Crisis In American Cinema

Every once in a while its nice to have HBO. Every so often they show a great movie. Last week while aimlessly channel surfing I stumbled across a true gem, The Bad News Bears. I found this masterpiece 3 minutes before it started. That means I saw the beginning of the this movie for the first time since 1977 or '78, when I first saw the Bears during a sleep over at my best friends house.

So its Saturday night, I had two Crowns in me and the Bad News Bears come on, uninterrupted and uncensored. It was a great moment in my cable surfing history, nothing to watch on the tube and bam, 2 hours of TV bliss. Its like finding The Road Warrior( Mad Max II to the less informed) or The Warriors.

The last few days I have been replaying my favorite scenes over and over in my head. It was all good until I stumbled across something horrible. I wanted to look up my favorite quote from the movie, the "there is a lot of ass at the ball park" line. So I go to the IMDB(InternetMovieDataBase) type in The Bad News and guess what pops up. The Bad News Bears 2005 at the top of the list.

What the fuck? Who in the...what in the... how the fuck did this happen? To me this is an abomination. Who the hell does Billy Bob Thornton think he is? Is he trying to be like Sandler remaking The Longest Yard? What is this crap? I don't get it. There are certain things in life that must remain sacred and pure. Certain movies should not be remade. Just like certain sports teams should never relocate, like the Cubs, Red Sox, Yanks, 49ers, Cowboys, Pakers, Lakers and the Celtics. The list goes on and on, forgive me if I left your team out.

Back to Billy Bob. Billy Bob stick to movies where you play a super human strength, yard tool wielding, murdering retard. That's your wheel house. I love that shit. When you talk in that backward ass Arkansas croker fish retard voice, "I don't reckin I got no reason to kill nobody." That is good shit. Friday Night Lights was a great movie. Your little cameo in Tombstone was outstanding, when you got bitch slapped by Wyatt Earp. You need to stick to roles where the redneck DNA in your genetic makeup can shine through. Now don't go getting any ideas about remaking Deliverance, that movie is on the DO NOT REMAKE list.

I would like to leave all two of my faithful readers with this food for thought. The youth of America will be surfing the tube one day and may stumble upon The Bad News Bears. Only it may not be the real Bad News Bears, it might be this abomination that was made in 05. That kid may think Billy Bob is the real Boilermaker/ Buttercrud. What is to become of our youth? In the dark hours of the night, I lay awake in my bed, tossing and turning, my mind racing or worse yet I'll wake up in a pool of sweat with the fear that my son may be exposed to such a thing. Well, fuck that, not on my watch.