Leatherheads

I have always been a big football fan. I also enjoy watching a lot of movies. And while we are at it, I’ll go ahead and say I like to follow the political scene as well. You could say my heroes are Troy Aikman, Will Smith and Tim Russert. And last night I had a chance to watch all three come together at the same time. Sadly, it was a catastrophe on so many levels.
“Leatherheads,” George Clooney’s last movie outing tried hard, it really did. I give it a definite “A” for effort. And co-star John Krasinski, you know, the guy from “The Office,” funny as always. The football scenes were good and capturing the time period of the 1920’s was great. The thing about it was that while it wanted so hard to be really funny, it was well, just not funny at all. The jokes were too few and too far in between. And when they did come it was so predictable. It was almost if you had seen the joke off another movie and the whole film was just a collaboration of about ten other comedies. But whatever, it was a free movie on otherwise boring Sunday night. Movies are like first round draft picks, they try and fail all the time, I have accepted that reality. But while I was coasting through the final scenes, the movie took on a surprise added dimension.
So now we come back to our third axis, politics. The movie basically ends with this rag-tag pro football league appointing a commissioner who creates a bunch of rules to get a handle on the whole operation. But all the players and referees can grasp the whole concept of having regulations to abide by and begin complaining that they have to play the book. Now if you can’t find the underlying meaning in what I have just said, let me make it clear. A new commissioner (that supposed to be Roger Goodell) comes up with new rules to gain control of a bunch of wild cannon players (that’s Goodell suspending guys like ‘Pacman’ Jones, Chris Henry and Tank Johnson). It is almost as if Hollywood got tired of picking on President Bush and needed some fresh meat. Actually maybe these two guys should meet. “Hey George, this is Roger, he’s the newest member of the club. You know ‘the one where top officials get mercilessly bombarded with sucker punches by television and movie jokers who have no idea what they are talking about but hate it when someone uses the power that their job gives them to lay down the law.’ ” Okay so that is a bit off a long title, but anyone who has ever watched a Michael Bay film or the Daily Show with Jon Stewart knows what I’m talking about.
It kind of sums up the lawless attitude of Hollywood. The school of thought that hates on anyone who tries to keep order because it makes them look bad for all the DUI’s, revolving door marriages and no-underwear episodes.
So it was another jab against “the man.” But hopefully Roger Goodell will shrug it off and continue with his job. Let Hollywood continue to run rampant and kill whatever credibility they had. But you, Mr. Goodell, keeping holding down the fort and keep your professional organization a respectable one. Don’t let those nuts like Jones, Henry and Johnson ruin what so many other people have worked so hard to build. Just ignore the cheap shots and continue to demand that your organization be one that does things the right way. So keep it up maybe one day Hollywood will realize that is more important to conduct themselves as if what they do is privilege, not a right and stop picking on people who want their workers to be good citizens instead of those who make good tabloid talk.