BEFORE: This year's documentaries have been extremely inter-connected, there were probably a thousand different ways I could have strung them together. You see the problem, right? So many of the same people, historical figures and rock stars and talk show hosts keep popping up again and again. So I did the only thing I could do, put them together in an order that made sense to me, rough groupings of people that seemed similar, at least on the surface - musicians over here, artists over there, comedy legends and puppeteers over there. It's an impossible task to get it "right" so I don't even bother with that - what's going to get me through the chain with as much overlap as possible, just in case, and am I going to like the order that results?
From "The Stones and Brian Jones", Michael Lindsay-Hogg dated Mary Tyler Moore for a while, so he turned up in both places, and I heard the story twice about how David Bowie borrowed Little Richard's look for his "Let's Dance" period, so that was another call-back that I failed to make use of. The Muppets appeared on early episodes of "SNL", so that was another missed connection to the "Belushi" doc, and then in that same film, there was footage of Elton John singing "Crocodile Rock" with the Muppets, so Elton's back in the mix again, and he carries over today from "Jim Henson: Idea Man".
As I now know from watching "The Masked Singer", Elton's song "Philadelphia Freedom" was written about tonight's subject, Billie Jean King. So it's all connected, man.... One day they're going to find the bulletin boards in my basement with the photos of documentary subjects with strands of yarn connecting all the pushpins as I try to solve the giant conspiracy.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Battle of the Sexes" (Movie #3,126)
THE PLOT: Regarded by many as one of the greatest tennis players of all time, Billie Jean King is also an advocate for gender equality and has long been a pioneer for social justice.
AFTER: I did a whole tennis thing in last year's Doc Block, with "McEnroe" and "Citizen Ashe" and "Venus and Serena" - I can only imagine this one came into my awareness just after that, because really, there should have been a way to work this one in, but it somehow got left behind. Sure, I'm lined up great here for a tie-in with the Olympics, but I just don't know - did Billie Jean King ever compete in the Olympics? Do they still play tennis in the Olympics? And if so, are they playing tennis this weekend? Oh, if only there were a way for me to look all of this up, but honestly, that sounds like a lot of work. And I just got off a 14-hour shift yesterday at the theater, and it was a problem-filled shift for an Asian Film Festival. Now that I've seen what goes on in the organization and running of film festivals, I think I'm a lot less inclined to try to work for one in the future.
It was also five and a half years ago that I watched "Battle of the Sexes", the fictionalized bio-pic version of the classic tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs that ended sexism forever, back in 1973. Ha ha, wouldn't that have been something? The truth is that King DID do a lot of things to promote equality, and many were more important than that match, like supporting Title IX legislation and joining with other female tennis players to start a women's pro league. The thinking was, if there's a men's tennis tour, there should also be a women's tour, if the men are getting paid and the women aren't, well, there must be a way to balance that out. The solution, naturally, was to stop waiting for men to fix the problem - they never would have gotten around to it.
It's still a bit difficult for me to watch a story about a married woman coming out as gay, because it's what happened in my first marriage, and so maybe I'll always feel a bit this way about it, when everyone is celebrating her journey of self-discovery and congratulating her for figuring out who she needs to be in life, I wonder about the husband left behind, and how he's handling the whole thing. Nobody really takes the time to celebrate or even acknowledge his journey of self-discovery that is happening concurrently. Who speaks up for him? Just saying, there are at least two sides to every story.
This is really the first movie I've seen that even seemed to care at all about what Larry King (not the CNN guy) might have been going through - usually nobody gives a crap about his angle on his famous tennis-star wife coming out. The 2017 fictional version had his character figuring out his wife's sexual preference just by finding ONE bra that he didn't recognize in her hotel room, and jeez, I just bet it was a lot more complicated than that. First of all, it seemed like she took years to figure it all out, and if she hadn't figured it out, I can safely say that he didn't either. Most men are very dumb about this sort of thing, and I hate to stereotype by gender, but come on.
