italics = me
the rest = Jeremiah
Daniel Day Lewis and “The Method”—
I know we both adore his work, but – as an actor and/or playwright – how do you account for DDLs immense abilities to perform? For me, he seems to have moved beyond the (largely American?) Stanislavski + Method desire to achieve emotional veracity and psycho-realism through the retrieval and diagnosis of the human condition within any given, living moment through the actor’s own diagramming of character objectives, units, or bits. He seems, somehow, to be able to understand and embody – as the actor – the cultural moments that his characters are living within—he seems to understand acting as a medium of folklore, really. When I watch There Will Be Blood or Gangs of New York (an altogether shitty film regardless of the grandeur of the sets and some fine individual performances by Brendan Gleason and others), I feel like DDL has an unparalleled ability to realize and construct his body as a figurative device. In Gangs, “Bill Cutting” feels like both a metaphor for American Nationalism and a spiraling analogy of the auto-cannibalistic effects and affects of such rhetoric, regardless of time frame or period. In There Will, “Daniel Plainview” feels like a metonym that absorbs the ethos and logos of Capitalism but is ultimately consumed by the pathos of its inherent bloodlust—he becomes, classically enough, his own Frankensteinian doppelganger. In The Boxer, “Danny Flynn” is all that was and is heart-breaking about the immense complexities of reconciling The Troubles in The North of Ireland. What do you think?
As an actor and playwright, what have and do you continue to learn from watching his performances? Do ever feel like you’re missing “something,” because so many of his performances are on-screen rather than on-stage?
First of all, Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance in Gangs of New York made that movie for me, and it was one of the few occasions I can remember when I felt energized, leaving the theatre with my heart pounding and my head swimming, due to the performance of one single actor. Of course, the subject matter meant a lot to me as well. The wildness of this country in the 19th century, particularly among the immigrant and lower class communities will always fascinate me, and of course, I’m partial to untold stories of the Irish-American experience. Looking at the movie after the initial euphoria wore off, the flaws are impossible to miss, but Day-Lewis’ performance manages to preserve something important for me; it’s like he’s an honest-to-God transplant from a bygone era, walking around a movie set in Rome slashing the throats of Hollywood sycophants, who, just by being brutalized by him, end up seeming legitimate themselves. But his brutality is in his commitment to his art. I think one of the things that sets him apart from so many of his fellow actors, despite the fact that he’s probably a genius, and despite the fact that he was the recipient of an education that most of the world would envy (his father is Cecil Day-Lewis, former poet-Laureate of England) is that he seems to be willing to push himself farther than other actors. I have my own theories about Method acting and the people who commit to it; both Steve McQueen and Marlon Brando, neither of whom were ever strict Method practitioners but who dabbled in it when it suited them (like most actors today, I think) openly questioned whether or not acting was something a grown man could do as a profession and still respect themselves. These were men who were acclaimed for playing tough guys, rebels, womanizers, et cetera, with some kind of elemental truth that HAD to be true. Seriously, who the hell is ever going to be cooler than Steve McQueen? And of course they really were like that in their personal lives, they could kick your ass, but I think it bothered Steve McQueen that even though he raced stockcars and trained in Jeet Kun Do with Bruce Lee, he was never really tough in a way that mattered. When he swam away from that prison camp in Papillon, I doubt he could ever forget that he was only pretending to be a real man who had actually done all those things in his life. Brando probably had the same problem, although he was comfortable living inside the enormity of his own ego, and I don’t mean that as an insult, but he also seemed to like using acting as an excuse to go completely nuts. Watch The Missouri Breaks with Jack Nicholson to see what I mean. Anyway, I find it interesting that an actor like Charles Durning, who landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944 and fought a prizefight in Madison Square Garden, doesn’t seem to utilize The Method much. But I’m not saying there’s a connection. This is all a long-winded way of saying that maybe this is what drives Daniel Day-Lewis to immerse himself so totally in his roles. I think inside he has too much respect, or empathy or whatever you want to call it, to portray these people with anything less than total fanaticism. Anything less would be lying and actors don’t like to feel like liars. “Truth” is the golden word to them. It must be the playwright in me that doesn’t mind hoodwinking an audience from time to time. I have to say that the main reason I put forth this theory about Method actors is that I have often felt the same way. There was a short period of time when I considered abandoning my Acting degree midway through and training to be a paramedic. Possibly a ridiculous idea, a low-grade version of Pat Tillman quitting the Cardinals and enlisting in the Army, but there are times when it is painfully hard for me to find a reason why acting, and particularly my writing, matters in any way, and I can’t see a paramedic asking themselves the same question, unless they just get jaded from seeing too many bodies. I never dealt with this feeling by turning to The Method, which admittedly would have been a ludicrous affectation from a college actor. With me it was more a constant conversation with myself, one side arguing that acting was a silly way to spend your time, and the other side countering that just about everything else was, too. I think two actors, Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper, have managed to bridge this gap. There are probably no two actors in world who make representing the freaks and psychopaths of this world look so cool in a classic way. And they both maintain distinct personalities apart from their on-screen personae; Walken is a professional dancer who has said in interviews that he hopes his fans understand that he, Chris Walken, would never do the things his characters have done, and I think a lot of people would be surprised by Dennis Hopper’s classical training, and the fact that when his house burned down in the early-Sixties, a huge, expensive art collection went up in smoke with it. At any rate, I could write 1000 pages on this subject. To answer your last question on this topic “Do you ever feel like you’re missing “something”, because so many of his performances are on-screen than on-stage?”, no I don’t. First of all, I’m not sure if Day-Lewis’ performances would translate well onstage. But as they are, I think it’s a great thing that such great performances are caught on film forever. If you’re going to define a role, which is what you can do in a film as opposed to a play, you might as well define it in a way people will remember.
Dramaturgy don’t pay for surgery—
In your return email to me one of your bullet-points of potential talking points simply, yet quite starkly, reads as follows: “The extreme unlikelihood of ever making a living through playwriting.” As a poet, I totally empathize, but what do we do? Do we all stay in revising only leaving home to/for workshop until HBO comes knocking, as you allude in another bullet-point when you write, “Is getting produced at The Goodman or on Broadway the right goal? For anyone or everyone?” Amongst MFAs our age, the world of adjuncting is corporately competitive. I got into all this, in some ways, to get and remain as far from Capitalistic notions of dreams, ambitions, and attainments as I possibly can, or could. What are your feelings of the oft-impossibility of making a living and surviving comfortably here in America, the apparent apex of the “First World?”
