Rewatchables Reference

• Bill: The entire recruiting sequence – 'the best 15 minutes by far.' Seeing Butch McRae in Chicago, real Penny Hardaway highlights in the gym, the gimmick of competing coaches at every stop. Also: Bob Cousy shooting 10 straight free throws. The point-shaving video review scene. The montage when everyone gets paid off. Happy telling Pete 'I own you.'
• CR: The final press conference – Pete's confession. 'I've become what I despise. I cheated my profession, I cheated myself, I cheated basketball. I quit.'
• Van: The Tony point-shaving video review – 'the best thing in the movie.' Freddie grading on the coaches as they watch tape. 'It just builds and builds until it explodes.'
• Bill also nominated: Pete Bell's opening locker room rant ('the dumbest team I ever coached'), All Along the Watchtower needle drop when Pete confronts Tony, Shaq in Mary McDonnell's kindergarten class, Happy on the diving board with the Playmates.

• Bill: Young skinny Shaq and young Penny Hardaway. VHS tapes and crappy TVs for coaching staffs.
• CR: The local sportscaster doing early 'takesmanship' – 'it's time to tell Pete Bell to take a hike.' Bill: 'Now that guy's on Around the Horn saying goodbye to everybody.'

• CR: Tony flunking TV. Tarkanian saying Butch McRae couldn't make it at his school academically. The coaching terminology and practice scenes. Pitino coaching for real. 'Friends of the program' becoming a podcast phrase.
• Van: The NIL relevance – UCLA (the obvious model for Western) is actually the school whose O'Bannon lawsuit ushered in the NIL era. The coaching in practice scenes – 'actually grounded the movie in being authentic college basketball.'
• Bill: The music (Van Morrison, Creedence). Bob Cousy, Larry Bird, and Rick Pitino all being awesome in a sports movie. Ricky Roe's outdoor hoop with the rim that rolls back. Nick Nolte's 200-page Pete Bell novel. Using brooms as fake shot-blockers in practice.

Bill: Hendrix 'All Along the Watchtower' when Pete goes to confront Tony about the point-shaving – 'the one time the movie gets supercharged by a song.' Van agreed: 'Those songs are so college.'

• Bill: The point-shaving subplot combined with Happy being both a huge booster AND secretly shaving points – 'it's a bridge too far.' Also: Pete's coaching style of just screaming at everyone with no basketball strategy.
• Van: Happy's dual role as booster and point-shaver is the biggest structural problem.

• CR: Starting the press conference referencing '900 million Chinamen.' Neon's line to Jenny – 'I see why you left the bitch.' Nick Nolte doing the John Belushi white-guy-dancing-in-Baptist-church thing.
• Van: The Chinese not caring about basketball – 'aged super poorly' given China's massive basketball culture. Happy's 'we owe them this money' speech aging both best AND worst simultaneously.
• Bill: 'Penny' in quotation marks in the opening credits. Nobody would know who Neon was – by 1994 there was a whole college recruiting infrastructure. Dicky V's scenes being 40 seconds too long. Pete Bell being deeply unlikable as the hero. Mary McDonnell dressed like a 70-year-old grandmother when she was 41. Ricky Roe only asking for 30K and a tractor – 'my number starts with a 5.'

All: J.T. Walsh as Happy – bouncing on his diving board while dressing down Coach Pete, the 'we owe them this money' speech. Bill: 'So good, but it is an overacting extravaganza.' Also the assistant coach ('Tony's my guy, man!').

• Van: 'If Ron Shelton directs the movie, it's one of the great basketball films. There's a glitch – a small kernel of self-righteousness that doesn't work and drags the movie down.'
• CR: 'Blue Chips' 2 should happen – Penny/Butch as a coach against Ricky Roe running a dirty program. Or these guys have an ex-player podcast. Van's sequel: Pete Bell returns to coaching in the 2000s with Neon as assistant, coaching against Ricky Roe as the dirtiest coach in college basketball (Louisville Rick Pitino-style).
• Bill: 'Blue Chips' 2 should have happened – 'I'm just, you have my interest.'

• Friedkin wanted Nick Nolte only; Nolte had wanted to work with Friedkin since the 1970s (Sorcerer era).
• CR: What if Kevin Costner plays Pete Bell? Third of the Shelton/Costner sports trilogy after Bull Durham and 'Tin Cup'. 'You could see Costner getting corrupted by somebody.' Bill: 'If Costner's in this movie, Mary McDonnell's dressed a little different.'
• Also: Gene Hackman as Happy (CR). Pacino as a Calipari-type Pete Bell (Bill shot it down: 'hams it up too much').

J.T. Walsh as Happy – though Bill and CR debated whether he's graduated past 'that guy' status. Van: 'The most JT Walsh of JT Walshiness that exists.' Also Marquis Johnson and 'Silk' (the guy who brings Pete to Algiers).

• Bill's nominees: Happy's two Blondes, J.T. Walsh, Louis Gossett Jr., Larry Bird, Bob Cousy. Winner: Louis Gossett Jr. – 'comes in hot, he's basically the Officer and a Gentleman guy, and he's out in 3 minutes.'
• CR nominated: Alfre Woodard – one scene but has the line of the movie when Pete asks what Neon will become: 'A millionaire.'

• Director: CR suggested Ron Shelton – 'would have been more fun, more humor, more warmth.' Bill agreed.
• City: CR asked if it works as an LA movie. Bill: 'Should have been at an SMU-type school in Texas.' CR: 'Happy could be an oil guy.'
• Bill: If you're trying to capture the era – Shaq, Penny, and Christian Laettner as Ricky Roe. Van: 'I bet Shaq wasn't fucking with that.'

