by J.D. Lafrance
So how did the 1970s – a decade known for its nihilistic cinema – give birth to some of the best sports comedies in history? With ease, irreverence, and cynicism. In the big four—baseball (The Bad News Bears), football (Semi-Tough), and basketball (Fast Break) and even cycling (Breaking Away)–arguably the best was Slap Shot (1977), a foul-mouthed rowdy take on a minor league hockey team about to fold. Directed by George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), it starred Paul Newman as the veteran player-coach of a team that desperately tries to keep afloat with hilarious results. Screenwriter Nancy Dowd based much of the screenplay on her brother’s experiences playing minor league hockey. This lent a great deal of authenticity to the hockey-player hijinks on and off the ice. The film received mixed reviews when it was initially released but has gone on to become a much-beloved cult film and is considered by both GQ and Sports Illustrated to be one of the best sports films ever made.
Right from the start, the film sets a satirical tone with an amusing television interview as the Charlestown Chief’s goalkeeper (Yvon Barrette) explains in his thick French-Canadian accent the fundamentals of several key penalties in hockey and what happens to a player when they commit one of them: “You do that you go to the box. Two minutes by yourself. You feel shame and then you get free.” This scene gives us an audacious little taste of what’s to come.
The Chiefs are a bad team having a worse season. Attendance is poor and those who do show up are either wives and girlfriends or fans that openly mock the players. To make matters worse, the local mill is on the verge of closing down and team owner Joe McGrath (Strother Martin) plans to fold the team after the current season ends. Salvation comes in the form of the Hanson brothers who show up with knuckles full of tin foil and suitcases filled with toys. They are dumb goons that player-coach Reggie Dunlop (Paul Newman) benches immediately in disgust (“They’re retards!” he complains to McGrath). With nothing to lose, he decides to stick it to his so-called boss and goes to the press (a local reporter played by none other than M. Emmet Walsh) and “spills the beans” a.k.a. feeds him lies about how the team is going to be sold and move to Florida.
Reggie also decides to start playing dirty out on the ice (to win games, of course). Telling one rival team’s goaltender that his wife is a lesbian (“A lesbian!”) sends the guy into a blind rage. He discovers that the crowd loves watching violent hockey…and to this end he lets the Hanson brothers play. They are the answer to all his prayers as they viciously body-check opposing players, trip their goalkeeper and even do the same to the referee when he’s not looking. You name the infraction and they do it and in style. As a result of their dynamic style, the Hansons become folk heroes to Chief fans (and to this day are loved on fan pages far and wide). It’s not hard to get caught up in their goonish behavior, especially if you can remember the aggressive style of NHL teams like the Philadelphia Flyers, known as the Broadstreet Bullies in the ‘70s and beyond.
In addition to the main dilemma, the film also follows the rocky relationships of Reggie and his estranged wife Francine (Jennifer Warren) as he tries to rekindle the romance between them, and the team’s top scorer Ned Braden’s (Michael Ontkean) lackluster marriage to his bored wife Lily (Lindsay Crouse). One gets the feeling that these relationships are doomed to fail because the men are still boys, trying to grow up. Hill presents a few nice scenes where the wives and girlfriend commiserate over their hockey-playing significant others, lamenting over their lot in life in a particularly poignant scene scored to “Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word” by Elton John. It is this element that almost balances out and even comments on the goonish behavior depicted in the hockey sequences.
Paul Newman does a wonderful job conveying his character’s world-weariness. For Reggie, the Chiefs folding is the end of the line. He’s too old to be traded to another team and if he does continue in hockey, it will be as a coach. He’s burnt out – physically and mentally. And yet there is still a spark of the wily con man as he concocts a story to make the team more valuable – and more inspired. Special mention should go to Reggie’s god-awful fashion sense, which hilariously dates the film as he sports all varieties of hideous polyester: bellbottom pants, a garish collection of shirts with patterns on them that are beyond tacky, and a fur and leather jacket that makes Newman look like a pimp. Slap Shot also contains an impressive amount of cursing, a lot of it coming out of Newman’s mouth, which came as quite a shock to his fans at the time (as he was not known to be a potty mouth), but the homophobic and sexist language reflected how minor league hockey players really spoke.
Michael Ontkean (Twin Peaks) is believably convincing as the smartest player on the team – and the only one who objects to the Chiefs’ new style of violent play, even when Reggie threatens to bench him. As Ned tells Reggie at one point, “I’m not gonna do it. I’m not gonna goon it up for ya.” He recognizes that his teammates are playing for the wrong reasons and they’re turning the game into a joke. Initially, we’re not quite sure what motivates Ned. He looks like he’s just passing time but until what? He’s a college graduate and easily the most self-aware of anybody on a team content to take life one game at a time. Ontkean is able to convey the sense that Ned wishes he could be more like his teammates (he participates in their after-hours poker games) but he’s too smart and wants something more.
In a nice touch, Maxine Nightingale’s disco hit single, “Right Back Where We Started From” is the recurring theme music of sorts for the Chiefs. It is ubiquitous early on, playing over shots of the team bus heading to their next game and even in the background. To go with this memorable music are some truly beautiful shots courtesy of cinematographer Victor J. Kemper (Husbands), like the one of Reggie being dropped off at his house at dawn. In the background we can see the mill churning out smoke – it is at once beautiful and depressing. We know that in a matter of days it will shut down and many people will be out of work…but the light of day turns a poignant gun-metal blue.
During the first hockey game, director George Roy Hill places the camera on the ice with the players so that we are in the action, immersing us in the game. The camera gets right in there on the action so that you feel every hit and dodge the punches thrown in every fight. You can also see the actors doing most of their own skating, shooting, and body-checking along with actual players that were cast in the film.
