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SPORTS ILLUSTRATED:
Last year, it was horses in Seabiscuit (above). Next year, it will be (American) football, when Adam Sandler (bottom) stars in a remake of the Burt Reynolds movie The Longest Yard (immediately below).
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WHEN AN AMERICAN says ‘pitch’, he’s likely to be talking about one of two things: baseball; or a proposal, as in ‘pitching an idea’ or ‘pitching a movie’. When an Englishman says the same word, he’s more likely to be talking about sport, as in ‘cricket pitch’, ‘football pitch’ and so on.
Generally, it’s an easy distinction to spot, because Americans hardly ever talk about cricket and there’s not much baseball news in the British press. All of which is a very roundabout approach to a truth about the movies, namely that films about sport travel even less well than films starring television comedians. While the latter’s careers are almost always limited to people who can pick up one country’s programmes (nobody but a German reader is ever likely to have rushed out to see a film starring Thomas Gottschalk), sports flicks have a similar umbilical link to the culture of a single country.
But sport is such a major part of American life - and, as a result, such big business in North America - that Hollywood keeps making films about it, which go gangbusters over there but struggle to find audiences elsewhere. Take Field of Dreams, a movie which has gradually developed iconic status in the US (hardly a summer goes by without someone creating a baseball diamond out of a cornfield and holding a nostalgia fest on it), but was a much more modest hit in other countries. Even Robert Redford at the height of his stardom couldn’t make The Natural much more than an also-ran outside the US.
Nevertheless, the last couple of years have seen Hollywood put an awful lot of effort into movies featuring some kind of sporting endeavour. Take Seabiscuit, which garnered respectable audiences and a fistful of Oscar nominations stateside; or this spring’s Miracle, which found an irresistible premise in the time the US Olympic hockey team were the underdogs against the Soviet Union and emerged the winners.
And still they come, with a 1974 gridiron movie featuring former college football star Burt Reynolds providing the latest inspiration (although from the recent announcement, you’d think Adam Sandler had dreamed the idea up all on his own). The movie in question is The Longest Yard, about a quarterback and a coach who find themselves in the slammer and put together a team of inmates to take on the guards. Reynolds, who played the quarterback in the original movie (which was directed by Robert Aldrich), continues his career revival with the role of the coach in this one (a part played by Michael Conrad in the original film), with Adam Sandler - who has been busy creating a somewhat more mature screen personality for himself of late - as the quarterback. The film will be directed by Peter Segal, who worked with Sandler on two recent films, Anger Management and 50 First Dates.
And it had a team-member try-out before going into pre-production in June, with a call for non-pro footballers aged 18 to 35 to make up the squads. Chris Rock also stars, and Albert S Ruddy - who co-wrote and produced the 1974 film - is onboard as executive producer. The film will be on screens some time next year.
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