Hey folks, Harry here... Ok ok ok... I lied about it being the most deadly game on Earth... however, it really is a remakable and powerful documentary about one of the most unique games you'll ever see, that I'm pretty damn sure you've never seen or heard of before! Here ya go...
Harry,
First time contributor here. I see that there have been some brief
mentions of Murderball here, but I think it deserves more attention
because it is fucking awesome.
Last night was the first screening at the Seattle International Film
Festival for Murderball. Murderball is a documentary about the sport
of quadriplegic rugby and Team USA and Canada's quest for dominance in
international competition. The film explained details of the game (for
instance, each player is assigned a class based limb usage and
assigned a point value from 1-3; a quad rugby team can only have four
players who have a total of eight points on the court at all times)
and tracked the team through its quest for Paralympic Gold at Athens
in 2004 (one of the players remarked in the movie that a family friend
once came up to him and said "I heard you were playing in the Special
Olympics" to which he replied "I'm not retarded"). The "human" focus
of the film concentrates on Team Canada's coach (an aging former Team
USA player with a bad attitude), a motocross player going through
rehab months after an accident leaves him quadriplegic and the
personal stories from Team USA players.
Now, in most cases of documentaries showcasing people with physical
disabilities, you leave with a sense of "That was a great movie about
a person with a disability" or "Wow, that is really great that Person
A overcame such obstacles to lead a somewhat normal life." When you
finish watching Murderball, you think "Fuck, that was a fantastic
movie about athletes who have hot girlfriends." The personal side of
the film isn't sappy. The players don't feel badly about themselves.
Some of the more comic moments stem from the players talking about
women and sex (i.e. getting erections for the first time, having sex
for the first time, one player's technique for doing it doggie-style).
There is an awesome scene where one of the players, who has no legs,
hides under a box and the players call one of the hotel employees to
pick the box up. The guy scares the shit out of the woman and it is
funny as hell.
Three of the players, including the USA quad rugby spokesperson Mark
Zuppan were on hand for a Q&A session. They discussed a lot of the
things that didn't make it into the film, such as how coaches use the
classing system to sandbag their ranks and the regulations for the
chairs. We were informed that the 2008 Paralymics will be televised
just like the Olympics, which is awesome.
Perhaps the best question came at the very end, when an audience
member asked the team members what they thought of Christopher Reeve
and his work to raise money and awareness. Their basic collective
reply was that the negative in Reeve's work was twofold: that as the
"poster child" for quadriplegics, everyone thinks that quads can't
move their arms at all and it seemed that all Reeve wanted was to get
out of his life as a quad and not just embrace it and that was
frustrating.
All in all, it's an awesome documentary and it was a great
introduction to the sport. It begins nationwide release on July 22nd.
Thanks for reading (if you have),
kim.