• Shaquille O'Neal was nominated for a Razzie for Worst New Star. Bill: 'That hurt my feelings. Shaq's good in this movie.'
• Friedkin said afterwards: 'It's hard to capture in a sports film the excitement of a real game.' Bill: 'Completely disagree. Lots of sports movies have worked. Fuck you.'
• Friedkin didn't want Shaq to be too tall, so he had shoes with tiny quarter-inch soles and had to carefully frame shots with Nolte and McDonnell.
• The gym for Butch McRae's scenes was Mount Carmel High School in Chicago. The crew, including Shaq, stayed at the Howard Johnson's in Lafayette, Indiana for two weeks.
• Shaq's final real college game came against Indiana and Bobby Knight. Indiana beat LSU by 10 in the tournament and eventually went to the Final Four.
• Rick Pitino is credited as 'Richard Pitino' in the closing credits.

• Bill: Nick Nolte – no. Cheating in a basketball movie – 'What else? 'White Men Can't Jump' hustling, 'Above the Rim' playing terrible until called out.' Bob Knight – no (his actual Apex is '87 when he came off season on the brink and won the title). Flunking TV in college – 'yes, 100%.' Point-shaving movie scenes – 'gambler's better.' Rick Fox – brief nice run (this, Eddie, 'He Got Game', Oz). Shaq and Penny as actors – 'yes, 100%.'
• Van: This is his favorite college basketball movie of all time. Also recruiting scenes Apex: Bill goes Gene Hackman getting Jimmy Chitwood in 'Hoosiers', Van goes the Tech recruiting in 'He Got Game'.
• CR: College basketball movies Apex – 'it's my generation's snapshot.'

CR: Scorsese.

• CR: 'The guy who delivers Neon's Lexus.' Van agreed: 'That IS Philip Seymour Hoffman.'
• Bill: 'He would have been an unbelievable Happy.'

• Bill: No conference tournament – Western's season is just over after the regular season. Timeline issues: recruiting happens during the season somehow, Neon passes the SATs in a week and is suddenly in class. Western University Dolphins as a team name – 'you're in LA and you're the Dolphins?' Ed O'Neill just happens to have pictures of all the recruiting violations. Kids playing pickup basketball at 10 PM and none of them know who Pete Bell is.
• Van: If you have Indiana's real uniforms and Bobby Knight, why are all the other teams fake? 'The movie is 10-15% cooler if you have Richard Pitino and Kentucky and all these other schools.' Also: Neon's age – he went to JUCO, then the Army, then college – 'he's got to be at least 26.'
• CR: Pete Bell's coaching – the Vincent Chase 'are we sure he's good at his job?' award. 'His big wrinkle is to throw two guys at Calbert Cheaney. Maybe your time had passed.' Also: if he's got 2 national championships, one losing season shouldn't put his job in jeopardy.

• Bill: 'The easiest layup for an 8-episode streaming Air-style show from 2012 on. Probably better suited for a streaming show.'
• Van's sequel pitch: Pete Bell returns to coaching in the 2000s. Neon is his assistant. They're coaching against Ricky Roe, who's now running the dirtiest program in basketball (Louisville Rick Pitino-style). The local 'take a hike' reporter now has a podcast called 'Take a Hike' where he talks about everybody who needs to get fired.
• Craig: Pete Bell goes to Montana State, builds a team the old-school way, then meets Western in March as a 15 vs. 2 seed.

• CR: Bringing back J.T. Walsh as Lieutenant Markinson from 'A Few Good Men' – at the press conference: 'I don't want a deal and I don't want immunity. I want you to know that I am proud neither of what I have done or what I'm doing.' Gets off. 'And then the Take a Hike guy is like, looks like Western got the death penalty.'
• Bill: Nell appearing for two seconds in the Algiers swamp while they're looking for the gym.

• CR: Ron Shelton for screenplay – 'probably the best writer of sports movies ever.'
• Bill: J.T. Walsh, 'but I don't really feel like anyone deserves an Oscar.'

Bill: Why wasn't Jalen Rose in this movie? 'He's as famous as anyone they used and he would have been perfect. He could have played Tony.'

• Bill: Tony's #44 blue Western jersey from the point-shaving game. Also Pete Bell's championship ring.
• CR: One of those TV/VCR combos and all the game tapes. 'Also honestly the B-roll – extra footage Friedkin had of the practices and games.'

• Van: 'Just fucking cheat. Stop acting like a bitch. Cheat, get the wins, nobody cares.'
• CR: 'If you're going to cheat, don't act ashamed of it.'
• Bill: 'Go with the standard basketball angles. Don't try to reinvent the wheel.'

• CR: 'Above the Rim'.
• Van: 'The Program'.
• Bill: One on One with Robbie Benson – 'also Western University, basically the same themes but from the 70s perspective. Robbie Benson can kind of hoop. He's a little Austin Reaves-ish.'

• Van: Shaq – 'the only time he's been really competent in a movie. He can charisma his way through anything.'
• CR: Nolte – 'his performance defines the movie.'
• Bill: 'For me personally, Cousy wins it – 10 straight free throws, the crew applauded.' But also: 'I think Shaq clearly wins the movie.'

Craig had never seen it. Verdict: top 5 Rewatchables contender. 'A really great nostalgic look at an old era that takes a lot of swings. Most of it works.' Six bullet points: one of the great opening sports movie scenes, fantastic pace, Happy's speech ages both best and worst, best basketball in a movie ever, most refreshing old-school cameos representing an era, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Called Jenny Bell 'greatest ex-wife of all time.' 'Bob Cousy – you'd sooner believe Cousy was an actor they taught to play basketball than the other way around.' Suggested 'Friends of the Program' as a better title.