Battle of the Sexes (2017)

Bread and Circuses
or
Tennis is a Cruel Mistress

Those of us "of an age" who lived through the "Battle of the Sexes"—the 1973 televised tennis exhibition match between Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs proved nothing about tennis and the relative ability of men and women to play it—mostly remember the hype and hoopla of it all, rather than its relative merits of any real "battle of the sexes." 

King was 29 years young and at the top of her game. Riggs was 55 years old and at the top of his game in 1939, when he won the Grand Slam. But, Riggs was a gambler and a hustler, and he took advantage of the recent split of nine of the top female tennis players from the USTLA over the pay discrepancy between men and women players to fan the flames of sexism that were inherent in a sport that had its roots in social clubs that had discrimination of sex and religion in its by-laws. It was a calculated gamble. He won publicity either way, and, any overflow benefiting tennis and women's tennis, in particular, was an unintended benefit to those parties.

The "event" was fictionalized before; in 2001, ABC, the network that originally made hay on the televised broadcast commissioned a version "When Billie Beat Bobby" that starred Holly Hunter and Ron Silver (respectively). In the time since, much more has come out about King's personal life at the time and that becomes a major plot-point in Battle of the Sexes, the new version of the story "from the directors of Little Miss Sunshine" (that would be Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton*-it isn't mentioned that they also directed Ruby Sparks, presumably because it wasn't "the indie hit" their previous film was). The result is a fairly straight-forward adaptation (King was a consultant and a remarkably fair one, it turns out) that manages to show the effects of marginalization—whether sex, sexuality, or age (not that we need a demonstration of it these days)—and Society's penchant for exploitation and for waking up and considering larger issues...if there's a buck in it.

At the start—the timeline is crunched, somewhat—Billie Jean King (Emma Stone excellently not depending on her strengths) has won the Grand Slam and is the most well-known women's tennis player on the circuit. She's pulling in crowds. Despite that, tour promoter Jack Kramer (played by Bill Pullman) refuses to raise the stakes of the women's tournament in line with the men's, which, by rights, should be eight times higher than what he's offering. With World Tennis publisher Gladys Heldman (a shining Sarah Silverman), the two decide to create their own tournament, signing on for a token amount of one dollar apiece, attracting enough attention to be sponsored by Virgina Slims. 15-love for the women.

The leading women's tennis players sign on to a tournament for $1 apiece.

Women's tennis is getting attention. The women's tournament is causing controversy. Meanwhile, Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell, who plays it exactly as you'd assume he'd play it, with a sense of the outrageous and the pathetic, making him the perfect person to play Riggs) is unhappily working at a firm owned by his father-in-law, and cheerily using the contacts to make bets on his own skills as a tennis player. Bobby has a gambling addiction—one so bad that he perpetually is playing high-stakes poker with his therapist (now that's funny!)—and he sees the attention the women's tour is getting and he sees dollar signs that go along with his arrogance that he could easily beat any of the women's league. So, he goes on a public attack, challenging King to a grudge match, daring her to take him on. 

She refuses, but changes her mind when Margaret Court, also in the league, accepts the challenge and loses in what became known as "The Mother's Day Massacre." King decides to take him, seeing as how she must now defend women's tennis in the eyes of the ticket-buying public. King is used to being in the public eye, but the intense scrutiny that the Riggs dare focuses on her is something she isn't quite prepared for. And there's another complication—the married King has begun an affair with a hairdresser, Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough), who travels with the tour. The intense scrutiny of an out-of-wedlock affair, let alone a lesbian affair) could play disastrously in a playing field for hearts and minds.

This part of the story has never been told (and it's the reason Faris and Dayton wanted to make the movie) and sheds a light on the tenor of the times, the stakes at risk, and how easily a capriciously started challenge can turn deadly serious. Barnett's presence is hushed up, hidden, and fairly buried lest it cast an easy-target on women's tennis, women's roles, and feminism, already being given a pretty good beating in the public maelstrom around the event. The interesting thing is that Barnett, and the pressures she was under, are given a very sympathetic eye in the film, despite the fact that Barnett sued King for palimony in 1981, effectively "outing" the tennis star in a very public way. But, the affair is given a romantic edge and there's not a hint of animosity in the way Barnett is portrayed. That is both charitable and practical, because the true focus on the film should be the prejudices across all courts that women faced then and face now.

