Once In A Lifetime
Starring: Marv Albert, Franz Beckenbauer, Shep Messing, Pele, Steve Ross, Henry Kissinger
Written by: John Dower and Mark Monroe
Directed by: Paul Crowder and John Dower
Distributor: ESPN/Miramax
Rated: PG-13
You may find yourself in a comfortable seat in an indie movie theatre on the east side. You may find yourself watching a documentary about a US soccer team from the ‘70s. You may say to yourself, “Well, how did I get here? I don’t even like soccer. And where is David Byrne?” From some guy who’s done work for television (John Dower) and the film editor of Dogtown and Z-Boys and Riding Giants (Paul Crowder) comes a flashy film about the New York Cosmos. Somewhere in the hazy primordial ooze of the 1970s, they were a legendary New York team that featured some of the biggest names to ever play the game before it collapsed along with the rest of professional U.S. soccer at the dawn of the 80’s.
While the film isn’t terribly deep or ambitious, Crowder and Dower have put together a very glossy package that can be a lot of fun to watch. We follow the birth of the team through to its inevitable demise in period footage and contemporary interviews that have been pasted together with a poorly written voice-over by Matt Dillon. The voice-over kind of sounds like anything else you might here on a cable sports documentary. The notable difference here is that every now and then when the documentary talks directly to the audience, one gets a, “Hey, that sounds like Matt Dillon,” experience. The story moves from one moment in history to the next with the style and sensibility of a pretty solid TV documentary. It never really elevates beyond this, but this hardly matters, as the film delivers an entertaining history lesson to those with enough interest in the subject matter to get them through the door to see the film.
The story focuses pretty closely on corporate giant and US soccer fan Steve Ross. Somewhere around the beginning of the 90’s, he somewhat casually merged Time Inc. and Warner Brothers. A couple of years later, he died. A little more than a decade and a half before that, he became the president and CEO of Warner Communications. With a substantial sum of money, he forged a US professional soccer league that peaked in 1980 with frequently sold-out games at Giants stadium. The Steve Ross end of the film is morbidly interesting in many ways. When faced with the need to promote soccer to make it profitable, he sunk a huge amount of money into acquiring Brazilian soccer legend Pelé. Thanks to Ross’ desire to promote the sport, Pelé was one of the first professional athletes to get a multi-million dollar contract. Brazil was a bit upset about having lost one of its single biggest celebrities and demanded that he play one more year in his native country before moving to the US. Ross was upset. He called someone who called someone at the White House and eventually soccer fan Henry Kissinger was calling Brazil, which quickly became very excited about the prospect of having Pelé play with the New York Cosmos. Kissinger appears briefly in interview footage. Pelé declined to be interviewed for the movie. As interesting as this all sounds, it’s not executed well by the filmmakers.
The problem with the documentary is not that stories like the one above lack interest or enough volume to fill a feature length film. The problem here is that the guys doing the documentary don’t deliver the story with the kind of passion that makes for a great movie. The storytelling is uninspired. Everything’s flat and glossy. Like cable TV. VS
Russ Bickerstaff is a local poet and writer. His poems can be heard regularly at Linneman's Monday Poetry Night.
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