Family Movie Night: ‘Game Time — Tackling the Past’
Posted on September 2, 2011 at 8:00 am
The latest Family Movie Night, sponsored by Wal-Mart and P&G, is “Game Time: Tackling the Past,” about a pro football player named Jake (“Chuck’s” Ryan McPartlin) who has been estranged from his family. He reluctantly returns home for the first time in 15 years when his father (Beau Bridges) becomes ill, and then decides to stay home when his contract is not renewed. Jake fills in at his father’s job as a high school football coach and reconnects with his high school girlfriend. Watch for it Saturday, September 3, at 8 (7 Central).
Sports psychologist David L. Cook wrote a book called Seven Days in Utopia: Golf’s Sacred Journey about a young golfer who runs away after a meltdown at a big tournament, gets stuck in a small town, and meets a mentor who was once a champion and teaches him important lessons that he takes with him back to the next competition.
It’s still a good story. And I give Cook and co-writer/director Matthew Dean Russell credit for avoiding some of the usual sports-as-metaphor details. They refrained from making their main character spoiled or hot-headed. Even more unusually, they refrained from making his father a monster. Both are well-intentioned but misguided. This eliminates the easiest routes to dramatic intensity but demonstrates a confidence in the characters that is most welcome. It would be too much to say that adds subtlety to the story. This story is not subtle in any way; its biggest failing is that it does not trust its audience enough. It hammers its points home and then does it a few more times, and then a few more, just to make sure. If only the filmmakers had trusted their audience as much as the movie’s teacher trusts his student.
Lucas Black (“Cold Mountain,” “Friday Night Lights“), who co-produced, plays Luke Chislom, a young golfer who has been driven all his life by his father. When they get into an argument on a crucial shot in an important competition, Luke’s father walks off the course and Luke snaps his club in half and runs away.
Swerving to avoid a cow in the road, Luke crashes his car into a fence in the small town of Utopia, Texas. While the car is being repaired, a local rancher named Johnny Crawford (Robert Duvall) offers to give him some golf lessons to help him “find his game.” In true Mr. Miyagi “wax on, wax off” fashion, many of these lessons do not involve hitting a golf ball with a golf club. They are lessons about focus, faith, patience, confidence, and grace. They have Luke pitching washers, taking the controls of a plane, painting a picture, and literally burying the lies that hold him back. And there’s a pretty girl in town who is training to be horse whisperer and seems to know something about whispering golfers as well.
Black is an engaging performer and he and Duvall have an easy, natural quality together and many scenes have a refreshingly quiet quality, not so much of volume but from a spirit of humility and sincerity. Luke is a good kid, open to learning but not naive, and the film will reward those who are willing to give it a chance.
What does it feel like to have your story turned into a movie?
It’s really special. You can’t really put words to it. Life changes on a razor’s edge. One day, I was just living life in Utopia and the next day I happened to notice a hand-written sign on a half piece of paper on a bulletin board in the cafe that said Utopia Driving Range next to the cemetery and it said, “Come Find Your Game.” It intrigued me so I went out there and I found this beautiful cemetery with oak trees and a rock wall around it, and about ten steps outside of it were three pieces of astroturf, really bad golf balls, and a bunch of weeds and a pasture on the other side of a barbed wire fence, and this was what they called the driving range. It was pathetic!
I felt like this was the place where the Lord said, “Write a book.” I went home, got my computer out, on the porch of an 1874 farmhouse and began to write. My fingers didn’t stop for hours. This story came pouring out. One day before, I was just walking around Utopia. The next day, I’m in the middle of writing a book. Now, five years later, we’re sitting here talking about a movie with Robert Duvall.
It’s unbelievable how all that happened. But God has a purpose and a calling and we know that, we step into it and he gets the glory. It’s a great adventure.
I’m very intrigued by the idea of “Come Find Your Game.” Tell me more about that.
