by John McFetridge
Every once in a while I get into conversations about 70s
movies – there were a lot of great ones. At the time I mostly liked the
disaster movies. Oh, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And Jaws was my
favourite for quite a while.
But usually these 70s movie discussions are about the more,
let’s say ‘noirish,’ of the decade. Now that I’m so (so, so, so) much older and
looking back on those movies I have a different perspective. One movie that I
first saw in the 70s when I was a teenager I thought was very funny and
somewhat disposable, I have now realized is the one that really had the most to
say and said it best.
And that movie is...
Slapshot.
Yes, that Paul Newman hockey movie. The one with the Hanson
Brothers and that kind of disco song, “Get back to where you started from,” and
Michael Ontkean and the striptease.
Slapshot was slapstick in the best possible way.
But it was also about what was really at the heart of the
70s, that weird decade when the world went from the possibility of revolutions
and social change in the 60s to the go-go, I-got-mine 80s. There was a power
shift in the 70s and Slapshot got to the heart of it. And that heart is what
makes it a great movie.
“The world promised
in the 1950s, a world apparently on the verge of realization in 1965 seemed
like a cruel joke by 1975. Panic set in... so did the urge to seek revenge.”
Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces.
And that’s Slapshot. (though I think Greil is talking about
punk music.)
Released in 1977 Slapshot it tells the story of a small-town
pro hockey team and its player-coach, Reggie Dunlop played by Paul Newman.
It gets an 87% rating at Rotten Tomatoes,
Deadspin says
it’s, “The Only Honest Sports Movie,”
Bleacher Report has written its, “Five Reasons Why Slapshot is the Greatest
Sports Film of All Time,”
and
ESPN named it the #5 Best Sports Movie of All Time.
And yet, from what I can see, the thing that happens in
Slapshot that makes it
so great, the thing that sets everything in motion and makes it all possible
(necessary, really), almost never gets mentioned.
The plant closes down. Thousands of workers are laid off.
It happens in the background – literally. Reggie Dunlop and
Ned Braydon are walking by and Ned says, “What’s going to happen to all these guys
when the plant shuts down,” and Reggie says, “Aw, they’re not gonna shut it
down, they’re just jerking them around, negotiating.” But they’re not
negotiating, of course, they don’t negotiate with the workers, it’s as if the
citizens of the town have somehow become terrorists.
From there the team is going to fold.
And that’s why the GM (another great performance in a Paul
Newman movie by Strother Martin) brings in the Hanson Brothers – they’re cheap.
That’s the first thing Paul Newman says when he confronts Martin, “You cheap
bastard.” Martin says, “I got a good deal on those boys.” And then he sets out
to sell the bus, the massage table and whatever else isn’t nailed down.
The movie is funny, of course, the Hansons hit the ice and
it’s hilarious. But underneath all the slapstick and one-liners there’s a very
real heart. Being ripped out of the town.
Sure, Reggie Dunlop tries to save the team somehow, maybe
someone will buy it and move it to Florida, but the team owner tells him her
accountant has advised her that it’s better for her if the team just folds.
Which is probably what the accountants have told the plant’s
shareholders. It’s not that they aren’t making money, but they could make even
more if...
Another funny part of Slapshot is the French Canadian
goalie. His explanation of penalties in the opening scene is one of my all-time
favourite movie moments, especially when he says that if you get a penlaty for
doing something, “only a stupid English pig with no brain,” would do, you have
to, “go to the box, feel shame for two minute and then you go free.” That’s
just funny.
But the best scene with the French goalie is when Reggie
sends him to try and find out who owns the team. The joke is he doesn’t
pronounce the ‘s’ on ‘owns,’ but the real issue in that scene is that the
players don’t know who own ("owns, owns") the team. As Reggie Dunlop says, “The corporation
owns, the team. What do you care, you get your cheque.”
Likely the guys working in the plant don’t know who owns it,
either. The era of the local owner is gone by the 70s, now it’s just, “the
corporation.”
In his desperate attempt to save the team, save what he sees
as the heart of the city, Reggie sells it out. It stops being about hockey,
about honest competition or sport or teamwork and it becomes a circus – no, a
sideshow. The players become the classic sideshow freaks, the depression era
geek-show (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_show).
It’s player-against-player, cheered on by the screaming fans.
“Dave’s a killer.”
“Dave’s a mess.”
Dunlop, of course, fails and the team will fold. Oh, he
succeeds personally, he gets a job with a team at a higher level and promises
to, “bring up all my guys,” when he gets there. But we know he won’t be able to
bring up many guys and we know he’ll fail on the bigger stage. Deep down,
Reggie is too nice a guy, not selfish enough. Oh sure, he’s desperate, but that
won’t be enough – and that’s what Slapshot is really about and why it’s so
good.
The 1970s were the end for guys like Reggie Dunlop and for
all the guys who worked in plants like the one in the movie. They lost.
Guys like that always lose.
Oh sure, they won a few battles in the 30s and then they won
WWII (I’ve seen Band of Brothers) and they strutted around for a while in the
50s – but it didn’t last.
We can sure see it in the movies – Taxi Driver, Blue Collar,
Rocky (I’m told there were more Rocky movies in the 80s but I refuse to believe
that), The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon, Five Easy Pieces, Vanishing Point, Saturday
Night Fever -- not a single It’s a
Wonderful Life in the decade. Until Star Wars. The good guys win in Star Wars.
Of course, it’s a fantasy that takes place a long, long time ago in a galaxy
far, far away... (and it reinstates a monarchy, doesn’t it?)
It looks to me like the 70s was when ‘divide and conquer’
became the main theme. All those great 70s movies are about loners who lose.
All institutions (especially ones in which people have a vote like government
and unions) are bad and need to be made small and have as little influence as
possible.
Is this what we’re still seeing in so much crime fiction
these days? Loners who lose?