Hey folks, Harry here... Chris Eyre will always be covered here at AICN, if for no other reason than he directed the great film, SMOKE SIGNALS. Back in 1998, that film topped my list of the Best of 1998! Sounds like he's made a pretty darn good film here, according to Mean Mr Mustard, so take a read. Here ya go...
Hey Harry,
Last night I saw Chris Eyre's latest, "Edge of America," at the Sundance opening night premiere in Salt Lake City. Redford opened the evening with an earnest speech about the importance of Native Americans expressing themselves and Sundance being the vessel to spread their work. And then Chris Eyre and his cast took the stage to say some thank-yous (I wouldn't have guessed Wes Studi was such a goof-ball -- when the director introduced him, Wes leapt across the stage with a whoop and a hand flourish that was quite entertaining).
I never saw Eyre's "Smoke Signals" (it's on my list), but his latest sounded interesting: James McDaniel plays Mr. Williams, the new high school English teacher on the Three Nations Reservation in Utah. He's from Texas, he's an outsider, and he's black, something most of the locals have never seen outside of TV and movies. Needless to say, he struggles fitting in and his class is non-responsive to him. Mr. Williams then decides to coach the fledgling girls basketball team, which he does with a hard-ass, no nonsense, no mercy attitude. Why is he so pissed off all the time? Where is his compassion? Why did he come to this town? Will he learn to accept this culture that is so alien to him? Will he coach the girls to a win at the State Championship? The answers aren't as predictable as you would think.
Essentially, what we have here is a traditional sports film, right down to the game-winning shot at the end, but Eyre's and his screenwriter Willy Holtzman dial down the melodrama and typical stereotypes you see in films like this. The result is a somewhat predictable, but pleasant story where the originality is in the details. For example, one of the girls on the team has a drunken father (Tim Daly, who also executive-produced) who's mourning the death of his wife and his daughter's mother. He gets upset at his daughter for picking him up late from the factory. You'd expect a scene back at the trailer home where he flies off the handle, hits his daughter, and tells her, "I don't want you playing on that team, you little slut!" What happens instead is much more truthful and more satisfying.
Mr. Williams has a very difficult time understanding the culture he's walked into, which is especially demostrated in a locker room scene where the mother of one of the players is performing a healing ritual on her troubled daughter. "What's smoke doing in my locker room!" he says. Mr. Williams is an Angry Black Man, or "a Black Man in America," as his assistant coach points out, and the film is just as much about him learning to be more compassionate and empathetic than it is about basketball.
But, really, the film isn't about sports or basketball or winning or anything like that. The Sundance catalog describes "Edge of America" as a film about overcoming diversity, and that couldn't be more true. It's a real family film, but I worry about it's chances of being seen by families because the volume of F-words, while making the film more realistic, would definitely slap this film with an R. I was a little unclear over whether this film would play in theatres or if it would go straight to Showtime, so that may not matter. I look forward to seeing it again, mostly because the acoustics in Abravanel Hall are truly shitty, as some of the dialogue was too distorted to understand. And also because Wes Studi steals nearly every scene he's in as the wise bus driver whose understatements are often hilarious.
I'm seeing a lot more stuff next week and I'll check in then. Later, folks.
- Mean Mr. Mustard
