'Challengers' writer Justin Kuritzkes found what would make tennis even more exciting
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- Опубліковано 28 лис 2024
- 'Challengers' writer Justin Kuritzkes found what would make tennis even more exciting. 'Tennis would be even better if I could know at every moment exactly what was at stake for the people playing,' says the screenwriter about the film starring Zendaya and directed by Luca Guadagnino. Gold Derby senior editor Daniel Montgomery hosts this webchat as part of our 'Meet the Experts' writers panel for awards contenders.
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By the way, Josh O'Connor is quite the versatile actor (who plays Patrick). He played a gay character in God's Own Country which brought him critical acclaim, but also played Prince Charles (the ears) in The Crown. Mike Faist was apparently in the broadway version of Newsies. I went to high school with a guy that was on that cast, and recalls Faist as a teen. Apparently, everyone thought the kid was going to go places. While both are good, O'Connor has the much tougher role. You don't even notice he's British (so many do American accents well due to the amount of American TV shows like Simpsons, Family Guy, and Scooby Doo making it over to the UK). I thought Zendaya was decent as well.
Based on my username, I've followed tennis a long time. I know some who love tennis, but didn't care for the movie and preferred, say, Wimbledon, instead. I personally enjoyed the hell out of this movie. It's not so much tennis as tennis which is what Wimbledon is, but a metaphor for how the three express their mutual feelings. Often, in a love triangle, it's not a triangle at all because one side (usually two characters of the same gender) aren't involved with one another, but in this case, Patrick and Art are flirting with one another.
As a love triangle, without the tennis, it's not enough either. The tennis serves as a metaphor for the two guys competing for Tashi. Especially in the match that frames the entire movie, they aren't merely competing to win, but they are competing for Tashi too, and it's all done without dialog, but stares. Luca has said he doesn't know much about tennis, so what must have attracted him was this love triangle expressed though a competitive sport. And the ending is almost preposterous, unexpected, and lands with a giddy conclusion that is breathtaking as Luca has filmed it.
I know some tennis fans would like it to be more about tennis, but that's what's compelling. It is set in tennis (reasonably accurately, with some quibbles), but isn't about tennis as say, Wimbledon (most other tennis movies that aren't comedies also involve romance, such as the hilariously awful, Players from the early 80s).
It's not so well known but Kuritzkes is married to Celine Song who wrote and directed Past Lives. That movie is very loosely based on her own relationship to him.
As a long-time fan of tennis, I'll make some comments about the tennis itself. This is only meaningful for those that follow pro tennis. In the movie, Art and Patrick win the finals of the US Open boys' doubles, and then are facing each other in the boys' singles. They seem not to care about who wins it, but I suspect most boys would care a great deal to win a junior Slam.
That the two of them went to an academy is not unusual. The American players of the 1990s were heavily influenced by Nick Bollettieri who gathered the best at his academy in Florida. He wasn't even that good of a tennis player, so his genius was to get them together and compete. Other academies have been created. There's one near me where Frances Tiafoe trained (I wouldn't quite call it an academy, but it serves a similar function).
By the end of the movie, Art has become an incredibly successful tennis player. It's rare to play down to the challenger level (which is one level below the main tour). It typically happens when a player is injured a lot. Agassi did it because he was such an up and down player and his ranking was top 5 but also into the 200s, so his decision to play Challengers helped him. His coach, at the time, was Brad Gilbert who served as tennis consultant.
Even so, with Art being a multiple Slam winner, you'd frankly expect there to be a huge number of fans and reporters there. Instead, pretty much no one is at the event.
The challenger event is made out to be sponsored by some place that does auto parts as if any small shop could host an event. I don't know how true that is, but for non-tennis fans, it was probably important to show that the challengers was a step down, and so they made it look like a huge step down.
Atlanta was a real ATP tour event. It no longer exists. John Isner (who is pictured) did win it a few times. It didn't precede the US Open. Instead, the tour would go to Washington DC, then Canada (either Montreal or Toronto), then Cincinnati, then maybe Greensboro, before going to the US Open, but it's not necessary to be that accurate to the tour schedule. It's more accurate than most tennis movies. The Atlanta locker room (where Tashi and Art talk) looks awful for a tour level event, though certainly Atlanta probably doesn't have the same resources as Tokyo or Beijing (all of them ATP 500 events) and probably resembles DC. I'm not even sure they had a permanent location like DC does (pretty sure it didn't). Even so, you'd expect it to be nicer.
The challenger locker room also seemed like a high school locker. You would think that would be better, but again, it was to show how Patrick was really in the slums (not that challengers are SO bad...there's the futures beneath that). Still, it was important to contrast the different fortunes of Art and Patrick.
Patrick's serve motion, while unusual, was not unheard of. Jay Berger (who would have played around the 1990s) had a shortened serve like that, as did Sylvia Hanika. It reduces the excess motion that a full serve has. It did serve as a plot point as Art criticizes him (even as a junior) for serving wrong.
Most of the tennis looked wrong but it probably had to do with needing the players to be in the center of the court. In today's tennis, players have to run a lot and often, they are pushed way to the side, It would be really hard to get actors to run like real tennis players and cover that much ground. It's hard enough just to get them to look like they know how to swing a racquet (which was OK). So having them mostly stay in the middle and hit shots up and down the center was probably done to reduce the difficulty for the actors as well as having to move the camera so much.
I'm guessing Tashi was very loosely based on Serena. The main difference is she opted to go to college. Usually, young phenoms skip college, especially women players. Players like Steffi turned pro at 13 or 14 and she wasn't the only one. Most men don't go either. John Isner did, but he was so raw when he was in high school, that it made sense to take time to develop. Lower ranked players sometimes go that route. US colleges often recruit from other countries. Players like Djokovic, Murray, Federer, and even much lower ranked players never considered US college tennis esp. since they weren't from the US. Stanford, by the way, is not only a top academic school, but has had some solid tennis players (McEnroe being a prominent one) play there.
Tashi's reason for going seems to come from her parents wanting her to have an academic background because she doesn't come from money and they value education.
Maybe Jason will appreciate this as he became a huge tennis fan in that span of time since he saw the Serena-Naomi match.
Interesting he's campaigning for Challengers and not Queer 🤔
Challengers was something Jason developed while Queer was a passion project for Luca. They had so much fun with Challengers that Luca asked Jason to write the Queer screenplay. It makes sense that Jason might talk about his own writing. Having said that, it's Gold Derby conducting the interview.