I think virtually every self-styled artist gets into it, at least indirectly, to avoid falling into some kind of financial trap, or at least I don’t think anyone would consciously become a poet, or an actor, or a playwright for the money. Fame, maybe, critical acclaim or some other kind of romantic notion, absolutely, but even the most naïve acting student understands that the chances of paying the bills through Chekhov monologues are terrible. And honestly, from a strictly pragmatic point of view, going into the arts in the United States is a bad idea if you’re not already independently wealthy. This isn’t Sweden, where you can get a government grant to start a hardcore band. If you can manage to wrangle an MFA through your chosen discipline, which you have done and I am a year from doing, then teaching becomes an option but as you say in your question, even that avenue is far from guaranteed. Due to the recession/depression, many states are cutting back on higher education funding, and some, like Nevada, where I live, are trying to slash the shit out of them; Governor Jim Gibbons, in an effort to be an orthodox Republican and stick to his “No New Taxes” campaign promises, would like to cut Nevada’s higher education budget by up to 52%, which would essentially destroy UNLV. So for me to expect to leave here in a year and expect to be employed in any way that utilizes my degree would be ridiculous. I assume that it works the same way in the world of poetry, but in the American theatre some of the the best known, most produced, most critically acclaimed playwrights, people like Susan Lori-Parks, Edward Albee, Lee Blessing and Athol Fugard (South African writer but affiliated with UC San Diego), have been forced to align themselves at some level with an academic institution in order to stay afloat. Sam Shepard was able to parlay his fame into a film-acting career, David Mamet became a Hollywood director, as did Neil Labute, who otherwise should never be mentioned in the same breath as the rest of these guys. Even Tony Kushner has been able to make money through screenwriting (Munich), but these are advantages open to the most successful, and usually most talented, people in the field. So what do the rest of us do? The cool thing about theatre, I often tell my own students, is that everything else informs it. Music, history, politics, religion, law, medicine, everything feeds into it, and I personally can’t stand theatre people who know nothing about and have no interest in anything but theatre. They’re the equivalent of hardcore bands that write songs about how awesome hardcore music is. Incestuous, devoid of new ideas and vitality. Art has to come out of dealing with the rest of what life has to offer. The Wire, for instance, since you mentioned HBO, is the best television show ever made, and probably stands as the crowning achievement of what American Realism is capable of as an art form. It details the decay and destruction of Baltimore, dealing not just with cops and criminals, but longshoremen, state and local politicians, public school teachers and students, journalists and virtually everyone else in between, all the while managing gripping, classically inspired storytelling, pitch perfect acting and excellent writing. But it didn’t spring from the mind of an MFA Playwright in his late 20s. David Simon, one co-executive producer and writer, wrote for the Baltimore Sun newspaper for a number of years and wrote the books A Year in the Killing Streets and The Corner based on his experiences, both of which were later developed into great TV series themselves, Homicide and The Corner, respectively. Ed Burns, the other co-executive producer and writer, was a 20 year veteran of the Baltimore Police Department, a Vietnam veteran and a teacher in Baltimore public schools for several years before The Wire came about. I’m not saying that we should all join the military to get good ideas, but brilliant work can come out of the things that we do to make money while we’re trying to get our artistic goals on track. The trick is not letting those goals fall to the wayside. It’s cheesy, but if you’re going to have success in this kind of thing, you have to keep hold of your dreams. It’s very easy to get used to decent money and forget about writing. It takes discipline and stubbornness to keep writing and revising and sending scripts out there while holding down a full-time job, nailing your rejection letters to the wall and wondering if any of this is ever going to work out, but there isn’t much of an alternative. Unless you manage to get extraordinarily lucky, like David Auburn did with Proof, a pretty mediocre play that somehow took off into the stratosphere and won a Pulitzer, this kind of thing is a long slog. I think in order to preserve our mental health, we need other outlets that have nothing to do with writing. Soccer obsession, obviously, is one we share. These alternative passions shouldn’t be difficult for us to find, either, because, presumably, it’s these passions that drive us to want to create art in the first place. We also have to be realistic about what success we hope to achieve. If I’m destined to die angry and unfulfilled unless I win a Pulitzer and make out with Kate Winslet (which I’m pretty sure David Auburn hasn’t done), then I might as well jump off a bridge right now. But there is a part of me that thinks all of this conjecture is premature. I know a lot of things, I’ve written a few plays, had a few productions here and there, but I’m far from a seasoned veteran, and there’s really no telling what is going to happen when I get out of grad school and start actually making a go of all of this. Before I came to UNLV, I didn’t see teaching as a possibility at all, because I hadn’t done it. But now, a part-time thing at a community college sounds like a decent way to go. Either way, I think the next five years of my life are going to be very telling. If things begin to click by then, then maybe I can talk about what success is really going to mean for me.
It’s not unreasonable to think that Kushner will never write another play that will capture the level of critical, public, and economic attention as Angels in America, which is completely understandable. Homebody/Kabul is a fucking amazing play that hasn’t been ignored, but. Since the early 1980s mainstream America, as ridiculous of a term as that is, has been forced to deal with homosexuality and AIDS on ever-increasing level of cultural saliency, and rightly so, as so many have and still do risk and endure so much. Perhaps, as a “Culture,” we just see our warring as a pure inevitability, as a consequence necessary for stability of growth. In my mind and memory, Kushner and his play’s successes are pretty close to unparalleled. When has a play of such hefty and ruthlessly – not to mention obviously – “subversive” content received such an amount of critical acclaim? As a playwright, one who I assume would love to earn a living through just writing, do you feel pressure to tackle the political in more oblique ways, if such a living is possible?
Regarding Kushner and Angels in America real quick: I occasionally will hear people, lamenting the state of “the theatre” in the United States, ask where the hell Tony Kushner went? “ He wrote “Angels” and then what else?” is usually the way it goes. And my reaction to that is basically, “What do you want him to do, write it again?” It isn’t like Tony Kushner sat down at a desk and cranked this thing out in a matter of seven months, it was process of work-shopping, writing and revising that involved several different productions at several different theatres, utilized the talents of several dramaturges and directors and took five or six years to reach it’s final form. Sometimes the stars align and the right work of art that says the right things in the right way gets the recognition it deserves and that’s what happened in Angels, I my opinion. Not to harp on The Wire, but it’s a prime example of a great work of art that never got its full due. Not too many things manage to become a massive critical success and an underground, cult hit, but The Wire did it. But in answer to your final question on this topic, I don’t feel pressure to “repackage” the things I want to write about in order to carve out a niche for myself. Theatre might never rival TV, film and the internet in popularity again, but it still has a core following, and in that following is an audience for everything. I would rather continue to focus on the things that I find interesting and hope someone else finds it interesting too, and maybe that’s what success ultimately means: being true to yourself in the face of immense pressure to change.
Written on our hills, “The South,” or, “Where you goin’?” “Nowhere.” (continued)—
(a) Could you talk a bit about how growing up in West Virginia and how carrying on as a self-identifying West Virginian shapes your creative process as a playwright? Also, to kick start this, I asked Andy Trebing the following:
"Coming from the northern edge of West Virginia’s coalfields, along the Elk River sunk down in an Appalachian valley, has had a huge impact on my poetry, particularly my MFA thesis manuscript. My friends who are still living back home talk about WVs landscape with a pretty powerful urgency. We’re often defensive, and I often feel myself longing for home. Figuratively or otherwise, has Tennessee’s landscape had any sort of impact on your work or you?;
Two of my best friends, Rebecca and Evan Fedorko, just had their first child, Cormac Benjamin. Before and during the early parts of Becca’s pregnancy, they were talking about leaving West Virginia, getting out cause of all the factors that make living in WV super difficult (too myriad to delve into here). Later, when I was visiting them last Christmas [2008] Evan, half in jest but really more in complete seriousness, revealed to me that they had decided to remain in WV, and quite permanently at that. He said to me, and I’ll never forget this, “How could I allow my kid to be born anywhere other than West Virginia. I mean, what the fuck would we talk about? We wouldn’t have anything in common, for god’s sake.” Could and should a strong sense of American regionalism be perceived as a positive method for furthering how we as a Culture are increasingly coming to cherish “diversity” at deeper and deeper cultural levels? What I mean to say is, for people like us, what happens when we, and this country, loses a sense of “The South?” Could anything positive come out of losing how we understand and recognize ourselves regionally, as a both a Culture and a “Country?” As a Culture, do/can we gain any-thing, per se, if we allow ourselves, purposefully or naturally, unnoticed, to lose how we communally form identity through recognitions of regionalism, colloquialisms, and other folk-idiosyncratic mile markers? Yeah, this one got a touch out of hand, sorry. Haha, give it go though, if ya want."
what would you like to offer in the way of thoughts concerning our thoughts?
