Thursday, April 28, 2011
Miami Dolphins 2010 Wrapup, Part Three: What Do They Do Now?
Not going to get too deep in the weeds on this one. It's not that complicated. Miami needs a quarterback. Not a free agent stopgap. Going down that route has never ever worked for this team. Neither has taking a QB outside the first round. Nope, Miami needs to use their 2011 first round pick on a QB. As I type these words the Dolphins are about an hour or so away from making their selection and a lot of QB's are still on the board. Will they pull the trigger on the highest available QB on their board? Given their track record and the current front office situation, I'd be surprised honestly. Whoever they take isn't going to play much, if at all this year, and when you've got a team with a GM worried about job security, you've got a team that's in trouble. Why? Because if a GM thinks he's gone if his team comes up a loser, why would that GM do what's in the team's long-term best interest? He's going to draft in the team's short-term best interest. This is what Parcells has wrought. His presence gave Ireland and Sparano job security. When he bailed early, their job security vanished. They know they need to win now so for Ireland a running back or maybe an O-Lineman make more sense to win a few more games in 2011. But this team's never a winning a Super Bowl without an upgrade at QB. We all have to know that at this point. I still think there's a shot Henne could take that step forward in 2011, but the odds are agin' it and ESPN keeps telling me this is the Year of the Quarterback. So let's take one!
Miami Dolphins 2010 Wrapup, Part Two: Where Did It All Go Wrong?
So what went wrong? Or, more importantly, who can I blame? Well, there’s a lot of blame to go around as usual but Past Interference is going with H. Wayne Huizenga as our Ground Zero. He’s no longer the owner but his fingerprints are all over the 2010 Miami Dolphins. I’ve written before about all Huizenga’s mistakes in installing a winning management/coaching team but it seemed like he’d learned his lesson in 2008. He cleaned house, canned both his failed GM and head coach, and turned the whole thing over to Bill Parcells to fix. A man who’d taken four different franchises to the playoffs and won two Super Bowls, Parcells appeared to be the perfect guy to fix the organization. One minor problem though—Parcells was a great football coach but he wasn’t hired to be Miami’s football coach. No, he was going to run the football side of the operation. He was going to get the Dolphins a coach, a GM and then find some guys who could play.
How hilarious has it been this week watching Bill Parcells serving as a draft guru for ESPN? We know the guy can coach but his track record as a personnel guy is a mixed bag to say the least. Mike Greenberg somehow overlooked Pat White when he was going over all of Parcells’ draft “finds” in his introduction. In Parcells’ most successful tenure as coach, the Giants years, he had little to do with personnel decisions. Parcells left that gig so he could get more personnel juice somewhere else. And after a few years he would keep leaving those new jobs no matter how successful he’d been. So the while the Dolphins hoped for a successful marriage they should have known it was unlikely to be a long one. Still, Parcells had a lot to do with winning Super Bowls and Dolphin fans were getting far too accustomed to losing. How bad a move could it be? But in hiring Parcells Huizenga planted a time bomb. A Tuna time bomb.
Turns out Miami wasn’t the only team interested in hiring Parcells. Atlanta wanted him and went after Parcells hard. Parcells preferred Miami but when news surfaced that Huizenga planned to sell the team, Parcells wanted nothing to do with an unstable situation and decided to sign with the Falcons. Huizenga put the full court press on Parcells and convinced him he wasn’t selling the team. With that reassurance Parcells inked with the Dolphins and Atlanta “settled” for hiring the unknown Thomas Dimitroff as GM. The Falcons have since made the playoffs the last two seasons and had the best record on the NFC last year. Meanwhile, turns out Huizenga planned to sell the Dolphins after all (surprise!) and there was only one way for the organization to keep Parcells from walking—give him the option to leave the team at any time after the sale while still collecting his full salary for the life of the contract! (Haha. It’s true). Predictably, Parcells began to turn over the key decision-making over to his handpicked GM and coach after just two years on the job and pretty much stopped having anything to do with the Dolphins partway through the 2010 season so he’d presumably have more time to count the money he was earning by doing nothing. But at least he left the team in a whole lot better shape than they were in before his arrival right?
Well, back-to-back 7-9 seasons and the worst offense in the league aren’t what anybody had in mind. Remember, Miami was 7-9 in 2006, Nick Saban’s last year. Parcells clearly failed at making Miami a Super Bowl contender. The team can’t score. And the main reason they can’t score if because they don’t have a good quarterback. And the reason they don’t have a good quarterback is because none of the regimes installed since the departure of Don Shula have valued quarterbacks enough to spend a lot to get a good one. Including Parcells. Miami still has not spent a first round pick on a QB since they grabbed some guy named Marino way back in 1983. Dave Wannstedt traded two number one picks to get Ricky Williams. But he wouldn’t draft a quarterback. Nick Saban used the number two overall pick in a draft to take Ronnie Brown. But he wouldn’t spend what it took to get Drew Brees. And Bill Parcells used the number one overall draft pick in 2008 on an offensive lineman, Jake Long. The QB he passed on, Matt Ryan, fell into the lap of the aforementioned Tom Dimitroff in Atlanta. Now I’m not convinced that when their careers are over this move is going to be a clear mistake. In fact Long is the better player at the moment. But when you are desperate for a QB and you pass up on a top prospect like Ryan, you better have a good backup plan. Miami’s was to spend second-round picks on Chad Henne and Pat White. White proved to be perfectly useless and Henne appears to be on the train to Bustville (but I haven’t given up hope yet!). In two years Miami used three second-round picks on quarterbacks. John Beck and Pat White are no longer with the team and Henne may also not be long for the aqua and orange.
