Breaking Away (1979)

When I was a kid, I was a voracious reader of movie reviews. Film critics Richard Schickel and Richard Corliss from Time Magazine, Jack Kroll and David Ansen from Newsweek, and Ted Mahar from my local newspaper The Oregonian were my main sources. If the film was R rated, my parents weren't going to allow me to see it. Movie reviews were my only way to learn about the film if I couldn't watch it. I recall one summer in July reading a glowing review by Time Magazine's Richard Schickel for the PG rated film BREAKING AWAY (1979) about four high school kids in Indiana.  I was stunned as most film critics never praised a film (at least not the ones I was interested in). It didn't really appeal to me as it wasn't a horror film.  It was about bicycling. But BREAKING AWAY appealed to my best friend's mother.  I was over at his house one hot July day when she declared we were going to the movies.  When we asked what movie, she said "BREAKING AWAY." We weren't thrilled about her choice, but the theater would have air conditioning and we would probably have popcorn. BREAKING AWAY turned out to be one of my favorite movie experiences as a kid, a surprise movie with no special effects or explosions. Just good writing and likable characters including a high school kid obsessed with an Italian bicycling team as the hook.

BREAKING AWAY is a quintessential American movie so imagine my surprise when I discovered the man who directed BREAKING AWAY was an Englishman by the name of Peter Yates. Sometimes it takes someone who's an outsider or from another country to see an American story in a different perspective.  Would you believe that MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969) about a cowboy gigolo and his crippled friend in New York City was directed by Brit John Schlesinger. Or the modern film noir classic CHINATOWN (1974) set in 1940s Los Angeles was made by Polish director Roman Polanski. Or the slick, neo noir Southern California thriller DRIVE (2011) starring Ryan Gosling was directed by Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn. In 1968, actor Steve McQueen hired Peter Yates to direct the American car chase classic BULLITT on the up and down streets of San Francisco after watching Yates handling of an exciting car chase scene in downtown London in the British crime thriller ROBBERY (1967).  A little over a decade later, Yates would helm a quiet, slice of life sports film called BREAKING AWAY set in the Midwest college town of Bloomington, Indiana. The other outsider is screenwriter Steve Tesich, born in Serbia who attended Indiana University and based BREAKING AWAY on a fraternity brother Tesich was friends with who rode in the Little 500 bicycle race which is the setting for the finale of the film. 

Directed by Peter Yates with an Academy Award winning original screenplay by Steve Tesich, BREAKING AWAY is a coming-of-age film set in Bloomington, Indiana about four 19-year-old friends who have recently graduated from high school but are in the crossroads of their young lives, struggling to make their next choice in life.  In this college town where Indiana University is located, the boys are known as "cutters." They're from working class families, their fathers all worked at the local limestone quarry before most of the quarries closed. One quarry has become a favorite swimming hole and place to reflect and goof off for the boys.  Dave Stohler (Dennis Christopher) is obsessed with bicycling and Italian bike racing, immersing himself in all things Italy including speaking Italian to his exasperated Dad - Ray Stohler (Paul Dooley), a former "cutter" who now owns a used car lot and his more understanding Mom- Evelyn Stohler (Barbara Barrie). Mike (Dennis Quaid) is a former high school football star with a chip on his shoulder. The diminutive Moocher aka Mooch (Jackie Earle Hayley) is easy going unless someone calls him "shorty." And the lanky Cyril (Daniel Stern) is the not so smart former high school basketball player unsure what his future holds.

Cracks begin to develop with the four friends staying together. Dave begins a flirtation with a pretty college coed Katherine (Robyn Douglass), pretending to be an Italian Exchange Student much to the chagrin of Katherine's frat boy boyfriend Rod (Hart Bochner). Mooch realizes he needs to get a job and thinks about tying the knot with his girlfriend Nancy (Amy Wright).  Cyril contemplates taking a college entrance exam. Mike hates that the rich college kids like Rod and his friends come to their quarry swimming hole.  When Dave and Cyril serenade Catherine at her sorority, Rod shows up with his frat brothers looking for Dave and beat up Cyril by mistake. Mike wants revenge. Mike and Mooch start a fight in the college cafeteria forcing Mike's cop brother (John Ashton) to break up the melee. Dave becomes excited when he learns his favorite Italian bike race team -Team Cinzano - is coming to Bloomington to race in the Cinzano 100. Dave trains for the race while driving his Dad crazy with Italian food for dinner and shaving his legs (wind resistance) for the upcoming race.