(b) In your email back to me you wrote, “Chuck Kinder, Pinkney Benedict, Lee Maynard and Russell Marano: WV writers who really hit something, for lack of better phrasing.” You also include Breece D’J Pancake to this list at another point in that particular section. Along with Denise Giardina and her novels, I would add Richard Currey and his collection of short stories, The Wars of Heaven, to that list as well. I think most keenly, you conclude that section by asking, “What are we trying to say? Because there is a common thread to the work of every writer I have mentioned, you and me included.” Ok, so “what are we trying to say?” because, for the most part, I feel like no one is listening to us even when we’re excellent. Regardless, what are these “common thread[s]” that string us together as creative writers, other than the obvious. Landscape and/or setting as an agent of inevitability, one that dooms characters and narrators from birth to lives unfulfilling, as inescapable destinies, is one common thread I’ve noticed across the work of most of those you’ve mentioned. We all seem affected by that collective sense that wears and tears on us as WV youths, that sinking repetend of, “I’m never going to get the fuck out of here.” But, then we grow up, and tons of our writing seems to reflect us dealing with the ambivalence we feel for our hills and valley homes. Nearly all of the stories in Pancake's lone collection deal with dreading an existence of indifference and generally feeling minute and feckless. Your play, Bleeding in the Dark, which is set in the contemporary college neighborhood of Morgantown, WV, seems to wrestle with these ideas pretty centrally. What do you think? What are you/we trying to tell the world about our experiences of WV?
I am answering this question a few days before I drive home to West Virginia to clear my head and finish writing a draft of my thesis play. I’ve been through maybe five permutations of this story and only now have I made the decision to set it in West Virginia, which I should have done from the beginning. I say this because the playwrights I most admire never left anything vague when it came to who they were writing about and why. Sean O’Casey, John Millington Synge, Lorraine Hansberry, LeRoi Jones and Ed Bullins, to name a few, had very clear ideas of what their purpose in writing was, but I think August Wilson had the clearest mission, and the one that I identify most with right now. He looked at the theatre and said, “Something is missing” so he wrote a ten-play cycle about the African-American experience, one play per decade of the 20th century. I’m not saying I intend to copy him (and Wilson’s idea may have been modeled after a cycle of plays that Eugene O’Neill had begun on the Irish-American experience, but unlike Wilson, O’Neill later destroyed most of his manuscripts), but he had right idea. As I’ve said before, I have often had a hard time finding a reason why my work matters in any way, because simply indulging some need inside me doesn’t seem to be enough. Whether or not you like Wilson’s work, and a lot of people don’t, I don’t think you can say he didn’t matter, because he was telling stories no one else was. And that’s the mantle I have recently re-devoted myself to. Something is missing. No one is putting a West Virginia of any kind onstage (unless you include the musical Batboy and I don’t because it’s based on a story from the Weekly World News) and if I am asking myself why I am writing in the first place, I can’t find a much better answer than to try to rectify this. Artistically this makes sense and it makes sense professionally, as well. Finding a place for yourself, even if it sometimes feels artificial, is important.
I have noticed something really interesting and funny about West Virginians who leave the state and go off to live in other parts of the country. Some of us leave the past behind and don’t really make big deal about it, but the majority of us become militants, much more defensive of the state, its people and its culture than they ever would have been while they were still living there. I’ve even noticed people speaking with much more “Southern” accents than I remember them having. I myself have tacked the West Virginia flag above my bed and I find myself Googling recipes for pepperoni rolls and ramps in order to introduce the ethnic cuisine to my friends in Vegas. I have met two West Virginians in this town and both of them, total strangers seconds before, gave me their home phone numbers and told me to call them if I ever needed anything. It’s very strange, but I can also completely understand it. Las Vegas and West Virginia might as well be different countries, culturally speaking, and if this same thing happened in a different country, I don’t think we would scoff at it. The idea of Chechens or Tatars asserting their own identities in the face of a dominant Russian culture doesn’t seem ridiculous at all, it sounds like the story of any large, modern nation. In the ‘40s and ‘50s thousands of Appalachian people left their homes and moved to big cities to find work, and they usually clustered together the same way immigrants do. The neighborhood of Uptown in Chicago during this period was a Japanese, Native American and Appalachian enclave, many of those Appalachians being from West Virginia. I don’t think many West Virginians would even entertain the notion that we are not, in fact, real Americans, but we all know that the “American Dream” never really materialized in our home state. Most West Virginians know about the troubles of the coal fields, but there’s something about West Virginia’s “natural beauty”, as the brochures say, that drives the point home for me even more powerfully. Take a walk through the woods in Randolph County and it would be easy to imagine yourself in a place untouched by man in any way, someplace wild and mysterious, older than human civilization, immensely powerful in a way one person or people can never hope to understand. But the reality is, the hills you’re walking through were timbered out, then reforested a long time after June 20th, 1863. Virtually the whole state was timbered out, to the best of my knowledge the only virgin forest in West Virginia is a stand of hemlock trees in Randolph County. That is a concept that I find hard to wrap my head around. Families made fortunes by cutting down every damn tree they could find and none of that money found its way back to the people who did the cutting. Not every place has this kind of history, and it’s not as if this is some interesting story that doesn’t have anything to do with the present. West Virginia is still one of the poorest states in the nation, with social problems most people associate with inner-city ghettos, and health problems doctors face more often in sub-Saharan Africa than in the rest of the United States. And yet the landscape is undeniably beautiful, and sometimes, especially after you’ve been away for a long time, it seems impossible to call any other place your home. It is possible to be comfortable in West Virginia, even in meager circumstances. But I think you can also get too comfortable, too addicted to the day to day familiarity of life here, you forget about the things driving you to get out, and it’s then that the desperation sets in. Add a few deaths, a few random acts of violence to that equation and it starts to feel less like heaven and more like hell.
