"Secretariat," the movie

With a Disney sports movie, you have zero shot. The use of theguy who wrote the screenplay for this piece of work confirms it.

I'd love to have a book Disney simply couldn't live without. Knowing how
they'd ruin it on the screen, I'd make Willie Sutton look like a punk, and hold
them up for beyond the max.

 

OK, just back from the movie, so I can now comment on the actual film, rather than excerpts, trailers and spoilers.


Overall it gets a D grade: just barely marginally better than complete failure.

First, the good stuff:

1. Otto Thorwarth, an actual jockey who plays Ron Turcotte, does a very good job.

2. Some of the background scenes about bloodline research are actually fairly interesting.

3. The early (pre-Derby) racing scenes are decent -- nowhere near as good as "Seabiscuit," but all right.

4. Diane Lane is smoking hot as usual, way more attractive then Penny Chenery ever was herself.

and ... uhmm...

that's about it.

I won't even START about the historical bastardizations because I don't want to be here all night. But a few particular points just glared out from all the rest:

THE FUCKING "FAMILY DRAMA" WAS UTTERLY INANE, INSIPID AND IDIOTIC AND WOULDN'T PASS MUSTER AS AN EPISODE OF "LENNY AND SQUIGGY."

Every single second of the happy horse shit ( ) about the ditzy hippie daughters singing "Silent Night" as part of a commie antiwar school pagaent, I was just absolutely grinding my teeth, "get this fucking shit off the screen and get back to the horse racing."

It's been a long long time since I walked out of a theater, but I was just... this... close. :

OK, anyway, "this too (did) pass," to coin a Biblical phrase to go along with the dozens they threw into the plotline, adding a pointless, gratuitous and (I would suspect to many) offensive layer of pushy pseudo-evangelical Christianity to the movie. I never ever read or heard Penny Chenery ever reference one word of a religious or fundie-Christian nature during her whole 3 years or so in the public spotlight (spanning the major careers of Riva Ridge and Secretariat), so I can only assume the bible-thumping was a completely editorial decision by our lil pals at Disney.

So the crapola clears off the screen and we finally get to the Triple Crown races. The Derby is decently done, of course S wins, then we get to the Preakness. Apparently our intrepid production team didn't feel like staging another race, so the Preakness is wrapped up in about 45 seconds of screen time consisting of the darling family watching on TV at home in Denver.

Finally we get to the Belmont, one of the truly historic moments of horse racing and in fact all of American sports. Forget all this other crap, the historical fudging, the cheez-whiz family drama, all that shit -- if they got this ONE SCENE right, they get the whole movie right.

Utter fail.

The footage was shot at Evangeline Downs in Louisiana, which is approximately to Belmont Raceway what the home field of the Shreveport Shrimpmunchers is to Yankee Stadium.

They couldn't be bothered to CGI in a big crowd or a city background, so it looks like the Belmont is being run on some hillbilly harness track in the middle of Clammy Armpit, Louisiana (which of course it is, complete with pickup trucks sitting up on blocks in half-empty garages in the background). They couldn't even be bothered to herd the extras into the camera shots to make it even LOOK like the place is packed -- Secretariat walks from the paddock to the track in front of a few handfuls of random spectators.

Anybody who saw that broadcast knew the whole place was a mob scene -- that was one of the main things everybody kept HARPING on. Secretariat had taken the nation by storm and the joint was absolutely packed to the gills.

Then the race starts. Nice tight focus for a while, concentrating on the horses. Then the camera pulls back to show miles and miles of bucolic Louisana countryside. Secretariat and Sham battle neck and neck for half the race, and here we are at the climactic moment when Secretariat shifts into warp drive and leaves the whole world behind.

And they fucking blow it. They show NO angles of the rest of the field receding in the background. Chic Anderson's "tremendous machine" line is tossed off to general disinterest.

When Secretariat really did make the turn for home, the place was absolutely thundering -- you could SEE it on the TV screen as the camera actually vibrated as he roared down the stretch.