Then the issue got more complex when Marilyn Barnett sued Ms. King for palimony, and suddenly it was a hot news story, Billie Jean admitted to the affair but said it was over, she loved her husband and she publicly said it was a mistake, and she looked forward to staying with Larry while not having kids and planning the right time for a divorce. Sure, sounds like a recipe for success.
Yes, of COURSE gay people have the rights to be with whoever they want, marry whoever they want, and that's fair as long as they also have to deal with the consquences. If you want gay marriage then you also have to accept gay divorce, gay separations and I'm sure there are other complications that I'm unaware of that come along as part of that package. Just be careful what you wish for, as there was a time when gay people could NOT legally get married, and in some ways maybe they didn't know what a great situation they were in as a result. And anyway there's always the chance that another conservative will be put on the Supreme Court and maybe someday gay marriage will be un-legalized again, like what happened with abortion. The time to pass amendments to keep things legal is NOW, while the liberals control the, umm, well, the part of Congress that they control, I don't have time to keep track of these things. Biden should be hard at work passing as many executive orders as possible while he's still the chief executive.
Anyway, I guess Billie Jean King never played in the Olympics, but she won TWENTY Wimbledon championships (6 in singles, 10 in women's doubles, 4 in mixed doubles) and she had a "career Grand Slam", which means she won the singles title in all four Grand Slam events at one time or another. 13 U.S. Open titles (4 in singles, 5 in women's doubles, 4 in mixed doubles) and four titles in both the French open and the Australian Open. And she won that "Battle of the Sexes" match against Bobby Riggs, which netted her $100,000 (in 1973 dollars), bragging rights and a cameo on the show "The Odd Couple".
Later in the 1980's she became the captain of the U.S. Fed Cup team and also the coach of the women's Olympics tennis squad. AHA, there's the Olympics tie-in I was looking for! And then there's her being instrumental in starting the Virginia Slims tennis tour, the Women's Tennis Association, and World Team Tennis. And her team in the WTA was the Philadelphia Freedoms, so apparently I misspoke before when I said that Elton John wrote the song "Philadelphia Freedom" about HER, technically that's the name of her tennis team, which moved a year later and became the Boston Lobsters, which is a much more terrible name.
Just five documentaries left in the chain now - and I'm starting to work out where I need to go after they run out. One possibility is to just target "Deadpool & Wolverine" as the next big movie I want to see, and I can already see that I can get there from my last doc in a minimum of two or a maximum of 5 steps. That gives me some flexibility regarding when I can get my ass to a movie theater - but the option is there. I don't want to review the whole cast list because spoilers, but I'll be hoping that I can then figure out a path from there to the start of the horror chain, whatever it turns out to be.
Also starring Billie Jean King (last seen in "McEnroe"), Frank Deford, Chris Evert (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Darlene Hard, Larry King, Ilana Kloss, Randy Moffitt, Martina Navratilova,
with archive footage of Roone Arledge, Marilyn Barnett, Sonny Bono (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Louise Brough, Maria Bueno, Rosie Casals, Dick Cavett (also carrying over from "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Bob Hope (ditto), Cher (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Walter Cronkite (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here"), Barbara Walters (ditto), Margaret Court, George Foreman (last seen in "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali"), Althea Gibson (last seen in "Citizen Ashe"), Roosevelt Grier (also last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Jack Klugman (last seen in "Days of Wine and Roses"), Jack Kramer, Bill Moffitt, Betty Moffitt, George Plimpton (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Tony Randall (last seen in "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed"), Bob Richards, Bobby Riggs, Charles Schulz, Gloria Steinem (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Karen Hantze Susman, Gerald Williams
and the voices of Howard Cosell (also last seen in "McEnroe"), Richard Nixon (also carrying over from "Jim Henson: Idea Man"),
RATING: 5 out of 10 trips to CostCo for frozen yogurt with her parents
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