It’s this conflict that I think drives almost all of the writing coming out of West Virginia. You’re right, most of us grow up with the specter of remaining in West Virginia for eternity hanging over our heads, and many of us leave the state to seek our fortunes elsewhere. And yet when we get out into the rest of the country we act like forsaken immigrants, getting drunk and pining for home, cursing the places we currently live for being so different from what we grew up with. I find it very telling that Breece D’J Pancake and Russell Marano, the two writers who, for me, wrote the most compelling things about West Virginia, were doing so from Charlottesville, VA and Chicago, IL, respectively. Certain things just don’t seem possible in West Virginia, and a successful writing career is one of them. These two guys walked the halls of Northwestern and the University of Virginia, elite universities, and yet they couldn’t find a way back home any better than the rest of us. They also died young, so maybe they didn’t get the chance. What frustrates me more than anything is that I can’t put my finger on what the hell it is that I miss so much about West Virginia. But I think it has something to do with the history of the place. It feels haunted, literally and figuratively. Taking a drive down Route 92 between Morgantown and Elkins illustrates what I mean. The highway is dotted with abandoned buildings that used to be hotels, bars, gas stations, homes, all kinds of things. In Morgantown, someone would have bought and refurbished them, or more likely in recent years, torn them down for parking space, but since they’re sitting out in the country where apparently no one wants to be, they’ve just been left to fall in, and all you can do is wonder what used to happen there and how it used to be. And maybe that’s what the biggest problem in the state is. West Virginia is primarily defined by things that existed in the past; the coal industry and the wars that grew out of it, the Old World culture that thrived there until the 20th century, the Civil War. Since the coal industry fell into decline, nothing has really developed to take their place. We will keep electing Robert Byrd until he drops dead, Walmart is now the biggest employer in the state, and drug overdoses, not car accidents like every other state in the country, are now the number one killer of young people. It’s this kind of paradox that I want to convey through my work. No one is telling these stories, and as you say, it seems like even when we’re brilliant, no one is listening. So plays are one way of telling the story that hasn’t been done much (Jean Battlo is the only West Virginia playwright I can think of). Tracy Letts, author of August: Osage County recently put Oklahoma into the Broadway spectrum, so it’s possible for West Virginia as well. Poetry, novels and short stories are a few more well-travelled methods, and the ones that have garnered the most acclaim and attention. But I think until someone makes a movie about West Virginia, a movie that isn’t Matewan, The Mothman Prophecies or Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, a film that actually deals with the realities of life and death in West Virginia in a sincere and non-patronizing way, no one is really going to pay attention. I have a lot of ideas along these lines (a six part mini-series about the Battle of Blair Mountain being the most grandiose), but I can’t be left up to me and a few other people. To sort of sum up this line of thinking, I think that West Virginians recognize that life here is unique, and we can get downright hostile when prejudices and misconceptions about the state show up in the mainstream culture. As West Virginians, we are the only ones who are qualified to search for the truth about this place, and if want others to understand, we have to keep writing and producing art. This means that we can never really break the umbilical cord. We may not be able to live here, but we’re never going to be able to truly leave home, either.
Football/Soccer as Cultural Narrative, as Folkloric—
(a) I thought you could write a bit about Garrincha, the forgotten legend of sorts, a player I know you admire greatly. Even those purposefully oblivious to the sport recognize Pele, but Garrincha is a ghost, as cliché as saying so may be; that in mind, his physical limitations (below and left), his brilliance, and the circumstances surrounding his death are fascinating--could you carry on?
(b) Also, I have this thought that Garrincha could allow football genealogists to trace and locate the genesis, the most famous example, of Brasil’s myriad beautiful failures. Adriano can’t stop drinking, has seen a psychologists, rehab therapists, and just as Inter Milan are about to win their fourth Serie A title in as many years, he fled to Brasil,
refused to return, had his contract cancelled, and signed for Flamengo, but now he’s looking to return to Italy. When (fat) Ronaldo starting breaking into the international scene, earning transfers from Cruzeiro to PSV and then to Barcelona in the space of three years, everyone thought he would become the greatest player in the history of the game. Once at Barca, 47 goals in 49 matches did nothing to discourage such hype, the kind which seemed to transcend hyperbole and begin to sound more like journalistic-prophecy. Inter Milan swooped after his single blistering season at Barca. Then his career began unraveling. There was controversy surrounding his attitude before the France 98 final, which saw Zidane realize his “sporting destiny,” not Ronaldo. A string of knee injuries, surgeries, and rushed recoveries saw him spend more time in the San Siro’s stands, not on its pitch. Ronaldo’s reputation as a partier soon eclipsed that of him as a player, and whispers turned to headlines. Of course, that didn’t stop Real Madrid from adding him to their roster of Galacticos. The decline continued as his ever-expanding waist line underscored the negative headlines. One story told of the Madrid physios having locks installed on all the refrigerators at their training ground to stop him from wolfing down ice cream bars. Another mocked him, reporting he never ate less than two ice cream sandwiches before a morning’s training, always barely ever breaking a sweat after. In a political hooking, which saved their jobs, the team’s president and front office scapegoated him for the team’s decline, and he was shipped off to AC Milan where he continued to gain weight and made only 20 appearances, still managing to score 9 goals, though. For club and country, Ronaldo, who also holds the record for goals scored in World Cups, has scored 324 goals in 458 appearances. Staggering figures, as were the recent images of him, now back playing for Corinthians in Barsil, drunk out of his mind, making out with two transvestite prostitutes. In a press conference called to respond to the images, Ronaldo swore he thought they were women. Outside of Brasil, both Adriano and Ronaldo are generally villianized as head cases and wasters, men who’ve bought into their own hype and have been spoiled by their riches. As was the case after a dramatic period of hard-partying and weight gain transformed Ronaldinho (below and right, before and after the party binges) from the world’s undisputed best to a saggy rodeo clown in Europe’s most over elaborate and disappointing carnival, i.e. Barca across Rikard’s final months in charge. Conversely, George Best, “El Beatle,” has been lionized 
by fans and players alike. Pele loved him and thought of him as the world’s best. As a young Cockney Red, David Beckham’s father, Ted, a massive Manchester United supporter, must have experienced the same rush of idolization while watching Best that millions worldwide have felt while they watch his own son play. After all, George Best was the first celebrity footballer to morph into a pop-sex sensation. By the day of his 26th birthday, Best had basically drunk himself out of competitive football. But, those who love him defend his legacy with stern, yet wistful, vitriol. Even though he continued to drink even after his much publicized liver transplant, Best, excused by thousands, is painted more a sympathetic, yet flawed, hero. People shake their heads in dismay at Ronaldinho, whom seems to be finally rebuilding his career at AC Milan, but most I know dislike Ronaldo and Adriano. But for someone who spends most of time around football lovers in pubs, at games, and everywhere else, I can’t remember the last time Garrincha’s name turned up. Regardless, they all seem to share extraordinary origins in the public consciousness. Football made them and has seemed to contribute to their destructions. We seem to hunger for such narratives, those of the tragic hero and/or the fallen star; I mean, we all love a potential arc of redemption, but why are some hung in infamy while others are worshipped, even while they’re starting to smoke? Along these lines, why has Garrincha, who lies at the root along with Best, nearly been forgotten?
