'Lights' hits and misses

As films go, "Friday Night Lights" is an above-average-to-very-good sports movie with a penchant for needless melodrama (though that is de rigueur in Hollywood) adapted from the book of the same name.

Billy Bob Thornton gives a fine performance as head coach of the 1988 Permian Panthers, a high school football team in Odessa, Texas. Country singer Tim McGraw is surprisingly good as the alcoholic father of one of the Panthers, and the players themselves are well-acted.

The action sequences are among the best football scenes ever filmed, and the overall visual presentation is arresting in its bleakness, nicely translating the desolation of the West Texas plains that H.G. Bissinger wrote about in his 1990 book.

So if you've never read "Friday Night Lights," I suspect most of you would enjoy the film, because as films go it is an above-average-to-very-good sports movie.

I, however, have read the book (and in the interest of full disclosure, I did so for the first time Tuesday), and for all the positives listed above, they cannot compensate for the almost criminally negligent ignorance of Bissinger's most central and resonating themes.

As adaptations of moving, groundbreaking literature go, the film is as faithful to the book as Bill was (is?) to Hillary, straying from the text in inexplicable ways, searching for a cheap tear or a way to turn the drama up to "11."

Among the many transgressions, two are more unforgivable than the others. The first concerns star running back Boobie Miles.

In the book (and remember, the book is an accounting of what actually happened in Odessa in the fall of 1988), Miles wrecks his knee in a preseason scrimmage and doesn't play until midway through the season, and then for only a couple of games.

In the film, he gets injured in the waning moments of a blowout victory in the first game, which is only a minor quibble.

It's what happens after that is so egregious. In the book (and in real life) Boobie is essentially discarded by Permian once it becomes clear he can't play anymore.

Where he was once praised by the townspeople, after the injury he was derided and sneered upon for not being dedicated enough in his rehab. He eventually quit the team and no one really cared, as he was already a distant memory.

But in the movie, Boobie rejoins the team for the bus ride to the state championship game in Houston and is used by Thornton's character in a rather cliche "win one for Boobie" speech.

(And as an aside, the 1988 Permian Panthers never made it to the title game, losing in the semifinals in Austin. Even if they had played any game in Houston, they would not have bussed over, they would have chartered a 737, as they did two other times during the season at a cost of $20,000 each time. The film makers missed out on a golden opportunity to illustrate the outlandish decadence of the Permian program.)

Then there is the blinding hatred of racism that permeated Odessa in 1988, which barely gets a passing mention in the film.

As Bissinger wrote of race relations in West Texas:

"(N---).

"The word poured out in Odessa as easily as the torrents of rain that ran down the streets after an occasional storm, as common a part of the vernacular as 'ol' boy' or 'bless his 'ittl' biddy heart' or 'awl bidness' or 'I sure did enjoy visitin' with you' or 'God dang.'"

The racism that is so evident, so powerful and so much a part of the book and helps paint the people chronicled in its pages has but two scenes in the movie - when a booster uses the n-word in reference to Boobie and again when Permian officials negotiate the terms of the state championship game with representatives from predominantly black Carter High School.

Along with ignoring the racial tension presented in the book, the film also fails to examine closely enough the extra special treatment Permian players received within the community and in the classroom.

Bissinger reflected on this in a new afterword published in the 10th anniversary edition of "Lights."

"… I anticipated a book very much in the tradition of 'Hoosiers,' a portrait of the way in which high school sports can bring a community together … along the way some other things happened - the most ugly racism I have ever encountered, utterly misplaced educational priorities …"

"Friday Night Lights" the book used football as a window into a small, economically depressed community and examined all that is good and bad inside it.

"Friday Night Lights" the movie used football as a window into football, which is entertaining enough, I suppose, but what could have been a scathing indictment of our sports-mad society brought to the masses instead feels more like a celebration of it.

It's impossible to think of a bigger affront to the spirit of the book.

This week's top 10: Attending homecoming at the home office.

Andrew Hinkelman is a sports writer for The Daily Inter Lake. He can be reached at hink@dailyinterlake.com