Brat Pack America by Kevin Smokler

Author:Kevin Smokler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rare Bird Books
Published: 2016-08-18T22:41:29+00:00

Chapter 6: The Sweetest Victory

’80s Sports Movies

Movies Discussed: All the Right Moves, Vision Quest, Caddyshack, Better Off Dead, Johnny Be Good

Most sports movies end in victory, but what that victory means depends on when the movie hit theaters. The 2000s were the decade of the historical sports movie (Seabiscuit, Cinderella Man, Remember the Titans, Miracle), but also movies about the relationship between sports and family (Bend It Like Beckham, Million Dollar Baby, The Blind Side). For the first group, victory on the field represents a moment of social change. For the second, winning equals an understanding reached between parents and kids. The 1990s sports movie saw athletics as the backdrop of a man’s redemption (Jerry Maguire, He Got Game), as metaphor for personal or political triumph (A League of Their Own, Rudy), or the cost of trying to win at all costs (Hoop Dreams, Varsity Blues, The Program, Blue Chips). Here, victories are hard to come by, humbling and less important than what the protagonist learns in the process. Most of these movies end in a quiet moment instead of a loud cheer.

Those downer sports movies of the nineties weren’t just inhaling the grimness already in pop culture—grunge, heroin chic, Seattle weather—but reacting to the decade before. The eighties sports movie is largely a celebration of winning, of big games, last-second shots, adoring crowds, and trophies held high. All take different paths to arrive at a big game in their last scenes, but each, from the straightforward (All the Right Moves) to the surreal (Better Off Dead, Caddyshack) not only ends in victory on the playing field but also uses that victory to tie up all of its plot points. Doubting coaches and best friends, trouble with the boy/girlfriend, bullying opponents who cheat—all of it gets resolved at the final buzzer, which is almost always the last moment of the movie, too. These endings (usually in freeze frame, with the main character’s arms raised above their head) remind the audience that nothing before the big game remains unfixed and that everything afterward will be okay.

In order to talk about the eighties sports movie and the stadiums, fields, and towns it puts on the map of Brat Pack America, we must contend with its obsession with winning. The eighties sports movie saw victory as the answer to everything thanks to two self-deceptions: a misreading of the movies that directly inspired them and a big gulp of the decade’s hot air about sports.

Pregame: Where the Eighties Teen Sports Movie Came From

In the ninety-year history of the Academy Awards, only three movies about sports have won the Best Picture Oscar: Rocky (1977), Chariots of Fire (1981), and Million Dollar Baby (2004). We’ll leave Million Dollar Baby alone, as it came along many years after the time of Brat Pack America. The other two are the direct ancestors of the eighties sports movie and its obsession with winning.

In his legendary book about Hollywood, Adventures in the Screen Trade (1983), William Goldman (who wrote the

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