by fans and players alike. Pele loved him and thought of him as the world’s best. As a young Cockney Red, David Beckham’s father, Ted, a massive Manchester United supporter, must have experienced the same rush of idolization while watching Best that millions worldwide have felt while they watch his own son play. After all, George Best was the first celebrity footballer to morph into a pop-sex sensation. By the day of his 26th birthday, Best had basically drunk himself out of competitive football. But, those who love him defend his legacy with stern, yet wistful, vitriol. Even though he continued to drink even after his much publicized liver transplant, Best, excused by thousands, is painted more a sympathetic, yet flawed, hero. People shake their heads in dismay at Ronaldinho, whom seems to be finally rebuilding his career at AC Milan, but most I know dislike Ronaldo and Adriano. But for someone who spends most of time around football lovers in pubs, at games, and everywhere else, I can’t remember the last time Garrincha’s name turned up. Regardless, they all seem to share extraordinary origins in the public consciousness. Football made them and has seemed to contribute to their destructions. We seem to hunger for such narratives, those of the tragic hero and/or the fallen star; I mean, we all love a potential arc of redemption, but why are some hung in infamy while others are worshipped, even while they’re starting to smoke? Along these lines, why has Garrincha, who lies at the root along with Best, nearly been forgotten?This is a tough one to answer, but it’s a brilliant question, because, as anyone who has ever done a YouTube search for “Garrincha” can tell you, this man was a singular talent, and hardly anyone has ever heard of him outside of South America. He was possibly the best dribbler in the history of the game, virtually untouchable in an era that didn’t allow substitutions at the international level, when opposing defenders could simply kick a talented player out of a game and referees were far more lenient than they are today (I’m looking at YOU, Jorge Larrionda of Uruguay). He set up the first two goals in the 1958 final against Sweden, Brazil’s first world Championship, and when Brazil won their second title
in Chile four years later he was voted the best player of the tournament. And speaking of kicking players out of the game, Brazil’s first round exit from England ’66 was largely attributed to the hacking Portugal and Bulgaria gave Pele, but watch the videos; those defenders couldn’t get near Garrincha. It’s hard to say why he is left out of the best-ever players conversation with Pele (right, with Garrincha left), Maradona, Best, Beckenbauer, Puskas, DiStefano and Cruyff, when players like Enzo Francescoli and George Weah, both wonderful players but probably not candidates for the title of best ever, are thrown in. He may well be the seminal man in the history of great Brazilian stories of futebol self-destruction, although there were a few before him, but he is certainly not the first young, poor, fabulously talented kid who succumbed to excess because he couldn’t handle the level of fame he reached and the pressures that came with it. But why he isn’t given his due is a hard question to answer. The world will never know if Garrincha could consume more alcohol in
a single sitting than George Best (left, in form), but they both put as much effort into that as they did into their play on the field. Best may have wasted his potential even faster than Garrincha did, but I will offer my opinions on why he is still so revered in a moment.
Soccer (and I will call it that because it is a legitimate term used by the English since the 1880’s) is so deeply entrenched in the world that I think we forget how young it is in its current form. Eduardo Galeano, the Uruguayan author of Soccer in Sun and Shadow, has said that any historian who writes a history of the 20th century and omits soccer is eliminating a vital piece of the puzzle, because soccer’s rise to popularity and world domination is every bit as thrilling and awe-inspiring as the spread of Communism, Capitalism, or any other force that shaped the course of human history, and of course, the political exploitation of soccer, its fan and its players is pretty well-worn territory. The point is, this sport was already wildly popular in England and India, and spreading rapidly across the globe, before people even knew exactly what the sport was. The rules had yet to be written, modes yet to be established. The English, for instance, had never really thought to pass the ball before the world’s first international match between England and Scotland, when the Scottish ran circles around them with this newfound innovation. Who was the first player in the world to master the art of passing then? I have no idea, but he may have been Scottish. The modern game, in which fullbacks are among the deadliest offensive weapon a team can possess and center forwards are judged less by their ability to finish and create goals than by their ability to hold up the ball and link with marauding, creative attacking players, owes much to the Dutch (or the Hungarian, depending on who you talk to) style of Total Football. The Italians invented the catenaccio style of defense. So Pele is remembered not only because he was maybe the best player ever, but because when he and the Brazilians burst onto the scene in 1958, the world had never seen a team score goals like that. For an unknown black 17 year-old to make his debut on the world stage with a hat trick in the semi-final against France and a wonderful, aerodynamic brace in the final against host country Sweden was electrifying. It’s interesting to note that his compatriot Vava also scored a brace in the final, but does anyone talk about Vava much? Pele and Brazil went on to dominate Chile 1962, but the real reason he has endured is because he was the star of the world champion
Soccer (and I will call it that because it is a legitimate term used by the English since the 1880’s) is so deeply entrenched in the world that I think we forget how young it is in its current form. Eduardo Galeano, the Uruguayan author of Soccer in Sun and Shadow, has said that any historian who writes a history of the 20th century and omits soccer is eliminating a vital piece of the puzzle, because soccer’s rise to popularity and world domination is every bit as thrilling and awe-inspiring as the spread of Communism, Capitalism, or any other force that shaped the course of human history, and of course, the political exploitation of soccer, its fan and its players is pretty well-worn territory. The point is, this sport was already wildly popular in England and India, and spreading rapidly across the globe, before people even knew exactly what the sport was. The rules had yet to be written, modes yet to be established. The English, for instance, had never really thought to pass the ball before the world’s first international match between England and Scotland, when the Scottish ran circles around them with this newfound innovation. Who was the first player in the world to master the art of passing then? I have no idea, but he may have been Scottish. The modern game, in which fullbacks are among the deadliest offensive weapon a team can possess and center forwards are judged less by their ability to finish and create goals than by their ability to hold up the ball and link with marauding, creative attacking players, owes much to the Dutch (or the Hungarian, depending on who you talk to) style of Total Football. The Italians invented the catenaccio style of defense. So Pele is remembered not only because he was maybe the best player ever, but because when he and the Brazilians burst onto the scene in 1958, the world had never seen a team score goals like that. For an unknown black 17 year-old to make his debut on the world stage with a hat trick in the semi-final against France and a wonderful, aerodynamic brace in the final against host country Sweden was electrifying. It’s interesting to note that his compatriot Vava also scored a brace in the final, but does anyone talk about Vava much? Pele and Brazil went on to dominate Chile 1962, but the real reason he has endured is because he was the star of the world champion
1970 Mexico team, and Garrincha (left, raising the World Cup trophy) wasn’t on that team. If 1958 showed the world what Brazilian soccer was capable of, 1970 saw its full potential come to fruition. Brilliant, creative attacking football with Pele at his peak, doing things no one had ever done before, like attempting to score from his own half against Italy in the final and ghosting a through ball past the Uruguayan keeper only to shoot wide of an open goal. And the whole world was watching it happen on television. I think TV is a huge part of the equation, but the cult of celebrity that was taking over the world in the late ‘60s/early 70’s is what made the real difference. Rock and roll changed everything. When combined with the revolutionary climate of the time, suddenly being a great musician or athlete could make you a symbol of something much greater than yourself. The fact the Muhammad Ali, one of the most charismatic, intelligent and iconoclastic men in the world was black and was a source of inspiration for people across the world, and I think Pele was too for many of the same reasons. Rock and roll had a much more direct effect on George Best’s rise to fame. Here was this great looking Irish kid playing brilliant football with a haircut that made him look like a member of Gerry and the Pacemakers, and off the field he partied like a rock star too in an age when hyper-coverage of celebrity personal lives was beginning to evolve into what it is today. I was not alive then, and I am not an expert or a soccer historian, but I don’t think any player had done celebrity like George Best did it. He simply fit the times, and because he was so stylish, good looking and brilliant on the field, he helped define them. Garrincha didn’t have those kind of good looks, in fact, he was deformed by polio and doctors tried to convince his parents to keep him from playing. Maybe it’s all legend, although you can clearly see the way his legs twisted and bent, but it’s just part of his tragic story. In terms of a dramatic arc, going from dirt poor mulatto polio victim to world champion is about as classic as you can get, but his fall from grace was too. By the early ‘70s, he was a shadow of the player who dominated Chile in 1962 and he was dead from cirrhosis before he was 50, largely forgotten, leaving at least 14 children in his wake. I think the fact that Best played his best soccer for Manchester United, a well publicized European club, and Pele went from the 1970 World Cup to the massive celebrity orgy that was the New York Cosmos in the late 1970s, while Garrincha stayed in Brazilian football, also explains why he remains so obscure. But apart from that, who knows? Pele was undeniably the star of the era, even though every national team he appeared on was full of excellent players. It was Jairzinho, not Pele, who scored in every game of the 1970 finals; it was Carlos Alberto who captained the side and scored that iconic 4th goal against Italy in the final (set up by Pele), and it was Rivelino who hit the ball with the force of a Howitzer and who sported a Chester A. Arthur moustache and who amused the world with what must be the greatest ever goal celebration after scoring against Uruguay in the semifinal, but it’s Pele’s name that lasts. After all, he was consistently the best for almost fifteen years. But Garrincha is still considered the best right sided midfielder ever, so maybe he just missed being in the exact right place at the right time. Either way, the next time you get yourself into a barroom discussion about the best ever players, suggest to your friends that they look up Garrincha. Unlike many other awe-inspiring players, watching his trickery and creativity will literally make you happy. Maybe the quality of defending is higher now, but you can’t see modern players trying and getting away with some of the things he did.
