The Bronx is Bumbling
Beyond the fact that I liked Turturro as Billy Martin and even Daniel Sunjatta as a suspiciously slender Reggie Jackson, but thought Oliver Platt was badly miscast as Steinbrenner, my real problem with The Bronx is Burning was the whole premise of the adaptation: this project should have been a documentary.
What makes Mahler’s book great is the weaving of New York City’s 1977 storyline—the mayoral race, graffiti writers, newspapermen, cops, the disco scene, the 44 caliber killer, the blackout—with the ’77 Yankees storyline. City history and sports history are on completely equal footing.
In the dramatized Bronx is Burning last night on ESPN, which seemed not to have the budget to afford extensive period shooting on location, the city history part of the story boiled down to a ten second documentary clip on Abe Beam letting go of civil servants and some extremely wonky Son of Sam scenes, which only served as a painful reminder how much better Spike Lee had already treated the exact same material.
The inter-cutting of documentary footage—from Chambliss’ ’76 pennant winning blast to Abe Beam at the City Hall podium, and especially the post-episode interviews with Reggie Jackson and former Sport Magazine contributor Robert Ward (who got the infamous “straw that stirs the drink” interview and plays himself in the mini-series), raised the prospect again and again of how much better a documentary could have been.
Without a doubt, to serve its audience, ESPN even if they had gone the documentary route, would have had to give the NYC side stories a lot less airtime than the book did. Still a doc that leaned more towards ESPN’s own “Once in a Lifetime” and less to PBS’s “Unforgiveable Blackness” would have been a million times better the pale and static imitation they’ve served up. If the producers thought they needed a little star power, they could’ve had Turturro narrate and spent the rest of the extra budget they would've saved clearing music for a great soundtrack (ala Once in a Lifetime).Overall, it’s encouraging that ESPN had the ambition to take on a project of this dimension, but so far the execution is pretty disappointing.
4 Comments:
I agree. Maybe someone will adapt the book into a doc.
What about Giambi as the Cab Driver? He better get used to it, aheh heh haha hoho hee hee.
The On-Location scenes leave one anxious, as if they could replicate the Wasteland of then with the posh paradise NYC of today. I cant wait til see how Bushwick fairs...
i've come to the conclusion, Once In a Lifetime is only that much better after watching this.......
I completely agree. Hopefully, someone still can make a documentary. What a great book. I was 7 at the time, so I don't have many memories from that year, but I do remember going to NYC regularly with my folks, and it was a scary scary place.
btw- I wore my Mr. October shirt to the Yankee Boston media game this year and got mad props. When I told the writers who made it, they said things like, "I read that guy all the time. He ripped me a new one last year!'
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