You didn't vote for Pedro? But you said Napoleon Dynamite just NAILED IT! at the assembly!

While watching last night’s epic figure skating smackdown between Evan Lysacek and Evgeni Plushenko, I was reminded of one of the most brilliant sports announcer cameos in the history of movies:  Scott Hamilton in Blades of Glory.

Most sportscaster cameos simply don’t work because the filmmakers don’t use them right.  The cameo usually serves one of two purposes: “authenticity” or comic relief.  Too often, the cameo is asked to do both, creating a problem of contradiction:  the comic relief undermines the authenticity.  Even in comedies, the announcers are there to create the illusion of authenticity; otherwise, why not just have Stephen Colbert call the Nascar race in Talledega Nights rather than make Ken Jenkins read lines about an invisible fire and pay Darrell Waltrip to say “boogity boogity boogity.” The worst case scenario is that Joe Buck comes off even lamer than normal, which somehow happens at the climax of Fever Pitch when he’s SHOCKED that Drew Barrymore would just take off across the Fenway outfield.  Worse, you could have sports announcers do something other than announcing sports, witness the recent failure of Jim Nantz straining for hipness by breaking down Barney’s “Perfect Week” on How I Met Your Mother.

Occasionally, the sportscaster cameo almost works.  In The Longest Yard, Jim Rome pretty much sounds like he’s in The Jungle.  He strains a bit to drop in a “Travis” as a shout-out to the Clones at the multiplex, but Rome avoids the fatal mistake of sounding like he’s reading his lines off a movie script.  Rather, he sounds like he normally does, which is reading his lines off his computer screen on his radio show.  Still, the Rome cameo doesn’t really add anything to the film—Rome is there because of the crossover between his and Sandler’s audience, and it’s a bit of a reach to think that these games would even be broadcast, nonetheless by a $50 million man. 

Thus, the perfect sportscaster cameo meshes a spontaneous feel, like a sportscast, with the internal logic of the film.  The Abdul-Jabbar-in-Airplane! of sportscaster cameos is Howard Cosell covering the consummation of the Fielding marriage in Woody Allen’s Bananas.  As are most of Allen’s comedies, Bananas is an absurdist projection of the mind of the neurotic New York Jew.  Allen’s great fear is that he won’t measure up as a performer, so, in his mind, the wedding night is broadcast by Howard Cosell as if he’s calling the Thrilla in Manilla. Cosell sounds somewhat scripted, but he drops in some trademark Cosell SAT vocab, telling us that Mellish is “buttressed” by his manager and trainer, and in the post-sex interview with the wife, she tells Cosell that her husband’s “timing is a little off.”  Funny stuff.

Scott Hamilton’s cameo in Blades of Glory, on the other hand, is one of those standard-issue “authenticity” roles that doubles as comic relief because the network guy says something rude or non-PC.  Hamilton’s comedic insight is that he doesn’t need to movie-ize his performance.  When you’ve got a fat guy in cowboy vest skating ass-first to “The Stroke,” you don’t need to embellish anything about your usual “Oh, he just nails the triple axel!” call.  “Flawless!” and “Textbook Perfection!” are more hilarious than any beefed up script lines because the joke is that you’re taking this seriously. 

Still, listen a little more closely, and there’s something else going on here.  What makes Scott Hamilton one of the most enjoyable, if not especially insightful, ex-athlete color commentators is the unadulterated joy he has in watching athletes perform.  Granted, during this Olympics, he’s taken to groaning after falls and slight moans when the jump comes up a bit short, but he’s always genuinely engaged in the action on the ice.  He also seems to understand that his audience may not perceive the distinction between an excellent and simply very good triple lutz, so he tells the audience they should be excited because he’s excited.  Figure skating is an artistic medium as well as athletic, and Hamilton is prone to the artist flourish—or, if you will, a total freak-out after, say, a skater lands the quad.  And he’s not afraid to do a Three Stooges “Whoo Whoo Whoo” to describe a recovery after the triple toe.

In Blades of Glory, Hamilton perfectly captures the substance and feel of his own ridiculous commentary:  “This cowboy is cracking his whip on the haunch of this crowd, and they love it!” sounds exactly like a Hamiltonism about, say, Brian Boitano.  His description of Jon Heder’s “galloping peacock” might as well have been about Johnny Weir’s Torino outfit.  Hamilton isn’t exactly deadpan, but he plays the cameo as if he’s actually broadcasting figure skating.  The exaggerated nature of his commentary is even funnier because he doesn’t exaggerate it further for laughs. 

Like a great skating routine, the performance must seem effortless.  Because Scott Hamilton doesn’t try too hard for laughs, he gets them.  In fact, he’s more insightful in Blades of Glory than he’s been in Vancouver:  “Male figure skating is different than female figure skating.  We’re not America’s sweethearts. “ In the words of Scott Hamilton, he just NAILS it!  Textbook Perfection!