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MY FAVORITE THING
Because You Asked, and Because I No Longer Care What You Think of Me

by Scott Hall (pseudonym for Scott Aronowitz)

(Published: The Philadelphia Scene, Holiday Issue 1989)

Review: Fast Break
directed by Jack Smight
Released 1979
111 min.

“All right, Scott,” you’ve all said at one time or another, “you’re so all-knowing and omnipotent when it comes to movies. (Few of you actually used the word ‘omnipotent.’) So what, Mr. Cinerama of the Scene, is your favorite movie of all time? This should be good.”

Well, your sardonic jibes aside, my favorite movie is one you probably haven’t seen. And when I describe it to you, you’ll probably do one of two things:

1) Conclude that I was dropped on my head as a baby and could not possibly tell a good film from a bad one, and further resolve never to pay attention to another one of my reviews, and
2) Rush out to rent this film, wherever it may be (very few stores, from my own highly refutable research), because even though Hall is probably certifiable, I’ve got to find out just what the hell kind of appeal this movie could possibly have.

Of course, the alternative may be that, like most of my staff, my readers and nearly everyone I’ve ever met, you think I’m just an overweight, self-important, pretentious twit, and proceed to ignore me completely. (Incidentally, the overweight cracks really are not necessary.) But then, you did ask for it. So here, choke on it.

I’ve seen nearly 1,200 movies, and Jack Smight’s Fast Break is my favorite. Not the BEST I’ve ever seen, just my favorite. Former Brooklyn junior high school basketball coach-turned-delicatessen manager desperately wants to coach again. A small liberal arts college in the Nevada desert wants him to build their team from nothing, for a salary of $60 per game won. With the help of his playground pickup game teammate (former N.Y. Knick Bernard King), he scours the streets for five great but undiscovered players. Then they go to Nevada, pick up a freshman quarterback in a school without football, and become an unbeaten sensation. Now the trick is to get nationally-ranked Nevada State (fictitious school filling in for UNLV) to play them in an exhibition game.

That’s it. That’s the plot. It sounds silly and contrived, like a T.V. sitcom meets a Horatio Alger story. So how come I loved it so much? How come in a list of favorites that includes The Godfather, All the President’s Men and Sunset Boulevard, this far lesser story of underdogs overcoming adversity is my greatest pleasure? Four things, I think:

1) the characters are real, not cardboard cutouts, and they all have very real reasons for leaving New York for Nevada;
2) Gabe Kaplan brings with him his “Welcome Back, Kotter” sensibility for helping young people everyone else has written off to achieve more than they ever though possible;
3) the film contains at least three hysterical and original scenes, one of which would be dubbed an all-time classic 5 million or so more people had actually seen this film;
4) I’m not a sports fan, but the basketball games in this movie, especially the grand finale, are genuinely exciting.

It’s not going to make Halliwell’s tome as a genre-defining classic. It may not even make your Saturday night video list. But it should.

Because it’s real, it’s fun, and unlike much of what Hollywood feeds us today, it has a plot that keeps moving from beginning to end. And that’s saying a lot.