Without the Tuna to lead the team to a championship, Miami’s stuck with his handpicked GM, Jeff Ireland, and his handpicked coach, Tony Sparano. But Steven Ross’ all-too-public flirtation with Jim Harbaugh made it all-too-obvious Ross has 0 confidence in Sparano as coach (ignore the face-saving contract extension). A losing season in 2011 surely results in Sparano’s firing and probably Ireland’s too. So once again the Dolphins are led by people in desperate need of short-term success, something that’s worked out so well before. Thanks to Parcells Miami is now just a year away from engaging in yet another search for that elusive “messiah” to overhaul and rebuild the team into the champion Miami’s been waiting for for four decades.
How hilarious has it been this week watching Bill Parcells serving as a draft guru for ESPN? We know the guy can coach but his track record as a personnel guy is a mixed bag to say the least. Mike Greenberg somehow overlooked Pat White when he was going over all of Parcells’ draft “finds” in his introduction. In Parcells’ most successful tenure as coach, the Giants years, he had little to do with personnel decisions. Parcells left that gig so he could get more personnel juice somewhere else. And after a few years he would keep leaving those new jobs no matter how successful he’d been. So the while the Dolphins hoped for a successful marriage they should have known it was unlikely to be a long one. Still, Parcells had a lot to do with winning Super Bowls and Dolphin fans were getting far too accustomed to losing. How bad a move could it be? But in hiring Parcells Huizenga planted a time bomb. A Tuna time bomb.
Turns out Miami wasn’t the only team interested in hiring Parcells. Atlanta wanted him and went after Parcells hard. Parcells preferred Miami but when news surfaced that Huizenga planned to sell the team, Parcells wanted nothing to do with an unstable situation and decided to sign with the Falcons. Huizenga put the full court press on Parcells and convinced him he wasn’t selling the team. With that reassurance Parcells inked with the Dolphins and Atlanta “settled” for hiring the unknown Thomas Dimitroff as GM. The Falcons have since made the playoffs the last two seasons and had the best record on the NFC last year. Meanwhile, turns out Huizenga planned to sell the Dolphins after all (surprise!) and there was only one way for the organization to keep Parcells from walking—give him the option to leave the team at any time after the sale while still collecting his full salary for the life of the contract! (Haha. It’s true). Predictably, Parcells began to turn over the key decision-making over to his handpicked GM and coach after just two years on the job and pretty much stopped having anything to do with the Dolphins partway through the 2010 season so he’d presumably have more time to count the money he was earning by doing nothing. But at least he left the team in a whole lot better shape than they were in before his arrival right?
Well, back-to-back 7-9 seasons and the worst offense in the league aren’t what anybody had in mind. Remember, Miami was 7-9 in 2006, Nick Saban’s last year. Parcells clearly failed at making Miami a Super Bowl contender. The team can’t score. And the main reason they can’t score if because they don’t have a good quarterback. And the reason they don’t have a good quarterback is because none of the regimes installed since the departure of Don Shula have valued quarterbacks enough to spend a lot to get a good one. Including Parcells. Miami still has not spent a first round pick on a QB since they grabbed some guy named Marino way back in 1983. Dave Wannstedt traded two number one picks to get Ricky Williams. But he wouldn’t draft a quarterback. Nick Saban used the number two overall pick in a draft to take Ronnie Brown. But he wouldn’t spend what it took to get Drew Brees. And Bill Parcells used the number one overall draft pick in 2008 on an offensive lineman, Jake Long. The QB he passed on, Matt Ryan, fell into the lap of the aforementioned Tom Dimitroff in Atlanta. Now I’m not convinced that when their careers are over this move is going to be a clear mistake. In fact Long is the better player at the moment. But when you are desperate for a QB and you pass up on a top prospect like Ryan, you better have a good backup plan. Miami’s was to spend second-round picks on Chad Henne and Pat White. White proved to be perfectly useless and Henne appears to be on the train to Bustville (but I haven’t given up hope yet!). In two years Miami used three second-round picks on quarterbacks. John Beck and Pat White are no longer with the team and Henne may also not be long for the aqua and orange.
Without the Tuna to lead the team to a championship, Miami’s stuck with his handpicked GM, Jeff Ireland, and his handpicked coach, Tony Sparano. But Steven Ross’ all-too-public flirtation with Jim Harbaugh made it all-too-obvious Ross has 0 confidence in Sparano as coach (ignore the face-saving contract extension). A losing season in 2011 surely results in Sparano’s firing and probably Ireland’s too. So once again the Dolphins are led by people in desperate need of short-term success, something that’s worked out so well before. Thanks to Parcells Miami is now just a year away from engaging in yet another search for that elusive “messiah” to overhaul and rebuild the team into the champion Miami’s been waiting for for four decades.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Miami Dolphins 2010 Wrapup, Part One: Wha' Happen?
