Seabiscuit

I was sitting there waiting for something bad to happen. The movie was moving along at a nice rhythm – and perhaps it was the hardships in their earlier lives that was the “bad” and the winning of the races may have one or two bumps in the road, but nothing major. Could it be? Yes, yes it could.

Then the question I started asking myself was why did I assume something bad was going to happen? Was it because when I saw Freddy vs. Jason in theaters years ago, I had a dream that night that was basically the movie reincarnated and it scarred me for a 48-60 hours? Or was it that there’s a new arriving expectation that wherever you turn and look, there’s another negative piece of something rearing its ugly head? Or we just exclusively love horror and drama flicks presently and feel good movies are a thing of the past? Was it because I was by myself in a random AirBnb in Beverly, Massachusetts?

Five minutes after I thought that, and waiting, something bad did happen. A tier C horse heard a John Deere and was off running, grabbing Red’s foot and dragging him around the course, threw the stables, eventually landing leg first into the side of one. 11 broken bones. Three weeks later, the horse tore its ligament.

But the “bad”, that did arrive, turned into “good.” Red and Seabiscuit started to rebuild their strength together, trot for trot, a mini course gallop, and light sprints. And maybe expecting the worst is a natural human tendency (I think the science studies show it). And that’s why the two owners and couple were as nervous as college admissions day before the final race, the wife sitting back and not being able to watch until she knew the race had begun.

But what the movie did, and what many movies (used to) do, is turn bad into good. Turn a Gary Burteer injury into a crying victory for everybody. Turn a damaged and hurt rider and horse into a winner again.

For some reason, it feels like we’re an environment where we’re turning bad into bad. Not the Remember the Titans way. Or the Seabiscuit way.

Seth Rogan said it best on a recent podcast – “we just don’t make comedies anymore (in movies). They make no money. I can write an action / drama easily, it’s the comedy writing that’s tougher anyway.” I watched a combination of Promising Young Woman and A Quiet Place Part II on a plane recently – and by watched, I mean I saw the last 90 minutes for the first and bits and pieces of the second (all on mute) during the last 2 hours of LAX to JFK.

Let’s put it simply – the last twenty minutes of Promising Young Woman emitted a different emotion than the last twenty minutes of Seabiscuit.

I truly worry that people don’t expect to feel good anymore. They expect to see bad. Turn good into bad and bad into worse. How can we start turning bad into good? We knew how to do it ten years ago. Twenty years ago. There has to be a way – should we start with the basics? There are signs in my office about how to wash your hands. That’s pretty basic. What about the simple a) sleep, b) exercise, c) eat healthy routine? Can we turn a bad lifestyle into a good one? A bad day into a good one?

We’re in a bit of a chaotic environment, and not sure how we are able to escape it. Each new word you read is one bad word after another. In a non-covid world, we were able to break away from those bad words, or ignore them (because we know deep down it’s the news and that’s what they do), or just be with people enough so the smiles and laughter we saw and heard engulfed the day and took us away from what wasn’t.

Seabiscuit was a simple movie. A simple movie with good actors. Including the horses – who really are beautiful people too. I believe they can feel us and understand us, as I’ve had an experience with a horse where I felt like it knew what I was saying and I knew what it wanted to do.

But the horse whisperer talks aside (picture below), let’s all think on this one. Start turning bad into good again. Start remembering what good is again. We can do it, but it’s not going to naturally happen in this environment necessarily. Because it’s a bad environment. That’s turning bad into worse.