SlapShot the Movie - Puttin' on the Foil

- "RIGHT BACK WHERE WE STARTED FROM"
Performed by Maxine Nightingale
United artists Records

- "SORRY SEEMS TO BE THE HARDEST WORD"
Performed by Elton John
MCA/Rocket Records

- "Rhiannon (Will You Ever Win)"
Written by Stevie Nicks
Performed by Fleetwood Mac
Reprise Records

- "Say You Love Me"
Written by Christine McVie
Performed by Fleetwood Mac
Reprise Records

- "A LITTLE BIT SOUTH OF SASKATOON"
Performed by Sonny James
Columbia Records

- "YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE DANCING"
Performed by Leo Sayer
Warner Bros. Records

This year is the thirtieth anniversary of Slap Shot's release. There has been a lot of water under the bridges of Flood City. Maybe we should start with where I got the idea. Or where I was when I got the idea. And when. 1974-5 in Los Angeles, California. Very far from the Charlestown I created.

The 1970's for those of you who missed them were a fabulous time to be young and brave. Rules were meant to be broken. Make it up as you go along. Use your imagination. Healthcare plans, multi-national corporations, globalization were not on the map. Life and what to make of it were up for grabs.

When I read that my college educated brother was playing hockey in some dump of a mill town in Pennsylvania and my father was shocked, I thought oh spare me. The team and the town made him recall his own hardscrabble youth in Springfield, Massachusetts where the minor league hockey games were so rough that the brawls spilled out into the parking lot. "Old time hockey," he wrote. "Toe Blake, the great Eddie Shore." I was getting on with life. I had no time for an old man's reminiscing. Soon I received a call from my brother whom I barely knew. My parents marriage had ended years before splitting the four of us down the middle. It was midnight LA time and I was at the house of a bad news boyfriend. Three AM in Johnstown, Pennsylvania and my brother was drunk. The bottom line of the conversation: his team was to fold or be sold. I asked: who OWNS the Jets? He had no idea. And at that moment I knew I was going to write the screenplay that would become Slap Shot. I had never been to Johnstown, never seen my brother play, never met his team, but I had my story.

I was treated by the critics as the cinematic anti-Christ, polluting the vocabularies of upstanding American youth. But you stood by Slap Shot for three generations. You bought the videos, you bought the DVD's, you wore the Halloween costumes, hosted the Slap Shot parties, memorized the lines, and laughed and laughed. That is the real measure of a motion picture, not the opening weekend grosses. When an object is embraced by a popular culture, it takes on a life of its own. Thanks to you, Slap Shot has that life.

So, my old friends, in closing I want to evoke those deathless words spoken by the immortal player coach Reg Dunlop nearly thirty years ago: "Don't ever play Lady of Spa