Past Interference has been less than diligent in chronicling the weekly struggles of the 2010 Miami Dolphins. In my partial defense, the team’s performance was so uninspiring, so tedious and dull, that even had I felt like writing something about something, the subject would not have been the 2010 Miami Dolphins. But I do write about the team from time to time and seemingly overnight the Dolphins have ceased being tedious and dull. Well, at least ownership and management aren’t dull. They are…what’s the word? Pathetic? Inept? I mean I thought Huizenga’s mismanagement couldn’t be topped but wow, the Harbaugh/Sparano clown show Steven Ross premiered might have just raised the bar. I’m going to wait a little longer to process it though. Let me just say this. While the whole debacle was going on I was fully engaged and frantically seeking the latest Dolphins news at all hours, something I was most definitely not doing during the season. So at least you gotta give Ross some credit for creating some excitement around the team.
Alright. They say you can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been right? Well it’s something like that anyway. So how did the team get here? Where did it all go wrong? Let’s cast our minds back to the beginning of the season. It all began so promisingly remember? Yeah, I know. It seems like a million years ago. But Miami actually came out of the blocks 2-0. Two road wins, each against teams that made the playoffs the year before. And that turned out to be their longest winning streak of the season. Their only winning streak of the season. Two games. Two losses at home followed and after that it was a frustrating pattern where every subsequent win was followed by a loss. Every time, until the late season collapse of course. They were good enough to win 6 of 8 road games, but bad enough to notch just a single home victory.
After a particularly atrocious loss, a bad beatdown by Ravens in week 8, the season’s key moment arrived. Chad Henne had played horribly in defeat. Miami was 4-4 and winless at home. So prior to the week 9 game against Tennessee Coach Sparano announced he was benching Henne. Replacing Henne would be the hero of 2007, Chad Pennington. This communicated two things to Dolphin fans: (1) After 21 starts Sparano (and presumably GM Jeff Ireland) had lost complete confidence in Henne; and (2) Sparano (and presumably GM Jeff Ireland) was now more worried about his own job security than about the team’s long-term future. So it was a panic move. Word had already gotten out that Bill Parcells (more on him soon) was no longer part of the organization in any capacity but informal advisor. And without the Tuna’s protection his protégés felt they had to win some games right now to keep their jobs. Not what you want. And of course it didn’t work anyway. Pennington predictably got hurt (though I don’t think anybody in the pool picked the second play of the game) and Henne was back in the saddle again. Before Henne too went down with a knee injury he responded with a fine performance, helping to lead the Dolphins to a comeback win. Henne’s injury wasn’t that serious but he had to miss the next game. So enter third-string QB Tyler Thigpen.
Given Henne’s prior benching and Pennington’s season-ending injury, everyone understood that week 10 was Thigpen’s audition for the starting job. And previous flashes of mobility and big play ability had some predicting success for the new QB. Those people somehow ignored the fact that Thigpen hadn’t ever been able to actually win a game in any of his previous game action. But we all hoped for the best. And we got the worst. Thigpen played about as badly as a quarterback could play. I believe “crapped the bed” would be the appropriate expression. It was Ray Lewis all over again. Except I don’t think Lewis ever presided over a shutout at home. So back to Henne in week 11 at the home of the hated Raiders. And Henne was great! He and the team played their best game of the season: a 33-17 thrashing of the Raiders. Clearly the benching lit a fire under Henne and he stepped up his game in response like a true competitor. At 6-5 and with three home games left against the Brown, Bills and Lions, a winning season seemed likely. And if Miami could steal a road win against either the Jets or Patriots, a 10-6 record and a wild card spot wasn’t out of the question. Things were looking up.
Haha. Sure they were. Oh, Miami stole a win from the Jets alright, but that was no thanks to Henne. He was awful. Luckily Mark Sanchez matched Henne awful throw for awful throw and the defense pulled it out. But they couldn’t pull out wins in any of the home games. All hree winnable games, all games Miami gave away because Henne couldn’t make a play. I do not know what happened to the guy. What happened to the guy who led the Dolphins to a comeback win in that Monday Night games versus the Jets in 2009. The guy who wasn’t afraid to take a shot downfield? Now Henne just robotically proceeded through his reads and checked down time after time. He never tried to make anything happen. Even in desperation time. Both the Bills and the Lions games ended when Henne threw short checkdowns that guaranteed the clock would run out instead of passes into the end zone that at least would have given Miami a shot at a victory.
