87. North Dallas Forty (1979)

Show Notes

In our first post-Trump episode, Jason is joined by Friend Of The Pod Richard Brown to discuss the 1979 Nick Nolte film North Dallas Forty.

Before that, Rick and Jason catch up on withdrawing from political mainlining, growing up as children of single Mom's in the 1970's, and then get to the good stuff; a robust, detailed discussion of the genius of Ted Kotcheff and the singular pleasures of North Dallas Forty.

North Dallas Forty is billed as a "sports comedy-drama" which just shows how hard to categorize this brilliant and subversive counter-culture take on battling corrupt institutions actually is.  And yes, it IS about professional football, and the NFL, and the Dallas Cowboys and what at the time was a rare behind-the-scenes look inside an NFL locker room.  But it's also, like many of director Ted Kotcheff's other films (First Blood, Wake in Fright, Fun With Dick and Jane) about the individual fighting against or being co-opted by unfeeling authority.  

When Nick Nolte developed the movie, he hand-picked Kotcheff as a director precisely because Kotcheff admittedly knew next to nothing about football.  All the more impressive then that what few football scenes there are tend to be so impressively and bone-crunchingly filmed in North Dallas Forty.

Featuring a fantastic supporting cast of character actors like Charles Durning, G.D. Spradlin and Dabney Coleman, all of whom plumb familiar territory with sometimes surprising depths.  And it was the film debut of country superstar Mac Davis, who turns in a remarkably nuanced and complicated performance as the QB who has made his peace, sort of, with the professional and moral compromises he has embraced thus far.

North Dallas Forty is a great football movie, it's a great 70's movie, it's a great New Hollywood movie, and on and on.