dangerous requires a certain absence of imagination."
Montaud's character later dies as a result of a crash.
While there have been plenty of misses foisting on us stories with trite dialogue, overbearing music and exhausted plot devices, these dozen titles, which between them have garnered more than 50 Emmy and Oscar nominations, shows Hollywood has the capability to produce inspirational, even cathartic, movies about the gloomiest of subjects.
Randy Williams is the author of 100 Movies -- The Best of Hollywood's Heroes, Losers, Myths and Misfits