Did the coaching staff screw up Henne’s development? Dan LeBatard makes a convincing argument they did they did. Maybe Henne was never going to be on the fast-track to greatness but benching your starter before he even has two full seasons under his belt is never a good idea. I've been watching football long enough now to see a number of guys need several years to develop into great QB's (Griese, Bradshaw and Brees among others). And you know what else is never a good idea? When your worthless offensive coordinator (yes, you Dan Henning) calls play-action pass after play-action pass even though his QB is on record as hating play-action, and the worthless OC continues to call play-action even on the most obvious of passing downs where no defense is biting on the fake for even a second. Sparano, Henne, and QB coach David Lee have to take some blame here. I’m not saying Henne’s going to have a better career than Mark Sanchez, but LeBatard is absolutely correct to note that Henne's stats for his first two seasons are actually a little better than Sanchez and while Sparano undermined Henne’s confidence, the Jets organization was patient with Sanchez and surrounded him with playmakers. Unlike Miami, a team with no deep threat, no offensive skill players with speed, and a running game that’s just a shell of what it used to be. Henne never had a fair chance.
On the other hand the team managed to construct a very good defense. Wake, Dansby, Misi, Smith. These are good players; the team’s actually not far from having a great defense if they keep making solid personnel moves (never a sure thing with this franchise). They were good enough this to win some games on their own and put the Dolphins in position to win a few others. But the incredibly weak passing game just killed this team time after time. Henne led a few comebacks in 2009, but in 2010 we stopped expecting anything out of the guy. Except turnovers and useless checkdowns. We’ve been here before, for the better part of a decade now. A good but not great defense. An offense tasked with simply not losing the game. And they proceed to do so anyway because you can’t win that way! You need to be able to throw the ball and score and you can only do that with a good quarterback. For the ninth time in the last ten years, Miami didn’t have one.
The Dolphins were at least competitive in the games they lost down the stretch. Competitive until the Week 17 finale that is. The team rolled over and got rolled by the Patriots. One of the all-time franchise embarrassments. After that game team owner Steve Ross, previously inclined to stick with Sparano, suddenly changed his mind and Dolphin fans just had to wait out the coaching search to find out who the new head man was going to be. Right?
Alright. They say you can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been right? Well it’s something like that anyway. So how did the team get here? Where did it all go wrong? Let’s cast our minds back to the beginning of the season. It all began so promisingly remember? Yeah, I know. It seems like a million years ago. But Miami actually came out of the blocks 2-0. Two road wins, each against teams that made the playoffs the year before. And that turned out to be their longest winning streak of the season. Their only winning streak of the season. Two games. Two losses at home followed and after that it was a frustrating pattern where every subsequent win was followed by a loss. Every time, until the late season collapse of course. They were good enough to win 6 of 8 road games, but bad enough to notch just a single home victory.
After a particularly atrocious loss, a bad beatdown by Ravens in week 8, the season’s key moment arrived. Chad Henne had played horribly in defeat. Miami was 4-4 and winless at home. So prior to the week 9 game against Tennessee Coach Sparano announced he was benching Henne. Replacing Henne would be the hero of 2007, Chad Pennington. This communicated two things to Dolphin fans: (1) After 21 starts Sparano (and presumably GM Jeff Ireland) had lost complete confidence in Henne; and (2) Sparano (and presumably GM Jeff Ireland) was now more worried about his own job security than about the team’s long-term future. So it was a panic move. Word had already gotten out that Bill Parcells (more on him soon) was no longer part of the organization in any capacity but informal advisor. And without the Tuna’s protection his protégés felt they had to win some games right now to keep their jobs. Not what you want. And of course it didn’t work anyway. Pennington predictably got hurt (though I don’t think anybody in the pool picked the second play of the game) and Henne was back in the saddle again. Before Henne too went down with a knee injury he responded with a fine performance, helping to lead the Dolphins to a comeback win. Henne’s injury wasn’t that serious but he had to miss the next game. So enter third-string QB Tyler Thigpen.
Given Henne’s prior benching and Pennington’s season-ending injury, everyone understood that week 10 was Thigpen’s audition for the starting job. And previous flashes of mobility and big play ability had some predicting success for the new QB. Those people somehow ignored the fact that Thigpen hadn’t ever been able to actually win a game in any of his previous game action. But we all hoped for the best. And we got the worst. Thigpen played about as badly as a quarterback could play. I believe “crapped the bed” would be the appropriate expression. It was Ray Lewis all over again. Except I don’t think Lewis ever presided over a shutout at home. So back to Henne in week 11 at the home of the hated Raiders. And Henne was great! He and the team played their best game of the season: a 33-17 thrashing of the Raiders. Clearly the benching lit a fire under Henne and he stepped up his game in response like a true competitor. At 6-5 and with three home games left against the Brown, Bills and Lions, a winning season seemed likely. And if Miami could steal a road win against either the Jets or Patriots, a 10-6 record and a wild card spot wasn’t out of the question. Things were looking up.
Haha. Sure they were. Oh, Miami stole a win from the Jets alright, but that was no thanks to Henne. He was awful. Luckily Mark Sanchez matched Henne awful throw for awful throw and the defense pulled it out. But they couldn’t pull out wins in any of the home games. All hree winnable games, all games Miami gave away because Henne couldn’t make a play. I do not know what happened to the guy. What happened to the guy who led the Dolphins to a comeback win in that Monday Night games versus the Jets in 2009. The guy who wasn’t afraid to take a shot downfield? Now Henne just robotically proceeded through his reads and checked down time after time. He never tried to make anything happen. Even in desperation time. Both the Bills and the Lions games ended when Henne threw short checkdowns that guaranteed the clock would run out instead of passes into the end zone that at least would have given Miami a shot at a victory.
