MOVIE REVIEW: Catching Hell

Catching Hell (2011)
Director: Alex Gibney

Full disclosure: I'm not a big sports fan, so the Steve Bartman story in general was mostly new to me. So sorry if I'm treading old territory.

Really great documentaries have an odd tendency to have their essence reduced to one scene. "Don't Look Back" is widely remembered for Bob Dylan being a complete asshole to an otherwise friendly journalist who dared asked a few standard questions. "Roger and Me" will be remembered for Michael Moore wandering into the headquarters of General Motors and requesting an interview with CEO Roger Smith, then feigning surprise when he's denied.

"Catching Hell", made for ESPN's impressive '30 for 30' series, is no exception (more on that later). The documentary tells the complete story behind Steve Bartman, an unfortunate fan who, depending on who you ask, cost the Chicago Cubs the 2003 National League championship or meekly reached for a foul ball and happened to get it.

The full incident, as it happened, is seen here (money shot is at roughly 02:54). But the pure amount of context to completely understand what's going on here is somewhat breathtaking. Here is an attempt:
- The Chicago Cubs, despite having some competitive seasons (and a lot of uncompetitive seasons), have not been to the World Series since 1908. The belief that the Cubs are cursed is widespread; for some it's an amusing way to explain their team's bad luck. For others you have to wonder if they're being literal. One of the most popular theories involves a billy goat (really).
- But right now, they are up 3-2 in a series against the Florida Marlins in 2003. Playing at home, they are ahead 3-0 in the top of the 8th, with 1 out. The Cubs fans, some of the most ardent in baseball, are completely into the game; Gibney includes some home video footage of fans at the game, who are careful not to jinx the team. They are counting the outs left, even though they know they shouldn't.
- Marlin player Luis Castillo is at bat, with Juan Pierre on second base. He hits a fly ball almost directly down the foul line; left fielder Moises Alou makes the jump to catch it the ball. However, his effort is ultimately for nothing when Steve Bartman grabs the ball and prevent it from going into Alou's waiting mitt. Alou responds, justifiably, with an outraged fit. Bartman doesn't even wind up with the ball; another fan momentarily celebrates catching the ball before he notices that the crowd has completely picked up on what had happened. Bartman sits back down and resumes watching the game, while the crowd jeers.

If the Cubs had finished the game without anything major happening, this would be a mildly interesting piece of social psychology. This was not the case: as if on cue (at least if you're a Cubs fan) everything goes to shit following the Bartman incident. The Cubs give up a run...then another, then another. Then 5 more. By the time the inning is up, the Cubs are behind, 8-3. The score holds through the ninth inning, and the game is over.

While all of this is going on, Bartman's actions take on more and more symbolic importance. This is the area where the documentary is largely interested. Alex Gibney may not be a household name, but he's an accomplished director, most noted for the inspection of corporate greed in "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" and American foreign policy in "Taxi to the Dark Side". He approaches the Bartman incident with a social-psychological mindset, an intelligent decision.

The first aspect is the media. Through interviews with the commentary team and television director of the game, we see how the moment became a national story. Recognizing a television moment when he sees one, the director decides to replay the moment ad nausuem. The multiple camera angles available enhance the story; it becomes highly clear that Moises would've made the catch. As the tide of the game turns, the natural instinct of the commentators is to identify the moment as a turning point. By the end of the day, the fan interference was a top story. A commentator even notes that going into game 7 of the National League championship series, it felt like Bartman had taken most of the air out of the room.

More important than the media is the scene on the ground: the fans initially jeer once they realize that Bartman has cost them an out. As the situation becomes worse, he becomes the perfect scapegoat. A large "asshole" chant eventually spreads to the entire arena. Jeers and verbal abuse follow. Then comes the beer throwing. Steve Bartman's demeanor for the remainder of the 8th inning has become iconic in and of itself:

His blank expression with undertones of "oh shit I am so sorry", the subtle way he seems to be begging everyone to not look at him, the glasses, and the now legendary earphones, all tell the entire story. It's no surprise Bartman was one of the biggest Halloween costumes that year. In an interview with a woman sitting near Bartman, we find out he asked "do you think I did anything wrong?"

The situation worsens; security, who had been watching the situation develop, come to the conclusion that Bartman's physical well-being is in danger. Officers were sent down to remove Bartman and his group of friends from the arena.While Bartman is being escorted out of the building, with garbage and jeers being thrown at him, he attempts to cover his face, presumably to try and help protect his identity. A Cubs fan lunges and attempts to rip the jacket out of his hands, and is successfully stopped by security.
He would then give an interview to the local news which is the most stunning sequence in the film. It's not what he says; something to the effect of being mad that Bartman was trying to hide his identity from the world. What's stunning is the tone of his voice: a man who has just borderline tried to assault an innocent man truly, honestly believes that he's the one who has been wronged, since security stopped him. His tone isn't apologetic or even angry, but rather that of a defeated man. In his mind it is clear he had tried to do the right thing by lunging for Bartman's jacket, only for the forces of evil to stop him. It's a momentary and subtle scene, but rarely has a mob mentality been shown more clearly.

