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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Fat City

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Fat City

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In case you’re new to Medium Cool, BGinCHI is here once a week to offer a thread on culture, mainly film & books, with some TV thrown in.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools unsuffered.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the world of shit falling on our heads daily in the political sphere.

Tonight’s Topic:  Fat City

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Fat City

On this week’s MC, let’s talk sports and art.

I recently re-watched John Huston’s amazing film “Fat City,” and it got me thinking about the way films/books/TV series use sports to explore culture. This is usually their strength, even if the actual representation of sport is also pretty good. As solid as the football is in “North Dallas Forty” or the boxing in “Raging Bull,” or the soccer in Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs, the real insights are about the cultures in which these activities occur.

So, what examples can you think of that explore this kind of cultural exploration?

***

? NOTE: For next week’s Medium Cool, we’ll have the discussion of Tom Levenson’s book, Money For Nothing, that we promised in our thread the day Tom’s book was released.  ~WaterGirl

 

Reader Interactions

96Comments

  1. 1.

    BGinCHI

    Have others seen “Fat City”? It’s available on Prime.

    It’s really spare, and moving, and beautifully shot. A really quiet gem of a film.

  2. 2.

    bmoak

    Slapshot, the greatest sports movie of all-time,  is an exaggerated, but pretty accurate portrayal of minor league hockey in the 70s.  Try to guess which character are played by actors and which are played by hockey players.

  3. 3.

    trollhattan

    Will just note that Stockton proudly wore the Fat City label on their civic sleeves when I lived there and also, too, Cool Hand Luke was filmed there, the Delta filling in for Florida. Fat City’s skid row of the film was bulldozed for a freeway, because California.

  6. 6.

    BGinCHI

    @bmoak: As I’ve said many times here, I really love the culture that film offers, which seemed to get ignored for a long time. Those rusty PA mill towns and the dead end lives going on there are perfectly captured. And it’s also damn funny.

  7. 7.

    zhena gogolia

    I really liked Slap Shot and Bang the Drum Slowly when I saw them. But that was a very long time ago and I can’t remember why I liked them. I loved Bull Durham too. Can’t say I’ve seen any sports movies since then.

  13. 13.

    BGinCHI

    “Hoop Dreams” is brilliant at showing how Chicago’s racial divisions work when it comes to big-time sports. Great documentary.

  15. 15.

    realbtl

    I’m sorry but Fat City will always be Hunter Thompson’s proposed rename of Aspen in his run for sheriff.  Snowmass at Fat City just doesn’t have the ring.

  16. 16.

    NotMax

    Not what you had in mind but feel must also mention that for loving parody and leaving toothmarks in every cliché of 30s boxing movies the first film-within-a film of Movie Movie, “Dynamite Hands,” is tough to top.

    While possibly stretching the definition of sport to its limit, would consider The Hustler a must watch. For something quite different when it comes to smacking balls around on a table, Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire.

  17. 17.

    Zuleika

    “Among the Thugs” wasn’t really about about soccer, it was about Buford’s attempts to join in with the English soccer hooligans and what it was like to go to soccer matches with the possibility and excitement that the hooligans brought to the events.  It was a riveting, thrilling book to read when it first came out, when that world was still alive.  I’ve never seen a sport movie that compared to the excitement of that book.

  19. 19.

    zhena gogolia

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I only know him from clips that my students have shared. He is truly awesome. I can tell just from the clips what a good actor he is. I’ve watched the “Pretty Woman” one about 1000 times. I’d never seen this one — thanks!

  21. 21.

    NotMax

    And whoops, two more sport film titles internally insistent on being noted.

    Bend It Like Beckham and Breaking Away.

  23. 23.

    Craig

    Ted Lasso on Apple. So many great little things happening in that show. Lots of cliches reworked into functioning comedy, and commentary. I didn’t expect much from a show about a mediocre American college football ball coach hired as an English Premiere League soccer team, but it’s damn smart.

  25. 25.

    NotMax

    @BG in CHI

    Will try to keep in mind to pen an alert in advance of the next time it shows up on TCM’s line-up. Or it can be rented for $1.99 through Prime.

  29. 29.

    BGinCHI

    @Zuleika: “Green Street Hooligans” (2005) is the closest I can think of. Pretty solid, but nothing like the thrill of reading Buford’s book.

    You’re right that it’s pretty much one of a kind, on a culture that’s nowhere else as vividly portrayed.

