The Rookie (2002)

I was going to post this next week—the start of the 2024 baseball season—but, according to PBS News Hour (and other confirming sources), the season actually starts today with a series going on in Korea. So...we'll bunt.

Written some seasons ago...

The Rookie (John Lee Hancock, 2002) With all the fuss being made over The Blind Side, attention must be paid to the director's previous sports-film that proved popular, like The Blind Side, also based on a actual story that's just this side of incredible and told with a clear-eyed lack of pretension.

John Lee Hancock's first film in the Majors,* The Rookie, is a double-header of a sports film that manages to tell its male-weepie "dreams do come true" stories, both of them essentially true, with a minimum of sentimentality—the principals are actually quite bitter throughout the film, weighed down by the burden of "what might've been," and to a certain extent paralyzed by it. Coach Jim Morris, a former Big League prospect makes a deal with the High School team he coaches he'll "re-up" if they win their division. It then moves on to top itself to tell the consequence of that first story to the coach who must fulfill a promise to his team...and himself...to try out—again—for the Majors at the age of 39, a time when most pitchers are eyeing retirement, not opposing pitchers.

And because it's situated in Texas (for the most part), there's not an awful lot of talking about it, but, instead, there is a lot of scowling and stewing and time spent in solitude beating themselves up by transference in the form of hurling a baseball in frustration as fast as can be at some woe-be-gone target.

It might have been that baseball abuse added a few feet per second to Jim Morris' pitch, or it might be an arm strengthened by scar-tissue that can top his fast-ball at two ticks shy of a hundred mph. Whatever the reason, the science teacher/baseball coach in the arid football town of Big Lake, Texas must put-up or shut-up to his high-school team after his exhortation to pursue their dreams (and some batting practice with his blazing fast-ball) sharpens them up to become division champions.

That's story one. Story two is Morris' old-man hoofing it through try-outs and the farm system at the off-chance of being called to "The Show." It is an unlikely scenario, but Morris manages to do it, the film ending on the fairy-tale night that he must pitch in his first Major League game in his home state in front of his team and friends and family.

The movie could have been a sob-fest, but instead Hancock hinges it on dark nights of the soul and doubts about responsibility. This isn't some up-beat Rudy story where "wishing makes it so," (despite being produced by Disney). Morris (Dennis Quaid) must make a personal journey of dealing with a lifetime of disappointment and what might-have-been to accept the result of his efforts. After a life of compromise and making-do (and blaming others), he has to learn the grace to accept the gifts he has been given and the opportunities he's been afforded. Whatever pain goes behind each pitch, he must also put behind him.
Grace? Sacrifice? Forgiveness? Where do you go to learn such traits? Such inspiration usually is found at the Cathedral, the Temple, or the Mosque, but in the sports-world the big stadium is the source of humility. Hancock stages Morris' first walk into the Texas Rangers stadium as if he was walking into the Vatican, the high-arched entryway with the sun streaming through that stretches to a vanishing point that evokes a long journey, but also the long history of a game that, more than any other sport, is a competition with the ghosts of the past as well as the Boys of that particular Summer. The arches reach to the sky to define the goal but also press down with the weight of tradition, dwarfing the new recruit, challenging him to fill the space. In the distance, his fellow rookie, half his age, looks on in amusement at the old duffer hanging back in awe, anxious to start his journey and not thinking he may be looking at a flash-forward to a future of regret. It is a poignant moment of film, that says volumes in a single image and no words.

It's a good story told well. The characters are not larger than life, merely as large as they need to be. And no decision is made with a self-serving speech and heraldic trumpets—decisions and their consequences are agonized and fretted over. It's a story of people who not only have a lot to lose—they know it—but take the chance anyway for whatever amount of time it may last. The Rookie manages to make it look not quixotic, but essential.

Jim Morris' baseball card
* After writing two quirky off-beat films for Clint Eastwood: A Perfect World (1993) and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997).

The Pianist

Believe it or not, despite my last paragraph, this was written ages ago, soon after The Pianist was released on DVD. It seems like when one mentions "current events" as bad news, there is always an example one can point to. It is sadly inevitable. Wish it wasn't.