Nancy Dowd’s script is full of wonderful little touches that provide insight into the minutia of the game, which lends to its authenticity. For example, we see how the Hanson brothers tape foil to their knuckles before every game in case they get into a fight. Another memorable bit is the fight that breaks out between the Chiefs and a rival team—during warm-ups, so there are no officials to break it up! Hill then cuts to the National Anthem being played and the Hansons all bloodied, listening intently while the referee watches them suspiciously, even going so far as to warn one of them to which he responds with the now oft-quoted line, “I’m listening to the fucking song!”
One thing that makes Slap Shot stand out in its genre is the strength of the scenes that take place between the hockey sequences. This isn’t just footage of the guys bonding and pulling wacky antics—it’s also the relationship between Reggie, Ned and Lily. She hates being stuck in a one-horse town and feels that Ned is wasting his time playing hockey…while Reggie finds himself attracted to her and can’t understand why his teammate treats her so poorly. Lindsay Crouse brings a smart grittiness to her character. Lily is Ned’s intellectual equal but is constantly infuriated with him for the way he treats her (he shows his St. Bernard more affection). So why does she put up with it? Why doesn’t she just dump him and take off? I suppose she still loves him…but the friction of their relationship is hastily glossed over during the film’s feel-good finale.
Dowd’s screenplay is an affectionate satire of hockey but can also be read as a fascinating treatise on gender politics. In the film, the women are portrayed as consistently smarter and more mature. Reggie’s estranged wife always looks elegant and comes across as intelligent, having already planned out a future for herself away from the dying town. In a surprising twist, the team’s secret owner turns out to be a woman who has the power to sell or save the team. Meanwhile, the men are presented as silly stereotypes: the crude horndog, the pretty boy interested only in cute groupies, and the Hanson brothers who play with race cars in their spare time and mindlessly do whatever their coach tells them. Out of the men, only Ned—an intriguing, enigmatic character—hints at a more progressive view of the opposite sex. He not only refuses to play like a thug but in the final game openly mocks what his team has become with a show-stopping form of protest that is easily one of the film’s highlights, as he demonstrates just how absurd the game of hockey has become.
Slap Shot follows the sports movie template of a team of misfit players, loveable losers that when faced with a dilemma that threatens their very livelihood, gets their act together, and try to turn things around. The film’s knack for showing the inner workings of a sports team in an accurate and heartfelt way anticipated future sports movies like Bull Durham (1988), which does for baseball what Slap Shot did for hockey. And much like Ron Shelton’s film, Slap Shot comments on the inherent silliness of grown men acting as boys while also commenting on the absurdity of the level of violence in the sport. As the season goes on and the Chiefs start winning, the games get more and more violent – on both sides of the blue line. This spills over to the fans as they not only fight in the stands but outside the rink before the game has even started!
Not surprisingly, Slap Shot divided critics when it first came out. Newsweek magazine’s Jack Kroll found it to be “tough, smart, cynical and sentimental.” In his review for the Washington Post, Gary Arnold called it “a joyride conducted by drivers who betray an undercurrent of hostility toward their passengers.” Furthermore, he felt that “The profanity expresses more that documentary fidelity to the vocabulary of jocks. It’s an aggressive outlet for the filmmakers, too. Once you hop on, it’s advisable to concentrate on the gratuitously funny aspects of the ride and to avoid taking the hostility personally.” The New York Times’ Vincent Canby found that the film had “a kind of vitality to it that overwhelms most of the questions relating to consistency of character and point of view.” He added, “Much in the manner of Network, you know that it’s an original and that it’s alive, whether you like it or not.” Pauline Kael felt that Newman delivered “the performance of his life.” Oddly enough, Sports Illustrated’s Frank Deford criticized the screenplay: “The dialogue by Nancy Dowd is as puerile as it is unnecessarily vulgar. Apparently Nancy Dowd believes that male camaraderie can be instantly created with a whole lot of garbage mouth.”
Like many sports comedies made in the ‘70s, Slap Shot ends with Reggie and his team winning yet also losing. They win the league (albeit on a technicality) but the team is no more, leaving many of its players with uncertain futures. Think of Rocky (1976) where Rocky Balboa lost to the champ but went the distance; or The Bad News Bears (1976) failing to win the championship but demonstrating grit and determination. This non-traditional view of what it means to “win” was the hallmark of many sports movies from this decade and reflected a prevailing mood of the era. It wasn’t until Star Wars (1977) that people got tired of this view and wanted more escapist, idealistic fare and this became reflected in sports movies in the 1980s with efforts like Hoosiers (1986) or Major League (1989) where the protagonists win and there is no question that things end on a high note. That being said, Slap Shot still casts a long shadow with any new hockey film inevitably being compared to it, from films that only reference it, like Happy Gilmore (1996), to outright homages like the recent Goon (2011), or the instantly forgettable Slap Shot sequels (two so far). None of them come close to the bawdy fun or the authenticity and fire of Hill’s film, an insanely quotable classic that appeals both to the hardcore hockey fan and to fan.
