Harvard 29, Yale 29, Audience 0 (Final)

“The best football movie ever!” declared one reviewer.  “It’s the ‘Hoop Dreams’ of football!”, chirped another.  Which is why, as a lifelong devotee of independent films, documentaries, and college football, I decided to see Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, a film by Kevin Rafferty about the “epic” 1968 game between the Ivy League rivals.  Like most epic football games, the 1968 Harvard-Yale game was between two teams nobody cared about, and it ended in a tie.  As if the fact that Harvard and Yale played to a tie in 1968 wasn’t enough to drag me into the theater, this film also features Tommy Lee Jones, a guard on that 1968 Harvard squad, and Yale quarterback Brian Dowling, the inspiration for “B.D.” in the comic strip Doonesbury that was so popular back when Jimmy Carter was president.  So what’s not to like?

Cut to me in one of the comfy chairs at the Screening Lounge of the Landmark Theaters at the Westside Pavilion in West L.A last night. (Which is awesome, by the way– it really is just like a screening room.)  Things got off to a slow start when some guy, seemingly not noticing the half-empty room, informed me that I was sitting in his seat.  Like most of the other patrons, this guy gave every appearance of being either a Yale or a Harvard man. Speaking of which, does Harvard only admit pompous jackasses, or is becoming a pompous jackass a requirement for graduating from Harvard?  Ah, the eternal questions.  (Actually, that’s probably not fair.  I’m sure that plenty of normal, decent, men and women of average-sized egos have graduated from Harvard University.  I’ve just never met one.)  In any case, the seating issue was resolved, the film was soon underway and I settled in for what promised to be the cinematic experience of a lifetime.

About half an hour in it occurred to me that Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 would probably be most interesting to people whose passion in life is Ivy League football.  Towards the forty-five minute mark, I had narrowed this down considerably to conclude that, with the exception of the starting line-ups for Harvard and Yale on this autumn day in 1968, IT IS HIGHLY UNLIKELY THAT ANYONE ELSE ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH WOULD FIND THIS FILM EVEN REMOTELY INTERESTING.  Not for the on-field action, the skill level of which was about that of the average suburban high school football contest.  Not for the endless, pointless inserts of former players waxing poetically about this singular non-event.  Not even for the pauses, silences, and visual takes that can be so satisfying in a good documentary.  As I desperately tried to maintain interest in this film, my mind began to wander and I found myself dreaming up alternate titles for Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.  The best ones I came up with were:

Crappy Team Almost Beaten By Even Crappier Team!

Ivy League Football Standings Remain Unchanged After Tie!

Other than “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and “The Fugitive,” What’s the Big Deal About Tommy Lee Jones, Anyway?

Finding the game footage virtually unwatchable, I looked to the non-football aspects of the film.  After all, some of the best parts of Hoop Dreams took place off the court.  But I found no salvation there.  Just rich-looking old men reminiscing about how great it was to be young during the Sexual Revolution and the anti-Vietnam War protests.  One former player spoke of taking a three-year break from his Harvard studies to serve as a Marine in Vietnam.  Arriving back in the States, he and his fellow Marines were spat upon as they stepped off the plane.  Weren’t all those “Vietnam vets being spat upon” stories supposed to be apocryphal?

The filmakers being Yale men, they managed to find a former player who claimed to have seen an inebriated George W. Bush after a football game–wow, how scandalous.  Another Yalie who had dated Meryl Streep was astonished by her success in Hollywood given that in the entire time he knew her, La Streep had virtually nothing to say to anybody about anything.  A pained-looking Tommy Lee Jones described his Harvard roommate Al Gore as being “funny.”  Asked for an example, Jones said Gore would play “Dixie” on his touch-tone phone when that technology was first introduced.  Hard to believe some people still think he’s a big, weird stiff.

I’ve been an avid filmgoer for over forty years, and in my entire life I’ve walked out of maybe five movies after paying for a ticket.  I really wanted to sit through Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, and you can’t say I didn’t give it the old college try, but a little over an hour of this film was all that I could take, so I made for the exit.  I guess I’m just not Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 material.

Like any film, a documentary is supposed to tell a story which has something to say about the human experience that ordinary people can relate to on some level.  That’s what made Hoop Dreams such an exquisite film.  We’ve all imagined the exhilaration of exceeding others’ expectations and dreaded the despair of unrealized potential.  A person with absolutely zero interest in high school basketball–me, for example–could watch Hoop Dreams and, by the end of the film, be up on his feet clapping, laughing, and cheering for Arthur and William because their hopes and dreams had something to say to all of us.  As opposed to the aging, elitist Ivy League jocks of Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 who, in attempting to ascribe such gravity to this utterly meaningless incident, came across as smug and self-indulgent at best.

Tonight (Thursday) is the last night this film will be playing at the Landmark Theater, after which you’ll undoubtedly be urged to rent it on DVD by the same shysters who tricked me into coughing up eleven dollars and an hour of my life to see it last night.  Here’s my advice: times are hard and life is short and unless you were in the starting line-up of either Harvard or Yale’s 1968 football teams, don’t see Harvard Beats Yale 29-29. Instead, spend that hour and fifty minutes hugging your kid.  Well, OK…no, that would be creepy.  But give that kid a good, solid hug, then spend the rest of that time doing something useful like changing the batteries in all of your portable clocks, or having a sandwich, or offering up a prayer of thanks that you’re not a Harvard or Yale man.  Better yet, dig out that old VHS copy of Hoop Dreams and watch it again.  You’ll be glad you did.