Along The Rails

As we round the turn into Belmont fever, the Feral Herd is recommending horseracing movies for the purposes of Mood Setting and Space Filler.  Seabiscuit tends to top the list, largely because it mostly didn’t suck, and it’s pretty much the only Tbred-related movie most people can think of.  You’ve got Seabiscuit, and The Godfather.   And– let’s not even go there.

While a few innaccuracies made me hurl light objects at the heavy DVD player, Seabiscuit had several lovely surprises:

1) Real-life jock Gary “I Suppose I Shall Have My Close-Up Now” Stevens as George Woolf: I remember sitting there during the previews when I was suddenly seized with a horrible fear: What if… what if he sucked, and ruined everything?  I was all, “Please, God, don’t let Gary Stevens suck. Please don’t wipe away three Derby wins in two hours. Please. Don’t let this be another Boomer-Esiason-appears- on- All My Children-and-I-couldn’t-watch-the-Bengals-for-weeks catastrophe. I could never look Gary Stevens’ televised face in the eye again if he sucks. Please, Lord, if You love me, he shall not suck.” And… (this never happens, for Cincinnati residents) Gary Stevens did not suck.

I say this setting aside his very first appearance in the film, in which he is dressed like Roy Rogers on meth, and his truly herioc hairpiece, which deserves its own mention in the credits. Director Gary Ross left in one of the best lines of the whole book, from turf writer David Alexander: “Better to break a man’s leg than to break his heart.”

Also, let’s all have a big hand for Chris “Ivy” McCarron for his magnificent acting debut as War Admiral’s jockey, which consisted of the following pivotal line: “George.” (Book Note: Recently I paged through the children’s book “Seabiscuit Vs. War Admiral”, which has wonderful illustrations. One of them made me snort-laugh right in the middle of Barnes & Noble, though: The text was talking about how the jockeys had two or three rein-outs on the walkup start until the race finally started, and how all this was making the high-strung War Admiral nervous. The accompanying picture showed War Admiral shimmying all over the place in a blur. It’s the first time I’ve seen what it might look like if a horse had the DT’s. ) Bottom line, I left the theatre giving Gary the old Notre Dame Five-Clap Cheer (“GA-ry STEV-ens! Clap-clap-CLAPCLAPCLAP!”)

2) Racing Scenes: Fantastic. Fast. Exciting. Except when the green screen shows up.  You will know when this happens.  When it does, it’s as if the movie suddenly switched reels with Attack of the Clones, and George Lucas has come in saying, “You know what this movie needs?  Less real stuff.”

3) Scenes depicting Pollard and Seabiscuit’s dual rehabilitation before the ’40 Santa Anita Handicap: Wait ’til you see Tobey Maguire meet Seabiscuit when they van him in from the track. He’s got a cast, and the horse has a cast, and Tobey gets up off the porch, and the horse comes trotting at him, and Tobey is all, “No, no, Pops, I’ll come to you!” and he throws away his crutches and he hops over to Seabiscuit on one foot and he kisses him and oh, oh, oh, sniffle.

Some quibbles:

1) The book–as God has ordained it–was better.

2) There were a lot of inaccuracies. A lot. Granted, you’re going to have to squish the story here and there to make a sit-throughable movie, but Ross did it in a way which often made me sigh very loudly. The original story is so fascinating and compelling, but Ross changes some things that frankly don’t need changing. Such as: De-aging the son who was killed in a car crash from a teenager to a little kid. So that makes it… more sad now?

3) Although the “break a man’s heart” line was left in, two wonderful, wonderful quotes from Pollard were left out: His “We had four good legs between us” and “Among the hootin’ owls, we both got well again.” Gary? When somebody lays two gems like that on the chair of your writing desk, YOU PICK THEM UP.

4) This should have been number one, but it’s so huge I had to gear up for it: I hate—I hate—what this movie does to Red Pollard. Tobey plays the part the way it’s written extremely well (Two words, ladies: Brothel. Scene.) but sheesh. This Pollard is a Pollard-lite. They sucked the humor, the profanity, the life right out of him. He’s written as this, like, fourteen year old who’s barely been trotted around a track before, even though he’d been riding a full decade by the time the movie takes place. You can really see it when baby-face Tobey stands next to Stevens, who was all of thirty-nine when this was shot and, as all jocks, looked at least a decade older than that.

For instance: Pollard never asked to be put back on Seabiscuit after his spill, which says a great deal about his character and the way he operated. But here, we’ve got Red whining after Howard about it constantly. He’s like, “It’s the Santa Anita!” and Howard goes, “This is different, Red” and Tobey is all, “Yeah! This is REEEALLLLY different!” and you totally want to smack his freckles off. (But, as always, this has made for an excellent inside joke with my friends. Whenever one of us wants to do something that another doesn’t want to do, we’ll bust out the “But it’s the Santa Anita!” Which, of course, made the whole thing worth it.)

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