Long before Michael Scott started working at Dunder-Mifflin, Scranton was the site of another celebrated tale of thwarted dreams and wasted potential. Playwright (and Exorcist star) Jason Miller set his 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway drama in his Pennsylvania hometown, and in 1982, he directed the film version on location there. He even hired the West Scranton High School band to perform the score.
The movie’s title refers to the 1957 basketball season during which the fictional Fillmore High School squad were state champs. A quarter-century later, four of the teammates (politico Bruce Dern, high school principal Stacy Keach, wastrel Martin Sheen, and mogul Paul Sorvino) join their coach (Robert Mitchum) for a reunion, but the camaraderie soon gives way to bickering, betrayal and moaning over midlife crises. They look to the coach, for guidance, but the old man, whose attitudes are painfully Paleolithic in places, is little help. Another player is absent, apparently refusing to partake in the mutual hypocrisy. Miller’s tale is not without humor, but for the most part, it’s a bleak indictment of a certain strain of mid-century, midlife, middle-American masculinity.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MllxksPoWVU]