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Sports Arena
My Kind of Court Awareness
A movie about women’s basketball — hold the feminism.
The curtain for The Mighty Macs rises with Cathy Rush (played by a surprisingly blonde Carla Gugino) driving her VW Bus through the Pennsylvania countryside to interview for the basketball coach position at the Catholic girls-only Immaculata College. The radio gives us the latest bulletins. News flash: Richard Nixon, running for reelection, won’t pull U.S. troops out of Vietnam. Extra: feminists are demanding equal pay or some such. We don’t hear the whole thing because Rush finds it tedious and switches it off.
This tells moviegoers two things. First, we’ve time traveled back to early 1970s. Second, and more important, no, it’s not going to be that kind of a movie. It’s a story about struggle and triumph whose principal actors are women, sure. But it isn’t a story about feminism. Rush isn’t trying to shatter glass ceilings. She wants to coach a winning women’s team before she settles down to raise a family with her husband, the NBA ref Ed Rush (Bones’s David Boreanaz).
It’s going to take a lot of doing. Immaculata is a small college teetering on the financial precipice, as the dour but decent Monsignor (Malachy McCourt) and assorted board members and building surveyors constantly remind us. The school’s team, nicknamed the Macs, has a record so underwhelming that Rush is the only applicant for the job. The gym recently burned down, so those home games are going to be tricky.
Rush recruits a team, led by star shooter Trish Sharkey (Katie Hayek), but quickly sees she’s in over her head. Divine intervention arrives when the coach notices one of the nuns knows how to shoot hoops. Sister Sunday (played by a very Christina Ricci-looking Marley Shelton) starts out as that old movie cliché, the Pretty Young Nun who is Questioning Her Calling, but she quickly establishes herself as the moral center of the film.
Sunday gives encouragement and shot-blocking tips to the team. She stands up to Rush when the coach goes all Bobby Knight on the girls, insisting that they have a fundamental dignity as young women that must be respected. As they get better, the sister reminds Rush that victory on the court is not enough. The motivation driving them to the net is every bit as important. And at one make-or-break point this pious nun commits what Victor Hugo would call “an act of sacrifice” and lies through her teeth to save the day.
It won’t ruin the ending to say that the Macs achieve some measure of success. The Mighty Macs is based on a true story. The Immaculata team really were national champs of women’s college basketball from 1972 to 1974 and this is very much the authorized version. Several members of the school’s first championship team appear as nuns in the film.
Two behind-the-scenes struggles make The Mighty Macs more interesting than your run-of-the-treadmill sports flick. One is the struggle over distribution. The movie was first shown in 2009 at Indianapolis’s Heartland Film Festival but took some time to land a national distributor. Disney was interested but wanted to add a few mild swears to bump it from a G to a PG rating. Writer-director Tim Chambers said heck no, so had to find a different distributor.
The second struggle is over Katie Hayek, or perhaps we should say, over Hayek’s health. The Lancaster, Pennsylvania-born actress was perfect for the role of Sharkey. She both looked and lived the role, having played guard for the University of Miami on a full basketball scholarship. However, just as she was cast in the part, she found out that she had Hodgkin’s lymphoma and would need to undergo treatment stat.
Hayek told reporters she would have understood if the director had recast a non-cancer stricken actress in her role. But Chambers didn’t see it that way. He decided Hayek was indispensable and found a way to make it work. Chambers bumped her shooting schedule up. She wore a wig throughout to mask the effects of the chemo.
Hayek’s best scene comes when the whole team is posing for pictures. She is poor and without good clothes, so the photographer tries to hide her away behind the other girls. She fights back tears and retreats to a bathroom. Rather than talk her out immediately, her teammates go ransack their own wardrobes to help girl her up. The affection they display for her is obvious and — we now know — heartfelt.
About the Author
Jeremy Lott is editor of RealClearPolicy.com, RealClearBooks.com and RealClearReligion.org and associate editor of RealClearScience.com.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (14) | Leave a comment
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Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 10.27.11 @ 6:10AM
It may not have been about feminism but it's all about the women and that's the only reason it was made. You go girls!
Rusino| 10.27.11 @ 7:35AM
This article made me cry, in a good way. I will take my twelve jar old Granddaughter to see it. She plays too
Melvin| 10.27.11 @ 8:02AM
The triumph of the human spirit, knows no gender. It waits within our very souls, to be awakened when we need it the most, and when we least expect it.
