what a nice movie. how much of that is real?

Not much that was relavant to Max. They made him out to be some sort of braggart killer when Baer felt horrible remorse for it. Baer was made into a defacto evil Jewish scapegoat.

A decent movie but not a remotely accurate biopic fiction piece.

StackMo is right don't believe a damn thing about Max Baer. I hate the movie because of how he was depicted. Go read up on him and see what he was really like and then you will change your mind about the movie.

Good picture.
http://www.carnera.org/images/primo16.jpg


Baer was pretty slick. Wasnt exactly a loaded division when he was kicking around tho.

max baer, jack dempsey (middle), and primo carnera.

great picture

I watch it yesterday, funny

Yeah cool picture. Baer's shoulders were so broad damn.
The movie is nice, but it's not one of the more realistic Boxer movies out there.

When translating a story from reality (or book) to film, there has to be changes made. When reading a story, its easy to let your imagination do the talking, and the story flows at your own pace. A film has to captivate a general, broad audience.

Braddock's triumph over Baer looks insignificant if Baer is portrayed as the same type of human being as the hero. Furthermore, they (the filmmakers) never made it seem as though Baer hated people and life in general, they just gave him a bit of a playboy attitude; which, isn't very far from the truth at all. He was actually quite ****y and borderline lazy when it came to boxing, so the writers/directors/producers continued that quirk into his personna.

There was also a metaphorical allegory present: the poor, hard-working class citizens of the depression versus the rich, proud few who refuse to share. It's a sympathetic orchestra designed to tug at the heartstrings.

As a side note: The film had perfect timing, given the current divide in our nation's morale; especially among those who know absolutely nothing about war, peace, and economics and choose instead to just go by what the news (and the Left) tells them.

Concur with the Brass man.

The movie was filmed in Toronto and I recognize alot of the scenery. The fight scenes were from Maple Leaf Gardens where I've seen many a Leaf game and rock concert.

The loading dock scenes were shot at my wife's work and the owner of her company can be seen in a bit part operating a crane in the movie (is it just me or does the crane look too modern?).

And for the record she doesn't load cargo, she works in the office.

When translating a story from reality (or book) to film, there has to be changes made.

Furthermore, they (the filmmakers) never made it seem as though Baer hated people and life in general, they just gave him a bit of a playboy attitude; which, isn't very far from the truth at all. He was actually quite ****y and borderline lazy when it came to boxing, so the writers/directors/producers continued that quirk into his personna.

There was also a metaphorical allegory present: the poor, hard-working class citizens of the depression versus the rich, proud few who refuse to share. It's a sympathetic orchestra designed to tug at the heartstrings.

I agree that films often take liberties, and I won't deny I enjoyed the movie, but I respectfully disagree that the liberties taken with the portrayal of Max Baer in "Cinderella Man" were minor.

When the brute in the film that was supposed to be Max Baer was in boxing trunks, he was a hulking, grunting neanderthal, who is pictured grimacing in delight over two dead bodies. One of the bodies, that of Frankie Campbell, we all know by now, haunted him his entire life and contributed to his erratic record. The other body, Ernie Schaaf, died when he was forced to fight Carnera before he'd recovered from encephalitis due to an extreme bout with pneumonia, not because of the bout 5 months prior with Baer. Read the round by rounds of some of Schaaf's fights after he fought Baer, Ernie did damn good.

When the film brute wore white tie and tails he was a slimy, sneering pig, who's "playboy attitude" per the filmmakers, extended to creating a scene where the brute offers to comfort Braddock's widow after he's killed her husband. A scene created out of someone's gin soaked fantasies and certainly nothing remotely truthful. The film brute is pictured engaged in an orgy with two women. The real Max Baer, as a single young man in his early 20s, certainly embraced what was freely offered to him by independent women, who literally stalked him wherever he went, but he did not use and abuse women. That would be Joe Louis you may be thinking of, who slept with anything with two legs and a crotch, and the more legs and crotches the merrier. Funny how those pesky "breach of promise" suits filed against Max arose only after he was Champ, and many were made by women who claimed he had done the dirty deed in towns he'd never even been in at the time.

To the general classic boxing enthusiast, the real Max Baer was lazy in his training for a handful of well-known fights who's films survive. He trained thoroughly for his bouts against Christner, Campbell, Schaaf I & II, Heeney, Loughran, Risko I & II, Kennedy I & II, Levinsky I & II, Cobb, Griffith, Schmeling, Louis, Farr, Foord, Comiskey, Nova and a few other dozen lesser known bouts in the early 30s.

The real Max Baer was certainly colorful, but no more ****y than any other Heavyweight Champion. Research the early Champs and you'll find that Braddock, Dempsey, Sharkey, Schmeling, Louis, Sullivan, Corbett, Fitzsimmons, Jeffries, all either played on Broadway, or made movies, or sold consumer goods in ads and on radio, or bought expensive cars, or expensive houses or ran around with wild women. Jack Dempsey even got a nose job !

The real Max Baer wasn't one of the "rich, proud few who refused to share." During the Depression, he literally gave the clothes off his back to men without them, he slipped greenbacks into hungry hands outside downtown gymnasiums, he put a good word into the right ear to help the aspiring boxer and the common Joe get a leg up in the world.

Finally, if the film was so truthful about Braddock, why not bring up the fact that Jimmy was just as derogatory in the press about Max prior to the bout, and that during the weigh-in, when Max bound up like a puppy to shake Jimmy and Joe Gould's hands, they both verbally **** all over him.

Regards,
Cat
http://www.maxbaer.org