Saturday, August 21, 2010

MOVIE NIGHT AT CITI FIELD.

Tonight was the premiere of the Billy Joel documentary “The Last Play At Shea”. If you don’t know, Billy Joel (who happens to be a Yankees fan, but that’s another story) played the last two concerts in the history of Shea Stadium, back in 2008. The movie made its official premiere during the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year, so I’m not sure how exactly this was the premiere, but I also don’t really care: for $10, I got to sit in Sterling Club seats (row 6) and got to watch a movie I wanted to see anyway.

The crowd was mostly Billy Joel fans, and true to the press release, there were definitely about 20,000 people there. Concessions were open, Mr. Met was out in the concourse in left field where they had a stage set up along with controllers to play Beatles Rock Band (he played drums, in case you care), and the pre-game time was filled with Shea Stadium musical and Billy Joel trivia.  They didn’t sell the Promenade, but the Promenade boxes were full; they didn’t sell the left field landing area, the Pepsi Porch, Big Apple seats or anything that would have made it impossible to see the scoreboard. They filled the warning track with huge speakers, and turned off the lights. The weather was fantastic. Concessions were open, but they severely underestimated demand, and lines were longer than they are when there’s a game. But that was a small dent in what was a lovely night.

Let me get this out of the way: I am not a Billy Joel fan. At all.  I do, however, have tremendous respect for him and his body of work. He worked hard, he earned every drop of success he’s achieved. So this is not 16 pages of gushing about how awesome Billy Joel is.  I mention this because when I tell you that the movie is well worth you hunting down, it’s because the movie does a tremendous job telling many different stories. Some will be interesting to you as a Mets fan, others will be interesting to you as a baseball fan, others will be interesting to you as a rock and roll fan. So if you would call yourself any of those things, but not maybe a Billy Joel fan, I’d still recommend the movie.

It’s not a straight concert film; I believe there were only two or three complete performances of songs in the entire movie. If I was a Billy Joel fan, I’d probably be irked about that. But they fill the gaps with interviews with people like Keith Hernandez and Darryl Strawberry and Ron Darling and our own Gary Cohen; my colleagues Dana Brand and Greg Prince also get some screen time. They give history and background and context to people coming to see the movie who don’t know anything about the Mets or Shea Stadium.

You get a nice summary of Billy Joel’s history, which is either new to you or a refresher course. I appreciated the candor with which he was willing to discuss his life and career; it certainly isn’t a cleanly polished, nice and tidy life story. Of course, that also makes it that much more interesting.

Woven within and without continues the history of Shea. We get a crash course on Robert Moses, we meet a guy named William Shea, we see the Beatles performing. You fastforward through the 60’s to 1969, and then through the 70s to the 80s and 1986. You fastforward again until 2001, and then to 2008. Being that I have still not yet watched the 9/28/08 game at Shea, or the Shea Goodbye ceremonies, to see it on the big screen was more than a little heartwrenching.

However, the absolute best thing in this entire film was the introduction of Mets head groundskeeper, Pete Flynn. You’re going to say “So what” but I’m going to tell you that you are wrong. Pete Flynn, you see, was at Shea from the day it opened. Have you ever watched the film of the Beatles at Shea Stadium? Do remember that white station wagon with the fake paneling that drove the Beatles out onto the field? Do you know who drove that car? Pete Flynn. (This is not something I knew until tonight.) When Paul Mc Cartney came back to Shea to appear with Billy Joel (and the story about how that happened is fantastic, but I won’t ruin it by spilling it all here), who was driving the golf cart that took him out to the stage? PETE FLYNN.  And the camera was there when Pete turned to Paul and stuck out his hand and told him that he drove him out there the first time.

No, seriously, it would have been worth $50 to see that moment alone.

Now, I will admit that am biased; I still think the greatest musical moment in Shea Stadium history was when Bob Dylan walked out on the stage with Bruce Springsteen in 2003. It was amazing because it absolutely blindsided everyone; there were no rumblings or rumors (like there were with Mc Cartney and Billy Joel), Bruce just said, “I’d like to bring out someone who’s been a great inspiration to me, my friend Bob Dylan” and 55,000 people went collectively apeshit. But Mc Cartney showing up to close the loop, as it were, is undeniably amazing.

So this is the metsgrrl.com thumbs up on “Last Play At Shea”. Unless you absolutely hate Billy Joel, if you care about baseball or rock and roll, it’s worth a couple of hours to see “Last Play At Shea”.