Friday, January 27, 2012

"Kill Tenace, Anyone?"





Wow, that is indeed the (terrible) working title for my latest never-to-be-written/produced screenplay!







In the grand tradition of my other fab movie ideas (http://nickeddyrelents.blogspot.com/2010/03/three-movie-plots.html ), I was struck over the head with the sudden need to pretend to make a movie when I read this (in that very same book about 70's baseball players discussed the other day):







And so it was back to Cincinnati for Game 6 [of the 1972 World Series],
where - in the lone blow-out of the Series - the Reds hammered Vida Blue and
three other A's pitchers for eight runs and 10 hits, while the A's managed only
one run off Ross Grimsley. After the game it was revealed that local authorities
had arrested a man at Riverfront who had been overheard making threatening
remarks about [A's catcher Gene] Tenace; the 32-year-old Louisville suspect had
a loaded pistol and a bottle of whiskey in his pants when he was arrested. "If
you got to go, Gene," Reggie Jackson joked, "at least it will be on national
television."


Now, I want you to sit still a minute and really try to think of a reason that someone should not make a starkly dramatic (with moments of mordant humor), realistic, meticulously true-to-era feature film about some guy from Louisville in 1972 having a bone to kill fucking Gene Tenace, of all people. What?? You can't think of a reason, is the point.

I mean, the movie could just be the dude's entire day leading up to his arrest, with vintage pickups and stopping to get gas with "What Condition (My Condition Is In)" on the radio in the station and vintage beef jerky wrappers and shit, never mind getting a budget together to rebuild replicas of parts of Riverfront stadium (for this would be a prestige production, flying loftily above mere CGI eye-foolery). Plus the casting of all the various Reds and A's players and Vin Scully and Bowie Kuhn and Kissinger and James Caan and Mick Ronson and everyone else who was around in 1972.



You can go ahead and do this, is the point. You have my permission.

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