Going overboard on rowing films

By Alex Beam, Globe Columnist, 10/16/2003

It is true that I have been on a rowing jag. I'm not sure how long a "jag" lasts, although I have been rowing longer than Nicolas Cage and Lisa Marie Presley were married. Five times longer, in fact.

Did someone mention Nicolas Cage? As part of my stem-to-stern commitment to the whitest sport on water, I vowed to see every movie ever made that features rowing. (Yes, I even watched the first 10 minutes of "The River Wild," when Meryl Streep sculls under the BU Bridge and emerges into the Basin.) Embarked on such a course, your bow inevitably bumps up against Cage's 1986 shipwreck, "The Boy in Blue," possibly the worst rowing movie ever made.

The premise of the movie is that sculling was a popular, broad-based sport with a huge following in the 19th century. Perhaps. Whatever the case, a very ripped Cage plays Toronto's own Ned Hanlan, said to be the greatest sculler who ever lived. Toronto's own Christopher Plummer plays Hanlan's evil and manipulative manager, Colonel Shaw. The movie features climactic race scenes on the "Charles" -- filmed in Canada -- and the "Thames" -- ditto.

I will send my video of "The Boy in Blue" to the first reader who correctly answers this trivia question, one of three formulated for me by Karl Haglund, coauthor of "Inventing the Charles River": Who began promoting the construction of a sea wall and esplanade in the 1870s in front of what is now MIT?

Not too many people know that one of the best rowing books in recent years, David Halberstam's "The Amateurs," was made into a movie called "Rowing Through." A Japanese-Canadian co-production starring Colin Ferguson as Tiff Wood, the fanatically driven Harvard rower, the movie was never released in the United States. "It's awful," Halberstam told me when I bearded him at a book event a while back. "Especially the sex."

Sex? That's funny; there wasn't much sex in "The Amateurs," unless rowing 1,000-yard "pieces," or sprints, up and down the Charles a dozen times a day turns you on. But the movie is awash in blue scenes. The girl who covers rowing for the Harvard Crimson is something of a goer. "Would you quit comparing me to a [expletive] boat!" she exclaims during one romantic encounter. Actress Helen Shaver plays Slim, a curvy sculling widow (don't ask) who operates a combination boathouse/roadhouse for lusty young rowers.

It seems inevitable that Ferguson's most recent port of call would be the NBC sexcom "Coupling."

Trivia question for ownership of "Rowing Through": Name the Bostonian who in 1859 compared the Charles River with the Alster Basin in Hamburg.

The most improbable rowing movie ever made is the 1984 Rob Lowe vehicle "Oxford Blues." Lowe plays a Las Vegas carhop who dreams of attending Oxford to bump gunwhales with Lady Victoria Wingate, a beautiful and pedigreed Oxonian. We are asked to believe that Lowe is a champion sculler who has been honing his skills on Lake Mead, behind the Hoover Dam.

It all comes together when Lowe fetches up in Old Blighty and finds that Lady Victoria has already been empressed by a champion rower. Much oar-flashing ensues. In the end, Lowe eschews Lady Victoria for Rona, played by Ally Sheedy. One year later, Sheedy and Lowe would again set sail in the brat pack classic "St. Elmo's Fire."

For a free video of "Oxford Blues": When it was formally dedicated in September 1936, what was the Boston Esplanade called?

The best rowing movie ever made is likewise about Oxford: Ferdinand Fairfax's "True Blue," made in England and never released in the United States. "Blue" moviefies Daniel Topolski's wonderful 1990 book "True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny." It's a true story about a group of American rowers who tried to supplant the legendary Oxford Blues in the annual Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race.

The movie is great value: shower scenes reminiscent of "Oz"; a thrumping, Vangelis-like soundtrack redolent of "Chariots of Fire"; and a Jesuit priest-narrator fond of sermonizing: "This race means everything to us." There is no trivia question/giveaway for this movie, as I have already given it away.

See you at the Head of the Charles this weekend! I'm told the best crashes take place under the Weeks Bridge. That's where you'll find me.

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.