6) I have never in my life been happier than when, after a long day at Dos Minutos Int’l HQs, I returned to Casa Dos yesterday to find that amigos de la blog BH and TAZ had mailed me a blue ray copy of the classic Robin Williams film Awakenings, also starring Robert De Niro. I believe that I recently cited the movie while excusing a disengaged performance by LeBron James – I felt it was possible he had willed himself into a coma to escape Chris Bosh’s putrid play that evening, much like in Awakenings, when DeNiro puts himself back under to free himself from the constant overwrought acting of Williams. Let’s be clear: this isn’t the best Robin Williams movie. That, of course, is Patch Adams. How do we know this? Because Patch Adams is the best movie ever filmed! In that one, a forty-eight year old Williams enrolls in medical school and instantly declares that he doesn’t need to study biology, chemistry, or any scientific field of any kind, because the best cure for illness is, obviously, laughter. Thus, he dons a stupid clown nose, and despite continual reprimands from the administration to cease and desist, repeatedly sneaks into the children’s cancer ward at the university hospital and yucks it up with the unfortunate cancer patients. Bad enough they have cancer –now they are continually exposed to Williams' endless asinine behavior in the middle of the night. You can see the kids praying for the sweet release of death. Meanwhile, he falls in love with another medical student, who appears to be, conservatively, thirty years his junior. Also, she’s extremely attractive, and he looks like a middle-aged, Jewish werewolf. But, you know, whatever. Finally, because he simply won’t study at all, and then constructs a giant anus over a doorway welcoming a visiting conference of proctologists – and then is stunned when they don’t think it is funny – he is expelled from the school. So, he decides to open a hospital out in the woods somewhere, which he stocks by stealing supplies from the university. Of course he does – who wouldn’t? His girlfriend works at the clinic with him. Apparently laughter is not the best cure for mentally-deranged, homicidal patients, because he tries to help a guy like this at the makeshift hospital, it doesn’t work – surprisingly, because he’s not even a doctor, let alone a psychologist - and the mentally deranged guy flips out and murders Williams’ girlfriend. Of course, this leads to some deep introspection on Williams’ part, like: “Hey, you know what? Maybe I should leave practicing medicine to the, you know, doctors.” But then, after much thought, and a conversation with his arch-rival, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, he decides, “No, that’s insane - I’m going to continue to practice medicine without a license and steal supplies from the school.” Finally, he gets brought up on charges by the state, or the school, or someone, and he pleads his case by marching in the cancer kids to demonstrate how much better he has made their lives, although as far as we all know, they still have cancer. And somehow, the governing board of whatever body is trying him decides, “You know what? He’s right. He definitely should be practicing medicine, no matter what!” And he goes on to have a long career being a doctor in the backwoods of West Virginia , I believe. By the way, this movie is based on a true story – it is totally unbelievable to me, except for the part where the state of West Virginia let someone practice medicine for thirty years without a license – that’s totally plausible. To his credit, the real-life Patch Adams says: “I hate this movie.”
 
Awakenings is based on the true story of former Orlando Magic shooting guard Nick Anderson. In the 1995 NBA Finals, Anderson, a good player, missed four consecutive free throws to blow Game 1. The Magic would eventually get swept by the Houston Rockets, and Anderson’s career began a downward spiral. He could no longer make a free throw, as some kind of post-traumatic free throw stress disorder enveloped his brain – it reached the point where, through the first half of the 97-98 season, he was averaging only 6.5 points a game, and shooting a mind-bogglingly atrocious 36% from the free throw line. He was on his way out of the league. But suddenly, out of nowhere, after years in the wilderness, the fog lifted, and Anderson suddenly caught holy fire, and was one of the best players in his basketball over the second half of that season, averaging almost 23 points and shooting 67% from the line. It culminated in an all-time dramatic victory in Orlando over a Shaquille O’Neal-led Lakers squad, after O’Neal had bailed on Anderson and the Magic for the west coast. Three weeks earlier, before the revival, Anderson had scored no points at all in a game in LA. In front of a national tv audience in Orlando, he scored 30 points, had 8 rebounds, and was the best player on the floor. For those two and a half months, he was an early-day Dwyane Wade prototype – all athletic mid-range game, getting to the line, rebounding, and making winning plays all over the court. And then, just like that, “poof” – it was gone. He came back the next year, and wasn’t the same – his shooting percentages faded, he was no longer an effective player, and never was again. One of weirdest sagas in NBA history.
 
In the film Awakenings, Anderson is played by Robert DeNiro, a super-odd choice, and the film is repositioned from mid-late 90s Central Florida to “olden-times” New York (you can tell by the knickers and caps). Instead of an NBA basketball player, DeNiro plays a post-encephalitis, semi-comatose, mental ward patient, and Williams, reprising his role from Patch Adams, is his doctor. Though he has been hired to be a caretaker for a group of patients who are virtually motionless and utterly non-communicative, Williams embarks on a mission to break down the walls between the patients’psyches and the outside world. He makes an accidental breakthrough when he realizes that an elderly woman who responds to absolutely no stimulae whatsoever can catch any object thrown in her direction no matter how hard, or how errant, the throw is. Not only that, so can all of these patients – there is a scene in which, still totally unresponsive to any other outside source, a group of patients play a robust game of volleyball in which the ball never even once comes close to touching the ground. These patients are like the Heat’s Joel “Butter” Anthony, only the exact opposite. Predictably, a female nurse has the hots for Robin Williams, because he is obviously incredibly good-looking, even with extremely furry hands. Williams tries an experimental drug to bring DeNiro out of his coma. It works – he is suddenly revived, like Nick Anderson, after thirty years of trance-like inactivity, but one suspects that during those thirty years someone has been showing him Al Pacino movies, because after two days, when the hospital staff won’t immediately release him into New York City to fend for himself, he stages a Pacino-esque “At-ti-ca” style uprising with the rest of the patients in an attempt to intimidate the doctors into setting him free. Arguably, the drugs begin to wear off – but it’s unclear whether DeNiro has perhaps tired of Robin Williams’ constant mugging to the camera (mostly overblown sighs, and furrowed brows of intense concentration) and is willing himself back into a vegetative state (which is what I theorized LeBron might be doing a few games ago in response to Bosh’s poor play); or, whether Williams himself grows agitated with DeNiro’s hyper-intense twitching as the drugs start to wear off, and he begins to lose control of his body. Either way, DeNiro slips away back into his impenetrable fog. Williams is sad, for a moment, but as in Patch Adams, he is able to quickly gather himself, and in the ending voice-over tells us that “the human spirit is more powerful than any drug, and that is what needs to be nourished,” as he goes off to nail the nurse who has a crush on him. Uplifting? Definitely. In fact, more so each time I see it. It is easy to blame Williams for how cheesy the film is, but, really, DeNiro is no better. Besides Taxi Driver and Deerhunter, has he ever been in a good movie, if you do not count Mafia movies, which I do not, since they are boring and unwatchable? As I popped it in last night, I was surprised to learn that M.Minutos had never seen Awakenings before – man, was she in for a treat! She claimed that she has heard a doctor named Oliver Sacks, who actually studied these types of patients, on NPR, and so she was familiar with the story. “Plus, I’ve told you about the movie so many times,” I pointed out. “Right, but Oliver Sacks was telling the truth about it.” Oh. Good point…Thanks for the movie, BH and TAZ. Sorry you are reduced to reading this stupid blog for entertainment!
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Wordy.  Tomorrow night, in Detroit, we'll try to be a little less, you know, wordy.  If you need me before then, I'll be reading my Strunk and White for tips.  Later...
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