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I watched this film expecting something along the lines of "Remember the Titans." What I got was something much different. Billy Bob Thornton plays a football coach in Odessa, Texas. It is about the Permian High School football team that has won a few state titles. While Remember the Titans, a decent film for what it was, is supposed to be an "inspirational" story of overcoming odds, Friday Night Lights is more about the sociology of High School Football.It is based upon a true story. Apparently, Odessa, Texas is a small, rather depressed town. The film shows how important high school football is to the town, and more specifically, how the residents of the town develop their identity and importance through the football team. When the team wins, their lives have meaning. When the team looses, then their lives have no meaning.
I would highly recommend the film to anyone who has a passing interest in what high school football has become to many people in this country. The players are idolized by the local community, they have their choice of the most attractive girls, and are invited to the best parties. The coaches are essentially told to win the state title, or look for another job. A player gets a serious injury, the player wants to play because his life has been prepared to do nothing but play football, and the coach, knowing the player probably should not play, wants to believe that the player can play, and therefore puts him on the field. It is difficult for some of us to understand that there is so much riding on these games, for the players, the coaches, and the towns.
There is a featurette on the D.V.D. which includes the actual persons that are depicted in the film. What I learn is that the events in the film are real, and not "glorified" by the screenwriter or the studio. They do not win the big game because the test audience demanded a happy ending. We learn that not only the events in the film are real, but also that the importance of the team to the town and school is just as real.
The film was directed by Peter Berg, whose credits include the following: Very Bad Things, which was just very bad, and The Rundown, which was mindless explosions. Perhaps he has turned the corner.
Another thing: I recently saw "The Bourne Supremacy". They employed that hand held jerky camera technique made popular by the geniuses at M.T.V. It was very distracting. That technique was used sparingly in Friday Night Lights, which added to the sense of realism, as though you were watching a documentary. Goes to show that a little goes a long way.
Follow Ups:
I was wondering how many posters live in Texas (one poster mentioned he lived in Louisiana)?Football is religion, with local variations, in much of the U.S. And yes, this movie is about Odessa precisely because that writer wrote the book about a small West Texas town where epitomized what also went on elsewhere.
I live in Plano, and several years ago, a Plano high school player who used steroids committed suicide. Recently, the Dallas Morning News did a study on steroid use among North Texas high school football players. It is hard to tell how widespread it, but it is all part of the "religion is football" and "win at all cost" philosophy.
The bigger problem is that sports in America is big business, and that this shows up as early as high school isn't surprising. In fact, Sebastian Telfair, who jumped from high school straight to the NBA, was covered in sports magazines and recruiting services WHEN HE WAS IN MIDDLE SCHOOL.
I'm not denying that Texas is part of the problem, but football is a huge sport in Oklahoma, California, and Florida, to name a few. And a similar argument can be made, though to a lesser degree, for basketball and baseball.
regards, townsend
No doubt. I do not think the film, or anyone else, intended to single out Texas as the only culprit. I strongly recommend the documentary "Hoop Dreams", which takes place in Illinois. You get to ride along with "recruiters" as they drive by playgrounds, and scout grade school kids for area high school coaches.We have strong high school football here in Cincinnati. But the difference is that, with one exception, the local football powers are private schools, and they churn out as many doctors and lawyers as they do football players. I cannot comment what takes place in Florida and California. Maybe I am wrong, but it seems that there are more small towns in Texas, where the local economy is virtually non-existent, except for the football palace, than there are in California, where technology reigns supreme, and in Florida.
When the Houston Oilers departed, the N.F.L. wasted no time making sure Houston had another professional football team.
I am from Northwest Louisiana and have relatives in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Dallas is a few hours away. It is weird driving past small towns and you see the brand-new large football stadium...big enough to hold the entire town's population.At the university that I attend, I was walking past a kid in a wheelchair talking to someone. I overheard him say, "They were great to me after the injury. I get tutoring, everything." Then he paused and added, "I never realized before how much schooling I DIDN'T get. When I could play I could coast through and it was okay. Now I'm really getting an education and all it costs me is this chair. I'll never get out of it."
In one of my classes, I am supposed to tutor kids individually and in small groups. Monday I reviewed basic economics with a student. His teacher told me that the kid was not a bad student, he was just behind. He had been a good athlete in elementary and middle school and everyone had just passed him through. But in high school the kid turned out to not be such a good athlete. Suddenly, no one was "just passing him through" anymore. The student was taking his situation with more grace than you would expect, but he was way, way behind his peers in everything and was aware of it and his complicity in it.
The book is better than the movie, but the movie isn't bad. It is strange, though, to read the previous posts in this thread. It's one thing to live in this part of the country where football is so important, another to read others talk about our obsessions here. It's like what one sports writer here wrote: "LSU could win a dozen national titles in baseball and it wouldn't mean anything compared to the championship Saban won in football."
