Racing Stripes (2005)

Dir. Frederick Du Chau

Starring: Frankie Muniz, Hayden Panettiere, Bruce Greenwood, Mandy Moore

Another sports movie, another underdog. Underhorse. Underzebra. Whatever.

Racing Stripes is a sports movie for young kids. So that means it has all the right sentiments about following your dreams, having heart, not being afraid to be different etc etc. But for a children’s film I’m not sure it ticks all the necessary boxes.

It starts on a dark and stormy night. In their hurry to pack up a travelling circus leave behind one of their own: an adorably cute zebra foal. This foal is found by farmer Nolan Walsh (Bruce Greenwood) who takes him home. The little fella instantly wins the heart of his young daughter Channing (Hayden Panettiere, pre-“Save the cheerleader” and dating eight foot tall Ukrainian powerhouses). They decide to keep him and name him ‘Stripes’.

This being a children’s film, Stripes has a voice and character of his own. He loves to run. Soon, however, he runs up against the thoroughbred racehorse foals from the larger, richer farm next door. They mock his dreams.

Fast forward three years and Stripes (now voiced by Malcolm in the Middle’s Frankie Muniz) is all growed up. He is determined to prove that he is a race horse, so together with his farmyard pals they hatch a plan to get Channing to ride him and have Nolan enter them in the upcoming Kentucky Open race. He wants to put one over on the snooty thoroughbreds next door, even if it means risking everything against former champion Sir Trenton (voiced by Fred Thompson) and stable-owning ice queen Clara Dalrymple (Wendie Malick) who are perfectly prepared to act underhandedly. Oh, and along the way he can pick up token love-interest filly Sandy (voiced by Mandy Moore).

The filming is clever. It is a live-action film, not a cartoon, with real animals but with the images of the animals manipulated somehow so that they do seem to talk, goggle their eyes and otherwise interact. Training them to move on cue must have been an absolute nightmare. It certainly gives an extra spin to the underdog sports movie.

But will it work for a young audience? Not being 8 myself I find it hard to judge. There are certainly some characters, the louder and more slapstick ones such as the Mafioso New Jersey pelican Goose (voiced by Joe Pantoliano) and the disgusting flies Buzz and Scuzz (Steve Harvey and David Spade), that will appeal. And there are messages in there about following your dreams, daring to be different (and not judging others because they are different) and that breeding, training and skill count for nothing against someone with “the biggest heart”. Personally I’m not sure about that last one, but they are all improving morals to the tale.

Watch out for the zebra crossing

 Yet, it is a children’s story written and cast by adults. Frannie the goat is voiced by Whoopie Goldberg, who has next to no comedy to get her teeth into. She might as well be reading out the phone directory. But when it comes to misusing actors, how about casting the great Dustin Hoffman as Tucker the Shetland pony? And giving him such duff un-funny lines as “Goose, who’s a pelican who’s really a stool-pigeon who’s a chicken who ducks. That’s five birds. Count ‘em!”? He must have been desperate for the money I tell myself. Goose and Buzz and Scuzz have poo-related humour: this is good. But they also burst out into songs like Ebony and Ivory and You Can’t Touch This. Very topical. And the big epic theme songs are performed by ‘80s legends Bryan Adams and Sting. Again, I feel that they were aiming for a target audience 35 years older than the kiddiwinks. When Nolan ploughs a race-course into his cornfield one of the characters opines “If you build it, they will come”. This reference would only have been got by anyone who has seen Field of Dreams. There is more adult content in there as well. The inference is that Goose is a Mafia hitman, which I’m not sure is appropriate in a children’s film. And there is a lazy bloodhound voiced by Snoop Dogg. He has three years. I’m kinda hoping that most 8-year-olds don’t know who Snoop Dogg (the rapper whose dope-smoking and pimping is part of his persona) is. Certainly, the fact that Lightning is perpetually half-asleep plays in to Snoop’s dope-smoking image. Also, it is an inescapable fact that baby Stripes is waaaay cuter than teenage Stripes.

Racing Stripes is a mostly harmless film with some good visual effects and a rather bland storyline that under-uses some great acting talent and will probably entertain the kids for 1½  hours. I’m not sure they will be clamouring to watch it again immediately afterwards however.

What have I learnt about Kentucky?

The looove their horses in Kentucky. Horse rearing and horse racing is big money and a passport to success.