In terms of new information with regard to the Bartman story, an interview with the head of security is probably the biggest addition, as she details the fairly ridiculous steps that were necessary to safely get Bartman out of the arena. While contrasting his shy, sorry demeanor to the anger of the crowd, she tears up a little, and it doesn't feel fake.

Bartman was identified by the next day; the police staked out his home. Internet images of Bartman spread. The media staked out his house. Bartman released a statement through his brother-in-law apologizing for the incident, clarifying he wasn't a shadow Marlins fan (yes, people actually thought this). Beyond that, Bartman has made absolutely nothing of his notoriety; he has not given any public interviews, he has not appeared on any show. As Gibney points out, all we're left with is the aforementioned images of him and a few words of apology; this has only made his mythology grow. The "Bartman seat" remains a tourist trap for Cubs fans, and the "Bartman ball" was ultimately purchased for a 6-figure sum and publicly destroyed.

Of note is an ESPN reporter who tracked down Bartman sometime in 2006, only to get a momentary interview in a parking lot. He chose to use this time to apologize for Chicago's behavior. There's perhaps some irony to the concept of stalking a guy three years after he caught a baseball to apologize for all the bad things the event brought to his life.

The Bartman story makes up the 'meat' of the documentary, yet the story is contrasted with former Red Sox player Bill Buckner, who infamously missed a ground ball in game 6 of the 1986 World Series. Both men were scapegoats, but the connection is a bit forced, at best. Still, Buckner telling of how he came to terms with his media image is honest and interesting.


Gibney is most effective as a documentarian when he questions why anyone would've given such negative power to Steve Bartman in the first place. Cubs shortstop Alex Gonzalez made a crucial error in the 8th inning as well that was likely as or more hurtful to the Cubs than anything Bartman did, yet Bartman is the one who gets a documentary while the Gonzalez moment is a piece of trivia. Was it truly superstition? Did the Chicago Cubs fans, in that exact moment, truly believed that Bartman had jinxed the team and acted appropriately based on that info? Was it the media who turned him into a celebrity against his will? At the risk of overdoing it, if a group of Chicagoans can be borderline brought to violence by a man catching a foul ball, does that give us some understanding on how mob mentality can result in violence and even death?

Gibney doesn't provide answers to these questions, but he does a fine job of asking them. The mark of a true documentarian.


WHAT THE FILM SETS OUT TO DO: Explore the Steve Bartman story as a social phenomenon more than a sporting event, and connect the stories of Steve Bartman and Bill Buckner through the common element of scapegoating.


RESULT: Excellent job on the former, not as good on the latter. The intermixing of talking head interviews, documentary footage from the game, media clips and Gibney's narration adds up to the fullest telling of the Bartman story that's likely possible (barring an interview, which Gibney of course could not get). The Bill Buckner story is fine in and of itself, but almost feels like it should've been it's own separate piece. As a result, the film is probably a bit long. At 102 minutes without commercials, it sort of runs out of steam once the Bartman information has been fully explored, and the return to the Buckner story towards the end is a bit awkward.

SIDE THOUGHTS:
- Gibney identifies as a Red Sox fan fairly early in the documentary. To paraphrase an internet comment, there's something to be said about a Red Sox fan making a Steve Bartman documentary about the Red Sox.
- Great moment: A man calls into a Chicago sports show claiming to be Bartman, only to ask the interviewer what he thinks of Howard Stern's dick cheese. Prank calls never get old.
- The interviewer who tracked down Bartman in 2006 is treated largely uncritically by Bartman; there's something a bit odd about tracking down a guy 3 years after the fact and waiting 7 hours for him to get out of work. Perhaps there's journalistic arguments to be made here, but Gibney doesn't really explore it.
- Similarly, there's an interview with a fan who seems to take pride in his harassment of Bartman at one point. Gibney can be excused for not asking any follow ups since the guy comes off like a huge asshole anyway.
- An odd documentary technique is used. Footage of Gibney on a Chicago radio show, discussing the movie, is used to move the narrative of the movie along. It kind of works but I can't recall this being done before.

REVIEW: Moneyball

Moneyball (2011)
Director: Bennett Miller
Writer(s): Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, story by Stan Chervin, based on the book from Michael Lewis

As humanity becomes more advanced and more intelligent, any major changes to an industry are going to be met with skepticism and resistance. Furthermore, as society advances, we also become more impersonal; what was once the realm of common sense, intuition and experience can become a matter of numbers, statistics, and 'the books'. Baseball, the American past time usually held on a somewhat holy pedestal, is no exception to the rule.

"Moneyball" is the story of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), general manager of the Oakland Athletics, who finds himself pushing baseball in a radical new direction against much resistance. The reasons are highly practical: coming off an unexpectedly good season in which they made the World Series, teams with higher payrolls have taken the A's star players: Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi, Jason Isringhausen. With only one-third of the funds as their competition, Beane is left with the proposition of replacing a group of players he doesn't have the money to replace.

