Dodgeball

This might be the only sports movie I've ever seen that featured a pirate named Steve.

Dodgeball falls into the category of "stupid comedy" — the kind of film that takes nothing seriously, sticks closely to formula, and features characters that are barely two-dimensional, then laughs all the way to the bank.

Nothing about this film is particularly brilliant, until you start listening to the dialogue. During the Dodgeball instructional film, we get a couple of great lines about lead-based paint and how "Chinamen" in an opium den invented dodgeball by throwing human heads at each other.  Hank Azaria randomly shows up as "Patches O'Houlihan," a star dodgeballer with a pencil-thin mustache who encourages ganging up on weak players. 

Later, modern-day Patches shows up in the form of Rip Torn, who growls, "I love the smell of queef in the morning."  I'm pretty sure I've never heard the word "queef" in a film before or since this one.  So we have a pirate named Steve and an instance of the word "queef." This is not film school material.

Yet there's something brilliant going on here.  The film doesn't care how offended you are; in fact, Dodgeball revels in the juvenile humor.  We're not just talking about the easy "balls" humor throughout the film or the promotional campaign that was everywhere several years ago.  We're talking about brilliant comic dialogue, with layers:

"Good toss by the submissive out there!"

"It's gotta be the hair: Feathered and lethal.  You just don't see it nowadays."

"Ouchtown, population: You, bro!"

"We're gonna get out taints handed to us, that's what!"

"Well, they don't really make a 'Sorry your dodgeball coach just got crushed by two tons of irony' Hallmark card."

So, "queef," "taints," and a pirate named Steve.  This is not a family-friendly film.  This is a film you watch by yourself after the wife goes to bed.  I know because that's what I just did tonight.

Plus, look at all these cameos!  After the first dodgeball match, there's Curtis Armstrong, "Booger" from Revenge of the Nerds, playing a bit role and awarding Average Joe's their first trophy.  Later, in the Las Vegas sequence, Chuck Norris shows up as a committee member/judge type.  Jason Bateman and Gary Cole appear as commentators, and Bateman steals every scene, bro.  David Hasselhoff shows up as... David Hasselhoff.  William Shatner appears as The Dodgeball Chancellor.  Let's not forget Lance Armstrong, who gives a motivational speech for the ages in one of the greatest sports cameos ever:

"Quit? You know, once I was thinking about quitting when I was diagnosed with brain, lung and testicular cancer, all at the same time. But with the love and support of my friends and family, I got back on the bike and I won the Tour de France five times in a row. But I'm sure you have a good reason to quit. So what are you dying from that's keeping you from the finals?"

Stupid comedy?  Sure, but nobody ever expected Dodgeball to enter some pantheon of fine filmmaking.  This is no Citizen Kane.  This is a dumb movie about a fringe "sport" inspired by a children's playground game, and in a way makes fun of all the movies about sports, with the cliches and boilerplate plot intact. The weaknesses of Dodgeball are in many ways liberating for all involved.  Forget the plot holes.  This isn't high art.  This is barely a movie.  Let's make fun of pretty much every sports movie cliche ever.

Yes, most of the jokes are juvenile, the acting is flaccid, and the plot is ludicrous.  The humor goes to racial and gender/sexuality stereotypes too often.  There is nothing technically or aesthetically groundbreaking here, and as a human being, I probably am dumber for having watched this film not once, but several times over the years.  Some movies just rot your brain.

But...

When I watch a film like this, two sides of me fight.  One side, the academic, mature side, wants to take offense and bemoan the decline of western civilization if this is the kind of base tripe people enjoy these days.  I want to get my hackles up when I hear some of the jokes, obviously written from a masculine perspective and hung up on humor untouched by modern feminist thought. 

The other side of me, however, sees a definite purpose for comedies like this one, and sees a certain measure of genius at work here.  Most comedies offend some people on some level.  Let's not forget that the Marx Brothers frequently referred to "darkies" and made fun of fat people all the time. Dodgeball can't match the genius of a Marx Brothers movie (or the outright racism, and I'm glad), but Dodgeball has a certain smugness that equates masculinity with heterosexuality one minute, and the next seems to revel in the opportunity to stand on the blurry line between homoeroticism and athleticism.  That kind of balancing act is interesting.  The humor might be offensive, but smart people had their hands in this one.

I mean, come on.  A gigantic chest of money shows up at the end to save the day.  The chest is clearly labeled "Deus Ex Machina."  

Oh, and the name "White Goodman" kills me.  Not only is the name on-the-nose in an ironic sort of way, but it's an obvious reference to the dark romanticism of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown."  Seriously.

Okay, not really.

A few years ago, I had a brainstorm.  Nobody has done a movie about the most midwestern of midwestern games.  Some call the game "beanbags."  Others just call the game "bags."  Most folks I know call the game "cornhole," and with not much irony.

When I saw Dodgeball, I went away thinking, "What other fringe sports haven't been turned into films?"  Then cornhole hit me.  Plus, imagine the obvious anus jokes!  "This could be my ticket," I thought.  I hadn't come up with an idea that original in a long while.  I was almost proud of myself.

See, when I was first learning how to write screenplays, all I wanted to do was write simple comedies with quirky characters in even quirkier situations.  I'd come of age watching Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater films and figured, hell, if those guys can do this, I can do this, right?  So I set out to write stuff in that same direction, only to come up with derivative stuff no one wanted to read.  I put those aside and started looking at dark comedies, but I wasn't equipped to write those.  Then I turned to drama, only to find out I was shit at drama.  Back to comedy I went.  But I had no new ideas.

Then the cornhole idea came to me one day, as though in a vision.  I pitched the idea to my wife (then girlfriend) and a couple of friends, none of whom thought the idea would be worth a damn.  I never wrote the film.  I'm not saying I could've written a good cornhole movie, but writing nothing, well, I'll never know.  I shelved the idea.  Not a good idea for a movie.

Oh, wait.