Can we go there?

So far on this journey I have found movies that are filmed where they are meant to be set, that are filmed in studios, or that are filmed in other locations around the United States. I have found a couple that were filmed abroad, but not too far distant (Canada, basically). And I have found films where scenes that were supposed to be set abroad were relocated to America for shooting (e.g. Capote, where the Kansas scenes were shot in Manitoba, Canada, and the Spain scenes in Malibu, California). Racing Stripes is the first where a very different country stood in for America. Rather than Kentucky, the film was shot in South Africa.

Specifically, the movie was filmed in the vicinity of Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal. The disused Riverholme Farm in the Midlands Meander region provided the backdrop to the Walsh Farm and Dalrymple Stables. Turfway Park was actually  Scottsville Race Course.

Overall Rating: 2/5

The Insider (1999)

Dir. Michael Mann

Starring: Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer, Diane Venora

Fiat justitia ruat caelum – let justice be done though the heavens fall. This old Latin legal maxim came to mind while watching The Insider. It is a film about risking it all to do the right thing.

Dr Jeffery Wigand (Russell Crowe) is chief research and development scientist at the Brown & Williamson tobacco company in Louisville, Kentucky. He is fired after disagreements with the company. By chance Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino), producer for the current affairs programme 60 Minutes, stumbles upon him and scents a story. Wigand is potential dynamite. He knows that the executives at B&W regard themselves as being in “the nicotine delivery business” – contrary to their testimony to Congress when they stated that they believed that cigarettes were not addictive. He further knows that they have manipulated nicotine, refused to remove chemicals linked to cancer and are unwilling to remove any health-risk elements for fear of harming sales.

The difficulty is that Wigand signed a confidentiality agreement when he left B&W. This agreement guarantees his settlement. By breaking it he is putting his family’s lifestyle at risk. He finds himself followed and the victim of threats against his family; when he reports these to the FBI they treat him as the criminal. This merely motivates him to record an interview with 60 Minutes for release at a later date. Bergman is advised that if he can get Wigand’s testimony into court evidence that would invalidate his confidentiality agreement. Wigand therefore heads to Mississippi, where the state attorney is suing tobacco companies over health costs caused to smokers. En route Wigand is served with a restraining order; by speaking he runs the risk of arrest and imprisonment upon returning to Kentucky. He speaks, he returns, and he finds that his wife has taken their children and is filing for divorce. He has risked everything in order to tell his tale.

The smoking gun: talking can prove hazardous to your health

It is at this point that the corporate executives at CBS, 60 Minutes’s network get cold feet. They fear that Brown & Williamson could sue them for “tortuous interference”. Additionally a smear campaign is launched against Wigand by the tobacco firms to utterly discredit him. And so CBS re-edit the segment and broadcast the episode without Wigand’s testimony. The heart is ripped out of the story. The scientist is crushed; he has risked everything, and he has not had any sort of vindication.

He is not the only one crushed. Lowell knows what Jeffrey has risked to blow the whistle, and is uncomfortable with losing his own reputation for integrity: “I never left a source hang out to dry, ever! Abandoned! Not till fucking right now. When I came on this job I came with my word intact. I’m gonna leave with my word intact.” It is now his turn, in a neat reversal of roles, to risk his position by taking on the corporate power at CBS. He argues that 60 Minutes show the unexpurgated version, suggesting that a lawsuit would endanger current plans to sell the network (plans which would make the top executives very wealthy individuals). The channel head Don Hewitt (Philip Baker Hall) refuses to make him a martyr for the free press by sacking him and instead sends him on an enforced vacation. Lowell hires investigators to rebut the smear campaign and sends their results to the Wall Street Journal. In the end he leaks the entire story to the New York Times, which castigates the network. CBS are eventually forced by the scandal to show the full interview between veteran 60 Minutes host Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer) and Wigand. The defence of the “seven dwarfs” of Big Tobacco crumbles. Lowell resigns. And Wigand starts a new career as a high school science teacher.

Where it sticks to the whistle-blowing, the film is great. It starts with a Lebanese interlude to establish the characters of Bergman and Wallace. There is also a subplot about the Unabomber that doesn’t really make sense.

