4th quarter. Down by 16 points. 42 second left in the game. The ramifications of the 1968 football game appear to have been huge when we take into context the political context of that time, and through archival footage and some surprising talking heads from students who “lived” the epic game, documentary filmmaker Kevin Rafferty demonstrates how it wasn’t just pigskins being tossed around – but some very big ideas that would change they way people thought about big issue topics. We received the full banner sized poster one sheet below…
Harvard Stadium, November 23, 1968: for the first time since 1909, the football teams of Harvard and Yale are undefeated as they meet for their final game. Yale is heavily favored: Brian Dowling, their captain and quarterback – who had famously not lost a game since 7th grade – has been satirized as “B.D.” in classmate Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury strip; he’s joined by halfback Calvin Hill, a future NFL Hall of Fame inductee. Harvard’s lineman is Tommy Lee Jones, at the time Al Gore’s roommate. Yale was in the lead, 29-13, with only 42 seconds left in the game. What happened? Both Dowling and Jones recall this wildly unpredictable game with amazing precision and, in Jones’s case, an extraordinarily dry sense of humor. Jones is particularly droll describing how he and Gore spent a grim Thanksgiving (“we didn’t have any place to go”) roasting a turkey in their dorm suite fireplace.
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 opens at the Film Forum starting tomorrow, Wednesday, November 19th.