Did the coaching staff screw up Henne’s development? Dan LeBatard makes a convincing argument they did they did. Maybe Henne was never going to be on the fast-track to greatness but benching your starter before he even has two full seasons under his belt is never a good idea. I've been watching football long enough now to see a number of guys need several years to develop into great QB's (Griese, Bradshaw and Brees among others). And you know what else is never a good idea? When your worthless offensive coordinator (yes, you Dan Henning) calls play-action pass after play-action pass even though his QB is on record as hating play-action, and the worthless OC continues to call play-action even on the most obvious of passing downs where no defense is biting on the fake for even a second. Sparano, Henne, and QB coach David Lee have to take some blame here. I’m not saying Henne’s going to have a better career than Mark Sanchez, but LeBatard is absolutely correct to note that Henne's stats for his first two seasons are actually a little better than Sanchez and while Sparano undermined Henne’s confidence, the Jets organization was patient with Sanchez and surrounded him with playmakers. Unlike Miami, a team with no deep threat, no offensive skill players with speed, and a running game that’s just a shell of what it used to be. Henne never had a fair chance.
On the other hand the team managed to construct a very good defense. Wake, Dansby, Misi, Smith. These are good players; the team’s actually not far from having a great defense if they keep making solid personnel moves (never a sure thing with this franchise). They were good enough this to win some games on their own and put the Dolphins in position to win a few others. But the incredibly weak passing game just killed this team time after time. Henne led a few comebacks in 2009, but in 2010 we stopped expecting anything out of the guy. Except turnovers and useless checkdowns. We’ve been here before, for the better part of a decade now. A good but not great defense. An offense tasked with simply not losing the game. And they proceed to do so anyway because you can’t win that way! You need to be able to throw the ball and score and you can only do that with a good quarterback. For the ninth time in the last ten years, Miami didn’t have one.
The Dolphins were at least competitive in the games they lost down the stretch. Competitive until the Week 17 finale that is. The team rolled over and got rolled by the Patriots. One of the all-time franchise embarrassments. After that game team owner Steve Ross, previously inclined to stick with Sparano, suddenly changed his mind and Dolphin fans just had to wait out the coaching search to find out who the new head man was going to be. Right?
Friday, January 7, 2011
The People Have Spoken
While I continue to compose my thoughts about the ongoing Dolphins trainwreck, here's a Twitter sampling of Dolphin fans reactions to the Harbaugh fiasco:
Another season of glass half-full coachspeak, and fist pumping for field goals. I'm rooting for a lockout. F*@! this team!!!
More micromanaging, scare your quarterback into playing like a pussy, fist pumping field goals, saying K every 5 f-----g seconds bullshit.
I know the off season is long, but I'm honestly having trouble envisioning myself watching the Dolphins on TV next year.
Stephen Ross, you are now officially on my s--t list.
I'd say this loud, public, futile coaching search tops Jacksonville 62, Dolphins 7 as the most embarrassing day in Dolphins history.
Players from other teams are retweeting jokes about the Phins....this has reached "I s--t my pants at work" embarrassment level.
How is it that the Jersey Shore cast has shown better people skills than Miami Dolphins management?
I TALKED ABOUT THE F---------G ROONEY RULE ALL DAY FOR WHAT?!?! I BLAME OBAMA!!!
The Fins have made me so upset, that I've been forgetting to fast forward commercials on DVR
Just to be clear, The Miami Dolphins, can suck a whole bag of d---s
Good times
P.S. I'm pretty good about giving the proper links when I quote something but I forgot to match the tweets to their tweeters at the time I saved the comments. Sorry.
Another season of glass half-full coachspeak, and fist pumping for field goals. I'm rooting for a lockout. F*@! this team!!!
More micromanaging, scare your quarterback into playing like a pussy, fist pumping field goals, saying K every 5 f-----g seconds bullshit.
I know the off season is long, but I'm honestly having trouble envisioning myself watching the Dolphins on TV next year.
Stephen Ross, you are now officially on my s--t list.
I'd say this loud, public, futile coaching search tops Jacksonville 62, Dolphins 7 as the most embarrassing day in Dolphins history.
Players from other teams are retweeting jokes about the Phins....this has reached "I s--t my pants at work" embarrassment level.
How is it that the Jersey Shore cast has shown better people skills than Miami Dolphins management?
I TALKED ABOUT THE F---------G ROONEY RULE ALL DAY FOR WHAT?!?! I BLAME OBAMA!!!
The Fins have made me so upset, that I've been forgetting to fast forward commercials on DVR
Just to be clear, The Miami Dolphins, can suck a whole bag of d---s
Good times
P.S. I'm pretty good about giving the proper links when I quote something but I forgot to match the tweets to their tweeters at the time I saved the comments. Sorry.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Meet the New Coach, Same As the Old Coach
Ohmigod. You know what? Suddenly I feel motivated to write about the Dolphins again! Tune in tomorrow...
