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Off the Black

Written By Nobuhiro Hosoki

 

Phone Interview with Director James Ponsoldt

The 28-year-old rookie director James Ponsoldt is stepping up to the plate to score some clean hits with this film. Ray (Nick Nolte), a grizzled, reclusive alcoholic always accompanied by a bulldog on the side and sipping through an overflowing beer bottle from the bottom, spends most of his time watching America's past time: baseball. His fondness for the sport extends to a little moonlighting as a high-school umpire.

One day, Ray makes a call on a crucial and momentous pitch that decides a game.  The losing team is infuriated by his judgment, so they decide it's time for extreme payback via vandalism with toilet paper, bricks, what have you. One of the team's pompous asses, losing pitcher Dave (Trevor Morgan) faces a life-chaning lesson when he is manhandled by Ray and brought over to his house. Ray offers this brat of a lad a scond chance:  if the mess is cleaned up, he'll keep the cops out of the picture.  The two form an unlikely relationship. Dave's father (Timothy Hutton), it turns out, is a distant figure who was deeply scarred by his wife's abandonment two years earlier.

This all sounds like a familiar plot, but instead of being sentimental and feeling pathetic about Ray's condition, director Ponsoldt stakes his  narrative on a scene in which Ray proposes to Dave that he'll forget about the damages to his car window if the latter comes to his 40th high-school reunion.  The reunion sparkles with kindly humor and reminiscences about Ray's glorious days.

Throughout the film, Nick Nolte gives a performance that is top-notch and solid, particularly when he makes a poignant home video based on a one-way conversation that only a handful of gifted and experienced actors can pull off. But, there's some downside here:  a half-baked subplot involving Dave's attention-seeking sister (Sonia Feigelson), Ray's Alzheimer-stricken father(Michael Higgins), and Ray's single-mom friend (Rosemarie Dewitt). Three characters are introduced, but without any further explanation of those characters in detail.

But rookie's mistakes are forgivable. In the end, the title "Off the Black" is derived from a baseball term to describe the pitcher throwing the ball a little outside the strike zone. In this heartwarming film, Director Ponsoldt has made a slow pitch, but it's right down the middle toward the plate.

Written and directed by James Ponsoldt
Director of photography: Tim Orr
Edited by Sabine Hoffman
Music by Claire Campbell, Brian Petway and Alex Neville
Production designer: Anthony Gasparro
Produced by Scott Macaulay and Robin O’Hara
Released by ThinkFilm.
Running time: 92 minutes.

Cast: Nick Nolte (Ray Cook)
Trevor Morgan (Dave Tibbel)
Sonia Feigelson (Ashley Tibbel)
Rosemarie DeWitt (Debra)
Timothy Hutton (Tom Tibbel)
Sally Kirkland (Marianne)
Noah Fleiss (Todd Hunter)
Jonathan Tchaikovsky (Paul Michaels),
and Michael Higgins (Al Cook).