I have had the pleasure in my life to observe a few Nuns playing B-Ball in their full Habit with some neighborhood kids. The really amazing part was, they were so graceful as they went up for layups.
Mark Shepler| 10.27.11 @ 8:24AM
You know, even though I've watched the culture circle the drain for almost 40 years and am always ready to comment on it there are still times when a passing observation of something I already knew or could easily guess can surprise and dismay.
And so it is with Lott's throwaway line, "Disney was interested but wanted to add a few mild swears to bump it from a G to a PG rating. " Is there a better testament to the usually ridiculed indictment that Hollywood deliberately seeks to pollute our minds?
Geez, in those days Coach Rush was turning off those unpleasant radio news reports I was watching The Wonderful World of Disney every Sunday night, perhaps the most wholesome, trusted hour in all of TV land. Now, as a parent, I have to be on guard against them.
My, how far we've fallen.
Seek| 10.27.11 @ 12:33PM
People like you see cultural "pollution" everywhere. For the record, I've personally been in the presence of nuns swearing like sailors. Movies reflect the real world. Deal with it.
Old Army| 10.27.11 @ 1:43PM
And people like you see cultural pollution as progress, you know, like 12 year olds using obscenities in public, or homosexuals acting out in public. "Movies reflect the real world"? Maybe your world, not mine, nor my childrens either, unless douchebags like you have their way. Deal with it.
DTOM| 10.27.11 @ 8:39AM
Trouble getting national distribution?
They left out the leftist, statist propaganda, what did they expect.
It's sort of like leaving out the love interest, isn't it? (Last comment in AS sarcasm font ) ;-}
albert constantine jr.| 10.27.11 @ 8:45AM
Perhaps Disney would have been interested if the film featured pro-abortion nuns challenging the Pope's patriarchy, or displayed clergy molesting youths instead of it showing positive guidance.
Crack Smoker| 10.27.11 @ 9:04AM
Yeah, that was a pretty good movie. But, that team picture scene would have been way more powerful had all the young women taken off their clothes in solidarity.
Down with the class-gender oppression of clothing!!! Up with the freedom of nudity!!!
See you all at the Occupy Hollywood Rally!
POST American| 10.27.11 @ 9:54AM
----Cute idea ---for the '8o's Show'.
Meanwhile, back in Globalist
RED China TREASON OP 2011,
Hollywood's pretty much on its 4th decade
of serving up the same 5 or 6 films.
Surely the days of 'art', or even genuine
entertainment, and most certainly REAL
comedy ---are GONE.
Seems the capstone's made sure EUGENICS
leaves its predictive programming,
reductionist touch even on tinsel.
Occam's Tool| 10.27.11 @ 11:52AM
I'll get this one for my daughter.
Gr0w1er601| 10.27.11 @ 1:08PM
I doing basketball drills at the CU Field House in Boulder CO back in 1973 when this young co-ed approached me with an offer to play in the next pick-up game. Looking rather surprised (no one, let alone a female), I said, 'sure', and we proceeded to win for the next three hours. Turns out this 'young co-ed' played point guard for Immaculata College. I've never played with a better basketball player, male or female, since. Hats off to Cathy Rush and Immaculata College for giving this talented, but forever nameless (dumb ass me never asked her name, or for a date!) ball player a chance to express her God-given athletic abilities.
Suzanne Shaffer| 10.27.11 @ 2:18PM
A mighty fine summary of a film I will definitely see. My older sister graduated from Immaculata, and even though she has gone from this world now she is no doubt loving this production of a college she loved from where she is. Thanks, Jeremy, for a positive, sensible review.
POST American| 10.27.11 @ 10:55PM
-------------------------AGAIN----------------------------
--Putting aside the latest formula DIS--tractions.
ONE and all, esp. those over 30, sometime
when you find yourself in the grips of those
FUKISHIMA DENIAL/ Globalist TREASON
and DENIAL late night blues ---
DO DOWNLOAD Akira Kurosawa's 1952
masterpiece
--------------------------IKIRU----------------------------
Discover the adventure of your own soul
-----------------WITHOUT empathy whores.