Sports books and movies: 6 unsung heroes
The Damned Utd/The Damned United (depending on the medium).
Friday Night Lights.
Remember The Titans.
Shoeless Joe a.k.a. Field Of Dreams.
There are so many books and films that are directly about or are set against backdrops of sport that I love. There are innumerable instances they have raised the hairs on the back of my neck and punched me in the gut.
The turn in Million Dollar Baby.
Brothers warring and trying to mend their fractured relationships in Warrior and in The Fighter.
Pacino’s rousing speech from Any Given Sunday.
Most of us have read and/or seen these well-known masterpieces. They’re in the cultural lexicon.
If you’ve never used the phrase ‘Build it and they will come’, I don’t know if we can be friends.
Just kidding. We can. In fact, I want to do you a solid.
I want to tell you about some gems in the world of sports books and sports films/movies but not those ones that everybody’s heard about. No.
As a soon-to-be fledgling author — FOUL will be out in around four weeks — I want to give some love to some excellent and interesting works you’ve probably never heard of.
Brace yourselves for some lesser-known unsung sporting story heroes.
INCENDIARY
Ewan McGregor and Michelle Williams star in this 2008 movie that I was lucky enough to stumble across on foreign satellite TV. I’d never heard of it and had no idea what I was about to watch. I think I didn’t even catch the name of it. I want to give you a similar experience to mine and not tell you a whole lot about it.
It starts with a mother sending her young son off to an Arsenal game. Things go south from there. Some would argue that’s part and parcel of following the Gunners.
Go watch it synopsis-less if you dare. It’s currently (24/06/2020) available on Amazon Prime. Just don’t hold me responsible. Even though I told you to.
WHEN NOTHING ELSE MATTERS
The Last Dance has reawakened the world’s interest in His Airness, Michael Jordan. It wouldn’t have taken much, given that he’s one of the greatest athletes to have ever graced any sport, but the documentary is expertly crafted too.
WNEM is a book about MJ’s comeback, post-TLD. After three years in retirement at the age of 38, he decided to see if he could still boss the game he’d been at the pinnacle of since the mid-eighties.
I read this over a decade ago and some of its stories are still clear in my mind.
ENDURANCE
I’ve never had much of an engine. Even getting to the third in this list makes me a little tired. But one man who did have an engine (and probably still does) is Haile Gebrselassie; 10,000m and marathon extraordinaire.
Endurance is a biography about his career starring himself playing himself in dramatised scenes. Not sure I’ve seen anything else in this format. From his sheer mileage just to collect water to the habit that stayed with him at the elite level from his school-run, the portrait of the great runner is as fascinating as it is uplifting.
SLAYING THE DRAGON
One of the greatest sporting feats I ever witnessed was Michael Johnson’s 200m world record at the Atlanta Olympics. It left such an imprint on me that around five years later, at the tender age of 16, when I found out he had written a book, I tracked down a version of it in the US and ordered it to me. I don’t even know how I did that in 2001.
What I got was something between a biography and a self-help manual. As somebody who is now skeptical of both self-help books and athletes necessarily being credible sources of wisdom, I recall MJ’s measured, pragmatic and inspiring book fondly.
THE TWO ESCOBARS
We all know of Pablo. Less of us know of Andres, at least by name. He was one of the best Columbian players of his generation. Even though he wasn’t related, his life was strangely entangled with the famous druglord he shared his surname with. A superb watch.
PUT UP YOUR DUX
If you don’t like the '80s martial arts classic Bloodsport, this one probably isn’t for you BUT let it be know that if my words could fully convey how excited I am as I write this, you’d probably change your mind.
I don’t know what is more odd — the film or my story about it. I watched PUYD around five years ago. Shortly afterwards, I referred some friends to it. It had VANISHED. You couldn’t buy it. You couldn’t stream it. You couldn’t even get the thing on torrenting sites. All that existed were trailers. I tried to find it a few times down the years to no avail. How weird is it for a film to vanish into the ether?
As it came to mind today, I searched it for the first time in a few years and BOOM — IT’S BACK! The movie, which looks like it may have been pieced together using Windows Movie Maker, is a fascinating account of Frank Dux; the man who Bloodsport was based upon. He’s a real guy who has led a surreal life. You literally won’t believe some of the stuff he’s done. And maybe that’s for the best.
This is like Banksy’s Exit Through The Gift Shop’s love-child with Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal. If that doesn’t make you want to watch this, I don’t know what will.
As I think I may have just bought the last DVD copy in existence (no joke — it’s gone from Amazon. They still have the Blu-ray though.), here is a link to a version on YouTube. It’s only 70 minutes long. Watch it before it vanishes again!
NOTE: I was notified after writing this that the YouTube version is dubbed in German so unless du sprichst Deutsch, you’re going to have to see if any new copies have came available. Here’s mine. I haven’t checked if it’s dubbed yet.
I hope you find some joy in these sporting story gems. Let me know what you think and if you have any,
Arton