Friday, December 31, 2010
Tarzan
I started with the very first one: Tarzan of the Apes. Unfortunately I never got to finish it because I made the mistake of bringing it to school with me and somebody ripped it off. (Who the hell steals a Tarzan paperbook? They’re cheap. You can get it for free at the library. And no junior high school punk thief reads books anyway.) So I never finished that one. Luckily I already had a comic book adaption so I knew how it ended, and I was smart enough to never again bring one of my own books to school. Lesson learned. I read the second book in the series, The Return of Tarzan, cover to cover. And I loved it. And I loved the next one, and the next one, and the one after that (Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, probably my favorite). Let’s face it, Tarzan’s a wish-fulfillment character right in the wheelhouse of a 12 or 13-year-old boy, something I happened to be at the time. And say what you will about Edgar Rice Burroughs as a writer but those books move (no less a writer than Gore Vidal said Burroughs possessed a rare gift: he could “describe action vividly”). The books are never boring. Well, they aren’t unless you maybe try to read them all in a short period of time. I made it through the first 13 but put down number 14 halfway through and never picked it or any subsequent Tarzan book back up again. The repetition must have gotten to me. But I’ve never lost my affection for the character.
For most people Tarzan’s not a character from a book though. He’s a character from movies and TV. The 1932 movie with Johnny Weismuller was such a hit that it kicked off a movie series lasting over 30 years. The series kept on going well past the time Weismuller got too old to play Tarzan anymore. No problem. They’d just get a new actor to play Tarzan. And I saw a bunch of these movies. Not at a movie theater though. On TV. In the pre-cable era old movies constituted the programming lifeblood of countless local TV stations and where I grew up one station featured a little show on the weekend called “Tarzan Theatre”, which was nothing but the opportunity to show a cheap old Tarzan movie every Saturday. (This clip isn’t of “my” Tarzan Theatre but it's close enough).
At the time of my first exposure to the Tarzan movies I hadn’t yet cracked open the books but my know-it-all father had and he was kind enough to explain to me how the movie Tarzan was actually a much-bastardized version of Burrough’s fictional creation. The book Tarzan was not only clever and resourceful, he was the child of an English lord, the master of several languages including English, and was perfectly at home in either civilized London or primeval Africa. The movie Tarzan on the other hand was a simple but good-hearted man-child who couldn’t speak in complete sentences or comprehend modern civilization (though like his literary counterpart he would deal out some serious ass-kicking when necessary). And while the first couple of Weismuller Tarzan movies were well-done big-budget MGM affairs the later ones, with or without Weismuller, just kept getting worse. Stupid plots. Bad acting. The same stock footage used over and over again. Soundstages instead of location shooting. Even going to color didn’t improve things much. Until 1959.
After Weismuller retired the Tarzan producers replaced him with Lex Barker (for 6 films), and then Gordon Scott (nee Werschkul). But the budgets remained low and Tarzan remained the same monosyllabic character regardless of which actor donned the loincloth. That all changed with Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure. A new producer, Sy Weintraub, took over the series and changed things for the better. Realistic dangers. Sensible plots. Location shooting. And best of all, Tarzan acted and spoke like a normal intelligent human being. With a real script for once Gordon Scott proved to be a terrific Tarzan in his fifth go-round as the character and Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure lives up to its title. The follow-up, Tarzan the Magnificent was equally good. I loved those two films. The highwater mark didn’t last though. Scott didn’t want to get typecast at Tarzan so he set off for Italy to make a bunch of movies there during the height of the “sword and sandal” craze. After that he left show business altogether and kind of disappeared.
Finding that box with my Dad’s old Tarzan books obviously triggered a lot of memories. It also got me wondering about what ever happened to Gordon Scott, my favorite Tarzan. Luckily the internet allows such questions to be easily answered. Turns out that that Scott’s days as a celluloid hero made him a lot of fans and maybe the biggest was a guy named Roger Thomas, all of 14-years-old when Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure came out. As an older man he made it his mission to track down and meet his boyhood hero. After years of trying he finally succeeded and in 2001 he arranged for Scott to visit him in Baltimore. Scott arrived and that “visit” ended up lasting for six years. Scott just basically moved in with the Thomases. Scott was a kind of a mysterious character, a bit of a recluse really, but Thomas loved having his hero around. Can you imagine that happening to you? Your favorite childhood movie star coming to live with you years later? Becoming your close friend and eating dinner with you every night? Unfortunately, Scott developed some serious health problems, had to go into a nursing home, and died in 2007. But this article about the relationship between Scott and his biggest fan is really touching.
As for Tarzan, without Scott the series swung on with Jock Mahoney for two films but at 42 he was already a bit long in the tooth for the part. So Weintraub had to pick a new one from over 300 applicants (including Frank Gifford!) and here I can finally connect up this post to the National Football League because the man selected to play the next Tarzan was an active professional football player, Mike Henry. From the NFL gridiron to the African Jungle. A ninth-round pick from USC, Henry played linebacker for the Steelers from 1959 to 1962 and for the Rams from 1963 to 1965. (9 career INT’s and 6 career fumble recoveries). His 1962 Post cereal football card says “During the off season, Henry works as an extra in several movie and television studios in Hollywood.” But when Hollywood opportunity struck Henry chose movie stardom over NFL obscurity, retiring from the game in order to play the Lord of the Jungle. But Henry’s Tarzan wasn’t really much of a jungle dweller at all. The moviemakers refashioned the character as a globe-trotting hairy-chested James Bond type. Crazy huh?
