Films
A number of notable Hollywood films have been made about hockey. Notable hockey films include Slap Shot; The Mighty Ducks, successful enough to spawn two sequels, a cartoon series, and an NHL team named the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (now the Anaheim Ducks); and Miracle. The first two are fictional comedies; the last is a drama based on the true story of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" USA Olympic gold medal team.
Other hockey films include Youngblood, Hockey Night, MVP: Most Valuable Primate, H-E Double Hockey Sticks, Mystery, Alaska, The Rocket: The Maurice Richard Story, The Sweater and the 1937 John Wayne film Idol of the Crowds.
Many other films are less hockey-oriented but nonetheless prominently involve the sport. Ice Angel involves a male ice hockey player who dies and comes back to life in the body of a female figure skater. Both Happy Gilmore and The Cutting Edge center around failed hockey players using their talents for other sports (golf and figure skating, respectively), while Wayne's World contains a number of prominent references to the sport during the film. The movie "Big Daddy" features actor Adam Sandler watching a hockey game played by the New York Rangers. The Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Sudden Death is set and shot entirely in the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, the (supposed) stage for the seventh game of the NHL Stanley Cup Final. In the movie The Town, bank robber Doug MacRay (played by Ben Affleck) is a former draft pick of the Boston Bruins whose hockey career derails because of his propensity to get into fights with his teammates. In another Boston-based movie, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Eddie (played by Robert Mitchum) is taken to a Boston Bruins game (against the Chicago Black Hawks during the 1972-1973 season at the old Boston Garden) right before he is killed. Upon watching Bruins great Bobby Orr, he states "Can you imagine being a kid like that? What is he, 24 or something? Greatest hockey player in the world. Number four – Bobby Orr. Geeze, what a future he’s got, huh?" The Canadian buddy cop film Bon Cop, Bad Cop features a by-the-book English Canadian teamed with a rule-bending French Canadian to investigate a series of murders connected to professional hockey.
In Quebec, the movie Les Boys is a cult classic for many hockey fans, enough to spawn three sequels. The fourth installment of Les Boys featured "Hockey Legends" such as Guy Lafleur, Pierre Bouchard, Martin Brodeur, Yvon Lambert and more.
Hockey has also been referenced many times in the series of movies known as the View Askew Movies, which were written and directed by Actor/Director/Writer/Hockey Fan, Kevin Smith. His first movie, Clerks, featured a street hockey game played on the roof of a store, however many of the players in the game wore ice hockey jerseys, including jerseys of the New Jersey Devils, Pittsburgh Penguins and the Soviet Union. Mallrats shows the character Brodie (Jason Lee) playing an ice hockey game on the Sega Genesis game console. Chasing Amy includes a scene in which Joey Lauren Adams and Ben Affleck attending a high school ice hockey game. Dogma did not feature ice hockey but included three street hockey playing teenagers as henchmen for a demon. More recent, Smith's film Zach and Miri Make a Porno features an rec league ice hockey scene, several Pittsburgh Penguins references as well as a scene outside Mellon Arena.
While National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation was never a hockey movie, Chevy Chase's lead character, Clark Griswold, was famous for wearing a light Chicago Blackhawks jersey with "Griswold" and the numbers "00" on it during certain scenes. It also plays a part in Disney Channel original movies Go Figure and Genius, and romantic comedy Just Friends.
The movie Ferris Bueller's Day off features Ferris's best friend Cameron who wears a vintage Detroit Red Wings Gordie Howe jersey throughout most of the movie.
In the 1996 cult favorite Swingers, Trent (played by Vince Vaughn) is playing a NHL 93 videogame with his friends and extolling the toughness of Jeremy Roenick (then of the Chicago Black Hawks) and takes delight in bashing Wayne Gretzky (then of the Los Angeles Kings) in the game.
In the film, The Love Guru, Mike Myers is hired by the Toronto Maple Leafs as a counsel to their star player.
The Rock starred in a film, The Tooth Fairy, where he played an ice hockey places forced to moonlight as a tooth fairy
The 2012 film Goon starred Sean William Scott as a bouncer from Boston who becomes an enforcer in a Canadian hockey league.
Read more about this topic: Ice Hockey In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the word films:
“If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface: of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.”
—Andy Warhol (c. 1928–1987)
“Does art reflect life? In movies, yes. Because more than any other art form, films have been a mirror held up to society’s porous face.”
—Marjorie Rosen (b. 1942)
“Right now I think censorship is necessary; the things they’re doing and saying in films right now just shouldn’t be allowed. There’s no dignity anymore and I think that’s very important.”
—Mae West (1892–1980)