The Pianist (Roman Polanski, 2002): I've been avoiding watching this like the plague, because when you get home from a long day at work the last thing you want to see is a "holocaust" movie. (In fact, now, I'm thinking "when WOULD be the best time to watch a holocaust movie?" and the answer I come up with is "BEFORE the next holocaust!" seeing as a little education about precedent might prevent the next one...) But since our current Netflix choices are The Pianist or The Constant Gardener, its a bit easier to choose which of the two depressing movies you want to take on. We went with Pianist, and now I regret putting it off.

Yes, it's about the Warsaw Ghetto. But it's also a terrific adventure/survival movie about a man used to the rarefied world of the arts—a luxury, truth be told—being forced to make life and death choices just in order to survive. 

It begins with Władysław Szpilman (Adrien Brody) performing a concert piece over the radio only to have the program interrupted by Nazi Germany bombing the city. The reaction among the populace is a typical one--great fear leavened by a hope for the best (with a cautious "it can't happen here" disbelief). France and England declare war on Germany, and, with help like that, the crisis can't last long. 

But, it does. It gets continually worse with the Polish government cooperating with the Nazis, the Russians presenting an opposing front within the nation, the Jewish population denied jobs and businesses, forced to wear identifying arm-bands, then segregated into the poorest sections of Warsaw.

When the Jews are rounded up to be sent to the Treblinka concentration camp, Wladyslaw is separated from his family by a sympathetic member of the Jewish Ghetto Police and forced into slave labor, while secretly working to smuggle weapons into the ghetto for a rumored uprising.

Wladyslaw manages to escape and for the next three years, with the help of sympathetic friends—and, unbelievably, even one German officer—he manages to eke out an existence during the occupation and war-time bombardments. *

That its a true story makes it even more remarkable and a testament to one's will to live. But its also one of Roman Polanski's best films--a straight ahead artful telling of the tale without blandishments or Polanski's usual tendency to throw in some frivolous garbage that devalues the piece. Brody is simply amazing in it (but "Man Alone" movies tend to bring out the best in actors—anyone remember Dr. Hang S. Noor in The Killing Fields? Both actors won Oscars for their respective roles), slowly losing the detached look in his eyes as his situation worsens and worsens. 

One can't help but flash on current events and how a populace can be fooled into thinking "But they wouldn't dare...." Give someone enough power, and they'll dare anything. With enough power, who's going to stop them? 

Well worth seeing if only as a cautionary tale.

* Polanski was undoubtedly drawn to the story as he did basically the same thing growing up in war-time Krakow. He tells of how his family was rounded up for the concentration camps and only surviving because his father shoved him out of line, saying "I don't know you! Get out of here!" He lived under a false identity in a series of foster homes and on his own throughout the rest of the war.

Don't Make a Scene: Adaptation.

The Story: When looking at Adaptation. recently to re-post a review from a few years ago, I was struck by the weird nature of it (although given how Hollywood "changes" the facts—even in moves with the slug-line "Based on a True Story"—I shouldn't have been). The people in the story are real people—writers Charlie Kaufman and Susan Orlean, orchid fancier John Laroche—they exist, they knew the movie was being made (although when Orlean read the screenplay, she was "horrified" and, at first blush, wanted to shut it down). But, the story, "based on real events" was fictitious.

All except for the part that Charlie Kaufman had no idea how he was going to write a screenplay based on Orlean's book. The screenplay became less about the events of "The Orchid Thief" and more about the struggle to adapt it for the screen. A lot of the people are real. Kaufman's twin brother, Donald, is not, but presents a foil for Charlie to talk about his struggles. The real Kaufman even put "Donald" as one of the screenplay's authors and dedicated it to him.

Then, there's Robert McKee. He's real. Very real. Real enough to suggest Brian Cox play him in the film (over, reportedly, Michael Caine, Albert Finney, or Christopher Plummer). McKee has done well with himself with his lectures and seminars in the burgeoning market of potential screenplay authors and serves a need for those who are stymied by being too close to their subject: he provides perspective. It might seem a slight thing, but that can often solve the problem authors have to "crack"—if not their story-problems—their own myopia to it. For someone mentally spinning in a hamster cage, that provides possibilities and freedom; sometimes you can't get from "A" to "B" without taking a 90° jag along the way. You can only stare at a blank page or a white screen for so long before getting up and leaving it is the best strategy.

