' ' Cinema Romantico: The Oddest Pair Since Tom Brady & Drew Henson

Thursday, August 13, 2009

The Oddest Pair Since Tom Brady & Drew Henson

In the year 1999 Michigan's head college football coach Lloyd Carr (who sportswriters tirelessly defended while Wolverine fans constantly called for his head) had two main quarterbacks in his stable. One was a highly lauded recruit named Drew Henson. One was a not-as-highly-lauded recruit named Tom Brady. Yet anyone with eyes could clearly see Brady was better. I vividly recall watching Michigan play its rival Michigan State in 1999. Brady started, the Wolverines went up, Henson came in, Wolverines fell way behind, Brady came back in and led comeback that fell just short, and all you could think was....why the hell didn't this Tom Brady guy play the whole frickin' game? Yet the next week the two guys shared time again. Look, I obviously couldn't coach a college football team but I think time has vindicated my viewpoint.

You know the rest of the story. At least part of it. Tom Brady's got a few Super Bowl rings, several dozen magazine covers and a wife who looks like this. Drew Henson....well, according to wikipedia he was just released by the (are you ready for this?) Detroit Lions. The Detroit Lions! The first team in the history of the NFL to not a win a single game the whole season! Do you appreciate this?! The team that went 0-16 decided Drew Henson wasn't good enough to play for them!

Sorry, Michigan fans, but do you wonder if you could have won a national title back in '99 if Lloyd Carr knew what he had? Anyway, I digress because college football season is so near and I'm getting antsy. But I have a point here that I'm getting to and it's specifically about odd, mismatched pairs.

David Mamet, that relentless writer, the man who gave the world the foul-mouthed poetry of Alec Baldwin's "always be closing" speech in "Glengarry Glen Ross", the hard-drinking lawyer played by Paul Newman in "The Verdict", the hilarious, hard-edged satire of "Wag the Dog", Robert DeNiro's Al Capone beating a man to death with a baseball bat in "The Untouchables", and Alec Baldwin (again) lusting after a much, much too young lady in "State & Main" will, as the film community had long expected, pen an adaptation for Disney of "Anne Franke: The Diary of a Young Girl."

And cue the crickets! I mean, really, if they were in the attic all talking in Mametspeak don't you think they would have been caught after about two hours?

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