In the news today: the nine Pennsylvania coal miners have sold the book and movie rights to their story to Disney for $150,000 each. [article]
Now, on the one hand, I applaud their decision to take the money -- each of these men routinely risked their lives to dig coal out of the ground, and they did it for, relatively speaking, not so much money. They faced the very real possibility that they would die, in a cold and horrible way. And they had a glimpse of their own mortality, something that, as we age, weighs more and more heavily on us. Therefore, it does not surprise me to hear that these men are not particularly interested in going back into the mines. Seems sensible enough to me. And so, on that level, I applaud the decision to take what -- two? three? -- years wages in a lump sum and retire. I can't say I'd do it differently.
But, the circumstances of these particular people aside, is there something wrong with Disney's purchasing the rights to these types of stories? I'm hardly an anti-commercialist, and believe fundamentally that the marketplace of ideas is about both ideas and the marketplace. I confess, however, to being somewhat sick of this form of cinema verite. What ever happened to good old-fashioned unsung heroism, emphasis on the "unsung"? It is true, of course, that some real-life stories bear retelling in movies, but it is equally true that not every human drama makes a good movie. The trick is knowing the difference.
An example of this is another Disney reality-based project, the film The Rookie. That movie, which starred Dennis Quaid, told the story of Tampa Bay Devil Rays pitcher Jim Morris. For the record, Morris was a middling minor league pitcher who washed out of professional baseball because of repeated injuries. He moved back to his hometown and taught high school, although coaching the baseball team was his real passion. One season, annoyed because his players seemed to have given up on themselves, Coach Morris challenged them to win the state championship. They, in turn, challenged him right back -- Coach Morris had a reputation for throwing hard during practice; if they won the championship, he had to try out to play professional baseball. They won the championship, he tried out for pro ball when he was in his early thirties, and against the odds, was eventually brought up to the big leagues to pitch for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Disney bought the rights to the story and turned the story into a movie.
The problem with The Rookie is that it violated one of the fundamental tenets of storytelling: we already know how the story is going to end. Consider the tag-line of the movie's synopsis on Hollywood.com: "When he [tries out for the Devil Rays], his big-league dreams are revived, and there's no telling where he could go." Wrong. We know exactly where he could go, because he actually did try out for the Devil Rays, and actually did get brought up through the D-Ray's farm system, and actually did pitch for one and a half seasons in the Major Leagues. We knew this before the movie started, so where was the suspense? Did anyone in the movie theater really wonder, gee, will Morris flame out during his tryouts and go home a dejected and broken man? Of course not. And, as a result, there was no drama below the surface -- once you got past the feel-good part of the story (the part of the story that was covered in vivid, sometimes excrutiating, detail in the news media when Morris actually came up in the big leagues), there was nothing else to say. Prior to his lucky break, Jim Morris was hardly atypical: alot of middling pitcher who got sidelined by injuries early in their careers never made it to the Big Show. His "comeback", if you can call it that, was interesting, but did not reveal greater "truths" about the human condition -- it was mostly because of happenstance that he made the cut (the D-Rays were still in their expansion mode, so they didn't have a deep farm system). Ironically, his story was interesting because it seemed just like the kind of too-good-to-be-real story that Hollywood pumps out year in and year out. It was a true case of life imitating art.
Contrast The Rookie with Boys Don't Cry, which told the story of Tina Brandon, a woman living in Oklahoma who, by some accounts, was a lesbian, and by other accounts was transgendered (born a woman, but feeling she was a man). The story is full of moral ambiguities, and although the basic outlines of the story had been previously recounted in the news, the movie asked difficult questions about willful blindness, tolerance and what it means to be different. Ultimately, both were "true stories", but one revealed more truth than the other.
And so it is likely to be with the story of nine miners who, in the face of certain death, fought to stay alive. We will learn a little more about them, and we will understand a little bit more about their ordeal (think A Perfect Storm underground), but what will we learn about ourselves? I don't have high hopes that we'll learn much that we didn't already know.