You have mentioned Ronaldo and Ronaldinho as prime examples of players who early in their careers seemed to be the next great Brazilian master only to publicly fall apart through excess and substance abuse. Garrincha was no different, and the reason for this is obvious. They all simply wilted under the pressure. To be so young, so gifted, to come from nothing, and then suddenly be worshipped as virtual deities, to have multi-million dollar prices attached to their names and bodies, with the entire world expecting you to constantly improve, always top your latest great exploit, that pressure is unlike anything I can understand. For all their talent, good looks, fame and money, I wouldn’t trade places with Cristiano Ronaldo or Kaka right now for anything. What happens to Kaka if he arrives at Real Madrid and can only manage 8 goals and 6 assists for his 56 million pound transfer fee? That kind of money is obscene. The world takes soccer so seriously, and it needs players like Ronaldo and Garrincha to exist and to be as wonderful as they were, but the world loved Garrincha early on because he played with the sheer joy of the poor, shoeless half-crippled child he used to be. Before futebol was his only ticket out of the ghetto, it was probably his only love and peace of mind. Somewhere I’m sure, his talent trapped him and suddenly none of it was so much fun anymore. Those are my thoughts on that. Maybe the world can only afford to idolize so many people at a time.
You have mentioned Ronaldo and Ronaldinho as prime examples of players who early in their careers seemed to be the next great Brazilian master only to publicly fall apart through excess and substance abuse. Garrincha was no different, and the reason for this is obvious. They all simply wilted under the pressure. To be so young, so gifted, to come from nothing, and then suddenly be worshipped as virtual deities, to have multi-million dollar prices attached to their names and bodies, with the entire world expecting you to constantly improve, always top your latest great exploit, that pressure is unlike anything I can understand. For all their talent, good looks, fame and money, I wouldn’t trade places with Cristiano Ronaldo or Kaka right now for anything. What happens to Kaka if he arrives at Real Madrid and can only manage 8 goals and 6 assists for his 56 million pound transfer fee? That kind of money is obscene. The world takes soccer so seriously, and it needs players like Ronaldo and Garrincha to exist and to be as wonderful as they were, but the world loved Garrincha early on because he played with the sheer joy of the poor, shoeless half-crippled child he used to be. Before futebol was his only ticket out of the ghetto, it was probably his only love and peace of mind. Somewhere I’m sure, his talent trapped him and suddenly none of it was so much fun anymore. Those are my thoughts on that. Maybe the world can only afford to idolize so many people at a time.
In your email back to me, one of your bullet points reads: “So many of their great players-Kopa, Stopyra, Tigana, Zizou [Zidane’s nickname], Vieira, Henry, Thuram etc-have been products of French Colonialism or immigration.” Could you elaborate?
Centering here for a moment, how the hell did France make the last World Cup final? Sub question, you mentioned Zidane’s headbutt shouldn’t and wouldn’t tarnish his legacy. What’s your reasoning behind this conclusion?
Centering here for a moment, how the hell did France make the last World Cup final? Sub question, you mentioned Zidane’s headbutt shouldn’t and wouldn’t tarnish his legacy. What’s your reasoning behind this conclusion?
Let’s look at the starting line-up of France’s team for the final (below and right). Of the starting eleven, five were of non-French descent. These were Youri Djorkaeff (6), Armenian; Zinedine Zidane (10), Algerian; Christian Karembeu (19), New Caledonian; and
Marcel Desailly (8) and Lillian Thuram (15), both Ghanaian. Also starting that game was Bixente Lizarazu (3), a member of France’s Basque minority. Coming off the bench in that final were Patrick Viera, Senegalese, and Alain Boghossian, Armenian. Also featuring for France in the tournament were Thierry Henry, Guadeloupian, David Trezeguet, Argentine, and Robert Pires of part Portuguese descent. The reason why this interests me is France’s often conflicting ideas about race and national identity. Ostensibly, all of these players, black, white, Arab, Asian, or Pacific Islander are considered French and that’s supposed to be the end of it. While Algeria was under French rule, it was not considered a separate land being subjugated by another country, it was literally considered just part of France that happened to be across the Mediterranean. In a way, this is a noble idea, attempting to see beyond racial and religious differences to create a nation based on common ideals. But for the French this lofty idea has worked out about as well as it did for the United States. There are millions of North Africans and sub-Saharan Africans living in France, part of the country’s legacy of colonialism. They fought for France in World Wars I and II, often suffering discrimination while giving their lives for the motherland, and they are barely, if at all, represented in France politically. But if France practiced the same type of exclusion on the soccer field, as the Germans have more or less done with their Turkish minority (despite a few Turkish players on their under-21 side), France would be nowhere. I don’t need to outline the irony for anyone, and I’m not sure I have much more in the way of profound thoughts on the matter. But it raises a lot of interesting questions about nationality. Why, for instance, is the sight of a black player in an England jersey nothing to be surprised about, but the first time I saw Gerald Asamoah playing for Germany I was so shocked I had to call someone and tell them about it? Why does it seem that a man can be both African and French, but not African and Italian? Only in very recent years, in the cases of Matteo Ferrari and Marco Balotelli, has Italy found spots on their national side for any players of African descent. When countries naturalize players to put them on the national side, are they being progressive or are they being mercenaries? Even countries like Turkey, Spain, and Mexico have naturalized Brazilian players at this stage in history, and I don’t think this is because Brazilians assimilate better than other people. I think right now it is too early to make definitive judgments on what this means for national identities as a whole. But traditionally, nations like the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England, France, Brazil, Argentina etcetera, have been viewed as “immigrant nations” and therefore less racially, ethnically and religiously homogenous. Things are changing everywhere now though, and if you visit Ireland now, for instance, you are just as likely to meet a Ceausescu or a Kosciuszko as you are to meet an O’Reilly. How do we deal with this? Does it really matter if Germany fields players named Gomez and Asamoah, Poland fields Nigerian born strikers and Trinidad and Tobago fields white, English-born Chris Birchall? Are these political issues? For me they’re just political curiosities. I actually like watching soccer bend notions of race and ethnicity, that a Frenchman can be Indian, like Vikash Dhorasoo, or that a Swede can be African like Martin Dahlin. But in France’s case it’s much more serious. France, which has a population of about 5 million Muslims, is trying to ban women from wearing headscarves. Is the headscarf something that should be sacrificed for national identity and solidarity, or should they be taking a more multicultural approach? The United States has laws providing for free expression of religion, but France is apparently willing to overlook race and religion in order to create a French identity that is more a state of mind than anything else. But these are just ideas, they don’t change the fact that France’s immigrant population has been ghettoized and disenfranchised. I wish I could say definitely whether or not the fact that France’s greatest ever player is an Algerian has done anything to change racial ideas in that country, but it’s probably too soon to make that call.Speaking of Zinedine Zidane (just below, the headbutt), let me answer your sub-question. France made the final because they were able to squeak out of a weak group, drawing the Swiss, the South Koreans and then beating Togo, with veteran Patrick Viera shouldering a lot of the weight. On paper, they should have gone out in the Round
of 16 against Spain, but suddenly, Zidane, who was a spent force at Real Madrid, came back to life. He and the rest of that side, who were judged either as has-beens (Viera, Zidane, Thuram), young players yet to reach their potential (Ribery) or big game washouts (Thierry Henry) were galvanized in that win against Spain. In the quarters they beat an overrated Brazilian side 1 to nil courtesy of Henry, and they beat overrated Portugal 1-nil courtesy of Zidane in the semis. When they reached Italy in the final, well, who the hell could have predicted what would happen. The Italians are wonderful at making dominance look mediocre. That’s why we like to see them punished.
