Golf Now Playing at The Movies at Midway
November 10, 2006
If you look at the marquee in front of the Movies at Midway, you couldn’t tell there’s a movie playing this weekend in which golf plays a critical role.
That’s because Keeping Mum is one of the nearly one hundred films playing at this year’s Rehoboth Beach Independent Film Festival, held at the popular movie multiplex on Route One from November 9 through 12.
There’s just not enough room on the marquee for all of them.
As an avid movie buff and current board member of the Rehoboth Beach Film Society, however, I’ve made a careful study of the movie descriptions in the Society’s colorful 106-page Festival program.
I’m fairly confident that Keeping Mum is the very first film featuring golf as a significant element in a movie plotline in any movie shown at the Festival.
Here is how the program’s movie capsule describes it:
Keeping Mum is a farcical black comedy about a family in which every member has a secret or two and in which the newly arrived housekeeper has the ideal, if somewhat radical, method to rid everyone of their problems…. Walter Goodfellow [(Rowan Atkinson of Mr. Bean fame)] is an absent-minded vicar of a rural parish who is so distracted by the pressures of his job that he fails to notice his wife Gloria’s (Kristin Scott-Thomas) dalliance with her brash golf instructor Lance [Patrick Swayze], his daughter’s parade of new boyfriends, and his young son’s regular trouncing by the school’s bullies.
Imagine that–a golf pro that’s fooling around with one of his students. It’s a common element in a huge number of golf jokes. To be blunt, however, when I look around the Cape Region I don’t see too many Swayze-like candidates among our local pros.
On the other hand, the Texas actor is very well known in our house, thanks to his 1987 starring role in Dirty Dancing. For some reason that movie is very popular with the female members of our household, and I think he has something to do with it.
This isn’t the first time the Festival has screened a movie with a sports angle. One of the best examples is Iron Ladies, a big hit at the 2001 event. Based on a true story, it describes how a team of gays, transvestites, and bisexuals won the 1996 Thailand national volleyball championship. That movie was a scream.
For more Festival information, go to rehobothfilm.com, or just go to the Festival tent located in the rear parking lot of the Midway shopping center.
Paul Azinger, Ryder Cup Captain
Congratulations to Paul Azinger, recently named as the captain for the American side in the 2008 Ryder Cup.
The PGA of America made their announcement of the newest hope for an American victory in the biennial team competition on November 6. For the last three meetings, the Europeans have beaten our guys like rented mules.
The 2008 event will take place at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky, scene of Tiger Woods’ PGA Championship in 2000.
As part of the effort to improve the American’s chances, the PGA made two other changes, reportedly at Azinger’s instigation.
First, the point system used to pick most of the Ryder Cuppers is being altered to a model similar to that used by the Europeans.
Second, the PGA doubled the number of captain’s picks Azinger can use to fill out his team, from two to four.
As reported in the online Golf Gazette, Azinger readily understood the stakes involved in amending the rules to determine the best collection of competitors for the popular event.
“I’m going to get the blame if it doesn’t work,” Azinger said Monday at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky. “I would like some of the credit if it does.”
That sounds just like him.