SILVER SCREEN SPORT

The phrase “you couldn’t write it” often gets uttered when a sporting occasion ends in drama of some sort. My job of working in the sporting media industry often dovetails nicely with my passion for all things movie-related. But sports-based films have a chequered life, rather than reaching the chequered flag every time.

The inherent difficulty seems to be that writing a dramatic sporting script comes across as disingenuous, whereas many true life sporting stories wouldn’t get past the pitch stage with a major studio.. Imagine going to Disney or Sony Pictures with a script that see’s an ageing, iconic golfer try to mount a comeback after having many marital affairs, multiple injuries and then being arrested for driving under the influence. Said golfer somehow battles back to win The Masters, the most coveted golf title of them all. The CEO may well laugh in your face and describe it as too far fetched and cheesy to put into production.

Born in the 70’s, I was fortunate that my prime cinema-going years coincided with the arrival of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters and Star Wars. Indeed, I wasn’t just a fortunate cinema-living child, I was also in the sweet-spot age-wise when Die Hard and Aliens were released. Now while I adored (and still adore) all those films, the best cinematic experience I have ever had remains Rocky 4.

I wasn’t a novice Rocky supporter when he took on Ivan Drago in Moscow at Christmas in 1985 though. About 18 months before, I was on a family holiday in Jersey. It was the first family holiday not to include my elder brother as he was on his first ‘lads-only’ trip abroad. But the upside was that I got my own room in the hotel. In those days, hotels often had a movie channel. Thinking back, the hotel movie channel must have consisted of someone having to push play on a video recorder at reception at the specified hour, which was then piped somehow into each room as long as you put the right channel on your TV. One evening after our family dinner, I went back to my room and casually flipped to the movie channel and bam! Suddenly a terrifying, mo-hawked individual and a coiffured Italian man were smacking all hell out of each other in a boxing ring to the strains of a brassy, gladitorial soundtrack. There was more fat on a butchers pencil than on this Italian man, such was his incredible physique. Gobsmacked, I watched him beat the mo-hawked individual and then have a jolly good cuddle with some woman called Adrian. Intrigued and energised by this assault on the senses, the following night I made my dinner excuses early so I could get to my room and find the movie channel again and watch this thing from the start. The opening titles said it was called Rocky 3.

I never had much interest in boxing, but something about it hooked me immediately. The soft-hearted Rocky loved his wife but could take a beating in the ring and dish one out too. Rocky 2 appeared on BBC One by coincidence a few weeks later and that became my new instant favourite film. It took a while before I ever saw the original, Oscar-winning Rocky. When the trailers for Rocky 4 started appearing, I knew I wasn't missing out.

In the cinema, I had to assume that every other person had the same deep passion for all things Stallone by then, because they all made the screening feel like a real fight night. I would argue that Rocky 4 is the most fun you can have in a cinema. Yes at times it feels more like a collection of MTV videos than a dramatic movie but the training sequences, the build-up, the music and the final fight (best boxing fight ever committed to celluloid) saw most of the audience shouting, cheering and jumping around. I have never been in a cinema like it before or since.

It was only many years later that I started to realise that the success of the Rocky franchise has little to do with boxing. It’s the characters. There’s an old movie-business cliche that says: ‘Jaws is not about a shark’. I agree. Jaws is about male bonding and friendship while Rocky is about love and courage. And this is why the sporting movie is such a difficult thing to get right.

Most sports by now have had their chance at box office gold. Golf struggles to find a way into the multiplexes. Although many will have first encountered Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore, it’s Kevin Costner’s Tin Cup that remains the benchmark of that sport. American sports in general have better success than most. American Football has a wealth of movie clout from Any Given Sunday and The Blind Side to Friday Night Lights and Remember the Titans. Basketball has also proven to be a hit with Hoosiers and Space Jam although White Men Can’t Jump leaps above the rest. Ice Hockey has Slap Shot and The Mighty Ducks, Baseball has Bull Durham and A League of their Own.

That’s not to say there aren’t sports that have yet to find a movie worthy of itself. Football is the biggest culprit. The dreadful Goal trilogy may have been a last nail in its cinematic coffin. 1981’s Escape to Victory is still considered the best football movie and that speaks volumes. But then it did have Stallone involved and he knows a thing or two about putting sport on the big screen.

Motorsport tends to stop and start at the box office. Driven is the exception to the Stallone-knows-sport-in-film rule. Rush and Ford vs Ferrari are considered good but tellingly, the best motorsports films are documentaries with Senna leading the way.

With all these examples and the hundreds I could have mentioned, the thing that separates the good from the bad is not the sport or the trophy or the competition in the movie, it’s always the characters. Do you care what happens to the person or team? In the original Rocky, he lost the climactic fight. Raging Bull could hardly be accused of having a fairytale ending. In Tin Cup, Kevin Costner’s character spectacularly fails to win the trophy. In A League of their Own, Tom Hanks is more concerned with the level of crying than any of the baseball.

The drama of the sport itself is not the pull on the terraces nor is it the pull in the cinemas. It’s what the result means to the individual that matters. Whether it means something to you personally or the person you are watching, it’s that emotional response that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It’s not the fact that Rocky finally knocks Ivan Drago out that matters, it’s what he went through to get there that had everyone in Cinema A on Watford High Street yelling. When screenplays get that bit right, then you can say they can write it.

But not that tale about an ageing, iconic golfer who wins The Masters. That’s just ridiculous….