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Although I’ve been to a dozen major league ballparks over the years, storied Yankee Stadium was not among them. That fact would make my journey to Game 7 all the sweeter, I figured. Also, although the Boston Red Sox had not won the World Series in 85 years, I and millions of others had an excellent feeling that this year they’d finally go all the way. For once, we had some impressive facts to back up the positive vibes. The 2003 “Cowboy Up” Sox had broken all kinds of offensive records, including the powerhouse 1927 Yankees’ single season slugging percentage record. The other reason I felt like I should go to New York was that exactly 25 years earlier I’d shed a couple of teenage tears as I watched my beloved Red Sox lose the pennant to the Yankees when Bucky “F-ing” Dent lofted his fly ball over the Green Monster. And 17 Octobers earlier, I’d watched in mute horror, champagne glass wilting in my hand, as Bill Buckner’s 1986 Sox snatched defeat from the jaws of victory to glorify another New York team. Not only would this be the perfect way to see Yankee Stadium, this night could exorcise the ghosts of so many seasons gone by.
As I arrived in the Bronx just in time for the national anthem, it occurred to me that fate had set this up a little too neatly. Exactly 100 years ago the first motion picture had been screened, and later that year the Bostons had beaten the New Yorks in the very first World Series. Now, in what seasoned sportswriters were calling the most hostile territory that any professional athlete had ever entered, Sox ace Pedro Martinez was, in true mythological fashion, about to face future Hall of Famer and former Sox ace Roger Clemens—making possibly the last start of his career. Not only that, but because of a bench-clearing incident a week earlier at Fenway, sparked when Clemens brushed back Sox basher Manny Ramirez, (OK, there was more to it, but this is a short column), tension in the air could be cut with the wave of a bat. So a lot was riding on this game—the season, the hopes and dreams of two cities, the credentials of what promised to forever define the careers of two legendary “big game” pitchers.
I don’t have to tell most of you what happened. Truth is, I
don’t have the stomach. Suffice it to say that the Sox were
cruising to a World Series appearance when their ace ran out of gas
and their manager ran out of brain cells. In my Sox cap, amongst
60,000 screaming Yankee fans, my obnoxiously gloating cousin among
them (I was gloating moments earlier), I can’t remember ever
feeling lonelier. A couple of weeks later, when Sox Manager Grady
Little thought he was about to be fired (he was right, for once),
he said “I’ll be just one more ghost in that clubhouse,
fully capable of haunting.” In other words, the demons that
plagued the Sox for nearly a century had been in the back of his
mind all the time.
And what, exactly, does all this have to do with independent moviemaking?
Nothing, really, and everything. Here are just a few lessons we can
learn:
- Success and failure are self-fulfilling prophecies. (Any “curse” will bite you if you believe in it.)
- Don’t gloat until you’re holding the Oscar.
- A star will get you an audience, but supporting players determine whether you win or lose. And, finally,
- Don’t give up, because there’s always next year. This issue we’re proud to feature seminal interviews with two of our favorite moviemakers, Anthony Minghella and Bill Macy, and much more. Enjoy all their wisdom, and please subscribe! See you in Park City. MM
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This story was published in the Fall 2003 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
MM Notebook
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Since 1987 Kodak has been the official partner of the Cannes Film Festival, sponsoring the Camera d’Or prize that is awarded yearly to the best feature film by a first-time director. The tradition continues in 2008 when, for the fifth consecutive year, the festival will also hand out the Kodak Discovery Prize for Best Short Film.
“Cannes draws a huge number of filmmakers from all over the world every year, which gives Kodak a great opportunity to host our customers and show them how committed we are to the industry and to motion picture innovation,” says Kim Snyder, Kodak’s president and general manager of the Entertainment Imaging Division.
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