I just like the scene because movie-Kaufman has a very specific problem and movie-McKee is such a generalist that he doesn't address it and movie-Kaufman is so meek that he still gives him an perfunctory "Okay...thanks" for something that dismisses his issue with an over-arching rant.

What's also funny—and somewhat the point of what McKee does—is that he does provide the answer to his riddle, which solves the problem and provides the screenplay for the very movie the audience is watching, as unconventional as the solution is. Mind-bending, it is. Revelatory, too, on so many levels.

The Set-Up: Charlie Kaufman (Nicholas Cage) has a conflict: he has been hired to make a screenplay of Susan Orlean's book, "The Orchid Thief" and he can't do it. He can't even get started. His goal is "to make a simple movie about flowers" but the facts that made up the book are just not compelling for a movie, or the kind of metaphysical things he writes. His brother Donald (Nicholas Cage) doesn't help. He doesn't know what to do. In desperation, he attends one of Robert McKee's "Story" seminars, and during the Q and A, gets up the courage to ask about his very specific problem in a lecture about story-telling.

Yeah. You...

190 INT. AUDITORIUM - MORNING 190 

Kaufman, bleary-eyed, sits in the back. McKee paces. 
MCKEE Anyone else? 

Kaufman timidly raises his hand. 

MCKEE (cont'd) Yes? 

KAUFMAN Sir. What if a writer is attempting to create * a story where nothing much happens, where people don't change, they don't have any epiphanies. 

KAUFMAN They struggle and are frustrated and nothing is resolved. More a reflection of the real world -- 

MCKEE The real world? 

KAUFMAN Yes.

MCKEE The real fucking world?

MCKEE First of all, (sighs) if you write a... 

MCKEE ...screenplay without conflict or crisis, you'll bore your audience to tears. Secondly: 

MCKEE Nothing happens in the world? 

MCKEE Are you out of your fucking mind? 

MCKEE People are murdered every day! There's genocide and war and corruption! Every fucking day somewhere in the world somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else! 

MCKEE Every fucking day someone somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else! 

MCKEE People find love! People lose it, for Christ's sake! A child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church! 

MCKEE Someone goes hungry! Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman! 

MCKEE If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know much about life! 

MCKEE And why the fuck are you taking up my precious two hours with your movie? 

MCKEE I don't have any use for it! 

MCKEE I don't have any bloody use for it! 

KAUFMAN Okay, thanks.

Adaptation.

Words by Charlie Kaufman (and Donald Kaufman)

Pictures by Lance Acord and Spike Jonez

Adaptation. is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Image Entertainment and Shout! Factory

Adaptation.

Adaptation. (Spike Jonze, 2002) I love Charlie Kaufman's writing. It reminds me of the old "Twilight Zone" series...but with depth*—but he's more of the Charles Beaumont style of TZ story-telling than Serling's or Richard Matheson's or Earl Hamner Jr.'s. Leaps are made every few minutes beyond the central conceit, and comes to a truly disconcerting kernel of truth at the end, which makes whatever frustrations made during the course of the film worth it. Being John Malkovich is a charming deconstruction of personality and wish-fulfillment, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a jaded cynic's validation of love, and its intrinsic ability to be more than merely a process of instincts, chemistry and firing synapses. What's not to love?

But Adaptation. is another animal. It's "Charlie Kaufman in crisis," and a bit of a cheat, while also being an ingenious way to solve a problem—that is, writing a screenplay for a book that is, basically, un-filmable. Given the opportunity (and contract) to write a treatment based on Susan Orlean's best-selling book "The Orchid Thief,"** Kaufman readily accepted the job, being attracted to the odd obsessive themes of the book, and found himself unable to translate it into a film-story.

So—he thought outside of the box and the story itself—he wrote about his difficulties translating it into a film-story! The book's subject, John Laroche, the poacher who was seeking the "Ghost Orchid" in the Florida Everglades was a real person who was determined to find the rare flower to clone it and sell it. The screenplay's subject is about Charles Kaufman, screenwriter, who's trying to adapt Susan Orlean's book, "The Orchid Thief," and wrestling with its themes and his own inability to create the screenplay.

