The Curse of ESPN Movie

Given the thankless task of trying to portray Bob Knight in ESPN’s “A Season on the Brink,” Brian Dennehy throws a chair, curses, pummels a water cooler, curses, upends a cart of basketballs, curses, berates everyone around him, curses, says he can’t take it anymore, curses and storms off camera.

If only real life had imitated art.

Dennehy, an award-winning actor, didn’t need this. He didn’t have to risk his honorable reputation on ESPN’s first--and, we can mightily hope, last--attempt at movie making. As soon as he saw the hack job of a script, he should have flung it across the room, dropped a few f-bombs (in keeping with his character for one final moment) and high-tailed it back to Showtime, where he won Emmy and Screen Actors Guild awards for his portrayal of Willie Loman in “Death of a Salesman.”

For his next role, I’d advise Dennehy to strongly consider the lead in “Firing of an Agent.”

Billy Packer has called “A Season on the Brink,” which airs tonight at 5, “a piece of garbage.” Packer is right, but for the wrong reason--he was deeply offended by the profanity in the script, which shows Knight to be a man in dire need of a bigger rhyming dictionary. In one early sequence that somehow wasn’t featured in ESPN’s round-the-clock trailer, Dennehy as Knight uses the word that sounds like “duck” 15 times in three minutes.

(That could be a record, breaking standards set by “The Sopranos,” “South Park” and Tom Lasorda.)

Actually, the profanity is one of the very few things “A Season on the Brink” gets right.

This much, most of America knows about Knight: He throws tantrums, he bullies referees and players, he wins a lot of games, he got fired from Indiana and he curses.

To make a movie about Knight without expletives would be like making a movie about World War II without bullets.

Which, interestingly enough, is also something ESPN has tried.

Two versions of “A Season on the Brink” will air tonight, simultaneously, on ESPN and ESPN2.

ESPN gets the rough cut, so to speak.

ESPN2 gets the sanitized, supposedly-safe-for-young ears version.

The network shipped copies of the R-rated cut for advance review purposes, so I can only guess here: The other one’s a silent movie, right?

At one point in the film, which focuses on Indiana’s 1985-86 season, the host of Knight’s television talk show asks the coach why he uses the f-word so much.

Because, Knight responds, it is “the most expressive word in the English language. It can be used for surprise. (He helpfully provides an example.) It can be used for anger. (Another example.) It can be used for dismay. (One more example.)”

Knocked back into his chair, the host runs up the white flag. “Got it,” he says. “I won’t ask you when we go on camera.”

Looking away, Knight deadpans, “Well, that’s your call.”

That’s as funny, and as illuminating, as the movie gets.

If you ever wondered how the “SportsCenter” cut-and-paste approach might work for a feature-length film, here it is.

The movie is one long procession of game highlights stitched together with locker-room scenes and quick sound-bites and music, for no apparent deeper purpose than filling up the appointed time slot.

Except “SportsCenter” mixes it up--a little baseball here, some basketball there, a football update after commercial break. Not here. Here is what “A Season on the Brink” gives the viewer: rant, rant, rant; touching scene with Knight and his son to show his softer side, abuse, abuse abuse; touching scene with Knight and a former player to show his softer side, rant, rant, rant; Indiana loses its Big Ten finale to Michigan, Knight walks off the court.

And then, as the closing credits roll, the movie completely undermines itself by showing clips of the real Knight and all the greatest hits--brandishing the bull whip, bullying Jeremy Schapp, snarling through those infamous news conferences. Dennehy does his best to capture the essence of Knight the ogre, but when you catch a view of the real thing, Dennehy looks like nothing so much as a cranky old uncle who just needs more hugs and a better sweater next Christmas.

Interestingly, ESPN’s first movie winds up torpedoed by the fact it was ESPN’s first movie.

John Feinstein, who wrote the book on which the film is based, once worked for the network as a basketball analyst before a very acrimonious parting. ESPN needed Feinstein’s assistance on the project, but knew making the peace was going to be difficult.

When it didn’t happen and Feinstein decided not to participate as a consultant, the producers were left to go it on their own.

What they came up with, in Feinstein’s view, is something “they should air on Saturday morning, with all the other cartoons.”

Feinstein charges the movie makers with fabricating scenes designed to “humanize” Knight, including the coach’s final words to his team after the regular season-ending loss to Michigan:

“If you were to say to me, ‘Pick one of two possibilities at the end of that Michigan game: a) Knight walked up the ramp into the locker room and said, “Fellas, let’s not let one bad game ruin a great season,” or b) [he] was kidnapped by aliens walking off the floor,’ I would say b) was more likely.”

Too much of the budget was spent on promotion, Feinstein believes, and says, “It shows. It shows in the quality of the movie and in the fact that they have drummed up all this interest in it. Because that’s what ESPN does. They promote.

“I mean, is ‘SportsCenter’ any good? Not really. It’s a bunch of Keith Olbermann wannabes. But the commercials are brilliant. They do a great job of promoting their brand. That’s always been their strength. But product is not their strength. And this is another example.”

Feinstein, though, has kind words for Dennehy, who certainly deserved better.

“I thought Dennehy was good,” he says. “Given the material he had to work with, he did about as well as you could do ....

“But, as much as Dennehy tried, he can’t be Bob Knight. Thank God. There’s only one.”