Now, on the one hand, I applaud their decision to take the money -- each of these men routinely risked their lives to dig coal out of the ground, and they did it for, relatively speaking, not so much money. They faced the very real possibility that they would die, in a cold and horrible way. And they had a glimpse of their own mortality, something that, as we age, weighs more and more heavily on us. Therefore, it does not surprise me to hear that these men are not particularly interested in going back into the mines. Seems sensible enough to me. And so, on that level, I applaud the decision to take what -- two? three? -- years wages in a lump sum and retire. I can't say I'd do it differently.
But, the circumstances of these particular people aside, is there something wrong with Disney's purchasing the rights to these types of stories? I'm hardly an anti-commercialist, and believe fundamentally that the marketplace of ideas is about both ideas and the marketplace. I confess, however, to being somewhat sick of this form of cinema verite. What ever happened to good old-fashioned unsung heroism, emphasis on the "unsung"? It is true, of course, that some real-life stories bear retelling in movies, but it is equally true that not every human drama makes a good movie. The trick is knowing the difference.
An example of this is another Disney reality-based project, the film The Rookie. That movie, which starred Dennis Quaid, told the story of Tampa Bay Devil Rays pitcher Jim Morris. For the record, Morris was a middling minor league pitcher who washed out of professional baseball because of repeated injuries. He moved back to his hometown and taught high school, although coaching the baseball team was his real passion. One season, annoyed because his players seemed to have given up on themselves, Coach Morris challenged them to win the state championship. They, in turn, challenged him right back -- Coach Morris had a reputation for throwing hard during practice; if they won the championship, he had to try out to play professional baseball. They won the championship, he tried out for pro ball when he was in his early thirties, and against the odds, was eventually brought up to the big leagues to pitch for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Disney bought the rights to the story and turned the story into a movie.
The problem with The Rookie is that it violated one of the fundamental tenets of storytelling: we already know how the story is going to end. Consider the tag-line of the movie's synopsis on Hollywood.com: "When he [tries out for the Devil Rays], his big-league dreams are revived, and there's no telling where he could go." Wrong. We know exactly where he could go, because he actually did try out for the Devil Rays, and actually did get brought up through the D-Ray's farm system, and actually did pitch for one and a half seasons in the Major Leagues. We knew this before the movie started, so where was the suspense? Did anyone in the movie theater really wonder, gee, will Morris flame out during his tryouts and go home a dejected and broken man? Of course not. And, as a result, there was no drama below the surface -- once you got past the feel-good part of the story (the part of the story that was covered in vivid, sometimes excrutiating, detail in the news media when Morris actually came up in the big leagues), there was nothing else to say. Prior to his lucky break, Jim Morris was hardly atypical: alot of middling pitcher who got sidelined by injuries early in their careers never made it to the Big Show. His "comeback", if you can call it that, was interesting, but did not reveal greater "truths" about the human condition -- it was mostly because of happenstance that he made the cut (the D-Rays were still in their expansion mode, so they didn't have a deep farm system). Ironically, his story was interesting because it seemed just like the kind of too-good-to-be-real story that Hollywood pumps out year in and year out. It was a true case of life imitating art.
Contrast The Rookie with Boys Don't Cry, which told the story of Tina Brandon, a woman living in Oklahoma who, by some accounts, was a lesbian, and by other accounts was transgendered (born a woman, but feeling she was a man). The story is full of moral ambiguities, and although the basic outlines of the story had been previously recounted in the news, the movie asked difficult questions about willful blindness, tolerance and what it means to be different. Ultimately, both were "true stories", but one revealed more truth than the other.
And so it is likely to be with the story of nine miners who, in the face of certain death, fought to stay alive. We will learn a little more about them, and we will understand a little bit more about their ordeal (think A Perfect Storm underground), but what will we learn about ourselves? I don't have high hopes that we'll learn much that we didn't already know.
posted by Daniel at 12:54 AM
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