His brain trust of scouts offers little help. The older men suggest some good-looking prospects; they talk about their body shape, how good they looked in tryouts, the raw numbers, the same methods used for decades. The group doesn't give off a vibe of the wave of the future; one scout has to take a moment to adjust his hearing aid; another misses an easy pop culture reference. More than one is chewing tobacco.

During a routine trading visit to the Cleveland Indians, Beane meets 25-year old Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), and notices both his unusual look for a member of baseball management (he looks like a grad student who is happy to be there), but also the odd sway he seems to hold with the Indians GM.

Hill is best known for his awkward, nerdy humor in Judd Apatow movies like "Superbad" and "Get Him to the Greek"; to his credit, he uses these same instincts to find the right balance of humor and intelligence in his character (comparable to, say, Adam Sandler in "Punch Drunk Love"). Brand is a Yale economics major who has taken an interest in the works of Bill James, who used statistical methods to a new system of baseball player evaluation. Brand is a man of numbers; while Beane sees Johnny Damon as a precious entity in desperate need of immediate replacement, Brand sees "a good starter" who has been overvalued by the world of baseball. Beane at first rejects Brand's ideas out of hand. Then he mulls them over. Then he steals Brand from Cleveland and makes him assistant GM.

Beane and Brand apply their statistical methods to create a team that is as undervalued statistically as they are unimpressive to the scouting crew. Pitcher Chad Bradford (Casey Bond) throws in a 'weird' style. Scott Hatteberg (Chris Pratt) was a decent catcher who has suffered nerve damage, and seems downright surprised when Beane gives him a job offer and confused when they tell him they want him on first base. David Justice (Stephen Bishop) was a star player at one point, but is now 'old'; the Yankees basically pay Oakland to get rid of him; he hasn't quite gotten over his own stardom. None of their raw stats are all that impressive. Coach Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) has a particular disdain for Beane's methods (and, in one hilarious sequence, subtly expresses his opinion of Brand). Hoffman plays Howe less as a character than as a representation of the old school of thought in baseball. He is, after all, the guy who has to decide how to play these misfits. Beane has very specific instructions on how to play these guys properly, but Howe isn't convinced by the fact Brand crunched a series of numbers on a computer. A power struggle ensues.

Baseball fans will likely know how the season turned out, and any astute viewer can infer that if they're making a movie about it, something interesting must've happened. If you can go in blind, I'd recommend it.

The movie is rounded out by Billy Beane's personal story and family life. He has good reason to be suspicious of the established baseball system. At a young age, he was seen as a potential star prospect, enough that he was convinced to walk away from a Stanford scholarship. Yet his career, to say the least, didn't go as planned. Without overdoing it, both the writers and Pitt effectively portray Beane as a man with regret, perhaps even a slight grudge against the old school of thought; beyond truly believing in his new ideas, he's out to prove a point. Pay particular attention to the scene where Beane asks Brand how the young version of himself would've fit into his statistical methods.

Beane also has a healthy relationship with his daughter Casey (Kerris Dorsey), despite getting divorced from her mother (Robin Wright). For all the snappy dialogue that comes with trading players, the stoic method in which he can tell someone their career is over, and the cynical methods in which he deals with opposition such as Coach Howe, it's the simple scenes where he helps his daughter conduct a song that we see Beane at his most human. Beane makes a major life decision at the end of the film that some will find inexplicable; they should watch these scenes a bit closer.

The strong effort is anchored by a strong script by Zaillian and Sorkin. Sorkin's writing can sometimes verge on overindulgent (this hampered the otherwise good "The Social Network") but they find the right balance here by mainly focusing on Beane as a character. Director Bennett Miller ("Capote") compliments this by allowing scenes to flow naturally and giving them room to breath; there's a common conception that sports movies need to be action-packed and adrenaline-fueled, but "Moneyball" finds itself by going in the opposite direction (in fact, actual shots of baseball being played on the field are highly limited). There's probably a "baseball is boring" joke in that last paragraph, so you can make your own if you'd like.

WHAT THE FILM SETS OUT TO DO: Two-fold: tell the story of how introduction of statistical methods changed the way GMs approached baseball, and do so while exploring Billy Beane as a character.

RESULT: Basic success on both counts. The few scenes of Peter Brand getting into the specifics of the statistical methods were largely interesting, and probably could've been expanded upon a bit (there's possibly the risk of alienating an audience, but this is a Smart Movie anyway).

SIDE THOUGHTS:
- Philip Seymour Hoffman can be an amazing actor; here, he's largely relegated to a side role. He fulfills it well enough, but it can't help but feel a bit like a lost opportunity.
- Outside of a comedic scene in which she's forced to make small talk with Billy Beane and pretend to care about baseball, Robin Wright is highly perfunctory as his ex-wife Sharon and doesn't get much to do
- The song at the end is surprisingly catchy