Mistress and Husband meet cute in an elevator before realizing that they have a loved one in common.

One should mention that the film does a fine job of presenting all these quandaries and challenges without getting more preachy than the evidence already suggests—they stick very close to events as they actually happened, and given the media coverage there is more than enough evidence to vouch for its authenticity. Some of the effects work to achieve it is amazing—they really have an archived Howard Cosell with his arm around the real-life woman playing Rosie Casals? And they do a great job of combining archival footage with match recreations that don't skimp on the dramatics on the court.

It's amazing what causes change, even a bit of one. Riggs, and his outlandish braggadocio, and hustling piggishness put out in relief that women's tennis...and women's careers...was never being played on a level court, but one always slanting uphill. His sideshow chauvinism only brought out in relief the unstated, but very real inequity that was part of the system—it just wasn't highlighted in klieg-lights for all to see. It was kept in the boardroom shadows, without even the grace to feel shame, like an illicit affair might. Grace is what ultimately wins out in Battle of the Sexes, with a victory far more lasting than a number in a records book.

Sports is a distraction—our current Society''s version of the Roman concept of "Bread and Circuses," the means by which the Romans kept the populace from any concentrating on the deficiencies of the elite in charge "through diversion, distraction, or the mere satisfaction of the immediate, shallow requirements of a populace." Keep the masses entertained and they won't notice that things aren't so good as they think. But, every so often, sports will serve as a catalyst for change. We saw it in the desegregation of baseball, the installation of Title IX, and the current "controversy" of "taking a knee" during the National Anthem—as blatant an example of the bread and circuses form of obfuscation. The "Battle of the Sexes," while ultimately being a sideshow, did bring light to the disparity of pay-offs to players of different sexes, and, by reflection, the wage-gap prevalent in the broader work-places. In that way, by shining a light on old prejudices and the status quo, such "distractions" can become genuine "game-changers" sparking advancement and keeping the flame of equality alive...or at least visible in the distance.

* The writer is Simon Beaufoy, who did a few scripts for Danny Boyle (including Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours) who produced this—but didn't direct as his sequel to Trainspotting became viable. Beaufoy also wrote The Full Monty, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. He may not be a house-hold name, but it's quite a body of work.

Ruby Sparks

Hearts and Minds
or
"The Situation is Crazy.  I Am Not."

Stephen King will see this one and slap his forehead for an opportunity missed for a seven hundred page novel. I've known enough authors of fiction that have mentioned a scary thing: they'll start writing, fleshing out the skeleton of an idea, the characters take shape, become three-dimensional, and then suddenly, they live. In fact (and fiction), they become so alive they'll start doing things and going in directions that the author never intended or had even planned for. The figments of the author's imagination take on a life of their own, rebel and...rather than the author changing them, they change the author, or at least his intentions for them.

Eerie. And the basis for Ruby Sparks, the latest film from Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the folks who directed Little Miss Sunshine. That film I wasn't too crazy about, as it seemed to scream "Indie Sensibilities" from every tortured writerly "quirk" that was tossed in. Ruby Sparks, however, is different—a nicely buttoned-up movie that reverberates with all sorts of echoes that ripple through the film and cross over in a concentric series of folded back references, self- and otherwise. 

Author Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano) is struggling with a follow-up novel after an initial success—struggling for 10 years, in fact. His shrink (Elliott Gould) gives him an assignment to take the pressure off, and Calvin is inspired, writing about an idealized, neurotic woman named Ruby Sparks. But, he's not just inspired, he's energized, so much so he can't wait to get back to his typewriter (it's this old piece of technology before a PC, or what was known in the Pleistocene era as a "word processor") to continue the work, spend more time with her, creating her. So much so that he starts to fear that he's falling in love with her. His brother reads the pages and his criticism is harsh: "You haven't written a person. You've written a girl. Geeky, messy girls are not what people want." He remains undeterred, writing all night and into the morning. Imagine his horror when he wakes up from his QWERTY keyboard, runs downstairs and finds Ruby (Zoe Kazan) in one of his shirts, eating cereal.