The big day arrives - the Cinzano 100.  Dave gets to race against his idols.  Team Cinzano races to the front but Dave catches up to them.  He tries out his Italian on the team. Team Cinzano responds by sabotaging his bike, causing Dave to crash. His idols aren't what he dreamed they were. As Dave confesses to his Dad, "Everyone cheats" (his Dad selling lemon cars to customers, Team Cinzano) I just didn't know". Dave takes down his Italian posters and drops the Italian accent. Dave reveals to Katherine he's not an Italian Exchange Student. Just Dave from Bloomington, a "cutter." She slaps him and runs off in tears. Dave and his Dad begin to bond. Because of the cafeteria fight and the frat boys involvement in it, the University has decided to allow a local team to race in the upcoming Little 500 (a two hundred lap bike race made up of four riders). The Cutters can have a team. Mike rallies his friends, finding a piece of junk bike that they can use.  But Dave is done with bike racing. He wants no part of it.

One night, Dave and his Dad take a walk through the Indiana University campus. Many of the buildings on the campus have stone that Ray cut. Ray reveals he's proud of his work but was ashamed to walk through the campus since he never went to college. Dave runs into Katherine who's moving to Chicago and going on a trip to Italy with her parents.  Dave wishes Catherine the best. Suddenly proud to be a "cutter", Dave fixes up the bike Mike found. The four of them are going to race in the Little 500.  Dave's Mom makes t-shirts for the boys with CUTTERS across the front.  BREAKING AWAY culminates with the Little 500 bike race with the Cutters racing against many Indiana University teams including Rod and his fraternity brothers.  Dave puts the Cutters in the lead before taking a fall and injuring his leg.  Mooch, Cyril, and Mike take turns riding until Dave gets patched up. Inspired by his friends determination, Dave gets back on the bike and finishes the race, narrowly beating Rod at the finish line. 

One of the themes that jumps out in BREAKING AWAY is class distinction. Indiana University is an affluent college located in the working-class town of Bloomington. The kids going to Indiana University are rich kids like Rod and Katherine. The kids that grew up in Bloomington like Dave and Mike and Mooch and Cyril are from blue collar families, called "cutters" by the college kids because their parents a generation before worked at the local quarry. The Cutters are smart kids who have allowed the college frat boys and their parents' prejudices to make them think they're not worthy enough to go get an education.  It's a badge of honor that none of them are college bound. Dave and Mike and Mooch and Cyril are like four blue collar Musketeers. Dave's Dad Ray scoffs at Dave going to college.  Ray was working while in high school. He didn't need college. Mike holds a grudge against Indiana University for not offering him a football scholarship. The Cutters and the rich college kids will clash whether fighting in the university cafeteria or at the quarry swimming hole or racing against each other in the Little 500 bike race. The Cutters feel they have something to prove to their elitist counterparts.

The clever title BREAKING AWAY has many meanings. In the literal sense it means outdistancing oneself from the competition like Dave winning local bike competitions or later Team Cinzano pulling away from the pack in the Bloomington 100 bike race. But the title also comes to mean "breaking away" from indifference. The boys are stuck in neutral. They're too good to go to college, too proud to find jobs or pursue any real future.  It's a badge of honor that they're just loafing around. That will change. Mooch realizes he'll need a job, need an income if he wants to marry his local sweetheart, Nancy. Dave begins a relationship not with a local gal but an Indiana University sorority girl Catherine, an outsider.  Cyril, the laziest of them all, contemplates taking a college entrance exam.  Mike wants to just relive the past. To Mike's consternation, his friends are considering "breaking away" from Bloomington, from their swimming hole and their juvenile pranks and hijinks. Their "breaking away" to adulthood.

