The late-night/early-morning spot for Cubs fans asks who you are cheering for in the National League now that the Cubs are gone.
It’s another week here at BCB After Dark: the coolest spot for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. It’s our first night of the offseason. The vibe around here is a little different now. Not worse, not better, but different. But I’m sure it will be better after you join us. We have a few tables still available. There’s a two-drink minimum, but it’s bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
The Cubs are off until March, but the Braves and Mets played arguably the game of the year, with the Mets coming out on top 8-7 and clinching a spot in the postseason. It would be a game we’d remember for decades, except that there was a second game that the Braves could win to also clinch a playoff spot that the Mets had absolutely no incentive to even try to win. The Braves won, of course, so the Diamondbacks are sitting at home.
Last week, I asked you what you thought about the Cubs signing free-agent pitcher Jack Flaherty. A plurality of you thought it was a good idea, with 43 percent giving the move a “Yay!” Another 35 percent said “meh” and 22 percent were “Nay!”
Here’s the part where I write about music and movies. Those of you who want to skip that can do so now. You won’t hurt my feelings.
Brandon Sanders is a jazz drummer who, at the age of 52, just released his first album last year. So he’s a reminder that it’s never too late to give up on your dream. He has a day job as a social worker that’s kept him busy, but now he’s getting attention as one of the “young” new talents on the jazz scene.
Here he is with Eric Wheeler on bass, Chris Lewis on tenor sax and the great Warren Wolf on vibes. From Sanders’ first album Compton’s Finest, here’s the Kenny Barron-penned number “Voyage.”
In case you are new around here, the past two off-seasons we’ve done a movie tournament where I make up a bracket and we vote down a winner. The real purpose of this is to talk about old movies and learn about ones you may not be familiar with, but the voting part kind of ups the “fun” content.
Two winters ago we did film noir and last year we did a Westerns tournament. Now it’s time to decide what we are going to do this winter.
Unless someone has a better idea, I’m leaning towards doing a “screwball comedy” tournament. I had resisted the idea for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that it’s sometimes really, really hard to define what exactly a screwball comedy is and how it differs from a normal, romantic comedy or “rom-com.” It’s kind of “I know it when I see it” thing, with a tip of the hat to the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart. Generally, if Preston Sturges wrote or directed it, it’s screwball. If Carole Lombard stars in it, it’s probably screwball. But more seriously. a screwball comedy is a generally broad farce that tends towards satire. There’s pretty much always some kind of romance or “battle of the sexes” element. The dialog tends to be smart, snappy and filled with double entendres. There can be some debate between what is and isn’t a screwball, but you could say the same with noir and we managed to have a successful event with noir. Heck, we even had a few tough calls on what qualified as a Western. The purpose here isn’t to write some sort of definitive survey of the screwball genre, but just learn about some new movies.
The other issue is that the heyday of the screwball comedy is 1934 to 1944, which is kind of a short time period to look at. Screwball was a reaction to the Hays Office and the Production Code, which put an end to the raunchy comedies of the silent and pre-Code eras. (Although one of the most famous screwballs, It Happened One Night, came in just before the Code started to become officially enforced in 1934.) Even noir gave us a 20 year classic era.
But screwballs continued to be made after 1944, although with less frequency. I’d certainly be willing to classify Some Like it Hot and Pillow Talk from 1959 to be screwballs. Billy Wilder’s 1961 movie One, Two, Three is screwball. What’s Up Doc from 1972 definitely is and Arthur from 1981 probably is, but I haven’t seen that movie in 40 years so I’m going to have to revisit it first. Some of the Coen brothers films might be considered screwball, with 1994’s The Hudsucker Proxy maybe the most likely candidate. (Although that film may best be considered a satire of screwball comedies, which is quite a feat to satirize a satire.)
The main advantages of doing a screwball tournament is that it’s different enough from our last two and it’s a genre that I’m already quite familiar with and enjoy. I have to write about all these movies and if we’re doing a genre that I’m not a big fan of, then I’m not going to be as insightful when I make the case for each film to advance.
I have considered other genres. I thought about science fiction, but the number of real quality sci-fi films from the classic Hollywood period is low. Metropolis, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet—I’m sure there are some others, but science fiction really doesn’t start to get taken seriously until the late-sixties when 2001: A Space Odyssey and the original Planet of the Apes get released. Then in 1977 Star Wars gets released and pretty much everything changes. On top of that, after Star Wars we’re getting into the movies that all of you are probably familiar with.
I thought about sports films or baseball films and maybe we can do that. But looking at this list of the greatest 50 sports films by Tim Grierson and Will Leitch, exactly one film on the list, Pride of the Yankees, came out before 1974. Now could I come up with 28 good sports films made between, say, 1934 and 1984? Sure, I probably could. But I suspect the more recent ones would clean up on the voting.
Horror? Great idea. But unless we’re only looking at the early Universal monster films and maybe some RKO b-pictures, you’re going to have to find someone else to run the tournament. I’m not the kind of person who willingly watches The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I suppose I could handle one that limited the films to before the collapse of the Code in 1967, but I think true horror aficionados would be frustrated by such a tournament. And Psycho would win in a walk.
I also thought of an Alfred Hitchcock tournament. But if we’re going to watch the 28 best Hitchcock films, then we’re going to have to go back to the silent era and his early talkies in the UK. Maybe that’s not a bad thing, but I do think looking at 28 films by an auteur with as strong and consistent a vision as Hitchcock is going to start to look monotonous. I’m not ruling it out, but I’ve come to like the screwball idea better.
The other idea I had was to have a four-director face-off between Hitchcock, John Ford, Billy Wilder and Howard Hawks. That would get away from the fear of monotony, but we’d also be revisiting a lot of pictures that we looked at in the noir and Western tournaments.
So I’m outlining where my thinking is right now. I’d like your feedback on these ideas. And if you like the screwball comedy idea, I’ll take suggestions for films in the tournament.
Welcome back to those of you who skip the music and movies.
The playoffs start tomorrow (today for most of you) and the Cubs aren’t invited. Yeah, that stinks. But it’s still baseball and that’s worth watching. So tonight I’m going to simply ask which National League team will you be cheering for this October. Tomorrow night, we’ll do the same for the American League.
I’m not asking you to predict who will win the NL Pennant. Tonight I’m just asking you who you want to win. I’m going to give you a “none-of-the-above” option, but I’m requesting you to only vote for that if simply aren’t going to watch any (or very little) of the playoffs now that the Cubs aren’t involved. If you are cheering for an AL team and you don’t care which NL team makes it, then pick the NL team you think will be the easiest for your choice to beat.
I think the NL question is tougher than the AL question, because a lot of these teams are in various degrees of rivalry with the Cubs. But hey, the Cardinals didn’t make the postseason either.
I do have a sense of which team is going to win the vote, but we’ll see how it goes.
So who do you want to win the NL Pennant?
Thank you very much for stopping by this evening. I hope you were able to relax and take your mind off of your troubles for a while. Please get home safely. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip the waitstaff. And join us again tomorrow for more BCB After Dark.