Apparently even the idea of layering in truly powerful crowd noise was too much, so they go for 20 seconds of near silence, then it's time for Another Word from Our Sponsor, Jaysus, so instead of any number of truly stirring songs you could have used, we get the nondescript lame pop-gospel of "Oh Happy Day" to bring the movie to an end.

I wanted to like this movie. I really did. I thought Disney did a decent job with "Miracle" and figured they could do something comparable here. The story of Secretariat was truly stunning, one of the true breathtaking moments of sports history, and could have been made into a memorable movie.

All they had to do was get that one scene right.

 

Secretariat is a man! Therefore ... evil!

If this were Lifetime, Secretariat would've killed Penny Chenery's mom to free himself from being sold. Addicted to killing women, he tramples a stable mate just for kicks. Then, he "accidentally" throws a female exercise rider at Saratoga and buries his hoof in her female head.

No one suspects a thing and when Secretariat wins the Triple Crown, though it just feeds his testosterone-driven male megalomaniac homicidal streak.

He wants Penny Chenery's money! He's the one who's bringing in the dough! He's the one who has to do all the stud work! He's ain't gonna be any woman's sex machine!

Chenery begins to suspect Secretariat is up to no good when she sees him scratch out a dollar sign, a noose, and the image of a woman's head in his stable.

Sham, driven to madness by the desire to one-up Secretariat, also suspects he is up to no good and does a little investigative work of his own. He sneaks into his stable and finds a gun in Secretariat's oat sack.

But as usual with Secretariat, Sham is out of his league. The wily Secretariat has been keeping tabs on him -- Riva Ridge is stupid, dotes on Secretariat because he's latently gay and works as his accomplice to set Sham up.

During a dinner in their stable, Secretariat slips Sham a fatal dose of Lasix and he dies. Secretariat makes certain that the trail leads to Riva Ridge and he goes to horse jail for a crime he did not commit.

Chenery is horrified and confronts Secretariat in his stable, not knowing Secretariat planned it along and still has his gun. Secretariat pulls out the piece and whineys at her (with subtitles to translate).

"You stupid woman! You never loved me! You only loved the money I made for you. I'll be damned if won the Belmont by 31 lengths to live the rest of my life as your stud!"

Camera pans to a close-up of Secretariat holding his gun. And then ... bang!

It wasn't Secretariat's gun. Lucien Laurin was hiding in the adjacent stable. Penny Chenery runs to him and they embrace.

"I always knew that horse wasn't right in the head," Laurin said. "Now you're dead ... Big Red!"

End credits. Coming up next ... Drop Dead Diva!

 

That reads like the plot of "The Horse Who Shot Liberty Valance."

 

I had never seen this before. Unbelievably cool. But what's up with the field being so small? I'm certainly not a horse racing expert, but seems like the Belmont field is usually 8-10 or more. Am I way off?

 

The Belmont field is frequently small because owners/trainers don't think their horses can handle 1 1/2 miles.

The 73 Belmont was particualarly small because Secretariat and Sham had both broken the race records in the Derby and Preakness, and many owners just said, "the hell with it -- we don't have a chance."

 

Bubbler, you've done it again.

 

Because that's the road to madness. Hiring on to write the script gives you the illusion of control, but you don't own it at that point. You're still subject to rewrites and the director's interpretation.
Once you take the money, you have to say good-bye to the work.

 

Nice work.

 

"Mother May I Graze With Evil" starring Tori Spelling.

 

'The Burning Stall' with Sarah Jessica Parker

 

I'm a film buff and know little of horse racing. I thoroughly enjoyed the film.

John Malkovich was spot-on, Diane Lane was tremendous. The family drama was very understated, but implied; not a soap opera scene in the film.

Much like Miracle and the Rookie, Disney did a tremendous job of letting its filmmakers tell a story in creative and understated ways. And I'm a sucker for good acting and this film was filled with great performance.