After Dave is humiliated by the Italian Team Cinzano bike team, he has to break away from his obsession with all things Italian including bicycling.  Hiding behind his fake accent and listening to Italian opera music, Dave finally accepts he's a "cutter" but also just a normal kid, trying to figure out what he wants to be in the world. Ray, Dave's father, will have his "breaking away" moment.  Ray, a true "cutter" who worked in the quarries, broke away from that tough blue-collar job to start his own business - selling used cars. But he's still blue collar. He didn't go to college. He's still uptight about change, his son pursuing college, or trying any food other than American. When Ray sees his son's anguish that his bicycling heroes cheat, that his own father cheats to a degree in the car business, Ray breaks away from his past prejudices, opening himself to his son and to change both for their family and his business. 

BREAKING AWAY falls into two movie genre categories: the sports underdog story and the coming-of-age story.  The 1970s was a big decade for the underdog sports themed movies.  From Michael Ritchie's THE BAD NEWS BEARS (1976) starring Walter Matthau, Tatum O'Neal, and BREAKING AWAY'S Jackie Earle Haley about a misfit Little League Team to John G. Avildsen's ROCKY (1976) about small time Philadelphia boxer Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) fighting the Heavyweight Champion of the World Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) to Hugh Hudson's CHARIOTS OF FIRE (1981) chronicling two completely different British distance runners competing in the 1924 Olympics (with an appearance by BREAKNG AWAY'S Dennis Christopher), sports underdog films have always captivated audiences. Personally, I almost always root for the little guy or gal in sports to overcome the bigger, stronger opponent or team. I'm not a fan of dynasties or long reigns by one athlete.  Sports underdog films are still popular today in films like David Anspaugh's HOOSIERS (1986) with Gene Hackman, Dennis Hopper, and Barbara Hershey about a small high school basketball in 1954 that makes it to the Indiana State Basketball Championship or Gavin O'Connor's MIRACLE (2004) about the amateur U.S Men's National Hockey Team beating the mighty Soviet Union in the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics.  

The coming-of-age story is also central to BREAKING AWAY. The root of the film is the four nineteen-year old's trying to figure out their futures. Screenwriter Tesich gives each boy a meaningful speech in the film, juicy dialogue that young actors today would die to have written for them.  Coming of Age films started to appear in the early 70s with Robert Mulligan's SUMMER OF '42 (1971) with young Gary Grimes falling in love with older Jennifer O'Neill. George Lucas's AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973) captures one night for four recent high school graduates (Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfus, Paul LeMat, and Charles Martin Smith) before one of them heads off for college. Four main characters (with multiple supporting characters) seems to be the right number for coming-of age films. AMERICAN GRAFFITI, BREAKNG AWAY, and later Rob Reiner's STAND BY ME (1986) all have four main characters.  But Barry Levinson's ode to his youth in 1959 Baltimore in DINER (1982) has five main characters (Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Steve Guttenberg, Tim Daly, and BREAKING AWAY'S Daniel Stern) and takes place right after college. 

For actors Dennis Christopher, Paul Dooley, and Barbara Barrie, BREAKING AWAY gave them the role of a lifetime...literally. Even though all three actors would appear in many more films and television shows, their performances in BREAKING AWAY are the pinnacle of their careers in my opinion. For Dennis Christopher who plays Dave Stohler the young Italian enthusiast, that's a little sad as BREAKING AWAY was early in his career. Because of BREAKING AWAY, I remember catching Christopher soon after in a creepy little horror film called FADE TO BLACK (1980) in which he played against his All-American kid type as a film buff turned serial killer. He also appeared briefly in CHARIOTS OF FIRE as an American distance runner. Scanning through his IMDB filmography, Christopher bounced around in various supporting roles but never really landed another leading role like Dave in BREAKING AWAY or even a reoccurring role in a TV series until that savior of forgotten film stars Quentin Tarantino (who resurrected John Travolta's career with PULP FICTION) cast Christopher in DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012) as Leonide "Leo" Moguy, a gambler and associate of Leonardo DiCaprio's villainous Calvin Candie. 