...a real basketball coach in a low income area on the other side of my county in CA. He realized the kids on his winning team had no future if they didn't get an education, too. So he locked the gym and the team suffered their first loss by a forfeit until they got their grades up. Aparently, it worked.If it were a small town in Texas and he was the football coach, he would have been shot.
Interesting comments - I have had similar experiences. One summer during college I worked at a good sized University in my home town. (The University is part of the Big East conference.) Among the summer help were a handful of recently-recruited football players who had to work in order to satisfiy their athletic scholarships. These kids were just out of high school, but displayed peaking and comprehension skills of (about) a 7th grader. It was quite clear that their athletic prowess had allowed them to breeze through school without doing much academically. And if they panned out as solid football players, they would most likely skate through college as well. Then if they don't make it to the NFL (which only a couple do annually at this school,) they are in for a huge shock when they graduate and have to find employment.
And what is really sad is, if they do make it in the NFL, very few think about putting away their money and saving it and investing some of it for the future. There is a better chance of making and keeping really big money if one makes it in the NBA or baseball, but as your numbers show, how many students can realistically count on that happening? Not many.I am in a political science class where last night the instructor reminded the students that "the one thing that can never be taken away from you is your education." For probably a third of the students, that instructor might as well have been talking to the wall. Youth and invulnerablity and all that. Oh well, I shouldn't point fingers. I felt the same way at 19 or 20. It's part of why I am back in school today!
Take care and have fun!
Those differences, like how the Boobie character really got hurt and how the school treated him afterwards are done for more dramatic effect and soft peddled in the movie (the dramatic effect being how the injury happened and the soft peddling being how the school treated him and how the coaching staff felt about him).This is just one of many differences in both content and tone.
The book is for sure a couple of orders of magnitutde better than the movie.
"Where are we going? And what am I doing in this hand basket?"
does this FILM compare to other films which touch on the same topic?
I remember Tom Cruise, early on in his career, starred in a film about h.s. football. Isn't Hoosiers about h.s. athletes, as well?
Can you compare it to them?
And how about Billy Bob's performance?
If you'd never read the book, in other words, would you have liked the film and appreciated BB's portrayal?
I thought BB did an excellent job and it is certainly in the upper tier of sports movies. I don't think it has the depth of Hoosiers (it never slows down long enough) but it's worth seeing for sure.
"Where are we going? And what am I doing in this hand basket?"
It has been so long since I have seen those films. As I recall, those films were fictional, and there were no suggestions that they were based on any specific, true story. I would suggest an analogy: I have seen many killings in film, and they have very little impact. Witnessing a actual live killing, either live or on television, leaves a more lasting impact. I think the same applies here. There have certainly been sports films about high school sports, but very few that are non-fiction. I felt that this left more of an impact because you know that the events depicted happened, and are happening every day under your nose.
He was on the D.V.D., as were approximately four other players. The players, including Boobie, stated that in reality he was arrogant, did not work very hard, did not study, and was sometimes hard to deal with. I think that came through in the film.There was one very poignant scene when Boobie is sitting on his porch, nursing his injury, and he sees garbage men collecting garbage. He looked at them with urgency because he, at that moment, saw his future, and it did not include football, or even a profession. Rather, it included menial, mindless, unglamorous labor. Everyday. In Odessa. For the rest of his life. I do not know whether that event actually happened. But it certainly added to the point of the story, and succinctly sums up the underlying theme of the film. I thought that scene added to the appeal of the film. Whether it actually took place makes no difference to me. Because it should take place, everywhere stories like this occur.
I have no doubt that the there were some pertinent facts that were changed, enhanced, etc. for dramatic effect. Believe me, I do not recall ever watching a film, from any source, thinking that it is 100% accurate. But based upon the interviews with the former players, and from a columnist with the local paper, I was left with the impression that most of the film is accurate.
I think that the point of the film remains intact. Which is that a high school sport consumes these smaller, depressed towns, such that the sport is more important than the player's health and education, their families, and the coaches. Most people assume those things take place at the college level. But I think that most assume High School sports are immune from the zealousness that pervades college athletics.
I think that this film, more so than any film I have seen since "Hoop Dreams", brought this reality into my living room. I have no doubt that the book was better. But then, is it not that way with most films that are developed from a book? To compare a book with a film is not fair, because a writer has two hundred plus pages to tell a story.
I agree with everything you said. My post was just in response to this sentence..."What I learn is that the events in the film are real, and not 'glorified' by the screenwriter or the studio."
I read it quickly amd probably gave it more weight than I should have. I liked the movie and I saw it before I read the book. I highly recommned the book, it goes waaay deeper into the whole football as religion thing. It's quite a read.
"Where are we going? And what am I doing in this hand basket?"
I was taken by the incredible pressure the coach, players, and even the doctor who treated the injured player was under. Football truly is a religion in that area of the country.
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