Patriots: The Movie (Working Title)

The Cast

Tom Brady – Matt Damon

This one is the easiest on the board. I’d trust Damon with this role for two reasons. The first is that he’s a Boston guy and he’d have a feel for Tom Terrific. The second is that he’s got the whole boyish thing going on. In short, he’s the perfect guy to play The Dynamic Dimple. As long as we’re not stuck with Ashton Kutcher or Ben Affleck here, we should be fine.

Bill Belichick – Tom Berenger

Tom Berenger is a hard-ass of the 10th order. He’d have to gain some weight for the role, but what else is Berenger up to that he can’t take a month to sling back Big Macs? If you don’t buy into this one, I challenge you to picture Berenger in a gray hoodie. If you’re still not on board, name someone better.

Drew Bledsoe – Dylan Walsh

Dylan Walsh is the plastic surgeon from Nip/Tuck that isn’t a sexual deviant. He’s been selected because he has an adequate jaw-line to play Bledsoe.

Adam Vinatieri – Eric Bana

Remember the guy from Troy, Munich, and Black Hawk Down? After Adam’s countless number of clutch kicks, most New Englanders will remember #4 for his awesome playoff beards. They were magnificent. In just about every movie, Bana has a good amount a facial hair growth. We’ve got another match.

Troy Brown – Omar Epps

It’s been too long since Omar Epps has been in a sports movie. I checked IMDB.com and the last one he did was some awful boxing movie where Meg Ryan was a freaking boxing promoter. Omar Epps is a sports movie legend and first-ballot hall-of-famer. This is the guy who starred in Major League 2 AND The Program. His last sports flick cannot have Meg Ryan in it. He’s got enough charisma to make Troy Brown work. I envision Troy being the fun-loving underdog and providing a lot of comedy in the movie. He also has to be a believable athlete (Downtown did catch 101 balls that season).

Tedy Bruschi – Michael Pena

Pena is the Mexican guy from Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center. He also played Chavez in Friday Night Lights. That’s about all I got. I’m not real pleased with this one, though.

Lawyer Milloy – Will Smith/Wayne Brady

Before Lawyer Milloy officially changed his name to The Perpetually Embittered Lawyer Milloy, he was the likeable star of the Pat’s defense. He was the life of the party at that first Superbowl parade, even getting Bob Kraft to dance...poorly. In an ideal world, we’d unite Will Smith with his co-star from the Legend of Bagger Vance and see if they could make a good movie this time. Smith would be great in the role. He can play intense real well and still bring some of that “I’m a fun guy” element to the character. Of course, Will Smith probably wouldn’t be down for this little project, so we’d have to settle for Wayne Brady.

The Story – Here’s how it’d go down

We’d start off with the end of the 2000 season when the Pats only won five games. There needs to be some scene where Tom Berenger decides that things have got to change. He should probably be in his office and speak ominously of the upcoming season.

As we fade into the 01 season, things aren’t much better. Bledsoe is getting demolished and the Pats have already lost their first game to the Bengals. During the second game, the evil Mo Lewis, as played by Ving Rames, practically murders Drew as he’s running out of bounds. Cue Tom Brady.

As soon as Brady enters the scene, you begin to see the team gelling together. Perhaps Lawyer Milloy and Adam Vinatieri discuss the team’s prospects over scotch. I don’t know what happens. This has the potential to be the boring part of the film. Don’t worry. All sports movies have the lull before the train starts rolling.

After the Pats lose a heartbreaker to the Rams, it’s about time for a montage. A really kick-ass montage, too. Vinatieri kicking field goals. Brady throwing screen passes. Troy Brown returning kicks. Drew Bledsoe brooding on the sideline and sporting a neck beard. All the good stuff. The montage will carry us into the play-offs.

I don’t even know how’d we handle the Snow Bowl except we need to see all the guys with their arms locked waiting for the refs to make the tuck call. Besides that, the only other point of interest would be Vinatieri’s kicks. We should also work in how absolutely desperate Bledsoe is at this point. Maybe we should show various teammates following him around on some sort of suicide watch or something.

Here’s where the rubber meets the road during the Steelers game. If you want a real goose bump scene, wait for when Tom “Golden Boy” Brady goes down and Drew Bledsoe, still sporting the neck beard, trots onto the field and connects with Troy Brown for a TD. Pure magic. Throw in Bledsoe crying at the end of the game and you’ve got yourself a winner.

