Mr. Beaks

When Burt Reynolds made THE LONGEST YARD in 1974, he was the hottest male sex symbol in America. Posing nude for COSMOPOLITAN and sweating profusely through the entirety of WHITE LIGHTNING, the guy was every housewife’s mental substitute when consenting to a night of tepid missionary obligation. What’s more, their men knew it, and didn’t care, because Reynolds was also the epitome of tough guy cool; an ex-college football star more credible as a shitkicker than that pretty boy Paul Newman, and more charismatic than the laconic Charles Bronson. Cast as Paul Crewe, a disgraced and imprisoned NFL Quarterback who’s forced to corral a collection of surly inmates to play an exhibition football game against the penitentiary guards, Reynolds couldn’t have been more in his element. And he delivers a classic star turn in a shamelessly entertaining film; one that was also director Robert Aldrich’s swan song to the macho aesthetic he practiced so memorably throughout his largely unsung career. (Off-topic: It’s a shame he didn’t have enough gusto left to pull off Joseph Wambaugh’s THE CHOIRBOYS, a project that, in his prime, would’ve been perfect for him.) THE LONGEST YARD is such a bruiser of a flick, when some cheeky Brits slapped together a remake a few years ago, only the ferocious soccer great Vinnie Jones would suffice as Reynolds’s successor.

Why, then, is Adam Sandler playing Paul Crewe in the Hollywood remake?

Last year, in my review of ANGER MANAGEMENT, I came clean with my belief that Sandler is one of American cinema’s great modern day clowns. I’ve always loved the uncomfortable duality of his affable exterior and psychotic id, and have long felt that, in the hands of a talented collaborator, he could do something truly memorable. Unfortunately, as I also noted in that review, he’s become quite comfortable churning out entertainments of progressively inferior quality via his Happy Madison production company; however, after the predictable success of 50 FIRST DATES (his weakest effort since LITTLE NICKY), it now seems like Sandler is ready to deviate from his commercially proven template and stretch a little.

If Sandler didn’t have a well-earned reputation as one of the most humble and loveable movie stars working today, I’d suspect THE LONGEST YARD of being a vanity production. Instead, Sheldon V. Turner’s most recent draft of the script reads like the blueprint for what will probably be an all-star game of make believe. That’s fine, but casting Sandler as Paul “Wrecking” Crewe is like the scrawniest kid in the neighborhood elbowing out kids twice his size to play quarterback in a pick-up football game. This wouldn’t be so objectionable if Turner’s script was as steeped in self-aware silliness as a typical Sandler production, but, despite some of the comedian’s trademark goofiness, it really is asking its star to fill out a guy who’s described as “… a confluence of intensity, toughness and sarcasm”. Even worse, there are low-angle hero shots aplenty, a bloody one-on-one basketball game that pits Crewe against a tough black convict, and lots of Herculean on-field exploits that will ask the audience to buy Sandler as a Drew Bledsoe substitute (of course, the gambling problems might invoke Art Schlichter, but even that would be a tall order).

As for the script itself, it’s a faithful, but annoyingly defanged updating of Tracy Keenan Wynn’s original: Crewe still lands in jail after a high-speed police pursuit (scored this time to a prospective Eminem cover of Skynard’s “Saturday Night Special”), wins the grudging respect of his inmates through his authority flouting antics, and gets befriended by the wise and resourceful “Caretaker” (to be played by Chris Rock), a smartass variation on Morgan Freeman’s “Red” from THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. The warden is more of a blustery jackass in Turner’s draft, a safe retreat from Eddie Albert’s deliciously conniving turn in Aldrich’s film, while Crewe’s fellow inmates are broadly drawn buffoons. Seeing as how a lot of these characters share last names with NFL stars – Sapp, Moss, Lynch, Shockey, Turley, Meggett, Blier, etc. – one wonders if Sandler and co. are planning to cast some real-life athletes for a little verisimilitude. Being that football has essentially become America’s pastime, this is probably a good idea; I just wish it didn’t evoke memories of NECESSARY ROUGHNESS.

Aside from a number of unimaginative comedic bits – e.g. Crewe’s forced to service an unattractive state employee (Kathy Bates) for information, the prison bitches sign on as the team’s cheerleaders – THE LONGEST YARD’s gravest offense is the decision to not only settle for a PG-13, but to recycle and neuter the best moments from Aldrich’s film. It’s bad enough that the game, as played out in the script, is practically a beat-for-beat rip-off of the original. But why bother invoking its mean-spiritedness if you haven’t the balls to go all the way? “I broke his fucking neck” is funny due to the profane glee Richard Kiel expresses at having, by all accounts, actually broken the guard’s *fucking neck*. In Turner’s script, however, they make sure to show the injured player moving his feet and hands as he’s being carted off the field. Lame. Also, Crewe repeatedly firing a football into the crotch of an opposing player is shockingly funny because they not only run the play twice, but seem to seriously hurt the guy. In Turner’s hands, though, it’s an official who continually gets the ball launched into his groin, and, as with the guard, it’s clear that he’s going to walk away unscathed.