Impeding his process is his twin, simpler brother Donald (both played by Nicolas Cage), who's decided he's also going to write screenplays, none of which Charlie likes. Susan Orlean figures in it (played by Meryl Streep), as does Laroche—he's the bespectacled fellow pictured to the right, not Chris Cooper's snaggle-toothed (though Oscar-winning) portrayal (pictured above)—but they're fictionalized versions of the real people, adapted to fit a more commercial film. Laroche is using the orchids to make a drug and sell it, hooks Orlean, and she begins a needy affair with him and, fueled by her addiction, becomes as obsessed with the Orchid Thief as much as he's obsessed with the orchids. Is any of that true? No. Are the people real? Yes. The website, Chasing the Frog.com had done a fairly succinct job of separating the fact from fiction here. Yes, these people do exist, as does screen-lecturer Robert McKee,*** but they're fictionalized versions of the real people. Can Kaufman get away with doing that? Yes, he obviously did, but they had to get permission from the real-life counterparts to do so (just as Jonez had to get permission from John Malkovich for Kaufman's Being John Malkovich or that would have been a moot project).

Look up the word "Adaptation" in the dictionary. "Any change in the structure or functioning of an organism that makes it better suited to its environment." There couldn't be a better explanation of the screen treatment of Adaptation. Kaufman couldn't, as they say in the trades, "crack it," so he changed the structure of the scenario...transplanted it, if you will...to make it work as a movie—especially a movie in the current environment of movie-making. And he made the debate between what he wanted to do and what he had to do part of the story in the form of the arguing screenwriting twins, Charles and Donald Kaufman.

Any writer of success must at some point deal with "the Other." The other writer, whose ideas are dismissed and shelved for work accomplished. Steven King did an experiment once to see if his writing would be as successful in other genres as opposed to the "scary fiction" writer, Steven King. So he created a psuedonym, Richard Bachman, much to the consternation of his publisher. Bachman sold well, but King had to deal with the success of his dopple-scrivener after several books were published. Ultimately, it inspired the concept of his novel "The Dark Half."

Noms de plume are as old as Bashō (and I'd bet cave paintings had false signatures, as well), and Adaptation. is credited to both Charlie and Donald Kaufman. Donald Kaufman is the first completely fictional person to be nominated for an Academy Award (at least not as a nom de plume). Donald also serves as a way for Charles to have conflict while doing something solitary—writing. For all the preciousness of the conceit, it still manages to work in a weirdly clear way, and it provides the means of this exchange, which re-defines the whole picture and sums it up: Donald and Charlie are talking about a time in school when Donald approached a girl he had a crush on, and when his back was turned, she and her gaggle of "Heathers" made fun of him.
Donald Kaufman: I knew. I heard them.
Charlie Kaufman: How come you looked so happy?
Donald Kaufman: I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.
Charlie Kaufman: But she thought you were pathetic.
Donald Kaufman: That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago.

You are what you love. Not what loves you. For that little gem of a thought—multi-faceted, flawless and fundamental—I have enormous respect for Adaptation. for all its problems.

Oh, one more thing: My first impression of Adaptation. was to recall a punch-line from an ancient Warner Brothers cartoon (actually a couple of them, one of them being "Show Biz Bugs," another "Curtain Razor")—but because of what transpires (and the fear that kids would duplicate it) it's not much in circulation anymore. In it, the indefatigably fame-seeking Daffy Duck is auditioning for stage-time for his act. Each one fails miserably and he's rejected. "Next!" Finally, he shows up in a devil's costume. He eats gunpowder. He drinks gasoline and nitro-glycerine. Then...dramatically, he swallows a lit match. BOOM! There's a huge explosion. "That's incredible!" cries the ecstatic agent. "I can book you immediately!" "Yeah yeah," says the ghost of Daffy, drifting heavenward. "But I can only do it once!"****

The fictional Charles Kaufman—or is it Donald? (Nicolas Cage)
—on-set with the non-fictional Susan Orlean.

For Ned', who asked...on July 9th, 2008

* There are others who take that switcheroo-based style of writing, including M. Night Shamyalan, and Alejandro Amenábar.

**You can read the original Laroche article here, at Orlean's web-site.

***McKee suggested Brian Cox (the original Hannibal Lecter) to play him in the movie. Good suggestion, actually.

**** Because the bit is dangerous, violent...and, if improbable, actionable, it has, over the years, been censored, as has been catalogued by this YouTuber.