Cut to a Tom Berenger voice-over during clips of Superbowl XXXVI:

While the Greatest Show on Turf came out as individuals, the 53 men on the Patriots came out as team that day, as they had all season. [Cue guys running out of the tunnel.] The experts had the Rams as 14-point favorites. What the experts forgot about was the determination and heart of these lunch-pail warriors. [Cue Wayne Brady/Will Smith lighting up various Rams receivers.] In the end, we needed Adam to go out there and kick one last field goal for us. [Cue Vinatieri ripping the hearts out of everyone in St. Louis and degenerate gamblers everywhere. Tom Berenger’s voice begins to crack] This last one made us World Champions. [Cue inspirational music and the confetti dropping.]

The end.

Except for the sequels.

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Movies & Sports

I got to see Invincible this weekend. It was everything that you’d expect from one of Disney’s sports flicks. Here’s the Disney formula:

Underdog (Papale) + A Supporting Cast Butchering Some City’s Accents (Philly) + A Driven Coach With A New Outlook On Doing Things (Vermeil) + Adversity (the guy was a freaking bartender) = Movie (Invincible)

Pretty simple formula that they have followed to perfection. Remember Miracle? Very, very, solid movie. Instead of Philly accents, we had Minnesota and Boston accents. Miracle’s Vermeil was Herb Brooks. If you’re looking for adversity in Miracle, you may have heard of something called the Soviet Union.

I’m sure that you remember Remember the Titans. Same exact movie. The difference is that you’ve got racists instead of communists. So I had this great idea for Disney’s next project: the 2001 New England Patriots.

You’ve got a back-up quarterback who leads a team of spare parts to a Superbowl victory over a superior team against all odds. That’s FOUR clichés right there. The main character would, of course, be Tom Brady. You’ve got Bill Belichick as the cerebral coach. The bad guys would be the Rams, who even beat the Pats earlier in the season. Gold mine.

The only question left is who would play who. The main characters that need to be coached are Brady, Belichick, Adam Vinatieri, Tedy Bruschi, Troy Brown, Lawyer Milloy and Drew Bledsoe. There are others, too.

This is where y’all come in. Let me know, via the comments, who should be cast. I’ll post the final roster or cast or whatever on Friday.

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Links: I don’t know how to quit you

9/11 Conspiracy Nuts – Did you know that September 11th was planned by the Bush Administration in an effort to beef up defense spending? This site is truly special. It’s run by a quack professor out in Wisconsin. I heard him on 1210 (‘The Big Talker’ in Philly) and wanted to give his site a look.

The Devil Made Em Do it – Here’s an interesting note: the Pope has an official “caster out of demons.” According to a priest who is Pope Benedict’s COD, Hitler and Stalin were possessed by the devil. Interesting. I’ve done some research and found out that Pope John Paul’s COD was actually Chuck Norris. Thank you, Chuck Norris. Thank you.

The Great American Bar – Not rain or sleet or hail or a really big hurricane will stop you from doing a body shot off a coed at Johnny White’s on Bourbon Street. Apparently, Johnny White’s stayed open throughout Hurricane Katrina. JD Landrum, owner/operator, I salute you.

Gynormous Baby – Woman gives birth to 14lb baby. Anyone who knows me knows that I dream of having giant babies. My goal birth weight is 13lbs. Also, diabetic mothers are more prone to have larger babies. Does anyone know if there is a dating web-site that information on, say, whether a woman has a disease, uh, like diabetes? This isn’t for me. It’s for a buddy. Never mind.

Ravishing Rick Haiku – Funny haikus. I think I’ve said enough.

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Summer Lovin: Had Myself a Blast

Well, TPB is back! We should be back on a post-a-day pace for the foreseeable future and I’m excited to get back in the flow of things. I figure that the best way to kick this off with a few thoughts on what happened this summer.

· The biggest news from the summer is that Connect4 got hitched in the beginning August. It was a fantastic day and truly joyous. C4 will be joined in the ranks of the married over the next year by the Ultimate Weapon, July ’07, and Cannon, April ’07. The Octogon and plans on taking my hand in marriage as soon as Rhode Island or New Jersey allows us to.
· The Red Sox have fallen off the table. The Phillies have stormed back into the playoff race. The Yanks found some way to add a top-five OBP guy to their squad at the very low rate of $15M or so a year. All of our predictions were pretty much off-base. I still hate Derek Jeter.
· To mark C4’s last few weeks as a bachelor, Team Pancake Breakfast and a few friends took a road trip out to Milwaukee and Chicago to catch a few ballgames. The highlights included tailgating before a game at Miller Park and seeing a 19-inning game. The lowlights included me getting a speeding ticket in Ohio and finding a dead bat on the grill of our rented van. In my defense on the speeding ticket, if you’ve ever been to Ohio, you understand why I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible too.
· I moved to New Jersey. Pray for me.

Good to be back. Somebody get me some syrup.

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