A Booth Full of Wit and Ego

Television has seen original sports movies galore in recent years, from HBO’s dark and funny “Don King: Only in America” to ABC’s dim account of Billy Jean King versus Bobby Riggs, an absurd scenario that claimed her camera-tailored tennis win over this aging grifter somehow emboldened contemporary feminism.

Coming in March is a Starz movie about the Joe Louis-Max Schmeling boxing rivalry that turned friendly and “A Season on the Brink,” ESPN’s version of John Feinstein’s book about the 1985-86 Indiana University basketball team and its volcanic coach, Bobby Knight.

The book was said to be unpopular with Knight, who has since moved on to Texas Tech after being expelled from Hoosierdom following one explosion too many. The actor playing him, Brian Dennehy, proclaims himself Knight’s “huge fan,” however, and promises a “fair statement” on this polarizing sports figure.

Well, ESPN is nothing if not ... fair?

Meanwhile, tonight brings TNT’s often entertaining “Monday Night Mayhem,” recalling Roone Arledge’s goofy idea about a prime-time home for the NFL on ABC. And a broadcast booth inhabited by a trio of personalities, two of whom--urban extraterrestrial Howard Cosell and Mr. Aw-Shucks himself, Dandy Don Meredith--would turn out to be Curly and Moe.

Was Arledge, who was then ABC Sports president, crazy? Yes, crazy like a visionary, one whose risky concept, developed in conjunction with NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, would give then-floundering ABC a bold new signature en route to becoming the most enduring franchise in prime-time history. And 311/2 years after the mayhem began, “Monday Night Football” is still puttering along with a threesome in the booth that includes a comic doing jokes.

“The presentation is gonna be everything,” Arledge (John Heard) says prophetically in the movie, although having good games to telecast is also beneficial.

There’s a lot here about network jealousies, with NBC getting ever edgy about the huge early success of “Monday Night Football,” which sat Keith Jackson beside Cosell and Meredith its first season before Arledge turned to vanilla Frank Gifford.

“Monday Night Football” fanatics should have great fun with this. Many of the storied squabbles and idiosyncrasies are covered here: Gifford (Kevin Anderson) stumbling over players’ names, Meredith (Brad Beyer) tiring of playing Dandy Don, Arledge refusing to return calls, and director Chet Forte (Nicholas Turturro) favoring shots of female cleavage, and impaling himself on his gambling addiction.

Inevitably, though, this becomes less about them, and even about the show that made some of them fleeting media stars, than about the strongest personality and only indelible member of the group, the auteur of public insults and diatribes who enraged nearly all of them at one time or another.

Of course, that’s Cosell (John Turturro), brilliant, magnetic and even courageous, but also insufferable, self-serving and, at times, as phony as his pancake of hair. He was sportscasting’s hybrid of eloquence and bombast, good cop/bad cop rolled into one.

As the movie does gradually tilt darkly his way, it becomes as wearisome as Cosell himself ultimately became when growing increasingly bitter and alienated, his self-puffery and craving for work with more “gravity”--including anchoring the evening news--becoming impossible to contain.

It’s a dissent into isolation and paranoia that Turturro captures ably while walking one of those fine lines separating credible acting from caricature. He’s mastered Cosellspeak and the physical mannerisms, including Cosell’s habit of draping his arm around the shoulders of the person beside him. Compare Turturro’s work here with Fred Willard’s in “When Billy Beat Bobby,” and you’ll see just how buffoonish a Cosell depiction can be.

Although gifted in many ways, Cosell himself would become a self parody. He clearly didn’t understand his limitations, affirmed by his ill-fated variety show (he even sang on one telecast) and other TV adventures with entertainers in which he became a willing shill for celebrityhood. And unmentioned in this movie is how this self-proclaimed champion of ethical sports journalism fawned over the ABC stars that Arledge shamelessly marched into the booth on Monday nights to advertise the network’s prime-time schedule.

Tonight’s source is the “Monday Night Mayhem” book by Marc Gunther and Bill Carter. TNT’s script was also written by Carter, a New York Times reporter whose later book, “The Late Shift,” was the basis for an HBO movie about Jay Leno and David Letterman competing for Johnny Carson’s throne on NBC’s “Tonight Show.”

Heading “Monday Night Mayhem” director Ernest Dickerson’s credits is “Strange Justice,” a balanced and stylishly creative Showtime account of Anita Hill versus Clarence Thomas that earned a Peabody Award.

None of this validates “Monday Night Mayhem,” some of which is “fictionalized for dramatic purposes,” its ending disclaimer notes. As if, when watching several scenes that scream out “fantasy,” you would have to be told.

There are some fine ones, as well. One has Cosell and Arledge (the undersung Heard’s excellent work is especially noteworthy) lunching together quietly until their simmering antagonisms erupt, flaming into a bonfire of anger and emotion. Another shows Cosell (a New York Jew who was pelted by anti-Semitic mail) deeply introspective and sad, telling his beloved wife, Emmy (Patti LuPone), he’s “out there all alone” after being declared a racist because of labeling a scampering African American running back “a little monkey.” In fact, he had made an innocent generic reference during a game, one that had been twisted by his enemies and misunderstood by others, the criticism of him ignoring his famous commitment to civil rights.

The Cosell/Meredith/Gifford team lasted only a few years, the fabulous on-air chemistry that made them ultimately eating away at them like acid. First came fissures in the facade, then cracks, then open rupture. Many others would pass through this Monday night turnstile in years to come, but none as memorable as these three as a team or Cosell as an individual.

He appears to have been one of those narcissists who truly believed the wonderful things he said about himself. Although loving to display his large vocabulary, there was one word he was never able to comprehend.

Humility.

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“Monday Night Mayhem” airs tonight at 9 on TNT. The network has rated it TV-14-L (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14, with a special advisory for coarse language).