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Game 6

When I first heard that Michael Keaton would be starring in a film called White Noise, I assumed it was based on the 1984 novel by the revered American author Don DeLillo, and I couldn't wait to see how DeLillo's postmodern vision of the life and times of Hitler Studies professor Jack Gladney would translate to the silver screen. I found out soon after that White Noise was a film about angry ghosts, and I think I threw something at a wall. Keaton now stars in Game 6, which is based on a screenplay written by DeLillo, his first.

The entire film takes place on October 25, 1986, a painful day among many in the history of the Boston Red Sox. As we already know, it was on this day that the Sox tragically lost game six of the World Series to the Mets after being just one out away from seemingly sure victory. This loss did not lose the Sox the series, but for most fans, it sealed their eventual fate in game seven.

The film begins rather ominously, panning across a thin slice of Manhattan before settling on Nicky Rogan (Keaton), our protagonist, reading the newspaper. He then peers out from his balcony, looking toward the East River at the cars below. Seemingly in deep contemplation, he utters a single line: "This could be it."

Just ten minutes into the film, the stage upon which the events of the film will transpire is set. We soon learn that Nicky is a successful playwright whose new play opens on this ominous day. Everyone, it seems, is saying this new play is Nicky's best yet. Nicky finds out after a chance encounter (one of many in this film) with his daughter (Ari Graynor that his wife plans to divorce him. He then visits his mistress (Bebe Neuwirth, doing as much as you can expect with just three minutes of screen time) who tells him that the most ruthless and notorious critic on Broadway, Steven Schwimmer (Robert Downey, Jr.), will likely kill the play by giving it a harsh review. On top of that, the play's lead actor has a parasite in his brain and can't remember his lines. Despite all of this madness, Nicky doesn't seem all that bothered, though he is clearly concerned with something.

"I've got bigger things to worry about," Nicky says plainly. A Red Sox fan born in the wrong city, Nicky sees "a tragedy in the making" for the franchise he's been "carrying on his back" since he was six years old. Baseball, it seems "“ not his play nor his myriad troubles "“ is what

Nicky refers to in the opening line of the film. But what is more and more evident as the day progresses is that Nicky is very much concerned with his play and the prospect of a know-nothing critic dismantling it. His close friend, Elliot Litvak (Griffin Dunne), a washed-up (physically and intellectually) playwright who he just happens to bump into early in the day, is all-too-real evidence of Schimmer's destructive capability. Schwimmer, it turns out, has ruined so many careers that he has to live in hiding, in squalor. Vignettes of Schimmer's home life and quirky nature are some of the film's more standard comic bits, but Downey does very well in them.

Thanks to a slowly building undercurrent of anxiety, Nicky skips opening night and instead watches the big game with a cab driver (a great drop-in performance by Lillias White) and her grandson, who provide exceedingly positive and insightful commentary on Nicky's psychological journey. As the Sox seem poised to win the Series, Nicky articulates what we've come to realize thus far: "This is deeply and intensely personal." This statement is confirmed when the (by today's standards) all-too-familiar Bill Buckner error sets the film's off-kilter climax in motion.

Maybe I've got a soft spot for baseball, Michael Keaton, Don DeLillo, and New York, but I really enjoyed this film. DeLillo's screenplay is rife with trademark postmodern quirks. His New York is one of endless traffic jams "“ we know this because Nicky only uses taxis to get around the city. We see him consistently attempt to engage aloof cab drivers with anecdotes of his old cab-driving days. Characters come and go, entering and exiting the stage at the obvious leisure of the author, conveniently bumping into Nicky and offering insight or providing necessary information to further the plot. Many of the film's characters may as well exist in Nicky's head. The film's events do not transpire in a familiar universe, but rather in a literary, metaphorical universe, one governed comically by the omnipotent and dispassionate radio voice of Lone Eagle, who waxes philosophical during his radio traffic reports throughout the film. What I mean to say is that this film is not simply Fever Pitch twenty years into the past. Because nothing looks too much out of the ordinary, save perhaps Downey's character, I think most viewers are likely to take the absurdity and the metaphors at work in Game 6 for granted.

In the end, whether or not you decide that baseball is a distraction or the main event in Game 6, there is no doubt that DeLillo's screenplay captures the torment that has for so long characterized the experience of being a Red Sox fan. This torment, of course, is somehow less resonant now that the Sox have

managed a Series victory in recent years, but that doesn't take the edge off these events, comfortably distanced twenty years in the past. Perhaps only the most rabid baseball fans, especially Red Sox fans, can really know what goes on in Nicky's head, but I hope there's something in this film for every viewer who has ever felt like they staked their existence on something completely outside of their control and entirely outside of their personal experience.

Movie Grade: A-