For me, there are a lot of reasons why Zidane’s headbutt on Materazzi won’t tarnish his legacy. First of all, he had won everything there was to win at that point. The World Cup, the European Championship, The Champions League, La Liga. He scored a brace in the World Cup final. You know who else has done that? Pele, Ronaldo, Mario Kempes, Geoff Hurst (with a hat trick), Vava, all great players. Zidane was a great player who reserved his greatest performances for when it mattered most. In the 2006 Final, he was on the verge of scoring another brace. Having already put them ahead from the penalty spot, he drove a bullet header toward the Italian net, only for Buffon to parry it away. Zidane could not have hit it better, it was the absolute best he could do in that situation and it wasn’t good enough, so his frustration level must have been near the breaking point. Roy Keane is the only person I heard make mention of this in the aftermath. When Materazzi insulted his sister, Zidane reached the breaking point. It was crazy, stupid, all of those things, and maybe it cost them the title, but losing on penalties, it’s very hard to say what might have changed that outcome. Amazingly enough, despite it being an act of violence, a lot of people praised Zidane and slated Materazzi for being a foul-mouthed cheat. And the headbutt itself could not have been more perfectly executed. It sounds ridiculous, but if Zidane had merely grazed Materazzi’s chin with a slap and been sent off, maybe people would hold it against him more. But because he planted his feet, drove his head into his chest and left the 6 foot 5, tattooed Italian central defender squirming on his back, gasping for air and crying like a baby, people kind of love him for it. That’s Zidane; even his red cards are acts of physical beauty. The other thing is, fans of any sport or art form are very forgiving of the person making the miracles happen. Everyone knows that Pele is cheap, Maradona is nuts, and George Best would steal your girlfriend if given half the chance, but it’s those goals, those passes, those runs, all of that genius that we really give a damn about. Zidane was the real thing, a true legend. He dominated the world stage for a number of years and has the trophies to prove it. Knocking out some preening smartass isn’t going to take that away, no matter how many billions of people watched it happen.
For me, there are a lot of reasons why Zidane’s headbutt on Materazzi won’t tarnish his legacy. First of all, he had won everything there was to win at that point. The World Cup, the European Championship, The Champions League, La Liga. He scored a brace in the World Cup final. You know who else has done that? Pele, Ronaldo, Mario Kempes, Geoff Hurst (with a hat trick), Vava, all great players. Zidane was a great player who reserved his greatest performances for when it mattered most. In the 2006 Final, he was on the verge of scoring another brace. Having already put them ahead from the penalty spot, he drove a bullet header toward the Italian net, only for Buffon to parry it away. Zidane could not have hit it better, it was the absolute best he could do in that situation and it wasn’t good enough, so his frustration level must have been near the breaking point. Roy Keane is the only person I heard make mention of this in the aftermath. When Materazzi insulted his sister, Zidane reached the breaking point. It was crazy, stupid, all of those things, and maybe it cost them the title, but losing on penalties, it’s very hard to say what might have changed that outcome. Amazingly enough, despite it being an act of violence, a lot of people praised Zidane and slated Materazzi for being a foul-mouthed cheat. And the headbutt itself could not have been more perfectly executed. It sounds ridiculous, but if Zidane had merely grazed Materazzi’s chin with a slap and been sent off, maybe people would hold it against him more. But because he planted his feet, drove his head into his chest and left the 6 foot 5, tattooed Italian central defender squirming on his back, gasping for air and crying like a baby, people kind of love him for it. That’s Zidane; even his red cards are acts of physical beauty. The other thing is, fans of any sport or art form are very forgiving of the person making the miracles happen. Everyone knows that Pele is cheap, Maradona is nuts, and George Best would steal your girlfriend if given half the chance, but it’s those goals, those passes, those runs, all of that genius that we really give a damn about. Zidane was the real thing, a true legend. He dominated the world stage for a number of years and has the trophies to prove it. Knocking out some preening smartass isn’t going to take that away, no matter how many billions of people watched it happen.
Let’s talk for a bit about Cruyff and the well-regarded esoteric-enigma of Dutch footballing genius, the nation that bears-up the pedestal of world football’s most successful failures. Those who know the sport know, as you wrote in your email back to me, that the players of the Dutch national team refused to salute the generals of Argentina’s military dictatorship, as was demanded of all the squads participating in the 1978 World Cup. Even more famous is Johan Cruyff, who’s always mentioned in equal breathes with Beckenbauer and Maradona as the possible pinnacle performer of his day, who was a such a staunch leftist that he refused to travel and play in a tournament held in a country whose people collectively believed their leaders were listening to their whispers in bed. For him it was clear, even if that tournament was THE tournament, freedom was more important than football, and the ideal was uncompromisable, especially for the ends of the sort of glories that make one a legend. He knew the consequences: at best, a reduction in mystique, at worst, his distraught fans would brand him undeserving of his citizenship. He still didn’t travel, and the Dutch lost the 1978 final to the home nation just as they had four years previously, in West Germany. Cruyff could’ve argued that his presence was worth no more real effect than his absence, but others, who remember how players like Pele, Maradona, Zidane, and Ronaldo have seemingly solo-carried their countries to and through final match victories, would most likely beg to differ, and not all that politely either—after all, they were expected to win by so many. Perhaps for Cruyff his refusal resonated in connection with his nation’s scars from Nazi occupation and the spirit of his nation’s Resistance fighters; perhaps, when considered together, they were moral basements and penthouse ceilings which he regarded as equally permanent. That said, in 2008 Cruyff didn’t flinch as he publically refuted, for the first time, that his famous absence from the international stage was not in protest, as was so often for so long reported and cherished by much more than a minority. For those who choose to cherish, there is an integrity in the protest theory of his his absence, and the sense of sacrifice inherent in such powerful choices, especially when they are made publically by cultural icons and embodiments of national philosophies, only reifies the depths to which we are captured, as audience members, by such choices. Cruyff, rather conversely, isn’t widely regarded as a generous man. He was arrogant as fuck as a player. As a Barca’s manager, he was self-righteous, dictatorial in his methods and practices, and ultra-condescending towards members of the press and opposition managers alike. Yet, many of his players and the team’s supporters adored him. After all, it was honor to be associated with Cruyff, a manager of such skill his signature skill-move was collectively patented and named by the world at large. Children all over the world, right this very second, are practicing “The Cruyff Turn” (see his most famous example here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pTgHDjf_4I&feature=related). His credibility, though, has eroded in the minds of many football fans, and a general weariness for his more petulant side is growing in my own mind. Those who love his highlights but hate the man see him as obsolescent, an aged genius hermitting himself inside the embrace of his ego, his self-cultivated “genius” persona. Hunter S. Thompson once commented, during a documentary interview from the early 1980s, that he was beginning to lose sight of where he ended and his literary persona, “Raoul Duke,” began. Both Charles Bukowski and “Henry Chinaski,” and both Sylvia Plath and her poems’ speakers exist in such margins of blurry vision, especially for fans. Could you discuss Cruyff’s enigmatic legacy as a microcosm of all that is beautiful and ironically childish about the players, past and present, of the Dutch National team?
