Genre: Sports Drama
Premise: A former high school hoops star turned alcoholic is called upon to coach his former school’s basement-dwelling basketball team.
About: When all of “The Batman” controversy was going on (would Affleck still be the Batman? Did he want to be the Batman?), this is the movie Affleck decided to sign onto instead. It comes from long time spec shaman, Brad Ingelsby, who’s sold as many spec scripts as any writer this past decade.
Writer: Brad Ingelsby
Details: 124 pages
Well look at that. Just days after I pronounced the sports drama an express trip to Ignore E-mail Query Alley, I’m reviewing a sports drama that got Ben Affleck attached. What’s going on here? Well, for starters, it’s not so much a sports drama as it as a “Down-On-His-Luck Dude Coaches Kids” drama. If a formula has won over Hollywood before, it can do so again. At least that’s the industry mentality. Also, Ingelsby’s a writer with several produced credits and a reputation for writing some of the best spec scripts in town. In other words, there are extenuating circumstances.
Reading Affleck projects is always an inadvertent trip into his psyche. We know he has drinking problems. Today’s character has drinking problems. We know he loves sports. This is about sports. We know he loves that East Coast blue collar vibe, as that’s how he got famous (Good Will Hunting). I don’t know if all this was calculated by Ingelsby, but in retrospect it would’ve been more of a surprise had Affleck NOT signed on.
Just outside Philly, 30-something Jack Cunningham works construction, lives alone, and drinks on the daily. We get a good idea of what this man’s life is like when he strolls into a bar after work… on Thanksgiving. Problem with booze? Check.
But that’s not the only problem Jack’s got. He’s got a pushy sister who’s always nagging him about isolating himself and an ex-wife he still loves who’s just found herself a rich boyfriend. He’s also got another issue which we’ll find out about later.
One night Jack gets a call from Father Tierney at Bishop Hayes High School, where Jack used to go to school. Back then, Jack was one of the best high school basketball players in the nation. But that was a long time ago. Father Tierney tells Jack that the head coach position is vacant and he wants him to take it. Jack mulls it over and finally decides, why not?
On the first day of practice he realizes he’s got a pretty good team. They’re just not well-disciplined. When Jack starts instituting that secret ingredient, the team gets better. Unfortunately, Jack is slipping into the locker room every chance he gets to down a few beers. He just can’t get away from that sweet sweet Coor’s Light.
And then we learn why Jack’s an alcoholic and no longer with his wife. DEAD KID BACKSTORY. Yup, that rascally favored trope of overwrought dramas is back again. Jack’s son died when he was nine and it destroyed his life. So in addition to trying to get this team in order, Jack has to come to terms with the loss of his son and repair his broken relationship with his ex-wife. Who knows, maybe they’ll even get back together again.
Yes indeed. As you can tell from the sarcastic manner in which I summarized Dead Kid Backstory, I’m not a fan. In fact, when I sensed that we’d learn why Jack lost his wife and became an alcoholic, I kept repeating to myself, “Please don’t let it be a Dead Kid Backstory. Please don’t let it be a Dead Kid Backstory.”
Why do I hate Dead Kid Backstory so much? Because it’s the default go-to for bleak dramas about adults. I see it ALL THE TIME. And the only time it works is when there’s a genuine depth to it, when you know the person writing about it has a personal connection to the experience. And if it runs that deep, it’s usually too depressing. Nobody wins if your only choices are Too Cliche or Too Depressing. But I’m not going to harp on that. I’ve already rambled about DCB enough on the site.
Despite DCB, Ingelsby remains one of the best character writers in town. And you can see that from his character descriptions….
His older sister, BETH, 37, a feisty, stubborn homemaker. Annoyed at the moment that her younger brother is holding up the dinner she spent the entire day slaving over.
Her husband, KURT, 38, an innocuous, big-hearted family man who drinks his coffee out of a Worlds #1 Dad mug. He wears a cashmere seater embroidered with the words, Graham Mercedes- Benz Dealerships.
Their son, RYAN, 8, a shy, sensitive boy. The only thing Ryan loves more than basketball is his Uncle Jack.
He’s one of the few writers where I know exactly who his characters are just from their descriptions alone. And it’s not only that. He’s great at showing character instead of telling character. For example, one of the first things Jack does after construction work is get in his car, reach into a back seat cooler, and pour himself a beer.
One of my favorite “show don’t tell” moments in the script was when Jack had to look nice for his first game. So he goes to the back of his closet to find a suit, takes it out, puts it on, then feels something in the suit pocket. Brings it out. Movie tickets to “Meet the Parents.” In that moment we know exactly when the last time was Jack wore this suit. Seems like a small thing, but so much better than the lame “tell” version, which I read all the time. “When’s the last time you wore that suit, Jack? The Clinton era?” Show is always better than tell.
If only we didn’t feel like we’ve seen it all before. There’s a storyline where the father of the best kid on the team doesn’t want him playing in college, so Jack has to convince him to let him follow his dreams. Hasn’t that been done a thousand times already? With that said, you like everyone here enough that you care what happens to them. That’s Ingelsby’s talent. He knows how to construct a character.
What this script needed was a clear conflict at the center of the coaching storyline. Something we could latch onto. In Hoosiers, a big inspiration for this script, it was about a town that was used to doing things one way. And a coach came in and wanted to do them the opposite way. That was the conflict. We understood that whenever a big scene came around, that conflict would be at the center of it.
What’s the conflict here? I have no idea. There was a moment in the middle of the script where Jack gets mad at the team and curses them out. Afterwards, the assistant coach conveys his discomfort with that outburst and I thought, that could’ve been your conflict right there. This is a Catholic religious school. Yet we never lean into that. In fact, the players are just as foul-mouthed as Jack is. Had the school been by-the-book and highly religious, then Jack comes in as this atheist has-been alcoholic, now you’ve got a clear conflict that needs to be resolved. But we don’t get anything close to that.
Usually when a script has problems, it’s on the character end. With Has Been, it’s the plotting. It’s all too obvious. Again, if feels like several movies we’ve already seen. When the biggest surprise in your script is DCB, you need to get back in there and come up with something better. Ingelsby is lucky he’s so good at crafting characters we like, cause normally, the issues in this script would’ve sunk it.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you’re going to use DCB, you need to tie the child’s death into the plot in a creative way. Here, Jack’s son was 9 when he died. It’s random. It would’ve worked better if his son was in his teens. Why? Because Jack is coaching teenagers. Coming to work every day would be like facing his biggest fear. These kids would remind him of his own kid. Instead, we get generic DCB, which is always a let-down.