Henry did three Tarzan films and there the series died. Luckily Henry didn’t die along with it. During the filming of Henry's second Tarzan movie Cheetah, played by Dinky the Chimp, used his fangs to rip open Henry’s jaw. Henry became delirious with jungle fever for several days but survived unlike Dinky the troublemaking chimp who was euthanized for his sins. Henry also suffered several injuries during filming and came down with dysentery, ear infections, and an infected liver as well (Plus a typhoon destroyed the set of his third Tarzan movie and brought with it a typhoid epidemic; bad juju). After making that third movie Henry was sick of the whole thing, called it a day and hung up the loincloth even though he had been all set to star in the TV series to immediately follow that third film. The part instead went to Ron Ely (who was good). The TV show lasted two years and several theatrical movies were cobbled together from some of the episodes but essentially the Tarzan movie series came to an end when Henry left.
A decade later Tarzan finally returned to the screen in two very different films: Greystoke (a fine period piece) and Tarzan the Ape Man (to this day the worst movie I have ever seen in a theatre). Then two more movies in the late 90’s: Disney’s Tarzan (not a bad cartoon) and Tarzan and the Lost City (unseen by me but I heard it sucked). Since then nothing. But in recent years we’ve seen Zorro and Sherlock Holmes refashioned into big-budget special effects blockbusters so I don’t see why the same can’t be done for Tarzan. But I have a feeling that when that future Tarzan movie appears it's not going to bear a whole lot of similarity to the original Tarzan books I read all those years ago.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
30 Years Ago This Month
In my previous post I referred to the one football game I ever attended with my mother. It turned out to be one hell of a game, one of the most exciting I’ve ever seen. The Dolphins shut down the league’s top-scoring offense for three quarters, fell behind in the fourth quarter, rallied for a late game-tying TD, and then, facing certain defeat, blocked a field goal to send the game into overtime. Where they won. Awesome. The greatest NFL game I’d ever been to up to that time. And did I mention this was a Monday Night game? The crowd was absolutely electric that night and when that winning field goal went through the uprights the Orange Bowl was shaking. Literally. What a great game and a great night. But no one was talking about it the next day. Nobody. I found out the next morning before school that while I was yelling and high-fiving and cheering on the Fins to victory, a lunatic had gunned down my hero.
Right before the game’s most dramatic moment, the New England Patriots’ attempt at a walk-off game winning field goal, Howard Cosell informed the audience of the murder of John Lennon. But the 80,000 of us actually at the game didn’t have a clue. We were screaming our guts out and rocking the stadium while everyone watching on TV suddenly could care less about the blocked field goal try.
For days afterward the news was filled with images of people deeply affected by Lennon’s death. People openly weeping about someone they’d never met. I didn’t have that reaction. Like I said, Lennon was my hero but I didn’t cry for him. I just felt weird. More than anything I was confused. I didn’t really know how to react. I didn’t know him and being a teenager, an introverted one at that, I wasn’t really given to openly expressing my feelings. But I knew I’d lost something.
When it comes to music I’ve always somehow found myself behind the times. While the rest of my peer group was digging disco and corporate rock and “Bruce, Billy and Bob” (as one of my friends put it), I was at home listening to my mother’s old Beatles records. My mother was a bit of a hippie and she had pretty good taste in music, assembling a nice collection of what we now like to call Classic Rock. And years after the group called it a day I played those Beatles albums over and over and over again. Their music meant everything to me. They were the Alpha and Omega of rock. My mother primarily owned the later period stuff, so when I wore those grooves out I got myself all their other records too. And I loved them all. I loved them so much that the music wasn’t enough anymore. I wanted to learn about the band too. I wanted to know the legend. Who were these guys and what made them so great? I needed to know. So I picked up a little book called The Beatles Forever and I read it so many times that it eventually fell apart. I’ve read plenty of other books about the Beatles but this one’s still the best as far as I’m concerned. You get the basic history, some fine writing about the music, especially the solo careers, but the author, Nicholas Schaffner, really gets across just how important the Beatles were to the generation that grew up with them. And those were the people shedding tears in the wake of Lennon’s death.
Back in 1987 I saw a show marking the 20th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper and the so-called Summer of Love and at the end each of the surviving Beatles was asked if they believed it was true that “All You Need Is Love”. George Harrison said he did. I can’t remember exactly what Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr said but in the Beatles Anthology McCartney said he did believe that was the essential message of the Beatles. Maybe that’s too simplistic a summary of the entire Beatles catalog but let’s stipulate that McCartney’s right, after all, the man wrote a lot of love songs and he’s surely more qualified than anyone else to say what the Beatles were all about. After all, the Beatle became the most loved band of all time for a reason, or reasons. And surely one of those reasons was their message. Another reason has to be the Fab Four (seemingly) lived their own message, being so close to one another and so appreciative of their fans devotion (at least in appearance). The Beatles Forever lets you see all this from the viewpoint of a fan who felt this connection to the band. And the connection didn’t stop with the band as a group. The Beatles were so famous that each member of the band had a public persona, so every fan had a favorite Beatle. And like so many mine was John Lennon.