  30. 30.

    Roger Moore

    @NotMax:

    I was going to mention Breaking Away, and I’m glad you got to it first.  I think it’s more explicit than most sports movies about using the sport as an excuse to investigate culture.

  32. 32.

    SFBayAreaGal

    A League of Their Own.

    I  didn’t know there was a women’s baseball league that was started to keep the game alive during the Second World War, when many of the male players were enlisted to fight.

  33. 33.

    Yarrow

    “Murderball.” It’s about wheelchair rugby, specifically the US team preparing for the Athens Olympics. It’s so good. Really shows what the world is like for people who get injured, have to go through rehab and learn what they can and can’t do and how they deal with it. The guys are such amazing athletes. Really great.

  34. 34.

    Scout211

    I know it’s not considered a great movie or even a good movie, but Brian’s Song always brings back  fond memories from my youth. What a tear-jerker! But I guess it was what I needed at that stage of my life.

  39. 39.

    mali muso

    Was going to mention Bend it like Beckham but others have beat me to it. I remember really enjoying it when it came out, and I’d be curious to watch it now and see how it holds up.

  40. 40.

    Yarrow

    @BGinCHI:  It came out in 2005, just a few years into the whole reality TV thing and well before social media took over. I don’t think they could make it today. It feels so honest and real.

  42. 42.

    Craig

    @BGinCHI: loved Green Street Hooligans. There’s a old Gary Oldman BBC show The Firm, about some aging hooligans who kinda let life get away from them.

  44. 44.

    Yarrow

    “When We Were Kings” about the Ali – Forman ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ fight. It’s amazing. As much cultural and political discussion as sports.

  46. 46.

    Yutsano

    I’ll actually make an argument for Rocky. Although it’s not really a boxing movie inasmuch as it is a personal growth story. The very original from 1977 is a solid piece of storytelling.

  48. 48.

    Yarrow

    Also enjoyed “Battle of the Sexes” about the family Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs match. It shows how the Women’s Tennis Association gets started and how hard it was for them and how little they got paid.

  50. 50.

    NotMax

    @Omnes Omnibus

    Downhill Racer

    Oh gawd. Played an extended run at the theater where I was an usher. Will never excise from the gray matter the sheer unadulterated piercing annoyance of the sound of the beeper signalling ready, set, go for each participant as it spat out of the large array of speakers night after night.

    ;)

  51. 51.

    Craig

    @Yarrow: watched that again the other day. Fantastic movie, still as brilliant as in 1996. Norman Mailer tells some great boxing lore. Everyone should see that film.

  52. 52.

    narya

    Agree on Slapshot and Breaking Away and Bull Durham and League of their Own for sure; I’ll throw in Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings. I happened to watch Driving While Black (recorded it on PBS a while ago), and Bingo Long would likely look different with that in mind.

  53. 53.

    Amir Khalid

    I liked A League of Their Own. And Cool Runnings. And Nick Bassett, England Manager. And If I had ever managed to see The Damned United, I might have liked that one too.

  55. 55.

    MomSense

    It’s technically not a sport, but I would recommend Les Etoiles, about the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet.

  56. 56.

    Brachiator

    The 2010 Christian Bale film “The Fighter” is about so much more than just boxing. Very well done.

    I never cared much for “Raging Bull,” even though I note that it is a supremely well crafted film.

    I haven’t seen “Breaking Away” in years, and yet I can remember scenes and themes whenever it is mentioned. A remarkably goodhearted film. A great cast. And Paul Dooley, who is still with us at 92, was wonderful.

  57. 57.

    tokyokie

    Although I think Fat City and The Setup are great movies, the best boxing movie of all time, with the possible exception of Raging Bull, is Robert Rossen’s Body and Soul. It features John Garfield in his prime (and what a good-looking fellow he was), and the brilliant boxing sequences were shot by the great James Wong Howe moving backward on roller skates. The last line of the movie is one of the best ever, as Garfield snarls to the mobster who wanted him to take a dive: “What are you going to do? Kill me? Everybody dies.”

    Rossen, of course, went on to direct the aforementioned The Hustler, the greatest sports movie of all time, that’s been in my personal top 10 for more than 50 years.

    And kudos to Omnes Omnibus for bringing The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner into the conversation. Even though judging by his form, Tom Courtenay doesn’t look as though he’d ever done any serious distance running.

  58. 58.

