THE LONGEST YARD

by Kevin Koehler

Men like to watch other men playing sports, perhaps even more than they like playing sports themselves. I'm sure there are biological explanations, sociological ones, probably involving hunting and gathering, dominance, and other caveman things. I like to think that what sports represent is true egalitarianism, practiced in a form we unfortunately do not see elsewhere in society. Rules are written down and enforced (poor refereeing aside) with general equality - both competitors start with zero and the team with the most points wins.

O.J. Simpson can murder his wife, but the Royals will still beat the Yankees if they score more runs. The Yankees also have ten times the payroll of the Royals, but that's neither here nor there - this is the land of equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.

Above all else, cheating (even the simple suggestion of cheating) undermines the equality of sports in which we are so invested. This is why Ty Cobb - unrepentant racist, womanizer, alcoholic, thug, and all-around asshole - is in the baseball hall of fame while the man who broke his unbreakable hits records, Pete Rose - repentant gambler and all-around asshole - is not. Mark "I don't want to talk about the past" McGwire will likely share his fate.

In The Longest Yard, Burt Reynolds plays disgraced ex-quarterback Paul "Wrecking" Crewe. He wasted his talent, tossed from the NFL after his involvement in a points-shaving scandal. We're introduced as he engages in various self-destructive behaviors: drinking, stealing a car, and beating his girlfriend (not necessarily in that order). This episode (all taking place before the opening credits) culminates in Crewe's incarceration for a few months at the state pokie. He quickly finds himself an outcast among the rapists and murderers – like most sports fans, the domestic violence they can look past, but throwing a football game is simply unforgivable. Crewe is ultimately recruited (with a combination of carrots and sticks) by the warden to organize a prison team to face the guards, thusly set on his path to unlikely redemption.

Though possessing an undeniable pop sentimentality that often muddies its outsider stance, The Longest Yard dovetails nicely with the other anti-establishment films of the time, such as Bonnie & Clyde and, particularly, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. We are constantly reminded of the inherent inequality and corruption of our social systems - in Cuckoo's Nest, the asylum is the target and cultural metaphor; here, it is the prison (remember Cuckoo's Nest's chief criticism of Nurse Ratched, as voiced by Nicholson: "She likes to play a rigged game").

Crewe's motley band of murderers, petty thieves, and lifelong criminals (including Esterhaus from Hill Street Blues, the James Bond baddie "Jaws," and Teen Wolf's dad) are the improbable heroes of the film, the abusive guards and warden the villains. Where Milos Forman and Randle P. McMurphy (not to mention author Ken Kesey) made "crazy" a matter of perception (what is insane in a world that's gone mad?), The Longest Yard asks what it means to be criminal in a system without fairness, where (like many films produced in the shadow of Vietnam) violence is cloaked in duty and righteousness?

Interesting footnote: Director Robert Aldrich had a fairly interesting career. He started out as an A.D. to Charlie Chaplin; like his former employer, Aldrich's commercial successes (the camp classic Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? and The Dirty Dozen) allowed him to found (briefly) his own studio. His 1968 film The Killing of Sister George was provocative for the time (though quite dated now) for it's relatively candid treatment of lesbianism.

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