Pacino might get star billing, but it is Russell Crowe’s film. Crowe gives a nuanced performance as the complex scientist. Crowe is usually the most alpha of alpha males, running around in a little leather skirt in Gladiator or being the charismatic outlaw leader we saw in 3:10 to Yuma. But here he hides beneath snowy hair and behind thick spectacles. He even drives a Volvo for heaven’s sake! Wigand is the prime mover in The Insider and it is he who has to make the bulk of the brave moral decisions that drive the story forward; Pacino’s Bergman merely “greases the rails” (though, as stated, he later makes his own stand to force the truth to come out). The key question asked is: what would you risk to inform the public? Wigand was presumably a very bad recruit for a tobacco firm, as he was proud of his past career working for health firms (even if one of them was Union Carbide, architects of the 1984 Bhopal disaster which killed thousands). At first his priorities are clear: protect his family. The health coverage included as part of his severance package is critical for a man whose daughter has severe asthma. While upset at being fired he states that he thinks the package agreed was fair. What takes him down the route of blowing a gaping hole right through the confidentiality agreement? Is it lust for fame? No – there are no signs that he gets off on having a security detail or a blue light escort. Part of it is probably pique. He dislikes having his integrity questioned and when threatened his natural reaction is to fight back. But mostly it is a moral responsibility. He knows that executives at Brown and Williamson are aware of health risks attached to their product but will not take action to mitigate them as that might damage sales. This is a very clear health risk that he feels needs to be exposed. And he ultimately judges that it is vital that the public become aware of this, even if he must be crucified to do so. When he is deliberating whether to go to court in Mississippi he asks himself what has changed. “You mean since this morning?” Lowell asks, referring to the Kentucky gagging order. “No”, Wigand replies. “I mean since whenever.” He may have been handed a gagging order but that does not alter the fact that the truth needs to come out. The gagging order does not make the public health risk lesser, or the culpability of the B&W executive lesser, or the information he can reveal less important. The truth has a life of its own, independent of his mere mortal frame. In the end we only have his words when Mike Wallace asks whether he thinks it was worth risking it all to blow the whistle: “At times I wish I hadn’t done it. There were times I felt compelled to do it. If you ask me would I do it again, do I think it’s worth it? Yeah, I think it’s worth it.”

What have I learnt about Kentucky?

This is the wealthy Kentucky. Corporate power, big suburban houses and skulduggery in high places.

When I think of tobacco in America I think of North and South Carolina. I did not know that Kentucky was tobacco country, and had never heard of Brown & Williamson, the third biggest of America’s ‘Big 7’ tobacco giants. Moreover, they seem to have a quite remarkably inordinate amount of power in Kentucky. We’re talking suborning the Feds and getting the Kentucky Supreme Court to issue gagging orders.

What I think I’ve learnt more generally about America, however, is that the different states really are different political entities. Here we saw Mississippi suing tobacco to reclaim the health costs on tobacco-related illnesses. Individual states run their own health service systems (or used to – I don’t know how that has changed with the Obama reforms that the Republicans seem so vehemently opposed to). Frankly, I’m not sure I ever knew what the American system of health coverage was. I suppose in the UK we picture American doctors riffling through patients’ wallets before they drag them from the train wreck, but it’s clear that states did cover some health costs.

Can we go there?

The action in The Insider darts around the United States – from Kentucky to New York to Mississippi to Nebraska. A lot of it was filmed on location – the opening scene in Lebanon was shot in Israel and even Bergman’s enforced vacation was shot in the Bahamas (what’s the betting Pacino insisted on that?). Crowe had the rather less glamorous backdrop of Louisville, Kentucky, for most of his scenes. When Wigand and Bergman have their first meeting they really are in Louisville’s Seelbach Hotel. Their second face-to-face, in Wigand’s car, occurs with them parked on the banks of the Ohio River, looking across to the Colgate factory in Clarksville, Indiana. Wigand’s homes were on Croydon Circle in Hurstbourne and Seneca Park. He later goes to teach at the duPont Manual High School .

Crowe and Pacino did have a sojourn in Pascagoula, Mississippi. The courtroom used in the film was the actual one in which Wigand’s real-life deposition was taken. Likewise the house belonging to Richard Scruggs (Colm Feore) was actually the real Scruggs’ home; unfortunately it was levelled by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Overall Rating: 3/5

Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)

Dir. Michael Apted

Starring: Sissy Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones, Beverley D’Angelo, Levon Helm

“I was born a coal miner’s daughter  

 In a cabin on a hill in Butcher Holler; 

 We were poor, but we had love, 

 That’s the one thing that daddy made sure of; 

 He shovelled coal to make a poor man’s dollar…”

 And there, in the lyrics of a song by Loretta Lynn, is the plot of Coal Miner’s Daughter.