How Slap Shot made the Top 100:
No. 15 J. D. Lafrance
No. 23 Roderick Heath
No. 56 Jamie Uhler
I’ll never forget the first time I saw this film. It was of course in a theatre back in it’s release year of 1977, when ice hockey played a major role in my life, a time when I even donned skates to play goaltender. Can’t say my skating skills were much though. In any case a close friend and I held season tickets to the New York Islanders, and we were living and breathing hockey for several years. In any case, we were thrilled to hear that a film about the sport was opening, and dividing my time with sports and movies I knew well what a talented guy George Roy Hill was. Heck, THE STING and BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID were two other movies I found most entertaining. As you note here J.D. in this thorough and all-together engaging essay on this cult film, the satirical underpinning is what made the film popular upon release and has allowed it to hold the stage with both comedy lovers and sports enthusiasts, and it’s really a no-holds-barred treatment of some of the sport’s more devilish aspects, and of the unsavory characters that don the skates and often engage in warfare with sticks. All sorts of bizarre characters emerge from this often uproarious scenario, and Hill loads his film with outrageous humor of all sorts and colors. As you say J.D., the film’s reputation has grown, and is now a big favorite on sports movie listings. Love the use of the theme music, and the habit of the players taping foil on their hands. The excessive profanity is a kind of guilty viewer pleasure, but no doubt this is close to what a locker room sounds like. And Newman is quite good in his role as the coach. This is a comedy countdown, and this laugh riot has earned it’s keep. The Hansons are really a hoot, and I’m laughing to myself right now just visualizing them.
One of your very best reviews J.D. Outstanding! How appropriate that a native Canadian does this film full justice!
Thanks, Sam! Yeah, I felt as a Canadian it was my civic duty to write something about this film. In a country where hockey is practically religion, SLAP SHOT is highly regarded and I have fond memories of watching it growing up. The film is such a loving tribute and also a well-observed critique of the sport. It is also just a lot of fun to watch and this is certainly due in large part to the Hansons who steal most of the scenes they are in. They’ve become cult figures in their own right and continue to do public appearances thanks to the legacy of this film.
Excellent round-up of thoughts on one of my all-time favorites. I think the two keys to Slap Shot are the reverence for an abstract “Old Time Hockey” in an age where Bobby Clarke and the Broadstreet Bullies’ chicanery turned the game into Wrestling, and the economic malaise and depressed mood that was the lasting marker of the Stagflation ’70s after Nixon’s gold shock (you remark on Rocky and the Bad News Bears, I see these themes extending as far as An Unmarried Woman with Jill Clayburgh).
The always shifting meaning of what “Old Time Hockey” meant, with the guys referencing Eddie Shore (without the possibility any of them likely ever watched him) is an odd occurrence: at once it means the new paradigm of Flyers-style hockey that the movie critiques, then it becomes idealized into what hockey used to be prior to the goonery. In a way, Slap Shot was a cultural response to the decay of the sport, wishing for something better and providing a brilliant ending where Ned exposes Flyers-hockey in a metaphor to how it might as well be pornographic in nature too. I mean why not? In reality, what destroyed the Broad Street Bullies wasn’t Nancy Dowd, but the Montreal Canadiens, who indeed brought back “old time hockey”, and won 4 straight Stanley Cups, eradicating the Flyers each time, and frustrating their attempts to goon it up. In a way, you can see the Canadiens winning out each April, when teams bench their goons and don’t even think of playing them.
The sale of the team, the desperation of the fans, the sense of aimlessness for an ostensibly upper-middle class couple – one wasting away in a “career” below his aptitude and the wife in a booze bottle – all bring up as a summation the dreary economic mood that is almost a reflection of today in many ways. This part of the film is what ‘makes it’, IMO. The lady owner of the team, although you’ve gotta love the homophobic wisecrack against such a stuffy country club shark of a lady, is represented by Dowd as somewhat unsympathetic, maybe even cruel for conducting business as she sees fit with her property, by telling Reggie to go read a 1st year Finance textbook. Whenever times are tough, people turn away from freedom of choice and property and to railing against rich people – male or female.
You make some great points, here. Dowd’s screenplay really zeroes in on the more ridiculous aspects of the sports and shows just how silly they are by raising them to absurd levels. And yet what is crazy that a lot of the antics depicted on the ice, really happened, like the Hanson brothers going into the stands to get the guy that threw something at one of them! It’s funny because fans of hockey now consider SLAP SHOT to epitomize “old time hockey” forgetting that in the film they were referencing guys even further back in time.
I’m glad you mentioned about how relevant the film is now what with the grim “economic mood,” as you put it so eloquently, of today mirroring what was happening back then. The shots of the factory in the background of several scenes really stuck with me when I watched the film again recently. I know that the closing of the factory is mentioned casually a few times but it hangs like a shadow over the film. No wonder the fans are angry. It’s not just being egged on by their team’s antics but venting their frustrations at their crappy lot in life.
Would have never expected this film to make it to the top 100.
Yes, the 70′s were loaded with great sports comedies, this is one of them. However, THE BAD NEWS BEARS seems to play the laughs up a little bit better and the human element raises it above sub-par entertainment. BREAKING AWAY, the best of the four films, is NOT a comedy and is more of a coming-of-age drama with comedic overtones (very much the same way that Woody Allen’s MANHATTAN is not really a comedy) to keep things from getting too somber (Steve Tesich’s Oscar-Winning Screenplay elevated BREAKING AWAY to a position as one of the five best American films of its year of release).
However, I love raucous comedy and have a soft spot for SLAPSHOT even though I think, for me anyway, it just misses the boat in becoming a five star film. Newman, as always, is big part of my love equation for this movie (I’d watch him in anything) and he delivers a pitch perfect turn as the exasperated and often fed up coach/player in the film. Newman said in a 60 MINUTES interview that of all the films he ever made that SLAPSHOT was his absolute favorite. You can tell, from watching him in this film, that he was having a ball.
While this was a surprising figuring into the count, it certainly is wonderful to have it in the group and this essay by J.D. justifies it’s placement. I loved this essay!!!!!
I will have to re-watch this one as I too would probably not have given it a chance to be on this list. It’s been awhile. I’m with you Dennis I do prefer The Bad News Bears, which I voted for on my ballot. Something about a drunk Matthau teaching little league to a bunch of potty mouth 12 year-olds is too good to pass up.
This is a fine essay though J.D.! You make me want to rewatch it and that’s saying something.
