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This week, the men of GLoP convene to discuss the passing of GLoP Hall of Fame members Burt Reynolds, Les Moonves #MeToo moment, Rob Long’s so-crazy-it-just-might-work pitch for a TV detective show, Corey Booker’s kooky (and totally fake) “Spartacus!” moment, and one GLoP host visits the epicenter of the counter-culture and reports back. Care to guess which one?
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Rob is correct that, in the original “The Longest Yard” (Burt Reynolds version), all the prison inmates deserved to be there. At least originally. But remember that the old man – I think they called him “Pop” – had his sentence extended by like 20 years or something, or maybe to life, because he hit an abusive guard. And Crewe’s (Reynolds) sentence is also increased by 20 years or something, because he ends up refusing to throw the game played by inmates against the guards. His original sentence had been just a year or two, for “stealing” his girlfriend’s car and leading police on a high-speed chase.
And regarding the Spartacus stuff, I think it would be more effective to make fun of Cory Booker using the section from “Monty Python’s Life Of Brian.”
“I’m Brian!”
“I’m Brian!”
“I’m Brian! And so is my wife!”
THE LONGEST YARD has a quintessential 70s ending. Even though the film is technically a comedy (and is often uproariously funny), it contains many dramatic overtones, and concludes on a note of mixed triumph: Reynolds has led the prisoners to victory — but at a cost. He knows he’ll be spending the next 20 years of his life behind bars.
But at least he didn’t get shot for trying to escape.
The inspiration for the movie was a series of soccer games played in German-occupied Ukraine during World War II, between occupiers and locals. The occupiers played fair and the locals won every match; but the Gestapo took revenge later, executing several Ukrainian players.
Conservatives should give Les Moonves a tip of the hat.
When a made-for-TV movie about Ronald and Nancy Reagan depicted them as a dotard and a harpy, Moonves recognized its bias and refused to let it run on CBS, shunting it to Showtime instead.
His replacement is not likely to be as fair.
I don’t deny that happened, but are you sure it was the inspiration for the movie?
Bad lighting or not The Sting had some of the best lines:
Henry Gondorff: Glad to meet you, kid. You’re a real horse’s ass.
Johnny Hooker: Luther said I could learn something from you. I already know how to drink
and one I often think about when Trump is being Trump:
FBI Agent Polk: Sit down and shut up, will ya? Try not to live up to all my expectations.
The Sting is one of the all-time great caper movies but was shot, in many ways, like a Hollywood musical, with bright, “Singin’ in the Rain”-type lighting and well-scrubbed sets, cars, costumes, etc.
Even though plenty of movies from the 1970s have a dark, grungy, realistic feel to them (just watch The French Connection or Serpico or All the President’s Men some time — to name just 3 examples out of hundreds), The Sting was intended to be a conscious throwback to more escapist, frothier movies from Hollywood’s past.
Based on Wikipedia, it seems most likely that the inspiration came to Hollywood by way of a 1962 Hungarian movie. Some of the occupying troops/players in 1942 were Hungarian.
From Wikipedia, re: the John Huston film VICTORY, from 1981, which was a remake of the 1962 Hungarian film TWO HALF-TIMES IN HELL:
“HALF-TIMES was inspired by the now discredited story of the so-called Death Match in which FC Dynamo Kyivdefeated German soldiers while Ukraine was occupied by German troops in World War II. According to myth, as a result of their victory, the Ukrainians were all shot. The true story is considerably more complex, as the team played a series of matches against German teams, emerging victorious in all of them, before any of them were sent to prison camps by the Gestapo. Four players were documented as being killed by the Germans but long after the dates of the matches they had won.[8]”
So it seems that the so-called Death Match which inspired the 1962 film, while a great story, never actually took place.
There’s no way of knowing whether THE LONGEST YARD was based on that 1962 film. I’m inclined to believe that it wasn’t. Sure, the ‘62 film was about POWs playing soccer against their German captors, but is it so difficult to imagine someone independently coming up with the idea of a football game in prison?
Not at all; though both relevant Wikipedia articles (on the movie and on the match) agree on the matter of inspiration.
Also, both sources agree that the matches did take place, just that only some, not all, of the players were killed, sometime later and quite likely for other reasons.
It was still quite gutsy of this group of Untermenschen to humiliate the Master Race, when keeping a low profile would have been much safer.
Indeed, it seems reasonable that simply being Ukrainian would have been enough to get them shot. And I’m sure a lot of Ukrainians were shot who never played a game of soccer in their entire lives, let alone played against German military personnel or their hangers-on.
The Nazis were less rational in their evil than the Communists. If they could have maintained the sham that they were liberators for just a few years, they might have won the war. Win the war first, then exterminate whomever you please. By contrast, during the civil war in China, Mao’s troops were under strict orders not to abuse the peasants. Afterward, of course, they killed 50 million or so.
Yes there’s little dispute over the fact that the 1962 movie was clearly inspired by the so-called “death match” (somewhat embellished over time) of World War II. I don’t doubt that for a minute. My only quibble is with the notion that THE LONGEST YARD was based on the 1962 film. I am very skeptical that it was.