Theater of dreams: With inspirational sports films, no one’s a loser

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Sylvester Stallone heard plenty from the peanut gallery after Rocky V, which found the lovable lug broke, brain damaged and out of the ring.

“People were pretty outspoken about it, and I understand it,” Stallone said during a recent stop in Dallas to promote Rocky Balboa, which, it must be said, rolls off the tongue better than Rocky 6. “There’s no glory in the end of it. You don’t want to see Superman walking around drunk. You don’t want to see Elvis overweight. And you don’t want to see Rocky punchy and broke and not even going in the ring.”

Stallone had violated the First Commandment of sports movies: Thou Shall Inspire. After all, between spoiled, temperamental stars; steroids; a bloated crime blotter; and on-field brawls, the sports world has wrought enough real-life disappointment to go around. The sports movie’s job is to accentuate the positive and exaggerate the glory, the valor and the triumph of the will.

So Sly jumped back in the ring to spread a little sunshine, and, of course, to get another paycheck. Rocky Balboa, which opened Wednesday, returns to the “stand up and cheer” formula of the earlier Rocky movies - even if the hero is now 60.

Yo, Adrian. Insert Geritol joke here.

At least Rock isn’t alone. He’ll be joined in sports inspiration on Friday by We Are Marshall, a stirring drama that recounts how Marshall University grieved, bonded and resurrected its football program after the 1970 plane crash that killed 75 people, including most of the team, coaches, boosters and other family and friends.

Matthew McConaughey plays Jack Lengyel, the charismatic coach who took over the team, restocked it with freshmen recruits and led it back onto the field.

“Football is a metaphor here for taking the field in football or in life,” says McConaughey by phone. “There’s something in here that we can all appreciate. We’ve all lost. We’ve all grieved. Then you start to rebuild, and you start to find hope. You can’t do it solo. You gotta do it with your teammates or your family or your friends or your community.”

Cue the inspirational music and pull the clip to be played on the scoreboard next time the home team needs a rally. That’s another function of the inspirational sports movie: It can be sliced up and used to pump up the crowd at a real sporting event. Think Al Pacino’s “inch by inch” speech in Any Given Sunday or, from Rudy, “No one - and I mean no one - comes into our house and pushes us around.”

This year provided scoreboard fodder by the pound. On the football field, there was Gridiron Gang (tough-but-caring football coach teaches young convicts to win and respect themselves); Invincible (Philadelphia bartender defies all odds by making the Eagles squad); and We Are Marshall. The hardwood brought us Glory Road (tough-but-caring basketball coach leads Texas Western, with a historic all-black starting five, to the NCAA title).

All of the above are based on true stories, a fact that only elevates their capacity to inspire. It’s the best of the both worlds: none of the commercial breaks or dull patches, but all of the drama, human interest and life lessons. The sports movie is to sports what highlight shows are to the actual game. Trim the fat, show the good stuff, go home happy.

Sports can still be exciting without the benefit of movies, of course. Fans and broadcasters are fond of saying that this game or that series “couldn’t be scripted” (Texas quarterback Vince Young’s heroic effort against Southern Cal in the Rose Bowl this year, or the Red Sox cathartic, curse-ending playoff comeback against the Yankees in 2004).

And the movies, our bastion of escapism, let us skip the embarrassing stuff: the drugs, the star receiver who dogs it on the field because he’s doesn’t feel properly respected, the Cincinnati Bengals’ arrest sheet, the salaries larger than the gross national product of a small country.

McConaughey, who cheered on Young’s Rose Bowl effort from the University of Texas sideline, constantly uses the word “pure” to describe We Are Marshall. He also rattles off a litany of reasons to be discouraged by the world of big-time sports.

“How can you not stand a team and want to kill them on the field when your favorite player could be playing for that team next week?” he asks. “Then you have the ‘roids. You go ‘aw, man, I really thought you were that good.’ Or who’s cheating whom? Did Vegas have anything to do with it? I don’t know how much of it is just conspiracy theories or how much of it is valid, and that’s part of the disillusion.”

Ironically, as Stallone points out, the perks and pitfalls of modern athletes have brought them closer than ever to the elite status once reserved for Hollywood royalty. They always seem to know where the cameras are. Some, including Shaquille O’Neal and former Dallas Cowboy Michael Irvin, have even tried crossing over to the big screen.

“Today’s athletes are the new movie stars,” Stallone says. “They have the agents. They have the money. They play for so many different teams, it’s like casting different films and roles. There’s the petulance and everything else. Sports has ESPN. We have Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood.”

It’s easy to snicker at the idea of another Rocky movie; indeed, you’ve probably heard the laughter if you’ve seen the trailer. But Rocky Balboa works as a paean to the old-school attributes mourned by so many fans.

Uninspired by his new life as a restaurateur, Rocky wants one more fight to earn back a slice of self-respect. His opponent, who carries the unfortunate moniker Mason “The Line” Dixon (played by former light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver), is a “look at me” preener, a gifted but pampered fighter who can’t find a worthy opponent, not unlike Apollo Creed in the original Rocky.

That film represented a change in the moviegoing zeitgeist, a switch from the grit and fatalism of early- and mid-‘70s movies to the all-out escapism that would find its standard-bearer in Star Wars.

It was the ultimate underdog story, a fable about a neighborhood palooka who gives it his best shot against the champ. It obviously wasn’t the first inspirational sports movie, but it laid down the template for most that have followed, including Rocky Balboa.

So what’s next for the inspirational sports movie? The only move left for a time-tested subgenre: the spoof.

The Comebacks, arriving in theaters next year, is described in press notes as “a hilarious comedy that spoofs the best inspirational sports movies ever made.” The story of a sad sack college football coach named Lambeau Fields, it features former pro athletes including Irvin, Lawrence Taylor, John Salley ... and Carl Weathers, who made his name playing Rocky’s first major foe, Apollo Creed.

He insisted there would be no rematch. He lied. In the sports movie, you always get another shot.

___

FEELING UNINSPIRED?

Yes, it’s yet another list of sports movies. But we’ll keep it short and sweet. Here is one man’s take on the five most inspirational sports movies, spread across five sports.

BASEBALL: The Pride of the Yankees (1942): It’s hard to go wrong with Lou Gehrig; the “luckiest man on the face of the earth” speech brings shivers on its own. Throw in Gary Cooper, the symbol of homespun wholesomeness, and you’ve got a delicious slice of American apple pie.

BOXING: Rocky (1976): Before the sequels, before Clubber Lang and Ivan Drago, the original Rocky took home the Oscar with its vividly etched underdog story about a palooka who goes for the gusto. (It also marked one of the first uses of the Steadicam, which is inspirational mostly to cinematographers).

BASKETBALL: Hoosiers (1986): The troubled outsider, the town drunk, and the quiet superstar lead an overmatched team to the state title in Indiana, rumored to be the cradle of basketball civilization.

FOOTBALL: We Are Marshall (2006): It’s brand new, but deserving of the spot. No other sports movie so movingly dramatizes a team’s importance to its community. The stakes are high, the emotional payoff tremendous. Like the lady in “Start Me Up,” it can make a grown man cry.

RUGBY Murderball (2005): Thriving in life as a quadriplegic? Inspirational. Playing smash-mouth rugby in a wheelchair? Even more inspirational, not to mention exciting and frequently funny. A lean, mean sports documentary packed with choice human-interest stories.