    Amir Khalid

    @MomSense:

    Now that you bring that up, I would include Whiplash. Music YouTuber Adam Neely says it feels very much like a sports movie to him.

  59. 59.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Yutsano: People forget because with all the sequels Rocky became laughable, but the original Rocky won Best Picture and Best Director at the Academy Awards that year.

  61. 61.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    Although not really a fan of boxing movies, I liked and have seen Cinderella Man several times.  Big Russell Crowe fan got me to see it the first time, and bonus Paul Giamatti.

  62. 62.

    MomSense

    I used to love going to the Warren Miller ski movies.  The culture was the event itself.  Small theaters would open for a few showings and all the local skiers would show up.  My kids had ski school on Friday in season so all the parents and kids would meet to watch the movie together.  It was a lot of fun.

  63. 63.

    Feathers

    @NotMax: If you like boxing films, I’d really recommend heading over to the Film Noir Foundation‘s website. The founder, Eddie Muller, is also the host of TCM’s Noir Alley and the Noir City film festivals. His father, also Eddie Muller was a sportswriter for a San Francisco newspaper for 50 (?) years, known as Mr. Boxing.  He does great intros to all the films he presents, but the boxing movies get an extra oomph. On his Twitter/Instagram, he’ll sometimes post photos of famous boxing matches, pointing out his father in the front rows. (TBH – he’s usually reposting a picture someone sends him.)

    TCM today just showed SUSPENSE, starring the figure skater Belita, which I am going to put down as the greatest figure skating ever made, largely because it is a film noir. For fun but not as good figure skating movies, I’d go with either THE CUTTING EDGE for comedy or ICE CASTLES for sappy. (Although ICE CASTLES has the teen skater sleeping with her coach, presented as a romance, which was ugh then, but major, major five alarm yuck now.) BLADES OF GLORY needs to go in there somewhere as well. I didn’t care that much for TONYA, maybe because I followed it so closely then, and it just felt off.

  65. 65.

    raven

    I liked the MASH movie but hated it that it made them stick sports into war movies. The Boys in Company C comes to mind.

  68. 68.

    raven

    One of the worst bastardization of a sports book was “Friday Night Lights”. I could not believe that Billy Bob Thornton would let them take the true story of viscous abuse of high school football players and turn it into a feel good movie.

  69. 69.

    Craig

    It’s been so long since I’ve seen Fat City I’ll need to go watch it.

    Diggstown is a great longcon/Boxing movie. Solid cast with Louis Gossett Jr, Heather Graham, and Oliver Platt. Fireworks as James Woods attempts to outskeaze Bruce Dern promoting a take all comers Boxing contest.

  70. 70.

    HumboldtBlue

    @zhena gogolia:

    I really liked Bull Durham the first time I watched it. I watched about a year or so ago and it didn’t hold up all that well.

    And Fire In Babylon, while not a movie but a documentary about the rise of the dominant West Indies Cricket team is one helluva story.

  72. 72.

    Peale

    There’s a movie from 2014 out of the Philippines called “Children’s Show” that’s on the surface about children’s boxing but really about general violence and corruption that surrounds children growing up in that country who show any kind of talent in the ring. Not for the faint of heart.  Children of Heaven, this is not. Although one could probably watch them both in a “kids in sports” marathon to balance out the mood.

  74. 74.

    Feathers

    For current movies, I’d recommend THE SPEED CUBERS on Netflix. It’s about two competitors in the world speed Rubik’s cube speed solving competition. Just charming film about good people. It is also smart enough to only be as long as the material warrants, not padding the film and ruining the pace.

    I know I am always flogging the Criterion Channel, but they are currently running a showcase of all the official Olympic films, all the way back to the Stockholm Olympics of 1912. I’ve been dipping into them. Fascinating. It was supposed to coincide with the Tokyo Olympics this summer. What a year.

  77. 77.

    Uncle Omar

    As someone who grew up in the rural Midwest Hoosiers has always been a must watch.  Every town had at least two assholes who knew more than the coach of every sport.  And every town at least one coach who was a major horse’s ass.  The small town culture surrounding basketball is accurately portrayed.  And, if you’re in the mood you can go to Indiana and shoot hoops in the Hickory gym, which is also like some of the gyms I played in when younger.

    I once told someone that if I could have traded by life between 18 and 25 with anyone it would have been with Greg Noll, the big wave surfer to whom about a third of Riding Giants is devoted.  Wonderful photography and a chunk of insight into the surf mind/culture.  Of course, there’s a book for that also, A Barbarian Life, by William Finnegan.

