Forget “We Are Marshall”, “Gridiron Gang”, “Unbreakable”, and all the other cookie-cutter sports films that Hollywood churns out on a tri-annual basis, because next year, sports films are gonna prove they can be Oscar baiters too when Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Joe Namath in an upcoming biopic. Let’s get that Oscar buzz rolling, executive producer Jimmy Walsh:
“Most of the stuff you saw in ‘Forest Gump,’ Joe lived through all of it,” said Walsh, who first met Namath on the Alabama campus and has worked with him ever since. They witnessed the struggle for civil rights in Alabama, the sexual revolution and Vietnam.
Is Namath also going to start a shrimp company? And inspire John Lennon to write “Imagine”? And also be literally mentally handicapped and have his wife tear-jerkingly pass away from an ‘unmentioned disease’?
Basically, the film — tentatively titled “I Wanna Kiss You” — seems like an attempt to capitalize on the boomer generation’s inflated memories of Namath as a counterculture icon, complete with lots of shots of Namath drunk and depressed in order to make the film appear to be honest and balanced instead of solely self-congratulatory. Basically, “Walk the Line” but with footballs.
I just hope they can get Suzy Kolber to play herself.
