BEFORE: Just one sport left on the list, but it may be the most brutal of them all - it's a future-sports film, like "The Running Man" was, because we all know that sports are just going to get more and more violent, right? Burt Young from "Win Win" links through the movie "Mickey Blue Eyes" to James Caan (last heard in "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs").
Something odd is happening as a result of the movie project - my brain has revived a screenplay that I gave up writing five years ago. I don't know why, maybe it's all the talk of three-act structure, but it's broken down the story I want to tell into three parts, and I'm starting to think of ways that the story can really work. It's getting hard to think of anything else, so I'm thinking I should get at least an outline down so I can concentrate on other matters. It sort of feels like the idea is a big chunk of marble, and with each film I watch, I find a bit of something I don't want to duplicate, so it's like carving something out of the marble bit by bit. With luck, an original statue is inside - but I don't really have time to write a screenplay, so hopefully an outline or synopsis will do for now. More on this as it develops.
THE PLOT: In a corporate controlled future, an ultra-violent sport known as Rollerball represents the world, and one of it's powerful athletes is out to defy those who want him out of the game.
AFTER: Though this film is set in the future, it's a past version of the future. I love films about the future, since it's where most of us will be spending our time. But just like "Logan's Run" or "The Andromeda Strain", this is a vision of the future that's deeply rooted in the time it was made, and that has to be taken into account.
It looks like women don't fare very well in this future - they extended the concept of sports groupies, and all the women we see here are high-class prostitutes, sent to the athletes for 6 months or a year at a time to make them happy, or at least content, until the women are needed elsewhere. Rough gig, can't really see an upside for them, and it seems like maybe this movie got made just after the Equal Rights Amendment got vetoed.
For the uninitiated, Rollerball works like a combination of roller derby, lacrosse/jai alai, and basketball, with the roughness of soccer or hockey, played with a ball that looks like a snitch without wings, or that thing from "Phantasm" without the spikey bits that gets shot around the arena like a roulette ball. Oh, and some guys ride motorcycles for some reason. And the rules change in the middle of the playoffs, to weed out the older players or just to piss off the fans, depending on your point of view.
In other news, all music in the future will be played on cheezy Hammond keyboards, but you will get your choice between Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor", or the works of Booker T. and the MG's. Oh, and feathered hair will be making a comeback - so at least people will look stylish when they're getting pummeled to death in the Rollerball arena.
There's a list on the web now that details 10 things that "Back to the Future II" correctly predicted, and no, it's not the Cubs winning the World Series. It's technology like Facebook, video-games where you don't need to use your hands, and video-phones (aka Skype). By contrast, this film doesn't fare so well - there is a computer that contains all of the world's books and information, but it doesn't look much more advanced than Eniac from "Desk Set". Plus, the main character has to go to Geneva to access it, since someone forgot to invent the internet. And in-line skates.
I noticed that James Caan's voice in this film reminded me a lot of Adam Sandler's - which is fresh in my mind after watching "The Longest Yard" last week. I wonder if they've ever been cast as father and son - I know Caan is in the latest Sandler crap-tacular, but I don't think he plays his dad. (YOU go see it and let me know. Thx.)
I'm giving a somewhat neutral rating tonight, because I want to see how it compares to the remake.
Also starring John Houseman (last seen in "Three Days of the Condor"), Maud Adams, Pamela Hensley, John Beck, Moses Gunn, Robert Ito (last seen in "Black Sunday") and Burt Kwouk (Cato from the original "Pink Panther" films) with cameos from Ralph Richardson and Richard LeParmentier (General Motti from "Star Wars: Episode IV")
RATING: 5 out of 10 aphrodisiac pills
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