Movie A Day | Through the Shattered Lens

Blue Chips is a movie that will always make me think of England.

When I was a kid, I would spend every summer over in the UK. When I flew over for the summer of ’94, the in-flight movie was Blue Chips. I can still remember sitting in the back of the plane, trying to watch the movie on that tiny screen. At the time, I did not pay much attention to Blue Chips. It was about basketball, which was not something that I was interested in. It also starred Nick Nolte, who, over the years, starred in a lot of the movies that I saw while flying over the Atlantic Ocean. Try as I might, I could not understand a word that Nolte was saying. It was impossible to separate his gravely voice from the drone of the plane’s engines. I didn’t care much about Blue Chips.

Two months later, I was sitting in the back of my return flight when the flight attendant announced, “Our in-flight movie will be Blue Chips, starring Nick Nolte.” Still not caring about basketball and still unable to understand a word that Nick Nolte was saying, I sat through Blue Chips for a second time. What else was I going to do? Step outside and go for a walk?

Looking back, I can understand why Blue Chips would be shown on a plane. There’s nothing unconventional or controversial about Blue Chips. It’s not going to start any fights or leave anyone offended. Nick Nolte plays Pete Bell, a college basketball coach who, coming off of his first losing season, resorts to unethical measures to recruit three star players. Ricky Roe (Matt Nover) is a farmboy from Indiana and his racist father wants the college to buy him a new tractor. Penny Hardaway plays Butch McRae, whose mother (Alfre Woodard) wants a new house. Neon Bordeaux (Shaq!) doesn’t want anything but still gets a new Lexus. The corrupt head of the school’s booster club is named Happy and is played by J.T. Walsh. Other than Happy Gilmore, has there ever been anyone in a movie named Happy who hasn’t turned out to be bad news?

Blue Chips was directed by William Friedkin, though you’d never guess that this by the numbers movie was from the same director who did The French Connection, The Exorcist, or To Live And Die In L.A. In his autobiography, The Friedkin Connection, he devoted just a few words to Blue Chips, saying, “It’s hard to capture, in a sports film, the excitement of a real game, with its own unpredictable dramatic structure and suspense. I couldn’t overcome that.”

Friedkin’s right but I’m always happy whenever I come across Blue Chips on cable because it reminds me of that long-ago summer in England.

For tomorrow’s movie a day, it’s another sports-related film that always makes me think about Britain: Alan Clarke’s The Firm.

A pair of immaculate white sneakers, being worn by the lead singer of The Talking Heads, David Byrne, walk out onto a bare stage while an unseen audience applauds. Byrne places a radio on the stage beside him and says, “I have a tape I want to play for you.” Accompanied only by a drum machine and an acoustic guitar, Byrne launches into a performance of Psycho Killer that ends with him lurching across the stage like a marionette that is losing its strings.

So begins the greatest concert film of all time, Stop Making Sense.

As Psycho Killer comes to an end, Byrne is joined on stage by bassist Tina Weymouth. While Byrne and Weymouth perform Heaven, the black-clad stage crew sets up a drum kit behind them. Drummer Chris Frantz comes out for the third song, Thank You For Sending Me An Angel. The fourth member of the Talking Heads, Jerry Harrison, appears on stage for Found A Job and is then followed by several touring members of the band, including legendary keyboardist Bernie Worrell, guitarist Alex Weir, percussionist Steve Scales, and backup singers, Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt. It’s not until the concert’s sixth song, Burning Down The House, that the entire band is on stage.

Pieced together from three separate shows performed at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles, Stop Making Sense showcases one of the most important bands of the 80s at their absolute best. Eschewing any candid footage of the band backstage and only occasionally showing any shots of the audience, Jonathan Demme keeps the focus on the music and David Byrne’s amazing showmanship. Even more than the music, what really makes Stop Making Sense stand out is Byrne’s physicality. During one instrumental passage, Byrne even runs around the stage in circles before jumping back to his microphone without missing a beat.

Though the entire band is in great form, Byrne is almost always the focus of attention. The only time he’s not is when he goes backstage during a performance of Genius Of Love by Weymouth and Frantz’s side project, The Tom Tom Club. During that time, Byrne is changing into the “big suit,” the costume that continues to define the Talking Heads to this day.

Along with Burning Down The House, highlights include Life During Wartime,

Swamp,

Once in a Lifetime,

and Stop Making Sense‘s most famous moment, David Byrne performing Girlfriend is Better while wearing the iconic “big suit.”

Stop Making Sense is a fun, exhilarating, and sometimes exhausting concert film and, given all the bad feelings that exist between Byrne and the other three members of the band, it’s probably as close as any of us will ever get to experiencing The Talking Heads live.

For tomorrow’s movie a day, I’ll be explaining why Blue Chips always makes me think of England.