I finally saw the HBO movie, Paterno, the other day. I thought it was pretty good. I definitely do not get the hatred from all the Penn State fans (okay, I do get it, but it seems unwarranted). The movie takes liberties, just like most movies do. “Based on a true story” never really means that it is 100% true. Do you really think when those people were escaping Iran that there was a group of soldiers chasing the plane as it was taking off? No, but it looks really cool in Argo. Or what about the movie A Perfect Storm. There is no way anyone knows what happened on that boat. All of the dramatic shit that happens to those characters was made up.
I get that the movie does little to tell the story of Joe Paterno, but that was not what this movie was about. Maybe someone will do a biopic of the man someday, but that was not this film. This film focused on the Sandusky part of the story. And I am sorry PSU fans, but that is a big part of the story. It sucks, but it is. Did the movie make it seem like Joe questioned whether or not he knew about Jerry? Yeah, it took that liberty that maybe Joe Paterno asked himself whether he ignored things.
I keep reading about how former players are upset that the filmmakers did not interview them about Coach Paterno, or try to find out anything about the man aside from what they knew from this story. However, they were making a movie about Paterno and his role within the Sandusky scandal. If they were making a documentary about his life as a coach (or even a documentary about the scandal), then it would make sense to do interviews with those players and staff members who knew him well.
I thought Al Pacino did a fantastic job as Joe Paterno. In fact, there were times when it was hard to tell that it was not Paterno (I thought a few times they may have put in actual footage of the coach). The entire cast was pretty great. I will always be partial to Greg Grunberg since Heroes. But some of those moments between Scott and Joe (and with Scott’s wife) where they seemed to challenge the old man about Jerry, were pretty good scenes. Not sure if they were factual or not, but who cares, they made for a good movie.
The weird thing to me though is how Penn State fandom cannot allow for any criticism of Joe Paterno. As I have said before, he was a great man, who may have also been slightly flawed. He did great things, but at the end of the day, maybe he did not do enough. I feel like that was what the movie was trying to get at and if fans would watch it and realize that he was not a perfect human being, then maybe they could enjoy it a little more.
Here is a question I have for anyone reading…are there any other figures out there that seem to be off-limits when it comes to criticism? I mean, you can make a movie about MLK and show his negatives. You can make a movie that portrays Hitler as a tragic character. You can write a book about the dark side of Ghandi. So why does it seem that Joe Paterno is out of bounds when it comes to critique?