I’m hoping that, as has been the case on most Sandler films, the script will merely serve as a skeletal outline which will be enlivened by onset improvisation from its cast and writers. As it stands, though, this certainly doesn’t read like something in the wheelhouse of a competent, but flavorless director like Peter Segal (I hate to say that about the man, because ANGER MANAGEMENT’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot of a cat reacting to the size of Allen Covert’s cock is one of the funniest goddamn things I think I’ve ever seen). This is my plea: bring on a cadre of good writers (Louis C.K. would be an excellent guy to start with) to punch up the script, and go for a LONGEST YARD as irredeemably silly as the first film is rough. Tailor it more closely to Sandler’s sensibilities; make Crewe a redemption chasing second-string Quarterback who blew a close Super Bowl (I’m thinking Rams-Titans) on a horrendously botched play. Anarchic humor will not sabotage your chance for a sufficiently rousing finale; if anything, buoyed by Sandler’s charisma, it’ll endear the audience to Crewe and his misfits. I guess I’m saying, “Do what’s expected, but be cleverer about it.” And when Sandler’s ready to stretch again, lobby the likes of Alexander Payne, David O. Russell, or Terry Zwigoff for something smart and off-kilter.

Or film this script, and make Adam Sandler the next Burt Reynolds. The nude spread in COSMO will be worth it.

LIKE STANLEY KRAMER ON ACID

Michael Weldon, one of my childhood tour guides through a grimy, grindhouse subculture I could only participate in secondhand via the courtesy well-stocked local video store (the still-open Video Spectrum in Bowling Green, Ohio), writes in THE PSYCHOTRONIC ENCYCLOPEDIA of Robert A. Endelson’s FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE, “Most viewers find this movie beneath contempt.” Folks, these aren’t regular filmgoers he’s talking about, but the hardened, habitual Times Square movie hounds of thirty years ago; the guys who used to carelessly risk their lives sitting in scuzzy theaters amongst winos, drug dealers, and fugitives wandering in from the Port Authority. In other words, lunatics. For them, this picture was too much. That FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE was also frequently double-billed with another 70’s exploitation legend, SNUFF, clued me in that this was a film – like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, the RAZOR trilogy and IL ULTIMO SQUALO – worth tracking down. Though I didn’t exactly make it my life’s work, I did hunt a bit for this picture, but even upon moving to New York City, it proved elusive. Eventually, I gave up on my quest, figuring that the film was either lost to obscurity or simply too offensive for a DVD distributor to pick up.

As I’ve been saying a lot in the last year, “Thank God for Blue Underground”. (Thanks for VENOM, by the way!) It turns out that Bill Lustig has long been one of this film’s biggest defenders, which, having finally seen the thing, either makes him a singularly brave or clinically degenerate bastard. Though it does, as Weldon notes, steal its premise from THE DESPERATE HOURS, FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE is the kind of movie Stanley Kramer would’ve made if someone dosed had dosed his coffee on the set of GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER. Telling the tale of an African American preacher’s family taken hostage by a trio of escaped convicts, the film has all of Kramer’s stock notions of race relations, fetishizing its black characters to a saintly degree. But rather than worshiping them as paragons of human virtue, it tortures them with a relentlessness that’d make Mel Gibson self-flagellate in masochistic tribute. The ringleader of the escapees is William Sanderson (currently turning in fine work every week on DEADWOOD), playing an unbelievably racist piece of shit who hectors his hostages with every hateful epithet known to the Klan. What makes this even more excruciating, though, is the way in which the family’s patriarch absorbs this humiliation in a determinedly non-violent manner. He’s a disciple of Martin Luther King, Jr., you see, which is at odds with his adolescent son’s idolizing of Muhammad Ali (the son is played by a very young Reggie Rock Bythewood, who’d probably sock you in the mouth if you ever mentioned this film to him).

If this film consisted solely of Sanderson upbraiding the family until they claimed their bloody revenge, it could be easily dismissed, but it’s actually much more inventive in its cruelty. Perhaps it’s the unbearably protracted shot of Sanderson aiming his gun at a shrieking infant’s head, or the soft-focus interracial love scene between two hilariously disinterested actors, or the “blood brother” subplot with Bythewood and his white best friend that’s set up for a traditional kid-alerts-the-authorities scene, but veers off into territory best left unspoiled. I hear a lot of directors, when dealing with disturbing subject matter, talk about taking care of the audience. This flick “takes care” of the audience the way Cagney’s Tom Powers would.

I’d love to watch FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE with a packed house at next year’s Butt-Numb-a-Thon. It’s repugnant in ways NIGHT WARNING could never be. In terms of shock value, it’d be like TEENAGE MOTHER ending with a stillbirth. What this says about me, I’d rather not consider. But for those with an abiding love for grindhouse cinema, this is one of those rare cases of a film living up to its notoriety. For those who’ve been burned by hype countless times in the past, you know how rare it is to say that and mean it.

FINISH YOUR DRINKS!!!

Time to shut up and go play some poker like every other trendy asshole in this town is doin’ nowadays. I’ll be back tomorrow with interviews from Canadian genius Guy Maddin (whose excellent THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD is opening this weekend in New York and Los Angeles), Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore (ditto their new picture, LAWS OF ATTRACTION). I’ll also *probably* be announcing THE ANIMATION SHOW contest winners, though that could get bumped to Monday on account of my work load, and the fact that nearly every entry was eminently worthy of consideration. Nice work, people!

I’ll see you tomorrow. Hopefully, Lancey Howard won’t clean me out tonight.

Faithfully submitted,

Mr. Beaks

Great work, you supahfreak. And I hope Steak Cartier doesn’t come to my house and beat my ass for the crack at the start of the column. If he does, I’ll just show him the pictures of David Lynch standing in my living room, and he’ll cry like a li’l girl.

"Moriarty" out.