He freaks, naturally, much to her consternation, and then is shocked to discover that everybody can see her, too. She's just not a figment of his imagination; his imagination walks amongst us.

This is the stuff of male fantasy rom-com's. But, Ruby Sparks takes it into some dark places, ala Hitchcock, in the realms of identity, manipulation, male wish-fulfilments, and the odd idealization and expectations that love creates and blinds us to. We all create an object of affection (on both sides, sending and receiving), but whether that object has anything to do with reality depends on both parties and how much they want to compromise to achieve that...whatever it is..."more perfect union," let's say.

The script (by Kazan herself) explores some uncomfortable territory in that regard and Kazan has a knack for writing dialogue that is spot-on, but containing deep echoes that weight them further. It's one of the better rom-com/fantasy scripts to come along in awhile—at least it has a thought in its head—and the performers, while still showing an abundance of the too-eager "cutes," although, ultimately, its not enough to keep you wondering how it all could end. Yes, the film has its moments of coy cloyingness—for example, when Ruby goes to a family dinner with Calvin's hippy-dippy step-parents (Annette Bening and Antonio Banderas), that amounts to a side-bar, and just lets us know what we already know, that Calvin is a bit of a stick-in-the-mud and a buzz-kill, and (surprise, surprise) less capable of change than his own creation, which, if he wanted to, he could correct with a new sentence, or some Liquid Paper.

It doesn't go there (and only for revelation purposes, as if it did any more, it might be a good vehicle for Adam Sandler), nor does it end "Happily Ever After" as rom-com's do (but only because they choose to). Ruby Sparks chooses another way, fully committed to not committing and finding the fine balance of compromise.

Little Miss Sunshine

Written at the time of the film's release (mostly), but the reason there's not much here is because I didn't think much of it...or about it. I have expanded it somewhat today, but not for the betterment of my opinion of it. It's here because the directing duo's Battle of the Sexes is going to be written about later in the week.

Little Miss Sunshine (Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton, 2006) "Oh my God, I'm being pulled over! Everybody just pretend to be normal!" 

That's it, right there, summing it up in a nutshell...or a beat-up Volkswagon micro-bus designed for road-trippiness and cowded dysfunction.. 

Little Miss Sunshine fulfills all the traditions of the "indie" film (eccentric characters—✓. Road trip—✓. Pervasive streak of dark humor—✓), and has a terrific cast who manage to play it in a fairly fresh manner (Alan Arkin is always worth seeing—even in "obscene old grampa with no filters" mode, plus there's Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, and utility player Steve Carell, plus the "cute-as-a-button Abigail Breslin, who's there to make the audience go *Awww* and to impart some anticipated wisom and perspective to to her up-generational collection of odd-balls). There is some terrifically off-hand writing which is the only reason the various outcomes of the story aren't immediately telegraphed once each character is introduced. It's a fine diversion, but one has to ask--"Best Picture nominee? Really? Really?"

Are we having fun yet?

The first line of the thing is: "There are two kinds of people in the world: winners and losers." No. Not true. There ARE two kinds of people in this world and they are 1) those who categorize people and 2) those who do not, taking people one person at a time, acknowledging their personal strengths and failings. The first kind (1) categorize because it is a handy work-tool designed to simplify one's job if they are A) lazy or B) trying to codify something that would be uncodifiable if they went by a person's individuality. The categorizers turn people into numbers, statistics, and check-boxes, designed to embrace a kind of mob-rule of behavior dictated by age, sex, race, religion, political affiliation, or anything else that you could segregate in neat, dividable terms. The fact that the speaker of that first line is a motivational speaker with very little motivation himself, and whose family does not fit into any easy categorization speaks volumes. In fact, you could end the movie there and bring up a card that reads "Dysfunction ensues."

Life is messy. Life can't be categorized. And the micro-bus of fools displayed are people in transition without a clear understanding of what appears over the horizon. They are all, at least in the stage we find them, surviving (barely) on hope. And each one's hope  drives a wedge between interaction that might solve anybody's problem. They learn that lesson. That's the movie.

The saving graces are the performances by one and all, and some arresting writing along the way. But, the only way this "feel-good" comedy can make you feel good is by knowing that "at least you're not them."