    And for Momsense, the Warren Miller films are just fabulous.  They almost make me want to ski.  I have to stop watching about half-way through because I might get off my chair and go try and if I did I’d end up somewhere with a dozen broken bones and die of pneumonia in a hospital, which is what happens to people my age when they go to a hospital with broken bones.

  79. 79.

    NotMax

    @Feathers

    Also for fun, Kauf dir einen bunten Luftballon, with a 20+ minute sequence of ice dancing. (Starts around an hour and twelve minutes in; if you choose to watch you may encounter short ads interrupting it periodically.)

    As for Eddie Muller, am somewhat in awe of his collection of bizarre neckties.

    ;)

  82. 82.

    Craig

    As this thread seems dying I’ll mention Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War about the creation of World Series Cricket in Australia. It shows the dream of a media mogul to break the grip of traditionalists in International Cricket in the 70s. Like most great sports movies it doesn’t get too deep into the weeds of actual cricket rules. Great story about a sport that I’m barely grasping the rules of even after a few years of friendship with rabid Indian and Aussie fans.

  84. 84.

    Uncle Omar

    @raven: Sorry, I never saw Big Wednesday.  Being self-absorbed is what writing an autobiography is all about, I think, as is spending one’s life chasing waves.  Once somebody devotes his/her life to chasing anything at the expense of just about everything else, self-absorbedness goes with the territory.

  85. 85.

    NotMax

    @Craig

    If you can manage to sit through all three and three-quarter hours of Lagaan you’ll come away knowing the ins and outs of the rules of cricket from A to Zed.

    ;)

    Strictly for mild humor involving cricket, the Canadian film The Grand Seduction is a nice gentle outing.

  86. 86.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Craig:

    Packett threatened to send home the top West Indies players he had recruited for his new venture because they were playing so poorly. They turned it around and created the spectacle.

  89. 89.

    Felanius Kootea

    @Yarrow: “The succubus has got him” – I always remember that line when I think of Foreman’s loss.

    My favorite sports movie is Bend it Like Beckham though.

  91. 91.

    prostratedragon

    @narya:
    Yaay, Bingo Long! Also especially like The Set-Up of the good movies mentioned here; Robert Wise, and a rare sympathetic character from Robert Ryan.

  92. 92.

    J R in WV

    I’m just not that fond of film… the last movie we went too before the Trump Virus struck was Black Panther, which was pretty good. But don’t need to see it again, nor talk about it. Sports film… don’t recall seeing any.

    Don’t much care for boxing, though I did watch Cassius Clay –> Ali, won some money  while in the Navy as the lifers hated him for not enlisting/submitting to the white man’s draft, so lots of guys would bet against him. Whoops, he won every time!

    And then he got Parkinson’s… I have no doubt from the punches.

    Back in my home town there was a guy named Cotton White, who had been a pro fighter, some kind of light weight class. He had a cauliflower ear, and was a little odd, probably also from being punched a few times too many. I liked him, we got along well, he was nearly my folks age so almost certainly long gone now. Once I was stopped at a light in town, and he walked into the side of the truck, BLAM while crossing the street… scared the hell out of me!

    He shook his head, grinned and waved, said “OK, I’m OK!” He had been looking at the light, never saw me pull up and stop. Punch drink a little. But a popular guy, belonged to the YMCA, worked out, stayed in shape. Didn’t think much of the Karate and Ju-Jitsu classes. Not fighting as in boxing, was it?

  93. 93.

    suezboo

    invictus , about SA winning the 1995 rugby world cup for our new president, mandela. it was about so much more than rugby.

  94. 94.

    Groucho48

    There’s an Iranian film, Offside, about girls trying to sneak into a World Cup soccer match…girls aren’t allowed in. The soccer game us only the backdrop, but, it’s a very humane optimistic movie.

  95. 95.

    Westlake

    I worked with a copywriter who was a former boxer. He gave Fat City an enthusiastic endorsement and was impressed that I had seen it.

    Lots of great recommendations in the comments, adding:

    -Kids Return (Takeshi Kitano)

    -Dogtown and Z-Boys

  96. 96.

    Bloix

    Every sports movie is The Mighty Ducks.  Just watched The Queens Gambit.  Yup, it’s The Mighty Ducks.

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