JON-According to what I remeber reading about it at the time of release (or perhaps it was that Matthau biography), Paramount was at a loss as to what to do with Matthau. It seems they figured they had teamed him in buddy movies, romances, slapstick comedies and even a few dramatic roles and were running out of ideas. It was Micheal Ritchie that suggested they put the grouch in a room full of little children that caught the imaginations of the screenwriters and, viola, THE BAD NEWS BEARS was born.
There’s a moment in the film that never ceases to crack me up, much like most of SLAPSHOT, where Matthau is flying down the high-way at top speed in the broken down Cadillac, pool equipment strewn all over the car and falling out of the trunk and the entire little leaque team packed in like sardines and hanging on for dear life as he smokes a cigar and drinks a beer.
Englebert, the extremely obese kid, is rummaging through the glove box and produces an economy size bottle of JACK DANIELS and waves the bottle in Matthau’s face.
“Hey Mr. Buttermaker, you know that its against the law to drive with an open bottle of alcohol in the car????”
Matthau, still puffing and swigging, never taking his eyes from the rode, replies:
“And so’s murder. Now put that back in the glove box before you get me into real trouble..”
LOLOLOLOL!!!!! !
Thanks, Jon! I too, love THE BAD NEWS BEARS. Matthau is in fine form in this film.
Haha Dennis! That’s a hilarious scene from The Bad News Bears. I’m in love with that film.
Also Dennis, yes Breaking Away is not a straight up comedy. It’s a great film, that happens to have some funny elements. Also Manhattan yes is a better FILM than it is a COMEDY. Whereas Annie Hall is a better comedy than Manhattan even though it’s not necessarily a better film than Manhattan. I made all sorts of distinctions while making my ballot.
Without taking away from JD’s fine essay, I really cannot agree with you, JON, on MANHATTAN… Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the film but think it pales in comparison to ANNIE HALL which, in my mind, delivered the director and his writing to the highest peak. It’s innovative, audacious, inventive, hilarious and, above all, TRUTHFUL (not to forget to mention Allen as a performer at his most deadly, spurting off one-liners like rapid machine gun fire). It would, easily, grab my vote for the greatest single romantic comedy of all time…
Only CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS would rank higher if I had to make a list of Allen’s five or ten very best films… And, not all of them comedies…
Jon, do you have like a Rolodex of my film tastes and just post the exact opposite to rattle my cage every so often? LOL. Breaking Away is a ‘great film’? As if!
I’ve always thought Allen’s funniest film (err, script as he didn’t direct it but whatever) is Play it Again, Sam. It’s tight as hell, incredibly funny and produces many, many laughs from the everyday situation. I’d put half a dozen of his films over it, but not a one on laughs alone.
Haha Jamie way too funny. Yeah I think you and I are born to battle. Yes I think it’s a great film….in an escapist film sort of way. We all know how you feel about “escapism” though so I don’t feel like we need to get into it. Been there done that.
Dennis,
I won’t argue with you on Annie Hall vs. Manhattan. It’s splitting hairs for me. I slightly prefer Manhattan, but think Annie Hall is funnier.
I don’t mind escapism, and I’ve never said otherwise, I don’t like when it’s offensive or bland (the fact that it is so populist is why it draws the extra amount of contempt from me; it’s so darn influential). If someone wants to actually ‘escape’ and a film as pedestrian (in pretty much every way) as BREAKING AWAY does it, then there is a life that urgently needs focus and NOT escapism at the moment. Our ‘escapes’ should be extravagant celebrations of camp, kitsch, sexuality, etc.. in other words something you don’t get in the average made for TV movie with a slightly more polished script and performance.
If you think I do like ‘escapism’ wait until the Comedy Countdown concludes and the Wonders regulars do a ‘Guilty Pleasures’ month. You’ll see some of the stuff I wholly embrace…
Oh Jamie….I don’t know how I could have assumed you don’t like escapist fair….
Jamie 11-9-12
“There is a world, that’s real, that is worth fighting for, and being sidetracked by entertainment as fantasy is, nothing but a sidetrack that many downtrodden can no longer wait for.”
“I’m belittling no one, I’m just belittling an escapist film (an object), or ideas I feel are outdated or ultimately destructive to real progress.”
So really…not sure how I missed it. :S
Fine so you apparently like escapism in film, sometimes and in perfect guise. I guess I’m rather surprised.. Bravo to you.
Go ahead and try to define what everyone else needs “extravagant celebrations of camp, kitsch, sexuality, etc”. Good luck with that.
sorry those quotes are from 11-9-11, don’t want to get my dates wrong.
That quote you pulled and what I say here are perfectly in line. I have no problem with this. Let me ask you this, as escapist fair can you see a difference (ideologically, visually, script, craft, etc) with BREAKING AWAY, and say, Hawks’ LAND OF THE PHARAOHS?
I’m really talking about subversion. There is escapist fair that does this, most, by its very nature does not. That’s what I’ve always derided, usually on an island by myself.
Jamie yes I think there are many “types” of escapist fare. There is no one type. I think the escapist angle is defined by the individual. What one person finds fun and escapist, another finds offensive etc.
Also I’m not going to nor even try to convince you to even see my side of this escapist angle, nor anything regarding Breaking Away. I said I thought it was a great film and I think it’s fun and in the “escapist” vein. You, of all people, I know are not surprised by this. My lesson for the day is that Jamie does appreciate escapist films of a certain kind.
Actually Jamie I’m more interested in another angle to this. Do you think that films are mostly escapist by nature? In particular, let’s discuss comedies. Are comedies escapist? I think by and large, many comedies if not most are escapist films. In fact I think nearly any genre film is escapist. Perhaps my delegation of escapism for Breaking Away was not specific enough, as I think films are inherently escapist anyway. Let’s call Breaking Away a “crowd pleaser” type. My guess is that particular type of film you despise.
