McConaugheMay Day 27: Man in the Glass: The Dale Brown Story

Effectively, this is barely a movie and more of a clip show and hagiography of a guy I was unfamiliar with (McConaughey's in a lot of these, huh?). Dale Brown seems like a good guy who made a lot of people's lives better, but this documentary does a pretty poor job of laying out his life's narrative in a clear way—I'm still not really sure what exactly the NCAA battles were about besides desegregation in some way, even though the specifics don’t really enter into it. Everything else kind of gets glossed over. I fully believe the NCAA has been an active drain on the lives of many college athletes, but I would have liked some specifics of how, why, and what Brown did to fight against it.

Mostly this movie is just interviews with people very justifiably grateful that this guy helped them so much. I guess it did make me think that he seemed like a good guy, but as a narrative, this was pretty lacking.

It’s very clear that there wasn’t much of a budget for the film beyond a camera and some willing interviewees. Some very brief clips of sports games and a lot of old photographs and newspaper clippings provide the majority of the onscreen visuals. It’s a difficult thing to know for sure what the emotional core of a story is to anyone else, especially when you’re so close to the subject. In some ways, it’s easier to start from a place of dislike to provide enough foundation to find the core of why you feel that way. I wish that this documentary was better at explaining why this man meant so much to more people, but I can’t fault the filmmakers for not having the skill to do that considering the clear love they have on hand for Brown.

McConaughey literally has two lines in this. Apparently he met Brown while filming We Are Marshall, but what he gained from that encounter or what he thought about Brown in particular goes unacknowledged. Shaquille O'Neal is also in this movie, more prominently, talking about how he was so big as a 13 year old that his basketball coach tried to turn him into a goalie until Brown stepped in to encourage him. That's nice. Brown seems like a solid guy, and there are worse things in this horrible world than a nice guy getting a substandard documentary made to celebrate his life's accomplishments.