1. Brian Song - Everyone remembers this story of one of the first roommates of different color in the NFL. It is a wonderful movie about Gayle Sayers and Brian Piccolo and how their friendship developed in the face of Brian Piccolo’s cancer fight. And there is not a man in the world that doesn’t get misty when that music plays. Da Da Da Da Da…. “I need to go get some duct tape.” There is something powerful about Best Friends.
Do you have a best friend? Do you have that friend who keeps you accountable? Its funny, Brian Piccolo and Gayle Sayers were competing for the same position. The same job. Yet they became “brothers.” You know when the relationship took the turn? It happened when Gayle Sayers hurt his knee and when Sayers got home from the hospital, Piccolo had set up a rehab station in Gayle Sayer’s basement. Piccolo said when he won the position battle he wanted Sayers at 100%. And they trained together. A best friend saddles up beside you in times of crisis. Just as Sayers did to Piccolo when he fought cancer.
2. Rudy – Most of you know that I love Notre Dame, so I can’t share movies without talking about Rudy. My favorite scene is when he sees that he will not dress for the final game so he quits and his friend, the maintenance man, talks him into going back and all the players clap for him as he comes to the practice field. But even better than that is when the seniors all walk into the coaches office, lay down their uniforms and say, “I want Rudy to play in my place.” “You’re our captain and an All-American, Act like it.” “I think I am coach.”
If you have never played team sports then you have really missed out some great learning’s. Like in Rudy, do you model that teamwork around the office, in the neighborhood, in your church? Are you ready to lay down your uniform, your position, and your success so your teammate can have the honor? Are you modeling that authentic Christ like relationship to those people around you?
3. Ice Age - The cartoon story of the journey of a Wooly Mammoth, Saber Tooth Tiger and a Three Toed Sloth, and a baby. The three animals are risking their lives to return the baby who ironically will grow up to hunt them. And the Saber Tooth Tiger is really just playing along until he can kill them all. My favorite scene is after the Wooly Mammoth saves the Tiger from falling in this volcano the Tiger asks, “Why did you do that.” And the Mammoth replied, “That is what you do for a member of the herd.”
The human mind is hard wired to want relationships. I have been reading a few books this past year. One is called “Bowling Alone” by Robert Putnam. The entire focus on the research of this Harvard Professor is how we want deep and meaningful relationships yet we are less engaged with neighbors, co-workers, and even family than we were 30 years ago and we continue in a downward spiral. His research even proves that people with a poor diet but in a supportive group dynamic and stronger health gains than those with a good diet and working individually. I like to characterize this by saying, “It is better to eat Krispy Kremes with friends than broccoli alone.”
Putnam also states that connecting to a different race is called bridging social capital. This bridging is very difficult and out of the norm. We have always been taught by our grandmothers that Birds of a feather flock together so it is easy to focus on relationships with people like us, which is called bonding social capital. But we need to be like Sayers and Piccolo, like the Mammoth, the Tiger and the Sloth. Our communities will succeed when we bridge the gaps between us. And how to conquer that gap is taught very explicitly through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
4. Forrest Gump – I am a little embarrassed to say this but I loved the movie. All of the subtleties and era specific pictures, but I especially loved the scene where he is talking to Jenny, the girl he has always loved and he tells her about the beauty of the Sunset as he ran through the desert, and the way the reflection of the Rocky Mountains looked on a this lake at sunrise, and the way the stars looked on a clear night when he was in Viet Nam. Jenny looked up at him and says that she wished she would have been with him, and Gump says, “You were.”
Have you ever loved someone so much that you took them in your heart everywhere?
Man I have written about too many mushy movies I might get kicked out of the Man Club. I could have shared Brave Heart and William Wallace challenging his army that “All men die, but very few rarely ever live.”
Or the Magnificent Seven when the 7 gun fighters go protect the small village in Mexico. I love it when James Coburn straps his pistol to his leg and says “no body throws my guns on the ground and tells me to run.” Man I stand up and get Brooks’ gun and cowboy hat on and I am ready to ride off with them.
And finally
5. Dreamer – When this movie came out my daughter Ryanne and I went to see this it. The little girl writes a story for school about a king (her father) and a castle (the barn) and their horse. And the story seems to be about how the re-training of this injured horse brings together a father and his young daughter. And late in the trailer the father reads the story. The daughter says, "it’s a stupid story about a stupid king." And Kurt Russell says, "I like the stupid King" and the girl responds, "I love the Stupid King." Right there in the movie theater I just busted out crying and grabbed Ryanne and she’s about punched me in the nose.
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