Super Bowl LII: Touchdowns for Movie Fans

So we’ve survived another Super Bowl Sunday, one that was more exciting than most. No, I’m not much of a football fan, though I like to look in on big national sporting events from time to time. Like most people, I generally find myself rooting for the underdog, and so the victory of the Philadelphia Eagles—following lots of twists and turns on the field—of course appealed to my sense of drama. (I especially liked the sleight of hand that had Eagles replacement quarterback Nick Foles sneaking the pigskin into the possession of a teammate, then moving down the field to catch the pass and run it into the end zone for a touchdown.) 

The Eagles’ victory, the team’s first national championship since 1960, also served to remind me of one of my favorite recent movies, David O. Russell’s 2012 domestic comedy, Silver Linings Playbook. If you’ve seen the film you remember the dynamic within the Philadelphia household of a troubled young man, Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper), who has managed to extricate himself from a mental institution and come home in search of his estranged wife. His father, Pat Sr. (played by a predictably intense Robert De Niro) rules the roost, and the focus of his energies is the local football team. This means the entire family unit must wear Eagles jerseys, participate in earnest pre-game rituals, and otherwise ensure good luck for the team. Things come to a head during an outing to Lincoln Financial Field for a home game. The famously rabid Eagles fans are out in force, well-lubricated and slathered in green paint, to cheer on their boys. Inevitably, the younger Pat gets into a fracas with some especially obnoxious (and racist) fans, and is hauled off by the cops. Which leads Pat’s father to make a bet (or “parlay”) he cannot afford to lose. Somehow it all ends on a positive note, having proven that sports fanatics and romance fanatics are not so very different after all. (Especially when there’s a cagey but complicated young woman like Jennifer Lawrence’s Tiffany around.)

A surprising number of people tune in to the Super Bowl for its commercials, and as always I was struck by the number of elaborate Hollywood-related ads that popped up on my TV screen. A new twist was the Netflix gimmick of surprising viewers with the news that a new sci fi film, The Cloverfield Paradox, would screen immediately after the game. (I didn’t watch it, but commentators seemed to agree that the industry was trying to hustle out this follow-up to the well-received Cloverfield before word got out that the film was pretty bad.) Some lively ads used familiar actors in unexpected ways – like Peter Dinklage and Morgan Freeman rapping on behalf of a new Doritos flavor, and Rebel Wilson and a Hannibal Lecter-ish Anthony Hopkins (among others) replacing the voice of Alexa. Elsewhere, Jeff Goldblum relived Jurassic Park’s scary T-Rex chase (complete with John Williams music) in a commercial for Jeep. Quite amusing was an apparent movie promo, featuring Danny McBride and Chris Hemsworth introducing what seems to be a Son of Crocodile Dundee flick. McBride’s dressed for the part of Dundee’s offspring, and he covers a lot of terrain before realizing the truth: “It’s not a movie. It’s a commercial.” Yes, this spot promoting Australian tourism makes its point about the charms of the land down under, with tongue firmly in cheek. 

 But I can’t say I feel good about the sonorous voice of the Reverend Martin Luther King essentially shilling for Dodge Ram trucks. Does King’s 50-year legacy deserve this?

Here's a compilation of some of the most memorable 2018 Super Bowl commercials:

  

Dr. King and Dr. Poitier: They Both Had a Dream

This week’s fiftieth-anniversary commemoration of the March on Washington rightly focuses on Dr. Martin Luther King, whose “I Have a Dream” speech galvanized a nation. But it’s worth noting Hollywood’s visible presence at the march. It was not merely black performers like Sammy Davis Jr. and Diahann Carroll who took a visible role on that day. Steven J. Ross’s invaluable Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics recounts how such superstars as Marlon Brando, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, and Tony Curtis made their presence felt. The leader of the Screen Actors Guild delegation was Moses himself, Charlton Heston. He had deliberately been chosen by singer-activist Harry Belafonte, because of his appeal in the American heartland.

But I want to focus on another Hollywood participant, Sidney Poitier. Though much less overtly political than his friend Belafonte, Poitier too joined that symbolic march to the Lincoln Memorial. But it was his presence on the nation’s movie screens that really made the difference. On August 28, 1963, America had yet to see Lilies of the Field, the charming film that would net Poitier the first Best Actor Oscar ever won by a black man. But from 1950 onward, he had an unprecedented career as an African-American whom the world could accept as a full-fledged screen hero. True, some of his early roles were silly and melodramatic, as when he played Rau-Ru, the secret son of Clark Gable (yes, really!) in a Civil War melodrama called Band of Angels. But more typically he took on realistic roles with a large dollop of dignity. In his very first film, No Way Out, he was the noble Dr. Luther Brooks, who was hard-pressed to perform his medical duties because of the racists in his midst. And he gravitated toward portraying educated men -- doctors, lawyers, social workers, teachers -- throughout his career.

In 1955’s groundbreaking Blackboard Jungle, Poitier was an unruly high school student whose leadership qualities eventually came to the fore. But the role that sealed his reputation as a civil rights icon was, ironically, one that friends urged him not to play. In 1962’s The Defiant Ones, he shed his usual middle-class dignity to portray an escaped felon shackled to a white man (Tony Curtis). During their odyssey through the American South, both slowly and painfully discover tolerance  . . . and even brotherly love. African-American novelist James Baldwin found the film’s ending an insulting nullification of the black man’s well-honed survival instincts. In  a long essay on Hollywood called The Devil Makes Work, he noted that “liberal white audiences applauded when Sidney, at the end of the film, jumped off the train in order not to abandon his white buddy.”  By contrast, said Baldwin, “the Harlem audience was outraged, and yelled, ‘Get back on the train, you fool!’”

Though some black Americas may have been outraged, much of white America was happy to adopt Poitier as a symbol of future racial reconciliation. Part of the credit must go to director Stanley Kramer, who cast Poitier in this role, and then used him in two additional landmark films, Pressure Point and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.  That’s why the increasingly reclusive Poitier showed up for the opening of the StanleyKramer Centennial celebration, and wrote a letter praising a man who “had the insight and courage to bring to the forefront social issues that were difficult to address, and commonly ignored, by the general public.”

Kramer had the courage of his convictions, but Poitier embodied those convictions on screen, showing America how to move ahead. Methinks we need him still.

On opening night of the Stanley Kramer Centennial at the Billy Wilder Theater, Poitier poses with Karen Sharpe Kramer (left) and Kat Kramer