Murderball

I went to see Murderball a week and a half ago for the Philadelphia premiere at the Ritz Five with Lady, it was a packed house. The film is currently playing at the Ritz at the Bourse. Catchy name for a movie, eh? But what is Murderball and what was the film about?

Murderball is a rediculously greuling sport involving two teams of eight playing rugby on a basketball court. There are goals on either end of the court which teams are given one point for crossing the line with the ball which looks like a thick volleyball. You must dribble the ball or pass the ball to a teammate every ten seconds or the ball goes to the other team. It is full contact. No pads involved anywhere. There are four eight-minute quarters. Oh yeah, and the players are all quadrapalegics and in modified tank-like wheelchairs. Each player is assigned a point rating from 0.5 to 3.5 determining the agility and use of their arms and hands [for catching/throwing purposes] with 3.5 being the least impaired. Each team may only have 8.0 total points on the floor at a time distributed throughout the four players. Murderball was invented by a group in Winnepeg, Manitoba [Canada] and first demonstrated in the U.S. in 1979. For a more detailed description of the rules and history of the game check this out.

The documentary follows the US National Quad Rugby team on its journey to the 2004 Athens Paralympics. Out of the eleven international quad rugby competitions, the US had won every single one. This 2004 team was going there to defend an unblemished international tournament record. The film takes us into the lives of the murderballers, the intense rivalry with Team Canada and the experience one person has after losing the use of his legs.

The film opens by introducing Mark Zupan, the lead rebel of this band of rebels, the team captain. Tattooed and goateed, when not in a wheelchair, he looks just like any other extreme athlete: ripped and full of attitude. That goes for the rest of the team as well. These are not a group of average wheelchair pushing people. They are not your average 'able-bodied' person. These are top-of-the-line athletes. Training for some involves pushing upwards of ten miles a session. They lift weights. They do drills. They scrimmage. They play pranks. Just like any other team of professional athletes. They live to play. Watching them interact reminded me of my teenage years travelling up and down the east coast with my soccer team. Weekends spent in hotels, hours of driving and flying and playing teams from across the U.S. and a few from abroad.

We're not going for a hug. We're going for a fucking gold medal.

That's what Scott Hosgett had to say to people who belittle or just don't understand the stakes at hand for their trip to Athens 2004. He recalled a moment at a wedding when he was the center of attention as the jock talking about his trip to the upcoming Paralympics. Then, someone came up and said "I hear you're going to the Special Olympics!" and he then turned into "the fucking retard" and his heart sunk. He [and the rest of the players] don't mean to belittle the Special Olympics, but he wanted to make the distinction between the two events and the players involved. This is just one example of the brazen attitude each of the guys have.

What? You're not gonna hit a kid in a chair? Hit me. I'll fucking hit you back.

Those were the choice words Zupan had while talking up a guy who seemed to walk away from him as a sign of going easy on the guy in a chair. I know that I wouldn't want to get into a fight with Zupan, nor any of these guys. Not becuase I felt bad for any of them, but because I think most of them could kick my ass. These guys' upper bodies are way more developed than an average guy. I'm not pushing my own body weight around as a means of transportation, they are. A punch from one of these guys would probably pack more than I'm capable of taking. Zupan's friends also noted that this acerbic tongue wasn't something that resulted from him being sorry for himself and pushing his anger outward at others, he was an asshole before the accident and continued to be an asshole afterwards.

Zupan's arc within the film was the main arc for several reasons. He is the most commanding presence in the film. You look at him and you just see intensity. His girlfriend is a former morgue worker and looks great in a bikini. And his accident involved his best friend, Chris Igoe, drunk driving on his way home from a high school party and crashing his car and sending Zupan flying, what looked like at least fifty feet off the road over a set of shrubs into a lake. Chris didn't know Zupan was in the bed of his pickup, Zupan was drunk too and had crawled into the truck to sleep. He spent thirteen hours clinging to a branch in the lake because nobody knew he had been in the truck at the time of the accident. Chris carried a ton of grief through the years and had not spoken to Zupan in some time.

The other main story was of the rivalry between Team USA and Team Canada. They had a long-standing rivalry on the court, but all that intensified when Joe Soares was cut from the US squad and went north to coach Team Canada to Athens 2004. Soares was teh most dominant player in the world and lead the US to gold in Atlanta 1996. But Soares had gotten a little slower and just didn't have what it took to be on the squad anymore. He seemed to take it as a personal insult and felt that he needed to devote his energies to get back at the team by leading Canada to gold.

A smaller part of the film was the story of Keith Cavill, a Motocross racer who broke his neck and was learning to live all over again.

You're almost at an infant's level

Is how he described the first months in rehab after the accident. He struggled to learn how to zip a zipper and get up from a lying down position. When introduced to a new person, he couldn't fully grip their hand while shaking it. He was incredibly frustrated. His family, his girlfriend and the staff did all they could to support him and a catalyst was provided by a visit from Zupan to his rehab facility, showing Kevin, and the other recently injured people.

Zupan and the rest of the squad do a lot of community outreach. They meet kids, very young kids, at events. The kids are encouraged to talk to the players and ask them questions. The kids need to learn that a person in a chair is no less of a person simply because of the chair. They need to not be afraid. There's really not enough exposure of fully capable people in chairs out there. A person in a chair usually connotates injury or sickness, and that shouldn't be the case. Teaching kids at an early age otherwise can help. Bob Lujano, who has been playing for over a decade, is a quadruple amputee. He lost limbs below the elbow and above the knee, due to a rare blood disease called Meningococcemia, which is a rare form of meningitis. When a young boy asked him how he eats pizza with his elbows, he laughs and demonstrates with a piece of paper that's on his lap. He picks it up and bites into it and the boy looks on, smiling.

The players travel to rehab centers to speak. They tell the oftentimes downtrodden that this is not the end of their life. Zupan said that he does more now in a chair than when he was able-bodied. If he had to do it all over again, he wouldn't change a thing. The hospital visit that really hit home for me during the film was their trip to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in DC. They spoke to veterans of the Iraq war. Recent amputees. Boys and girls. Many were only eighteen years old, they could've passed for thirteen.

The eighty-five minute film passed very quickly. Pretty fast-paced, just like the game. Present at the preview were two members of Philadelphia's Magee Eagles, AJ Nanayakkara and Eric Anderson. AJ just made the National Team and spent a recent weekend down in Birmingham, AL training with the squad. AJ spoke before the film about his experience and how initially, he was a comlete shut-in and didn't want to do anything. Three years later, he started to play and hasn't looked back since. I think he said he's been playing for five years now and had missed a total of three practices. Now that's some dedication. The team is sponsored by the Philadelphia Eagles football team and practice bi-weekly throughout the summer at the Carousel House in Fairmount Park. The Beast of the East tournament is scheduled for October, I'm sure as hell gonna be there to see the game live and up close. Should be awesome.

Image: Murderballmovie.com

Comments

[yoko]

Thanks for the review-- it sounds like a tremendous movie.