Wow, 2 days in a row

So, I hope this means I'm back.  I didn't get a lot of writing done today.  I did however watch the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, which I started after my blog post last night.  I also started watching 3 Days of the Condor, which I like, but I also realized that I like doing other things while I watch TV (internet, Words With Friends) and I don't always pay attention to what's going on, and for a movie like that i really need to sit down and watch.  I plan on attempting again after this blog post.
I also watched two sports movies today.  I like watching sports movies because they motivate me to train for curling.  I'm going focus on the one I watched in morning because it had a much more complicated story than the one I watched while riding my exercise bike (The Rookie).  Gracie is the story set in the 1970's of a girl who's brother was a soccer star coached by her father.  After her brother is killed in a car accident, she decides that she is going to play on boys varsity team (there is no girls team) and beat the team her brother couldn't.  Her father refuses to coach her because she's a girl and boys coach won't let her train in the boys gym (the only one with weights).
At this point, I was like "Okay.  Here is where she decides to do it on her own and prove everyone wrong."  Except that's not what happens.  She decides to quit.  She starts partying and sneaking into clubs.  She fails her classes and eventually steals her parents car and has get pulled off some older dude by her dad.  It's only when she's hit rock bottom that her dad decides to train her because that's all he can think to do because he can't talk to her.  Her father goes so far as to quit his job to train her.  But, when the school board refuses to let her play on the boys team, her father talks to the school and gets her on the field hockey team (essientially giving up on her playing soccer).  She does the appeal herself and the school board agrees to let her try out.  She tries out, but only makes JV.  She wants to quit, but her dad talks her out of it.  I won't ruin the end (but we can all guess what it is).  There is a lot more to this movie, but it's father-daughter relationship that makes it memorable.
I guess the thing I took away from this movie is that you can have that typcial set up and even the same act breaks as every other sports movie, but make it a much more complex story if you make your characters rounded and fallible.  She doesn't have the strength in the begging to keep going when everyone tells her to quit.  She needs to hit rock bottom and her dad to believe in her.  After all the training, her dad still doesn't believe a girl should play on the boys team.    Depending on the type of movie you're making you don't necessarily need all that complexity.  It's entirely possible that it was realness of the story that kept it from succeeding at the box office.  But, at the end of the day I'm going to remember this movie for a lot longer than something like that football movie with Marky Mark Invincible or probably even The Rookie.  When Gracie succeeds, you feel it a lot more as you have way more invested in the character.
When I inevitably write a curling script it'll probably be more The Cutting Edge than Gracie, but I'm definitely going to be thinking about Gracie while I'm writing it.
Wow, in an effort to make this even more stream-of-consciousness.  I was just thinking about how in those things you see on-line "50 questions to ask your charcater" and the like, in most cases while I'm writing a movie I can answer most of those questions, but not all.  And certainly after watching a movie I couldn't answer most of them.  But, after watching Gracie, I could probably answer most of them, not only about Gracie, but about her mom and dad as well.  None of the characters felt like throwaway archtypes.
I'm seriously rambling now.  I'll leave it at this and hope to be more coherent when next we meet.  

BTW: I'm finishing my 2nd pomodoro of the day right about now.