The film tells the story of Loretta Lynn (Sissy Spacek), one of country music’s biggest stars. It takes the viewer from her childhood in a shack in the Kentucky coal-mining hamlet of Butcher Hollow, through to her headlining stadium tours as “the first lady of country”. There are plenty of thrills and spills along the way: married at aged 13, a mother of four by age 20, a grand-mother by 29. Her husband Doolittle (a shockingly young Tommy Lee Jones) spots her talent for singing and encourages her to learn the guitar, to perform in honky-tonks, and to write her own material. She gets her big break through sheer dogged persistence, cutting a record and then driving from radio station to radio station to get it on the air. She appears at Nashville’s famous Grand Ol’ Opry and makes friends with Patsy Cline (Beverley D’Angelo), the queen of country. She tours with Cline, and when Cline dies in a plane crash Lynn continues solo. Through all the twists and turns her volatile relationship with Doolittle provides a counterpoint.

Quite remarkably, Spacek and Jones seem to age with their characters. Spacek is unsettlingly believable as a pubescent, and then matures into a hot-tempered young woman and then a more matronly country star. She is aware of her failings all the way through. She is not an educated girl and she knows it. But she’s smart - “I may be ign’ant, but I’m not stooped” she says. Yet others may look down on her. One radio station manager tells her to “come off that dumb hillbilly act”; Doo replies “If you knew Loretta, you’d know that ain’t no act.” At first she has to be talked into each new step. The game changer is when she and Doo return to Butcher Hollow for her father’s funeral. It is then that she is able to tell Doo that she wants to be a singer, she wants it so bad. Jones too fills out from his fluorescent-haired youth into a stronger man. He has an enviable drive and determination (“that son of a gun Doolittle don’t know the meanin’ of the word ‘quit’!”) This is first seen when he bets that he can drive his jeep up a steep spoil heap. He sets his sights on Loretta, and he wins her. He then determines to make her a star, which he does. But what then? He gets her to the pinnacle, so what is left for him to drive towards. He feels like a spare part. Eventually he vacates himself from the tour and gets a job as a car mechanic, indulging in his love of vehicles. But he is always there when Loretta needs him. Even at the end of the film their relationship is still strong. He decides to surprise her by building her a new house, with a view over the trees that reminds them of Kentucky. They get to arguing about where the bedroom will be. He growls “like a big ol’ bear” and threatens to divorce her and move out to a treehouse. They laugh. He may have hit her, he may have (almost) cheated on her, but dat-gone it, they still love each other. He had always been her drive, her inspiration and her support.

It was a teenage wedding and the old folks wished them well:
Doo (Jones) and Loretta (Spacek) go to show you never can tell

But there was one more contributing factor to her success. She wasn’t some groomed and manufactured pop commodity. She was real. She came from the poorest of backgrounds and wound up a star, giving hope to thousands. In the title song she says “I’m proud to be a coal miner’s daughter / I remember well the well where I drew water…” Because she draws upon her own real-life experiences – from her impoverished but loving upbringing to her start singing in honky-tonks, up to her struggles to keep her man – there is a truth in her lyrics that appeals to people. They have lived through the same experiences and can relate to her lyrics. There is a personal connection between audience and star. And that is what gives her her success. Butcher Hollow is indeed the well where she drew water…

I think the biggest question to ask of any biographical film is: does it stand up on its own as a film even when you know nothing about the character being portrayed? This is a very good question to ask of Coal Miner’s Daughter. While I had heard of Loretta Lynn I couldn’t name any of her hits. I did know peripherally of Patsy Cline, but country music really isn’t my bag. And, yes: the plot does hold up. There was nothing that required specialist knowledge, there were no in-jokes or references that I could spot, and the story was pretty much universal: poor girl struggles up from nothing to become a star. And this wasn’t just history. At the time the film came out Loretta Lynn was only 45. She sat in the audience at the Academy Awards to see Spacek win the Best Actress Oscar for playing her (bizarrely, at the same time the boxer Jake LaMotta was also sat in the audience to see Rober DeNiro’s portrayal of him win the Best Actor Oscar too).

