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Don't Like How
Life Treated You? Make A Movie. by Joe McKeever
I haven't actually seen "Cinderella
Man" yet, the movie some are calling the best of the year.
This is the saga of prizefighter James Braddock and his struggle
to provide for his family during the Great Depression using his
fists and a courage that refused to quit. Anyone who sits through
the previews several times, as I have now done, pretty much knows
the story. And interestingly, it's all history. Almost all.
Braddock was born in New York
City's Hell's Kitchen. He fought his way out of poverty and and
eventually challenged for the light heavyweight championship of
the world, a fight he lost. Apparently an average boxer--he lost
20 times--he finally took a job on the New Jersey docks to support
his wife and three children. Then he got a lucky break.
One night, on a boxing card that
featured heavyweight champion Primo Carnera fighting challenger
Max Baer, Braddock went against someone named Corn Griffin and
knocked him out. Just a year later, after upsetting two more contenders,
Braddock was fighting Max Baer, the reigning heavyweight champion
of the world.
Peter Finney, New Orleans' own
champion sports columnist for nearly half a century, writes, "Here
he was, a hopeless underdog who had lost 20 times on the roller-coaster
journey, fighting a guy whose fists had been responsible for the
death of two opponents." Then he adds: "No Hollywood
hokum. It was all true."
"And there they were,"
he continues, "on June 13, 1935, Braddock and Baer fighting
for the title, as some of Braddock's faithful, listening to the
broadcast, prayed for the Irishman's safety inside a Jersey church."
According to the movie, the two
boxers went at it tooth and nail for 15 hard rounds. Directed
by Ron Howard--how far he has come from Mayberry--the men pummeled
each other with so many devastating blows and knockout punches,
one wonders how anyone could endure such pain and live to tell
it. That's what columnist Finney wondered. And he wondered how
sportswriters of the time had covered such a monumental bout.
So, Finney did something I admire
mightily. He dug up the newspapers records of the original fight
to see how ringside writers described this vicious pounding that
surely must have left both men as invalids.
Ah, what he found out.
"It was a putrid fight,"
said Jack Dempsey, former champ and writing for a newspaper association.
"There were no thrills, no spectacular moments. It was a
sad exhibition on Max's part. He simply clowned the title away."
Henry McLemore, writing for United
Press International, described how "I saw Braddock fight
a fight that was dull, uninspired and which would not have earned
him the decision over a half dozen mediocre ringmen working in
the business today. His jab was slow and sickly. His right hand
struck Baer on the jaw 50 times without so much as making Max
blink. As for Baer, he didn't throw 10 genuine punches of any
sort in 15 rounds. Braddock won the world championship with a
fight that, had it been presented at a small club, both fighters
would have been thrown out of the ring...."
Reality sure has a way of messing
up a good story, doesn't it. Unless you're a movie maker and then
you just tweak the history and make it come out any way you like.
Ask Oliver Stone.
Or a novelist on the order of
Dan Brown. You've heard of his fanciful tale, "The DaVinci
Code."
Two footnotes to the Braddock
story from Peter Finney you may find fascinating.
First, as the new heavyweight
champion of the world, Braddock lost his first and only defense
of the title. He lost to a fellow you may have heard of named
Joe Louis. Braddock would fight only one more time before walking
away.
But he did something so shrewd
that 70 years later, we are still stunned and sports business
people are still shaking their heads in admiration. Before giving
Joe Louis a shot at the heavyweight crown, Braddock asked for
and received a contract in which Louis would pay him ten percent
of the profits he made over the next ten years. And that made
Braddock a rich man.
With the money from Joe Louis
and from his own fights, Braddock built his family a large red-brick
home overlooking the Hudson River, where, as Finney writes, "the
Braddocks lived happily ever after."
And that, Finney adds, "was
no Hollywood hokum."
By now, most of us know not to
look to movies for our history. Not about the Crusades or Alexander
the Great or any other figure or event of the past. Moviemakers
have one overriding concern that dwarfs their commitment to accuracy:
to tell a story that will sell.
It reminds me of a vintage Peanuts
strip in which the teacher has asked the children to write an
essay on what they did during the summer. Linus reads his report
aloud: "Even though I was swimming and playing ball and enjoying
the beach, I longed to hear the bell signaling the return to school.
There is something about walking these hallowed halls of learning
that nothing can compare with. The pleasantries of summer pale
beside the joys of school." He thanks the teacher for the
A-plus, and as he returns to his seat, he remarks to the other
children, "As the years come and go, one learns what sells."
Two quick observations.
One. Aren't we glad the novelists
and playwrights did not get hold of the Holy Scriptures in their
original editions. No Hollywood hokum here. This is the real stuff.
As though addressing the very
charge that parts of the scripture were made of whole cloth by
wishful thinkers, one of the apostles wrote, "We weren't,
you know, just wishing on a star when we laid the facts out before
you regarding...Jesus Christ. We were there.... We saw it with
our >own eyes: Jesus resplendent with light from God the Father....We
couldn't be more sure of what we saw and heard--God's glory, God's
voice." (II Peter 1 from "The Message")
Two. Who among us would not like
to go into our own past and tamper with the record, erasing that
rudeness and correcting this foolishness, healing that hurt. Sort
of cosmetic surgery in reverse. But alas, that option is available
only in make believe. But there is something of a far better nature.
There is One who can do something
moviemakers can only dream about: a) reach into our past and forgive
us of our wrongs, b) use those mistakes to make us smarter and
better and stronger and more useful, and c) make us into wise
teachers and leaders to help others learn from our lives.
There is One who can do this.
But only One, actually: the Lord Jesus Christ, the One who inhabits
eternity and yet dwelt on earth in time. As the writer of Hebrews
put it, He is "the same yesterday, today and forever."
(13:8) Something we cannot say of anyone else.
He alone is able to help us in
the ways we need it most.
So, there's no point in making
up lies about your past to turn yourself into a winner. Neither
is there any point in grieving over your past failures. Just tell
the truth about yourself to the One who is The Truth, and let
Him take it from there.
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