Writing Prompt #7

 

After years mostly dormant, I am attempting to work myself into being a writer again. To that end, I did a simple Google search for "writing prompts" and chose the first link listed, which included a total of 20 prompts. My goal is to write from a new prompt each day, giving myself 10 minutes before calling "hands up, utensils down" (so to speak), and then posting the unedited result in this blog. The post below is today's entry.

 

"Write a review of the last movie you saw."

 

“Feel-good” movies are sometimes derided, sometimes dismissed, and almost never critically acclaimed. When a feel-good flick is also a biopic, it can be overly sentimental and even shade into soft hagiography. At their best, though, feel-good films make their viewers, well, feel good. My All-American did just that for me.

 

My All-American tells the story of Freddie Steinmark, an undersized but dogged defensive back for the University of Texas Longhorns in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The upbeat, devoutly Catholic Freddie is shown as a winner from his youth, winning games, winning the confidence of coaches at all levels, and winning the heart of his eventual fiancée, Linda, before ultimately being diagnosed with bone cancer, to which he succumbed shortly afterward.

 

Freddie’s story is his own, of course, though its cinematic telling echoes previous depictions of football players, especially Rudy and Brian’s Song. The film does not provide harsh, documentary-style grittiness, but that does not seem to be its aim. From all accounts, the actual Freddie Steinmark truly did inspire his teammates, coaches, and friends. The filmmakers’ choices zero in on the things about him that did that—his faith (alluded to many times though not shown in a cartoonish way), his discipline, and his unwillingness to give up despite enormous physical, psychological, and emotional challenges.

 

Ultimately, I did not watch My All-American to see the dark side of an otherwise upstanding person or to learn more about the seedy underbelly of big-time college sports—I know enough plenty about the influence of big money on athletics and even more about the complexity and contradictions of human souls, but I am old enough to dismiss the folly of believing the pessimistic take is the only or truest take. I watched it in the hope that Freddie’s better qualities might rub off on me as well. God willing, they will someday.