Rollerball (1975) A Film by Norman Jewison, Screenplay by William Harrison

Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 20, 2014

“We Shall Overcome” 

The awful reality is what I overheard Jimmy Caan repeat so I could barely hear it one day: “Destroy…destroy…destroy”. Jimmy was such a great protagonist as Jonathan E for Houston Energy that I was always rooting for him, but in the end, in 2014, the movie is essentially “Pro-League”. Part of the myth that held the Rollerball League together was that we could all “dream” to be Jonathan E, but in Corporate eyes, if not the fans’, he was an ideal, not a person. Jonathan disagreed. He was a person, with feelings (Corporate Executives took his wife away).

For Jonathan, it was about keeping fans hopeful and thirsting for more—and getting paid for it. That’s what he thought, until the owners try to force him out…he’s too good, “They’re scared of you Jonathan, all the way to the top they are.” [Cleon Jones’ character]. For the owners (maybe I’m less hypnotized by the women in the film than I was almost four decades ago and can see it now), it’s about going on after the League’s pseudo-destruction in the Final. After all, at the end of the film, Jonathan E is still growling destruction, and there is a New York player injured, but still on the track next to his a motorcycle (Alec Baldwin?). Without a new League, poor Jonathan E will have nowhere else to go.

Note: 49er Head Coach Jim Harbaugh echoed the words of Jimmy Caan last night in the post-game show on Fox. Perhaps for his downed player NaVorro Bowman, perhaps to show solidarity with the NFL Owners regarding the “review” rule which may have cost the Niners the game and Bowman hero-status, Harbaugh said, “We are destroyed but not defeated.*”

*Paraphrased from the second hand account given to me by my wife Lucia

The NFL Superbowl is in New York this year, as was the Final game in Rollerball.