The Dutch really should have won a World Cup by now, if not in 1974 then in 1998. Their style of play married with an overall technical precision basically begs for it. It’s like Brazilian flair mixed with German efficiency. I think that kind of skill breeds a certain arrogance amongst players. Why wouldn’t you think you knew better than the manager when you can do things with the ball that virtually no one in the world can do? Why wouldn’t you demand that your teammates defer to you? If you have one player in a team who can afford, right or wrong, to have this attitude, then maybe it can galvanize a team, they have something to rally around, but if you have six or seven players like this, as the Dutch typically do, then it’s a recipe for discord. Not everyone can be the wizard pulling the strings and making the magic happen but when you are capable of that, it’s got to be annoying watching someone else play the role and earn the plaudits. Some players are better than others at sharing the limelight, but one would think that the truly special players, like Cryuff (mid-turn, left and below), know that they are not like everyone else, that they are gifted beyond normal human standards, and he obviously chose to use those gifts to his full advantage. This meant imposing himself, insisting his skill and intuition be
placed first and foremost in a team that had other great players like Neeskens and Rensenbrink. Why he didn’t travel to Argentina in 1978 is unknown to me. Maybe he, like Roy Keane, had a falling out with the manager or the football association and decided that the right thing to do would be to walk (at least that’s the way Roy Keane supporters see it). Or maybe he was a true prima donna and felt that he had been slighted too many times to participate anymore. Either way, he must have been very concerned with his image in the public eye, or else he would not have let stand this “myth”, if that’s what it is, about him boycotting the Argentine World Cup because of the Fascist policies of their government. Regardless of what Cruyff did, I think his Dutch teammates did the right thing. Opting out of the competition is too easy and too drastic. Many people could attack the US soccer team because of the policies of our government, and many do, but that’s missing the point, in my opinion. International play should be about sheer joy of the game, shared by the common people of the world, regardless of political concerns. Of course it is impossible to separate soccer and politics, they are often the same thing, but it shouldn’t be the foremost issue. If it was, there would be a reason to boycott everyone. I could boycott the Norwegian and Japanese national teams because those countries still practice whaling. We could boycott the Australian team because of their historical treatment of the Aborigines. The entire world could find a valid reason to boycott England, but of course, the opposite is often the case. By showing up to play in Argentina, they showed the dictatorship that soccer is more powerful as a social force than military repression, and by refusing to salute, they said that politics and money don’t hold sway over everyone. It took balls for them to do that. It’s just a shame they didn’t win. Maybe if Cruyff had been there they would have, but that’s an unanswerable question. Would Ireland have done better in 2002 with Keane? We can only guess. As for the persona of a player versus the persona of a writer, the only thing I can offer is that while Chinaski may be based on Bukowski and Raoul Duke may be based on Hunter S. Thompson, those literary creations are mixed with a heavy dose of fantasy and imagination. Call Cruyff the best player ever, a Dutch hero, or an arrogant traitor who only cared about himself, it isn’t going to change what he actually accomplished on the field. The goals, the turns, the crosses, the runs, they’re all still there, waiting to be put into context by the rest of us. At the club level, maybe it would be easier to define. If he had played for AC Milan or Real Madrid, teams of the right wing aristocracy, we could call his goals the enforcement of iron law and justice. But unless, like Paolo DiCanio (below and right) has done, he ran to the sidelines and gave a fascist salute after scoring a goal, this would all be conjecture. Or bullshit, to put it another way. As for Dutch football as a whole, I just find it wonderful to watch. Unless they are playing the US or Ireland, I will always want them to win. And until they win something major, something will always feel amiss in the world of soccer. I don’t like 
arrogance in people, in fact I often despise it, but the Dutch have a lot to be proud of; great art, an open and progressive society, a history of brave and principled resistance against the Nazis, particularly in their efforts to protect their Jewish citizens, and they are supposed to have some of the greatest fans in the world (I haven’t seen it firsthand so I can’t say for sure). But most fans aren’t thinking about Anne Frank when they root for the Dutch; they just want them to win because of the way they play, just like many fans are happy to see the Italians take their catenaccio and go back home regardless of how they feel about Fellini films. I think a lot of fans worldwide hope that the Dutch someday find a way to sort out their individual brilliance and make it a truly collective force. If they someday manage to win the World Cup, I wonder if the enmity toward Cruyff will dissipate. His absence in 1978 won’t mean as much, just like missing a penalty in the first half can be forgotten if your team eventually wins the game. And there are few clubs more exclusive than that of the World Cup winners. Only seven countries have done it-Italy, Brazil, France, Uruguay, Argentina, England and Germany-and I for one would love to see that number expand to eight in 2010. The Dutch are always in the position to do it, although if anyone is going to win it for the first time it will probably be Spain. But they’re their own brand of arrogance and enigma.
arrogance in people, in fact I often despise it, but the Dutch have a lot to be proud of; great art, an open and progressive society, a history of brave and principled resistance against the Nazis, particularly in their efforts to protect their Jewish citizens, and they are supposed to have some of the greatest fans in the world (I haven’t seen it firsthand so I can’t say for sure). But most fans aren’t thinking about Anne Frank when they root for the Dutch; they just want them to win because of the way they play, just like many fans are happy to see the Italians take their catenaccio and go back home regardless of how they feel about Fellini films. I think a lot of fans worldwide hope that the Dutch someday find a way to sort out their individual brilliance and make it a truly collective force. If they someday manage to win the World Cup, I wonder if the enmity toward Cruyff will dissipate. His absence in 1978 won’t mean as much, just like missing a penalty in the first half can be forgotten if your team eventually wins the game. And there are few clubs more exclusive than that of the World Cup winners. Only seven countries have done it-Italy, Brazil, France, Uruguay, Argentina, England and Germany-and I for one would love to see that number expand to eight in 2010. The Dutch are always in the position to do it, although if anyone is going to win it for the first time it will probably be Spain. But they’re their own brand of arrogance and enigma. Anyway, allow me to say thank you for asking me my opinion on all of this, it’s been a fun thing to work on.
Jeremiah Munsey is a playwright and actor born in Elkins, WV, although he calls Morgantown, West Virginia home. He received his BFA in Acting from West Virginia University in 2003. His recent productions include A Duel of Kings, Replica, 9 to 5 Alleycats, and The Way it Has to Be, all produced at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Jeremiah expects to graduate in May 2010 with an MFA in Playwriting from UNLV.