Because the Beatles had called it a day by the time I started listening to their music, I learned about them from Schaffner’s book and subsequently from various interviews, mainly Lennon’s famous Playboy interview published shortly before his death. The biting wit, the uncompromising truth-telling (as he saw it), the crazy political stunts (trying to help stop a war). And his songs seemed to come from a more personal place than McCartney’s. He was real. All this strongly appealed to my teenage self. Here was somebody I wished I could be like. Now even then I knew Lennon was hardly, as McCartney put it later, the idealized “Martin Luther Lennon” figure he became after his I murder. He was too complicated and damaged an individual for that. But that didn’t matter. I loved his music and I loved what he had to say on matters both political and personal. I certainly wasn’t alone. And then some crazy person with a gun shot him to death for absolutely no reason. All these years later it’s still horrible to think about.
The day after the game I expected to be able to regale my friends with stories about the game. But that never happened. Nobody wanted to talk about it. Certainly not me, and for the last 30 years I’ve never thought about that Monday Night game without thinking about the death of John Lennon.
Right before the game’s most dramatic moment, the New England Patriots’ attempt at a walk-off game winning field goal, Howard Cosell informed the audience of the murder of John Lennon. But the 80,000 of us actually at the game didn’t have a clue. We were screaming our guts out and rocking the stadium while everyone watching on TV suddenly could care less about the blocked field goal try.
For days afterward the news was filled with images of people deeply affected by Lennon’s death. People openly weeping about someone they’d never met. I didn’t have that reaction. Like I said, Lennon was my hero but I didn’t cry for him. I just felt weird. More than anything I was confused. I didn’t really know how to react. I didn’t know him and being a teenager, an introverted one at that, I wasn’t really given to openly expressing my feelings. But I knew I’d lost something.
When it comes to music I’ve always somehow found myself behind the times. While the rest of my peer group was digging disco and corporate rock and “Bruce, Billy and Bob” (as one of my friends put it), I was at home listening to my mother’s old Beatles records. My mother was a bit of a hippie and she had pretty good taste in music, assembling a nice collection of what we now like to call Classic Rock. And years after the group called it a day I played those Beatles albums over and over and over again. Their music meant everything to me. They were the Alpha and Omega of rock. My mother primarily owned the later period stuff, so when I wore those grooves out I got myself all their other records too. And I loved them all. I loved them so much that the music wasn’t enough anymore. I wanted to learn about the band too. I wanted to know the legend. Who were these guys and what made them so great? I needed to know. So I picked up a little book called The Beatles Forever and I read it so many times that it eventually fell apart. I’ve read plenty of other books about the Beatles but this one’s still the best as far as I’m concerned. You get the basic history, some fine writing about the music, especially the solo careers, but the author, Nicholas Schaffner, really gets across just how important the Beatles were to the generation that grew up with them. And those were the people shedding tears in the wake of Lennon’s death.
Back in 1987 I saw a show marking the 20th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper and the so-called Summer of Love and at the end each of the surviving Beatles was asked if they believed it was true that “All You Need Is Love”. George Harrison said he did. I can’t remember exactly what Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr said but in the Beatles Anthology McCartney said he did believe that was the essential message of the Beatles. Maybe that’s too simplistic a summary of the entire Beatles catalog but let’s stipulate that McCartney’s right, after all, the man wrote a lot of love songs and he’s surely more qualified than anyone else to say what the Beatles were all about. After all, the Beatle became the most loved band of all time for a reason, or reasons. And surely one of those reasons was their message. Another reason has to be the Fab Four (seemingly) lived their own message, being so close to one another and so appreciative of their fans devotion (at least in appearance). The Beatles Forever lets you see all this from the viewpoint of a fan who felt this connection to the band. And the connection didn’t stop with the band as a group. The Beatles were so famous that each member of the band had a public persona, so every fan had a favorite Beatle. And like so many mine was John Lennon.
Because the Beatles had called it a day by the time I started listening to their music, I learned about them from Schaffner’s book and subsequently from various interviews, mainly Lennon’s famous Playboy interview published shortly before his death. The biting wit, the uncompromising truth-telling (as he saw it), the crazy political stunts (trying to help stop a war). And his songs seemed to come from a more personal place than McCartney’s. He was real. All this strongly appealed to my teenage self. Here was somebody I wished I could be like. Now even then I knew Lennon was hardly, as McCartney put it later, the idealized “Martin Luther Lennon” figure he became after his I murder. He was too complicated and damaged an individual for that. But that didn’t matter. I loved his music and I loved what he had to say on matters both political and personal. I certainly wasn’t alone. And then some crazy person with a gun shot him to death for absolutely no reason. All these years later it’s still horrible to think about.
The day after the game I expected to be able to regale my friends with stories about the game. But that never happened. Nobody wanted to talk about it. Certainly not me, and for the last 30 years I’ve never thought about that Monday Night game without thinking about the death of John Lennon.
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