Footballs and Hankies — Do Chick Flicks Need More Grit, or Gridiron?
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Can men and women go to the same movie and enjoy it equally? So asks a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal:
Movie-watching has become nearly as solitary as reading. Should we be surprised that films are being crafted for ever more specific audiences, just as books have been?
Yet several of the most successful movies of the season buck the trend. Take the surprise hit “The Blind Side,” which combines a venerable female genre (the tale of a mother’s determined struggles on behalf of her ward) with reliably male subject matter (football). I’m surprised it took a smart producer so long after “Jerry Maguire” to realize that, to reach a broad audience, you can do worse than to craft a gridiron chick flick.
One of my absolutely favorite films — this from a woman who thinks of split ends as hair-related and has yet to watch a live football game — is “Any Given Sunday”, a 1999 drama starring Cameron Diaz as a ferocious pro football team owner and a sodden, raging Al Pacino as her coach. Diaz’ character is riddled with insecurity and greed; her mother is a sad, rich drunk; the wife of the quarterback is a razor-tongued shrew who couldn’t care less if her injured husband dies on the field as long as he maintains her lifestyle.
Oh, yeah, and football scenes, a terrific soundtrack, all of it with the intensity of any Oliver Stone film.
I also loved “North Dallas 40″, a 1979 film starring Nick Nolte; what hit me hardest in both were the graphic scenes of venal team physicians juicing, taping and injecting their battered bodies to keep them playing.
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Recently my wife dragged me to a Jeff Bridges movie and then to a George Clooney flick. Normally I avoid serious chick flicks, nothing but nothing could get me to sit through Sex and the City…five minutes would put me into a straight jacket…but the wife is clever, Bridges is my favorite actor…though I would rather see him doing Wild Bill…and Clooney is wacked and I like wacky…reminds me of Cary Grant…so I go…and in the theatre count the number of men…a few with smiling triumphant wives…the movies in turn are terrific and bring a tear to my left eye…apparently my right brain is an emotional sucker…but with dismay I discover a trend…the flawed redemptive guy is not getting the girl these days…what the hell is up with that? And the women are leaving the theatre with a sly smile. Maybe we guys should see more of these chick flicks just to see what we’re up against.
libtree, interesting observations. I loved Clooney in Up In The Air and was struck by how the lovestruck emo-guy — as in the Zooey Deschanel flick from last year, 500 Days of Summer — gets screwed by the heartless, or at least, very not in love, woman. Hmmmm. Payback time?
A little cinematic re-con might be wise indeed to see how women are thinking these days, or at least those powerful enough to get their films made and distributed.
I can’t figure it out– I really don’t enjoy sports at all and only watch it on TV to be in the room with my husband (and am actually reading TrueSlant instead of paying attention) but some of my favorite movies of all time are sports movies! I really liked Invictus (I know, only barely a sports movie), but also Field of Dreams, The Natural, Bull Durham, Breaking Away, Hoosiers, League of Their Own, Chariots of Fire, White Men Can’t Jump, Remember the Titans. I know there are more but I can’t think of them. Oh, and I am glued to the TV during the Olympics! I guess I like the “overcoming adversity” and triumph portrayed in the sports movies.