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Director: Barry Levinson
Rain Man
Bugsy
The Natural
Good Morning Vietnam
Avalon
Diner
Synopsis
The film follows the leaders of the Baltimore Colts Band (currently Baltimore's Marching Ravens)
during and after the the 1984 departure of the Baltimore Colts NFL team
to Indianapolis. On a dark night in March, moving vans emptied all of
the Colts equipment from Memorial Stadium and shipped the franchise to
Indianapolis, leaving the city in shock. The film cites former Colts
owner Robert Irsay as the leading decision maker behind the move. The
all volunteer Colts Band remained behind and continued to perform on a
shoestring budget, representing the hope of the people of Baltimore who
wanted nothing more than their own NFL franchise. The band was adopted
by the Baltimore Ravens (formerly the Cleveland Browns) when the
franchise moved to Baltimore in 1996.
Thoughts
The Band that wouldn't die has two elements that I really love. The
first is the collection of band related anecdotes which really show how
close the operation came to failing but also why the people within the
band were dedicated enough to will their mission of bringing football
back to Baltimore to success. Stories like hiding the band uniforms in a
mausoleum and getting the ball which was used on the winning play of
the 1958 NFL Championship Game smuggled back to Baltimore inside a bass
drum. Perhaps my favorite is that of the Baltimore Colts band standing
on the statehouse steps to show that the people of Baltimore had support
for bringing an NFL franchise back to the city. If you listen to the
commentary on Ocean's Eleven, part of the screen writing involved
constantly creating situations where it appeared things wouldn't work,
as if the plan all of a sudden hit a brick wall and the team had to find
a new way around it. This kind of action is present in the documentary
and it is not only entertaining, but also drives the narrative
extremely well.
The second thing I like about the film is the perspective it gives on
just how much the band meant to the city of Baltimore. Seeing a grown
man cry when discussing a fight song may seem silly, but consider how
many people play their alma mater's fight song at funerals and
weddings. What we know about fan psychology tells us that people tend
to value themselves based on the teams success. The teams we follow
become an extension of ourselves and our self worth. Traditions become a
part of our heritage and they bring back memories of all the moments
when the teams, and ourselves, found success. Fight songs elicit pride
and bring us back to those moments when we felt the best about
ourselves. When I hear the strains of On Iowa or that long horn blast
before the Victory Polka, I get that rush. Seeing the film portray the
emotions with that was perfect and it really drove home why the band,
the keepers of the fight song, were so important to Baltimore. The film raises some interesting question as to the political economy and psychological impact of marching bands that I think warrants some serious study (ok, as serious as a study about marching bands can be).
This film has one, major flaw. Robert Irsay is the villain, the man who
stole the beloved Colts from Baltimore. Except that isn't the whole
story. Irsay left because of financial difficulties with the franchise
which came over a decade. Furthermore, an attempt to upgrade
Baltimore's Memorial Stadium to include revenue generating luxury boxes
and better facilities for the team and management was killed by the
Baltimore Orioles, who were sharing the stadium at the time, and more
importantly the state legislature who refused to fund several rebuilding
projects. Furthermore, Irsay was being constantly berated in the
press, causing even further resentment between the owner and the city
(this isn't exactly hard to find information either).
When you take all of this in totality, it must have seemed like, to
Mr.Irsay, that the legislature, the city, and the Baltimore Orioles were
preventing him from making the same amount of money other NFL
franchises were getting from luxury boxes and other sales while the
Baltimore press was simultaneously casting him as the villain in all of
this. One parallel to this is the recent stadium woes of the Minnesota
Vikings. A very popular small market team that, for a long time, was
fighting with sharing facilities with the Twins and a lack of commitment
from the local government when it came to building a new stadium. The
press sided with the Vikings, pressured the local government to keep the
franchise, and now it seems like they will get a new stadium and remain
in Minnesota. One wonders if the same would have worked with the
Baltimore Colts.
Review
There is a lot of entertainment value in The Band That Wouldn't Die, but
I wonder if the perspective of the narrative truly captures the reality
of the situation. Irsay certainly had his personal problems, but
focusing on them really doesn't do him any justice and misses the fact
that the neglect of the legislature and pressure from the local media
really pushed him out of Baltimore. The film really does a disservice
to the audience by neglecting this angle. We spend the entire time
talking about how people loved the Colts, but the filmmaker misses how
the legislature seemed to have been denying it for decades. Imagine the
new emotional weight given to the scene on the courthouse steps. The
legislature had spent decades denying that the Colts were important
enough to merit the funding that would have likely kept them in
Baltimore, and now they were saying that nobody really cared about
football in Baltimore anyway and they would not push to get a new club.
Adding the angle of the legislature would have really added to the
impact of the film and it would have made that scene on the courthouse
steps perhaps one of the greatest scenes in sports history.
No this isn't a story about the legislature, it is a story about a
band. However, neglecting the legislature's role in these events really
paints a false picture of the band. Instead of a group who had been
jilted by the NFL and Robert Irsay, the real story should have been how
the band was really in a civic battle, trying to convince the leaders of
Maryland and Baltimore that the pride and passion their citizens had
for football was not something that should be dismissed as unimportant.
The story tells us that sports play an enormous role in municipalities
and government in this country and the band is a vehicle for
demonstrating our conviction that sports are not an unimportant part of
our communities.
Still, the film does a nice job of several things. The anecdotes and
emotional value attached to the band really make this a solid piece of
film making. I just wish we got more perspective.
Also a side note, two distant relatives of mine have marched with the Marching Ravens. I can't say this from personal perspective, but according to them, the nice band leader in the film is actually a jerk. Not that it means anything but I laughed thinking about it when I watched the film. Further evidence of ESPN trying to gerrymander their characters into specific archetypes I suppose.
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