The Bad News Bears
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The Bad News Bears is a 1976 film directed by Michael Ritchie. It stars Walter Matthau and Tatum O'Neal. The film was followed by two sequels, The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training in 1977 and The Bad News Bears Go to Japan in 1978, and a short-lived 1979 CBS television series, none of which were able to duplicate the success of the original. Also notable was the score by Jerry Fielding, which is an adaptation of the principal themes of Carmen.
A remake of the movie, directed by Richard Linklater with Billy Bob Thornton taking the role of Morris Buttermaker, was released on July 22, 2005.
[edit] Plot
Morris Buttermaker (Matthau), an alcoholic ex-professional baseball player, becomes the coach of a cellar-dwelling Little League team, the Bears. By recruiting a couple of unlikely prospects - an ex-girlfriend's 11-year old daughter (O'Neal), and local troublemaker Kelly Leak (Jackie Earle Haley) - he turns the team into a near-champion as the finish in 2nd place.
In an important sense, the film is about the adults —the victory-obsessed Little League moms and dads who value winning above all else, including sportsmanship and enjoyment. In his 1976 review, critic Roger Ebert called the movie "an unblinking, scathing look at competition in American society." As the Bears begin to improve, coach Buttermaker gets caught up in this dynamic. Much of the film's drama is the way in which the league championship trophy, suddenly and surprisingly within reach, conflicts with his players' self-respect. The film culminates in the "big game," but most of the usual screen cliches are discarded in favor of a harrowing showdown between the favored Yankees' pitcher and his father/coach, counterintuitive strategy by both teams, and a game-winning play that isn't.
The film was notable in its time for the amount of vulgarity (including profanity and ethnic slurs) placed into the mouths of the various child-actors who played the principal roles (specifically, a memorable Tanner Boyle, played by Chris Barnes, quoted as calling his teammates en masse "a bunch of Jews, spics, niggers, pansies, and a booger-eating moron"). However, all of the questionable dialogue was used for comic effect. A true product of the mid-70s, the film includes a now-scandalous scene where an inebriated Buttermaker drives around the team, who are not wearing seatbelts, in his open-top convertible.
The Bad News Bears was filmed in and around Los Angeles, primarily in the San Fernando Valley. The Little League they played at was Mason Park in Chatsworth, California. In the film, the Bears were sponsored by an actual company, "Chico's Bail Bonds," a touch that fit in nicely with the idea that the Bears were a ragtag group of misfit kids who could not find a more respectable sponsor.