Jon, don’t think I’ve forgotten about you. I typed up a reply to this in text edit on my computer at home with the intention of finishing it this morning. I didn’t and now I am at work. Rather than retyping it and missing something I thought important (and I was happy with my thoughts last night), I’ll just finish it tonight when I get home and post it. So it is coming…
Thanks for your great comments, Dennis! For me, SLAP SHOT has improved greatly over time and the more I watch it the more I realize just what a great film it is, working on several levels: just on a purely entertaining way with the Hanson brothers and their antics; as a commentary on the sport of hockey, both a celebration and satirizing it; as a commentary on sexual politics; and on a socio-economic level with the closing of the town’s primary business and the folding of the team.
I agree with you that BREAKING AWAY is not an out-and-out comedy and now that I think about it I shouldn’t have mentioned it with the other examples I cited. It is more of a hybrid of genres. It is certainly a warmer, more life-affirming film than SLAP SHOT but my preference would be for Hill’s film.
But, and I agree with you wholeheartedly, that would be the reasoning for me putting SLAPSHOT ahead of BREAKING AWAY. If we get down to brass tacks, BREAKING AWAY is the better of all four if we look at them strictly as FILMS. As COMEDY, BREAKING AWAY wouldn’t come close to scratching the crotch or patting the asses of SLAPSHOT or THE BAD NEWS BEARS.
Thank you so much for the timely reply.
This was fun!
I didn’t see Slap Shot until the 1990s, when I was thrilled to see what I and much of the public had missed when the film was originally released. I guess it was just too subversive for its time. Although it didn’t make my list, it’s close — and I was tempted to include it simply for the fact that we get to see Ontkean’s bare butt in an era when onscreen bare butt wasn’t common.
Pierre, do you remember 1982′s MAKING LOVE (Arthur Miller) which starred Ontkean and Kate Jackson?
I saw that film with my Grandmother when it first came out. LOL! We had no idea what it was about except that Kate Jackson (a favorite of ours as we were huge fans of CHARLIES ANGELS at the time) was in it…
I think we were in the theatre for all of about 20 minutes before she grabbed me by the arm and dragged me out of the place mumbling about how movie companies should be ashamed of themselves for putting “dirty” movies like that in theatres…
LOL!!!!
But, this was the same woman that had no problems putting me in front of THE EXORCIST and DAWN OF THE DEAD when they first premiered…
LOL! Go figure!!!!!
Heh! Yeah, Ontkean’s form of protest at the film’s climax is unforgettable. It was a great way to put a fine point on the escalation of violent antics that the game had devolved into at that point in the film. I always liked Ontkean – he was so good in TWIN PEAKS.
Never saw Slap Shot — hockey’s not my sport — but J.D. rightly notes a strain of satiric debunking in Seventies sports movies. The idea seems to be to subvert an older idealized view of sports and sportsmanship, and in the football category the exemplar for me is Robert Aldrich’s The Longest Yard, which is probably a model (if not the model) for Slap Shot in many respects. Thanks for an enlightening review that makes me want to watch the film at last.
You are more than welcome! Good call on THE LONGEST YARD, which is part of a trifecta of great football films from the ’70s (see also SEMI-TOUGH and my fave, NORTH DALLAS FORTY).
Gotta add HEAVEN CAN WAIT to that no? Glad GUS is being shown the door… lol
I never really considered HEAVEN CAN WAIT a football film per se but I guess there are some connections.
You could arguably trace the whole irreverent sports trend of the 70s to the football game in M*A*S*H, for what that’s worth.
If I sat down right now and constructed my Top 60 I’m not sure if this would fall out—it very well might as I didn’t put yesterdays film in (!)—but when I did sit down to make my list I’d watched it just about a fortnight prior with my father while home for a quick break. It came to my surprise when it aired on one of those countless movie channels that he’d never seen it, so it became priority number one to view it that night. Needless to say I was instantly reminded of the films charms as he doubled over countless times laughing at the inane, vulgarness of it all. It’s played remarkably straight, with superb characterizations elevating its easiest of plots to something higher (while the depth of the economics of the plot aren’t deep by any reasonable barometer, regardless of what others will say here, it is remarkably ‘deeper’ than pretty much every other sports comedy made after the 1960s). Major League ripped its plot virtually wholesale and is funny too (and if you’re from Cleveland as I am it’s compulsory viewing every 8 months or so), but Slap Shot packs more raunch which is pretty essential for the type, and Hill’s hand is workmanlike and unobtrusive (his moving cameras for the hockey action are good too, which would be somewhat difficult to produce the moving poetry of any sport. Off the top of my head Huston’s Victory from the 80′s, while mostly a throw away film, features decent ground level soccer action. Soccer, I think is just about the hardest sport to properly capture).
Yes, Newman is good here (don’t know what that old hag Kael was smoking to say it’s the performance of his life though), but for me it’s the no-name actor doing the role of the pervert on the team that steals the show. He only has about 15 lines in the whole thing and I think half of them contain some version of ‘pussy’ or ‘snatch’ and his insatiable desire to acquire is as soon as humanly possible, but throughout he’s in many shots just grinning that mischievous grin that only a true buttoned-up mackintosh wearer can truly pull off. It’s unreal, and after away his mere presence sends me in a laughing fit. Yes kids, uber-creepy is funny.
Sometimes can’t figure out Kael, as much as I respect her. Newman was far better in Hud and The Hustler.
Yeah, I agree with you – this is certainly not Newman’s best performance despite what Kael says. It is very good but certainly not on par with HUD or THE HUSTLER. What I like about Newman in this film is that you can tell he’s clearly having a blast making it and this fun translates to the viewer.
