Boston film fest content certainly runs the gamut

From scapegoats to a street doctor, premarital counseling to a long cab ride

September 16, 2011|By Loren King, Globe Correspondent

THE BOSTON FILM FESTIVAL Runs Friday through Thursday at the Stuart Street Playhouse. For a complete schedule, go to www.bostonfilmfestival.org or call 617-523-8388.

Filmgoers may be eagerly awaiting “Moneyball,’’ but another new baseball movie shouldn’t be overlooked, especially by Red Sox Nation. Oscar winner Alex Gibney’s documentary “Catching Hell,’’ which premieres Sunday in the 27th annual Boston Film Festival, is about a pair of high-profile sports scapegoats.

Gibney, a lifelong Red Sox fan, includes former Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner’s infamous error in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series as one of those cases. The other is Chicago Cubs fan Steve Bartman, vilified after he interfered with a fly ball in a playoff game in 2003. “Catching Hell’’ points out the many other factors that contributed to the teams’ losses in both games; yet, for fans in Boston and Chicago, Buckner and Bartman became whipping boys and symbols of defeat.

Gibney, who grew up in Cambridge, says scapegoating is a theme in two of his most acclaimed films, “Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer’’ and the Oscar-winning “Taxi to the Dark Side.’’

“The soldiers at Abu Ghraib were called ‘rotten apples’ to deflect attention,’’ Gibney says in a telephone interview. “Scapegoating is fiction making. It’s a way of wrapping up troublesome ambiguities into a tidy package.’’ He was speaking from the Toronto International Film Festival, where he was presenting another sports film, “The Last Gladiators,’’ about former NHL star (and West Roxbury native) Chris Nilan.

“Catching Hell,’’ which shows on ESPN later this month, features extensive interviews with Buckner, who talks emotionally about what life was like for him until the Red Sox finally won a World Series. “I flew to Idaho and we had several long conversations,’’ Gibney says. “He was gracious, and I learned a lot that I didn’t know about him.’’ Bartman, however, continues to refuse interview requests, making him a more mysterious figure.

The festival opens tonight with “Certainty,’’ from writer Mike O’Malley - yes, the same O’Malley who plays the tolerant blue-collar dad of a gay son on the hit series “Glee.’’ The Boston-born, New Hampshire-bred O’Malley will take time from his other gig, as a writer on Showtime’s “Shameless,’’ to attend the festival with “Certainty’’ director Peter Askin and actors Tom Lipinski (another Boston native) and Giancarlo Esposito.