On May 10, 1987, I was in Oakland. I remember very well what I was doing that day: it was Game 4 of the best-of-seven playoff series between the Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers would lose only three games in the entirety of that post-season, and this was one of them, thanks in no small measure to the superhuman performance of Warriors point guard Eric “Sleepy” Floyd.
Believe it or not, that was relevant.
Try to imagine attending that game as I had. The fervor of an exciting playoff victory. The Warriors entered the 4th quarter down 14 points (102-88; their season ends with a loss). Floyd scored 29 points in that quarter -still a playoff record- and did most of it while being guarded by Michael Cooper, who would win the award for defensive playoff the year that season. Of course, as the quarter progressed, every Laker on the floor was guarding Floyd, including the starting five from Kareem to Magic, the coach, the trainer, the mop-wielding janitor and whatever Laker girls showed up for the roadtrip. It didn’t matter. Sleepy schooled them all that day. This was a performance for the ages.
NOW … imagine if a filmmaker made a semi-biographical, semi-fictional movie about the events of that day starring Eric “Sleepy” Floyd (Jay Ellis). Imagine if you felt like a set of producers reached into your brain and directly wrote and directed a story from what they found there.
That’s exactly how Freaky Tales to me. Exactly. I haven’t felt this connected to a film since Moneyball.
The film even begins outside the Grand Lake Theater – coincidentally which I where I saw Freaky Tales. Whoa.
OK, so will the rest of you enjoy it?
Yes. Yes, you will. But I readily admit I’m a smidge biased. Just a smidge.
Freaky Tales is broken into four stories from that day/that weekend:
Tale #1: “Strength in Numbers. The Gilman Strikes Back.” Or as I call it: “I may not like punk, but dammit I hate Nazis” In the opener, Nazis trash a punk nightclub. The punks fight back.
I don’t remember Nazis being around in 1987 Oakland, but I couldn’t be happier about a film that says, “If they were around, Oakland kicked their Nazi asses back to whatever hole they crawled out of”
Tale #2: “Don’t Fight the Feeling.” Or as I call it: “Too $hort Comes up Too $hort.” In this segment, two amateur rappers (Normani and Dominique Thorne) get suckered into a poetry slam face-off with Too $hort.
Tale #3: “Born to Mack.” Or as I call it: “Pedro Wants Out.” While the first two takes were mostly shallow comfort food, tale #3 is the hardest hitting, telling the story of a leg-breaker, Clint (Pedro Pascal), who wants out of the biz to attend to a pregnant wife. Unfortunately for him, his past catches up at a video rental store jockeyed by Oakland’s own Tom Hanks -in a wonderful brief cameo.
Tale #4: “The Legend of Sleepy Floyd,” which needs no alternative title, highlights Sleepy’s May 10.
In the afternoon, he humbled the eventual world champs at the thing they do best. In the evening, he took on an entire biker gang, and every little bit of this tale was almost as fun as being present on in the Coliseum on May 10, 1987.
The tales all overlap slightly in timeline resets, creating a Pulp Fiction-type effect. Is Freaky Tales as good as Pulp Fiction? No. But it might put you in a Pulp Fiction mood. Obviously, I’m going to respond to this film more strongly than pretty much the entire set of people I know who were not at the Coliseum on May 10, 1987. That shouldn’t stop you from enjoying this film all the same. At the very least, we have separate sequences of happily destroying Neo-Nazis, and -boy- does the United States, nay the world, ever need that message right now. So, yeah, I think even if your mind doesn’t automatically rolodex a running list of superior Warrior point guards: Sleepy Floyd, Tim Hardaway, Baron Davis, Steph Curry … I think you can enjoy the Freaky Tales all the same. Watch out for the green stuff!
There was once a Warriors guard called Floyd
And losses he tried hard to avoid
Then suddenly one playoff
The ultimate payoff
He became the ultimate Laker-killing android
Rated R, 106 Minutes
Director: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck
Writer: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck
Genre: Another reason to love Oakland
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Me!
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Neo-Nazis