While SLAP SHOT certainly doesn’t have much competition, MIRACLE is the only other hockey film that comes close to being as good and they wisely went a more solemn, straight-laced route. But all of the other SLAP SHOT imitators are just that and haven’t come close to replicating its smart mix of raunch and satire.
MIRACLE’s self-importance is nauseating, I’d take the cheeky fun, and pretty absurd YOUNGBLOOD (with young Rob Lowe) over it by miles…
Wasn’t Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves in that also? And Cynthia Gibb who was cute as a button and sexy as hell in a girl-next-door kinda way.
Yes, they both were. I’d forgotten that. Gibb was nude in that one too which quite surprised me the first time I saw it.
Old hag Kael! What! The old gal never touched drugs, though she was fond of the hooch as when she drunkenly berated Sidney Lumet one night over dinner with a horrified Al Hirschfeld looking on. I love Dame Kael, though I agree with her only occasionally — ‘Lolita’, ‘Nashville’, Shelley Duvall, ‘The Conversation’, Handle With Care’ aka ‘Citizens’ Band’, ‘My Dinner With Andre’. One of the three or four greatest film critics, I’d say, but pretty polarizing.
“Youngblood” — more jockstraps and bare asses.
Mark she is also one of my favorites with Kauffmann and Sarris. She certainly is the best writer of them all, but Kauffmann arguably matches her overall.
In nastiness though nobody touches John Simon. Her personal attacks against Barbara Streisand’s physical looks stand alone in meanness.
How can Kael be the best writer of them all, when she’s probably the third best female critic, let alone both genders combined?
I too like Sarris more than her, but how can you love both? Do you like the Red Sox AND the Yankees?
Who’s the best female film critic? Patricia Patterson? Renata Adler? Stephanie Zacharek? Carrie Rickey?
“Pauline Kael is the third greatest female film critic.”
Translation: I don’t like Pauline Kael.
Yes I do like both, as I like Kauffmann, irregardless of their fights. I can say over the years I’ve been enriched by their insights, whether or not I come away in agreement. For me that is the value of film criticism.
Susan Sontag maybe? Fine, but no Kael by a long-shot.
Then there is old lady Dyllys Powell, who lived to 94. One of the finest British film critics, but overall couldn’t hold a candle to Kael.
I haven’t read any Kauffmann in many years, though he once said that Anne Wiazemsky reminded him of a ‘depressed goldfish’! Now I love Wiazemsky, but still I had to laugh.
Oh, I forgot about Sontag, but she only wrote about film sporadically.
You didn’t have to translate me Sam, I would have said it (I thought I did by calling her a ‘ol’ hag’ anyway), but I suppose that would have negated the actual reason to ‘translate me’. Which was an attempt to trivialize my opinion. Whatever.
Mark S, I prefer Susan Sontag first and foremost. She’s highly intellectual, reasoned, has impeccable taste, and can broach a wide spectrum of topic and mediums and still offer interesting and insightful analysis that are beyond her mere ‘opinion’. Second would be that godsend Molly Haskell, whose chief work, ‘From Reverence to Rape’ is superlative.
Kauffmann also hated The Godfather, and a number of other films I liked, and vice-versa.
Haskell wrote some seminal stuff, but neither her nor Sontag are anywhere near Kael. That would be like saying that Jack London and Frank Norris are as great as James Joyce. Insanity.
Not really. Are we going by volume alone? That’s were Kael stands as greatest (no doubt as she was a paid critic for many years, able to build a huge amount of pieces). But if we are going by intellectual prowess and conceptual breadth, Sontags several books (Against Interpretation, On Photography, etc which all contain thoughts on films or film theory) Kael cannot touch. There Kael is a pulp writer selling dime paperbacks, while Sontag is writing Philosophical treatise.
To compare Kael to Joyce is the actual insane thing here. That’s Kael’s biggest problem, she wrote a ton about a form cinephile’s adore so they compare her prose to the greatest writers who have ever lived. Joyce would have written grocery lists in better structure and metaphor than anything that came from Kael’s typewriter.
I thought he recanted his opinion on ‘The Godfather’ or at least Brando’s performance, but maybe not. Kauffmann loathed, I mean loathed, Altman, I remember. Hated ‘Taxi Driver’, too. Big fan of Rohmer.
Another Kaelism: She once called Sarris asexual and said his marriage to Haskell was a sham. Beyond the pale, but that was the untamed 70′s and never a dull moment.
I judge it by a combination of both. Sontag was NOT exclusively a film critic, but as you just admitted here she branched out into many other areas. Kael had a grasp on the cultural pulse and the development of film as an art form, dedicating her working life towards defining film as art for her readers. Kael is not the greatest writer who ever lived, but exclusively as a film critic she was the best female who ever worked in that capacity. Sontag simply didn’t do enough, and wasn’t really a film critic but just a writer who wrote some film reviews. It would be completely unfair to include her in the same capacity as Kael, and to be honest there isn’t another film intellectual who would do so, or has done so. Kael is the top female critic when you factor in many other aspects by quite a distance. Still she is hated as much as she is loved, which I guess is a further attribute.
I am not remotely comparing Kael to Joyce, I was using a comparative simile to make a point.
Kael was a great vulgarian and highly suspicious of ‘art’ movies. She revered the De Palma bloodbaths and took a swipe at Bresson’s austerity every chance she got.
Mark, he tried to lessen his objection to the film, but never quite got over that embarrassment. And I did know that comment Kael made. Deplorable for sure.
Mark, I am well-aware of all that for many years. Wagner was the meanest man and worst anti-Semite who ever lived.
Should be now invalidate him as a genius?
This discussion is not about personal failings but about artistic gifts.