In the book and the movie, the mentor challenges this young kid who’s shown up having had a horrible meltdown in his life, in the middle of a golf tournament, in front of lots of people, and driving out into the middle of nowhere, this little town of Utopia and he meets this old rancher who says, “Spend some time with me and you’ll find your game.” He didn’t really know what it meant, but in the end he learns that life is much bigger than golf. The rancher will teach him about golf but all along he’s really weaving in principles about life. “I’m going to help you find your life.” Finding your game really is: What is your true purpose and calling? Are you allowing your talents to come out? Are you giving God the glory?
Why are sports such a powerful metaphor for the things that are meaningful to us in life?
People love sports because of the competition, because there’s a tangibility — success, failure, there’s a score. You can see improvement. And they like it because it takes them out of their everyday life. In the midst of sports you see these stories unfolding that mimic life. It’s kind of a microcosm, a way to look at life through a two-hour game or a World Series.
Is golf especially spiritual?
No. God created the universe and all its elements. Nothing is more spiritual than anything else. But you find that when you walk with God in every aspect of life, the parables that unfold in front of your eyes — God goes with you into that, whether it’s bowling or golf or curling or football. When we take Him with us and use the gifts and talents that He gives us within that, it’s all a spiritual experience. Every moment, every step we take, every breath we take is an opportunity to move closer to God or away from God or to help others move closer or away from Him.
What have you heard from those who have been influenced by your book?
Someone’s life is literally touched by the words that come through someone else’s hands. I scribed this. I’m not smart enough to write some of the things I’ve found embedded in this story. I’m just scribing it. When other people say it means something to them and affects their life — that’s pretty amazing.
There’s a women’s prison in Ohio where a lady was teaching a Biblical Principles class. She took the lesson of the “buried lie” from the book to ladies who have never played golf, never will play golf, probably never step on a golf course. They went out into the recreation area with the plastic spoons from their lunch and began to dig holes for their lies to change their lives, give all their false identities away. She said a revival broke out with all the other inmates around them, singing praise songs and crying.
Golf is unusual because there’s no referee.
Golf is supposed to be that place where we self-police and you do get those characters who put down the wrong score or kick the ball with their foot. That is just hilarious.
How did a small town in Texas get the name Utopia, which means an ideal community?
A guy named Captain William Ware started this town and named it after himself. The cemetery is still called “Waresville.” It’s in a valley with a crystal clear river that flows through here and mountains in every direction. They’re Texas mountains — they’d be called hills anywhere else! It’s just a really, really beautiful spot. After Ware died, it began to be called Utopia. I don’t know if that meant they didn’t like him or they just liked the name. It’s close to Utopia — except that it’s 104 degrees today!
Are many people afraid of success?
Yes, yes. There’s two fears, one’s the fear of failure and the other is a fear of success. You look at Tiger Woods — who would want to be that? Media sets up the superstars for the great fall. A lot of people at every different level shy away from being all they can be because they know the perils of the limelight.
Who have been your greatest teachers?
A gentleman named Johnny Arreaga was my childhood mentor and golf pro. He would hit a really great shot, and he’d turn and put his club back and say, “Picasso.” One day, when I was 14, I asked, “What do you mean, Picasso?” So he says, “Cookie, for every shot you’ve got a blank canvas. You’ve got to create a masterpiece in your mind’s eye before you ever take the shot. When I hit a shot, I sign it: Picasso. You have to make up your mind. If you don’t create a masterpiece in your mind before everything you do in your life, you will have a lifetime of unfulfilled stick-figure outcomes.”
Writer-director Tom McCarthy gives us stories of the families we choose. In “The Station Agent” and “The Visitor” the main characters were loners who found themselves unexpectedly drawn into caring for people who were very far outside their usual circles. In this, McCarthy gives us a man who already has a loving, stable family and a best friend (“The Station Agent’s” Bobby Cannavale) and is under enormous stress trying to take care of everyone. But he, too ends up meeting someone who at first seems a threat, then a burden, and then, somehow, family.