In the film when Loretta Lynn has to sing, that’s Sissy Spacek singing, live. When Patsy Cline has to sing, that’s Beverley D’Angelo singing. Strangely there is one genuine musician in the cast – Levon Helm, formerly of The Band, who plays the coal miner of the title, Loretta’s father Ted Webb. Helm himself died less than a fortnight ago at the time of writing.

What have I learnt about Kentucky?

I said earlier that in my head Kentucky and Tennessee tend to become a little conflated. Coal Miner’s Daughter states in its credits that it is filmed in both states, and there is a criss-crossing between the two. Kentucky has country music, but the pinnacle of country is the Grand Ol’ Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. The two states have (or had) a chain of small local radio stations devoted to country music scattered all over them. To my ears there is a subtle distinction between the polished up glitzy stadium country played in Nashville and the older folk music of the hills. Compare Lynn’s box-ticking You’re Lookin’ At Country with a song she sings much earlier in the film, a ballad called The Titanic… or indeed the harmonies of the funeral crowd singing Amazing Grace.

In terms of visuals, the opening scenes of Kentucky in the ‘40s show it as a tough land. “If you’re born in Kentucky you’ve got three choices: coal mine, moonshine, or move it on down the line…” Men blackened with coal dust climbing from the mines, long walks up hillsides studded with bare trees, snowflakes drifting to the ground. This is coal country. People are poor but family-oriented. And marriage at 13, while regrettable, is not illegal (as I say, this is the ‘40s we are talking about). Maybe I was wrong with my earlier assumption that Kentucky is wealthy.

Can we go there?

The movie was shot on location wholly in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. Even the bits set in Washington state.

Chief among locations has, of course, to be Butcher Hollow. This is part of the larger settlement of Van Lear in Johnson County, eastern Kentucky. (It’s obviously a musical part of the world; her younger sister is better known as the singer Crystal Gayle and yet another country musician, Dwight Yoakam – who appeared as the abusive Doyle in Sling Blade – was born in nearby Pikeville). The Consolidated Coal Company founded Van Lear in the early 1900s, and the mines were in operation up until the 1940s. The town still hosts a Coal Miners’ Museum and a period general store, now known as Webb’s Store. It is owned by Herman Webb, Loretta’s brother, who runs tours up to their childhood home in Butcher Hollow.

And the real-life locations were used in the film. That deep valley looking down onto the train tracks? That is Van Lear. Likewise the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, home of the Grand Ol’ Opry, was used for filming, as was the Loretta Lynn ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. Tours of the ranch take place, where visitors can see ‘Loretta’s Plantation Home, Butcher Holler Home Place & Simulated Coal Mine’. That Butcher Holler Home Place is the cabin constructed for the film to stand in for her actual childhood home. There is also an 18,000 sq ft Coal Miner’s Daughter Museum. Other Tennessee locations include Franklin: Loretta and Doo spent their wedding night at a long-out-of-action motor court nearby, and the WSM radio tower and WAGG radio station were visited on the Lynn’s road trip.

Overall Rating: 3/5

Week 18:Kentucky

"Spread your wings for New Orleans
 Kentucky bluebird,
 Fly away..."
 - 'Message to Michael',
 Dionne Warwick

As our train rolls off down the track my first thought was that Kentucky has a lot of similarities with its southern neighbour Tennessee. You know: country music an' all.

But then I started to think. And actually, Kentucky has lots of unique identifiers. There's the cuisine - the wings mentioned above could well be hot wings. The famous Kentucky Fried Chicken (made to the Colonel's secret recipe) originates here, and we can wash it down with bourbon. They have - rather annoyingly for a United fan at present - their blue moon of Kentucky, their bluegrass music and their actual blue grass: poa pratensis. This Kentucky bluegrass shimmers across the landscape, cropped by thoroughbred horses. So there are estates stocked with the finest mounts in the Western hemisphere and the solid presence of Fort Knox (home to at least part of the U.S. gold reserves): this could well be a very wealthy state. Not what I first imagined at all.

Before we spread our wings for New Orleans there's the minor issue of three films to watch. This week I shall be checking out:

• Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)
• The Insider (1999)
• Racing Stripes (2005)