But having said that I can’t identify a critic who infuriated me more than Kael did. She called Bergman’s SAWDUST AND TINSEL “powerfully awful” and regularly took down acknowledged masterpieces. There were times I wanted to write her a letter as I remember. Ha!
Oh, I’m not trying to invalidate Kael, though she did have dubious taste at times, and John Simon, a fan of her prose style, frequently chided her for it.
Indeed. Agreed. But Simon was a hachet man who took no prisoners. A regular marquis de sade in print. I did love his INGMAR BERGMAN DIRECTS volume though. It was his finest volume.
For laughs sometimes I open his PRIVATE SCREENINGS which is ripe with personal attacks of all kinds.
And for the record Jamie I will say that whatever I did read of Sontag over the years was superlative. I cannot deny this.
“It would be completely unfair to include her in the same capacity as Kael, and to be honest there isn’t another film intellectual who would do so, or has done so”
Pulled straight from your ass. It’s been done in print (there is a book that does just what I do actually called ‘Sontag and Kael: Opposites Attract Me’), online David Thomson (I guess he’s not a ‘film intellectual’) reviewed the book for Atlantic and added much more to the comparison and had no problem seeing both on similar ground. Etc. Many compare the two, and it’s more than fair (and applicable) to do so, but again it’s an attempt to not actually be forced to weight the two critics side by side. “I don’t have to entertain you stance, because no one serious would or has!” BS.
So let me be your editor: “It would be completely unfair to include her in the same capacity as Kael, and to be honest there isn’t another film intellectual who would do so THAT I KNOW OF, or has done so IN MY CURSORY SEARCHINGS”.
/Done.
And Mark of the four ladies you broached earlier I would say I do like Stephanie Zahareck who pulls no punches and writes quite ably, but again I am sometimes infuriated with her opinions.
So you found one reference in an oasis of ‘Kael as greatest female critic’ literature out there. Congratulations. Now look for some more.
And I met David Thomson last year at the Film Forum, received his autograph and subsequently praised him the following week at the Diary as one of my favorite critics. Had I known what you just revealed I could have also mentioned that he was the only film intellectual out there who preferred Sontag to Kael. But his dislike of Kubrick and Ford somehow seems more pertinent in the long run.
Next.
And I’m not trashing her (Kael) either. The fact I put her above, or amidst Haskell and Sontag is statement enough. But who has time for this when an all or nothing needs conjuring up.
The point isn’t anything other that you saying it’s never been done and me finding one within 5 seconds of looking. That’s it. If this were a trial the rest of your testimony would be shot to shit, which is how I’ll now approach this thread…
But either way, a crushing blow for me, at 31, to find out that I’m not a serious film intellectual because I both favor Sontag to Kael and dare to compare them. All those hours watching and reading shot to oblivion in a second…
Sontag is formidable on ‘Persona’, Kael flippant. Kael is bearish on difficult films and its her one great weakness.
No, that’s not quite right. There will ALWAYS be a few dissenters.
Heck YOU are one.
The reason I went back at you earlier on was because you made an opinion sound like FACT when you took issue with an innocuous statement I made at the very start of the sub-thread. Go back and look.
This was the flare you lit:
“How can Kael be the best writer of them all, when she’s probably the third best female critic, let alone both genders combined?
I too like Sarris more than her, but how can you love both? Do you like the Red Sox AND the Yankees?”
I stated an opinion and a popular one at that.
You came back with an extremely minority opinion and posed it as FACT.
There are no facts here. There NEVER are facts.
There are ONLY opinions. Yes it is rather comforting to know that mine here stands with most but I have lost count of the times I stood alone.
Obviously I stated opinion. Obviously you stated a fact pulled from thin air that I showed to be just that, pulled from air.
Do you really think that by finding ONE, SINGLE, SOLITARY instance where my “general” assertion is shown to be compromised, that the statement was then completely invalid?
Thomson is ONE writer who may have liked Sontag more than Kael.
There are others to be sure if you look hard enough.
But we have had this kind of discussion in the past. Overwhelming majority is not unanimity, true.
And now Wonders in the Dark readers and faithful, begone, withdraw, have done with you. Return to the laughter on the ice hockey rink, for Jamie Uhler and I have exchanged peace branches.
We are very good friends after all, and hag or no hag Pauline and all her vitrol will NOT be getting the best of us.
She may be the devil, but we have resisted her!!!
Ha!
J.D. Lafrance and his great review should rightly be the focus as it was for quite a while earlier.
The real accomplishment in this film is to make crudeness and vulgarity strains of hilarity. In today’s films such attempts come off as stupidity. The satire is what makes it all work and this excellent review examines that vital aspect. I haven’t seen this in years, but haven’t forgotten it. Those Hansens had me going.
Agreed. The crudeness and vulgarity are funny in SLAP SHOT while its imitators have mostly failed to recapture it and instead it comes across as you rightly point out as stupidity. I wonder if that’s because other films are trying to pay tribute instead of doing their own thing and so it just comes off as an ill-conceived copy.
I understand the Chiefs are a real hockey team, though most of the shenanigans displayed in the film are fabricated. But what a laugh riot! I own a copy of the DVD and have watched it many times.
Great review! No stone left unturned.
Thank you!
As for the antics portrayed in the film… yes and no. The strip-tease finale was fabricated but things like the Hansons getting arrested and the foil on the knuckles either actually happened or were based on reality. Screenwriter Nancy Dowd actually followed her brother’s minor league hockey team around for a month and had him tape record locker room conversations in order to get the details right on how these guys talked and acted.
Oh, here’s a Kael quote I just looked up on Wiki (she’s mentioning ‘Mouchette’ in a review of ‘Fitzcarraldo’ of all things). “Bresson didn’t drive the girl to suicide in ‘Mouchette’ (only the audience)”. The artistic depiction of despair apparently doesn’t resonate with her.