Paul Giamatti plays Mike Flaherty, a lawyer with a solo practice that is not bringing in the money he needs for repairs at the office and at home. Most of his clients are indigent but Leo, a man in the early stages of dementia (“Rocky’s” Burt Young), has a comfortable bank account. In a guardianship proceeding, Mike impulsively has himself appointed as guardian so that he can get the fee. Then he puts Leo in an assisted living facility, contrary to his assurances at the hearing that he would keep Leo in his own home.
Mike did not know that Leo had any relatives. But a teenage grandson who has never seen Leo turns up. His name is Kyle (newcomer Alex Shaffer). He has dyed blonde hair and he smokes. His mother, Leo’s daughter, is in rehab and he has come to stay with Leo. Mike and his wife Jackie (Amy Ryan) reluctantly take him in. Mike coaches the high school wrestling team part-time. Kyle turns out to be an exceptional wrestler. He begins to work out with the team.
There is a wonderful decency, naturalism, and humanity to this story, thanks to a sensitive script and superb performances. Ryan and Giamatti have the rhythms of a long-married couple, with a real sense of established teamwork, and appreciation. Her “what is that?” expression and his “it’s okay and under control” gesture to her are eloquent in conveying their depth of trust and understanding. The look on Mike’s face when he wishes Kyle luck in keeping his secrets reflects more than a decade of seeing her ability to get the truth out of anyone. And yet Mike himself is keeping bigger and bigger secrets from Jackie. He thought it would not hurt anyone. But there really isn’t any such thing as win-win. Someone always pays a price.
Bethany Hamilton (AnnaSophia Robb) tells us that as a child she spent more time wet than dry. She is the daughter of competitive surfers, home-schooled so that nothing would interfere with her training or her opportunity to go out into the water when the waves were good. And then one morning, when she was 13, a shark bit off her arm up to the shoulder. Determined that nothing could stop her from doing what she loved, she was back on her board a month later.
Two powerful forces kept her going, Bethany’s passion for surfing and her faith in God. This movie does a better job with the first than the second. The surfing scenes both before and after her injury are gorgeously portrayed, taking us inside the waves so that you will almost feel the spray on your face as the surfers rip around the swells. Writer-director Sean McNamara and the talented surfers on screen convey not just the experience of harnessing the power of the ocean but the thrilling rush of it as well. But he does not bring the same energy to the faith-based part of the film, which feels flat and more dutiful than heartfelt, like a youth group curriculum pulled off the Internet.
One problem is Carrie Underwood, a lovely performer who just does not have the acting skill she needs for Sarah Hill, the youth counselor who guides Bethany both before and after the attack. Perhaps because the film-makers are trying to please both faith and secular audiences, the faith-based elements of the story are thin and vague, reduced to a parable about not being able to see the big picture when you are too close and a trip to a very tidy settlement area in Thailand after the tsunami. The mention of Jeremiah 29:11 is not as significant as her doctor’s reassurance that “the things you are going to have to learn to do differently is extensive but the things you won’t be able to do is small.”
The real turning point is the scene where Bethany receives a prosthetic arm that does not give her the functionality she expected. That is a far greater blow than the original injury because it is only then that she must acknowledge that her loss is permanent. It is only then that she is able to have an honest re-evaluation of her faith, her priorities, and her options. In another sober moment, Bethany’s father (Dennis Quaid) silently matches the bite mark on Bethany’s surfboard with the enormous jaws of a captured shark, confirming that this was the beast that attacked his daughter.
Robb conveys Bethany’s resilience and athleticism. McNamara has a good sense for the rhythms of teen girl friendships (I still think that Bratz is underrated) and the scenes with Bethany and her friends capture the warmth and excitement of young girls on the brink of mastery of skills and the beginning of independence. But like its main character, it really comes alive when it catches the waves.
about a young golfer who runs away after a meltdown at a big tournament, gets stuck in a small town, and meets a mentor who was once a champion and teaches him important lessons that he takes with him back to the next competition.