Follow TV Tropes

Following

Film / Sticky My Fingers...Fleet My Feet

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/170422_sticky_my_fingers_fleet_my_feet_0_230_0_345_crop.png
Movie poster.

Sticky My Fingers...Fleet My Feet is a 1970 short film (23 minutes) directed by John D. Hancock.

It is based on a short story of the same name by Gene Williams, who stars in this film as the protagonist, Norm. Norm is a balding middle-aged white collar worker in Manhattan, who likes to play touch football in the park with his balding, middle-aged, white collar buddies. Actually it would be more accurate to say that Norm is obsessed with touch football. He puts on eye black, he draws up complicated plays, he compares himself to the likes of Vince Lombardi, and, much to his wife Marion's derision, he keeps a notebook with a record of all the touchdowns he's scored while playing touch football in the park.

One fine day Norm goes out to play another game with his buddies. They find another group of men to play with, one of whom has brought along his teenaged nephew, Wesley. Norm, who fancies himself to be an athlete, soon finds that neither he nor any of his friends can keep up with the boy.

Charles Durning, still three years away from hitting it big in movies with The Sting, plays the captain of the other football team.


Tropes:

  • Bookends: The film starts with a stock audio soundtrack of a football crowd cheering. It ends with stock audio of what sounds like a tennis audience applauding, indicating that Norm will be changing obsessions.
  • Call-Back: Norm gets back to his house disconsolate and injured. Marion is heckling him about putting himself in the hospital from playing touch football, when she is surprised to see him tear apart the notebook where he was keeping stats at the beginning of the film.
  • Damned by Faint Praise: In an Inner Monologue Norm introduces all his teammates, naming both what they do for a living and what their football skills are (one works for the Port Authority, one's a "defensive specialist"). He finally gets to Marshall, who is both obese and wearing a dumb-looking 1920s-style leather football helmet.
    Norm: Marshall. [long, theatrical sigh] Nice guy, though.
  • Disturbed Doves: Pigeons are sent flying when Norm catches a touchdown pass and goes crashing into a trash can.
  • Gray Rain of Depression: Norm trods back home in the rain after losing the game and being shown up by a teenaged boy who isn't even all that athletic.
  • Here We Go Again!: Marion is nagging Norm about his football obsession, only to be taken aback when she realizes how upset he is. Trying to cheer him up, she says that football isn't his game, but tennis is, and he's got "the best forehand on the West Side!". As Norm sits in the tub he thinks that Marion is just kidding him, that "My forehand's not so great....it's my backhand that's good." He starts miming his backhand in the bathtub, a stock audio clip of an applauding tennis crowd plays, and it's clear that instead of learning anything, Norm is going to go on a new athletic obsession.
  • Hollywood Midlife Crisis: Norm is trying to hold on to his youth by playing touch football in the park. When he's beaten and shown up by a teenaged boy, he has an existential crisis.
  • Hypocrite: Not only is Norm beaten by Wesley for the game-winning touchdown, he does a face plant into a mud puddle and crushes his hat. As he picks up the smashed hat, Norm, who treats touch football like Armageddon, thinks "God, my wife is going to be so childish about this."
  • Ignored Epiphany: Norm is beaten rather badly at football by a teenaged boy, and thinks about how "even the greats" like Frank Gifford or Crazy Legs Hirsch had to hang it up. Does he come to terms with growing older? No, he decides he's going to start playing tennis.
  • Inner Monologue: Heard from Norm throughout, like when he's introducing his teammates or when he's having his moment of Ma'am Shock when Wesley calls him "sir".
  • Ma'am Shock: Norm is startled when Wesley calls him "sir", thinking "I'm not that much older than he is," despite obviously being at least 25 years older than Wesley.
  • Serious Business: Norm takes his touch football games in the park way too seriously. As he's headed out to the park he says in Inner Monologue "No matter how many times you run to glory, there's something new about it."
  • Undercrank: Slow motion of the sort one might see in a televised football game is sometimes used to show the men playing in the park, underscoring Norm's delusions of grandeur.
  • Wet Blanket Wife: Marion nags at him to knock it off with the touch football business, making fun of his notebook of stats and saying "When are you going to mature?" Subverted in that while Marion is annoying, she is also correct about how Norm's acting like an idiot.

Top