Her indifference to Bresson, one of the greatest film artists of all-time and a personal favorite who some days of the week is my absolute favorite, may well be her most heinous flaw.
But, and it’s why I don’t like Kael, (and what Mark S. is working to show) it wasn’t that some filmmakers rubbed her the wrong way or that some didn’t do much for her while others did (this is something that can be said for all critics and fans alike) it was that she has a disdain for intellectualism or leanings in those directions when approaching art. It’s not just reserved for some, she gave it to anything she perceived as ‘bookish’. In my opinion this is a tired brand of uniquely American anti-intellectualism you see all the time. Kael dressed it up a bit so most swallow her and love it, but I read it as phoney (she was an educated person) or highly insecure. Either way I’ll gladly pass.
It’s the same with Robert Christgau in Rock criticism, he’s always making reference and judging records with an severe anti-intellectual bent (he quotes that Chuck Berry line, “beware of middlebrows bearing electric guitars.” all the freaking time) but masking it as some sort of authentic sound of rock and roll. It’s, as is true with Kael, condescending to the form, the audience that likes intellectual trappings, and incredibly constricting to the medium(s). Christgau, also like Kael, is a phoney too. He uses intellectual coded words to describe himself (self-proclaiming himself on his website the ‘Dean’ of Rock critics) and using his credentials to work as a professor at numerous colleges (which is fine, but don’t act like this vantage point is deserving of ridicule).
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being “educated” and suspicious or distrustful of academia or certain intellectual communities; and I think that any film critic coming out of the seventies (and yes, this includes Sarris, Haskell, etc) in some sense had to be. The auterist critics (as well as Kael) were writing in direct opposition to the (feminist / Marxist) ways that film was often being discussed in universities during that time–lines were being drawn and stands were being made between critics like this and academics like Laura Mulvey, and people like Sarris and Kehr were pretty upfront about their hostility towards that intellectual community (whose voices were, I understand, dominant on campuses at that time). There were a couple articles written last year or the year before in which Chris Fujiwara and David Bordwell grappled with this–URLs below.
With all that said, Kael could be an utterly nasty and disingenuous critic. And I say this as an admirer of her writing.
http://www.filmcomment.com/article/never-the-twain-shall-meet
http://projectcinephilia.mubi.com/2011/05/23/criticism-and-film-studies-a-response-to-david-bordwell/
Most fascinating addition here Peter!
While this is a great addition Peter, I for one think more ‘feminist/Marxist’ criticism is needed in the arts, as that is generally a way of thinking that respects the arts more than virtually all others (I’m reminded of Marcuse’s ‘The Aesthetic Dimension’ [as well as the work of Adorno] that essentially argues the art is the most important tool in breaking apart societal oppression)(and not to mention a way of thinking I align myself with). But my larger point is that, it is more than OK to reject a certain type of ideology or critic as Sarris and Kael did, (but lets be honest Sarris is largely know for a concept [auteur theory] he took and expanded from a bunch of French [often Marxist] intellectuals) but they often are left not putting any alternative political aesthetic ideology into its place. It becomes boorish to me to continue reading Kael’s rejection of this brand of thought while never once offering politics of her own. Instead everything clings to an incredibly small filmic only universe of seeing and discussing films. It seems to me rather obvious that if you like films as much as Kael, Sarris, etc do (reading one paragraph of their work this becomes readily apparent) that you understand their (and art in general) all pervasive power, so you should probably critic or discuss them based largely on their potential political impact on society.
So you should probably critic or discuss them based largely on their potential political impact on society.
But only if you think art’s most important goal is having a political impact on society–you do, I don’t; which is fine. One important distinction though–with the very notable exception of Luc Moullet, the original “young Turks” who founded the auteur theory were most definitely NOT marxists, and were at the time often seen as deeply reactionary and conservative thinkers. I know that sounds absurd today, especially considering the extreme radicalization of many of its writers as well as the actual periodical itself, but the original Cahiers was in no way a leftist paper. It was only after Godard left the periodical that it began to radicalize and assume a political agenda, and one that was pretty diametrically opposed to its original intentions.
By the way J.D., great review of “Slap Shot”. You’ve made me want to see it again.
Thanks, Mark S.! I’m glad you enjoyed it.
J.D. – I thoroughly enjoyed reading your review.
And in reading the multitude of comments you received, I learned something about my friend Sam Juliano that I didn’t know: “…when ice hockey played a major role in my life, a time when I even donned skates to play goaltender.”
Haha yes Laurie! You’re right! This was something new that I learned too! So fascinating to learn that.
hahaha Laurie! (and Jon!), yes I turn the clock back to 1976 to 1983, the years when I held season tickets to the New York Islanders who played their home games as they still do at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York on Long Island. The ride from NJ was close to an hour, but there are few precious details I don’t remember. The reason why I did play goaltender outside of my large frame was because I wasn’t very good on skates. If I was caught straying I often couldn’t get back, resulting in a score. Ugh.
But yes, J.D. has brought a new prominence to SLAP SHOT that no doubt will urge those who have not seen it to check it out!
Such great memories, Sam! As a child I didn’t play much ice hockey so much as a lot of road hockey which was always a lot of fun until the ball rolled into a nearby gutter. Thanks for sharing something so personal, my friend!
Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed it. And yes, that bit of Sam’s past was interesting to say the least! He could be an honorary Canadian!
J.D.,
Excellent tribute to one of the funniest sports movies ever. I do remember the critical reaction to the film being divided. Newman definitely gives one of his best performances.
Thanks, John! Newman is in fine form in this film and I was surprised at the mixed reaction to the film. I expected more negative reviews from the big critics. Interesting.