Paul Dooley who plays Dave's father Ray Stohler in BREAKING AWAY takes the role of the exasperated parent and makes it three dimensional. Dooley could have played Ray as a grumpy, mean, foul-mouthed Dad like many actors might have. Instead, Dooley makes those tense confrontations humorous (screenwriter Tesich's excellent dialogue helping as well). In BREAKING AWAY, we see Ray transform from a stubborn patriarch to a caring, open-minded father. Dooley was a favorite of director Robert Altman appearing in Altman's A WEDDING (1978), A PERFECT COUPLE (1979) and as the hamburger loving Wimpy in POPEYE (1980).  Dooley would play Molly Ringwald's sympathetic father in John Hughes SIXTEEN CANDLES (1984) and he made a brief appearance as a hockey announcer in another underdog sports film SLAP SHOT (1977) directed by George Roy Hill and starring Paul Newman. Dooley's excited performance in that film hints at what's to come in BREAKING AWAY. 

Barbara Barrie as Dave's Mom Evelyn counterbalances her agitated husband. Evelyn is the rock of the family, keeping them centered with her compassion and empathy. Evelyn even becomes enthralled with Dave's obsession with all things Italian including opera music which sparks her romantic side leading to an amorous evening with her husband. I'm not sure I ever saw Barrie in anything else (turns out she appeared the next year in 1980s PRIVATE BENJAMIN which I have seen) but it wouldn't matter. BREAKING AWAY is the role of her career.  Barrie would actually star in a TV version of BREAKING AWAY that lasted for one year in 1980-81 reprising her role as Evelyn Stohler. Jackie Earle Haley would return as Moocher. Replacing Dooley as her husband would be Vincent Gardenia and Shaun Cassidy took over the role of her son Dave. 

The actors who play Dave's "Cutter" buddies have continued on to lengthy successful careers.  You might have heard of Dennis Quaid who plays Mike, the ex-high school quarterback.  With his Cheshire cat grin and good looks, BREAKING AWAY was very early in Quaid's career and would be his calling card to leading man status. Quaid has played a wide range of roles from astronaut Gordon Cooper in Philip Kaufman's THE RIGHT STUFF (1983) to singer Jerry Lee Lewis in Jim McBride's GREAT BALLS OF FIRE (1989) to Steven Soderbergh's ensemble cast drug war film TRAFFIC (2000). In BREAKING AWAY, underneath Mike's tough guy exterior, there's a young man afraid to leave his past Jackie Earle Haley who plays Moocher is one of those actors who bridged the gap from child to adult actor with some gaps in between. With good roles early in his young career in THE BAD NEWS BEARS and BREAKING AWAY, Haley's career did not take off like Quaid's.  Haley barely worked much in the 80s and 90s before making a comeback as a suspected child molester in Todd Field's LITTLE CHILDREN (2006) with Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson and then as vigilante superhero Rorschach in Zach Snyder's WATCHMEN (2009).  Haley's Moocher is goofy and gentle except when provoked with jokes and taunts about his short stature.  

For Daniel Stern who plays Cyril, BREAKING AWAY would be his film debut. Besides Dennis Quaid's Mike, Cyril may be the saddest of the four "cutters" even though Cyril has all the funniest lines.  Cyril uses humor as a defense mechanism for his failure to make much of his life so far. When the Cutters win the Little 500, Dave, Mike, and Moocher all have a family member race up to hug them. Only Cyril is left looking for a familiar face to share his happiness, but none emerges, hinting that Cyril's future may not be so rosy. But actor Stern would go on to roles where he had friends or cohorts in films like DINER, Chris Columbus's HOME ALONE (1990) with Macaulay Culkin and Joe Pesci, and Ron Underwood's CITY SLICKERS (1991) with Billy Crystal and Jack Palance.  Stern also served as the narrator and directed several episodes of ABC's THE WONDER YEARS (1988 - 1993).

Stern should have received an "Introducing" credit since it was his first film but instead that went to actress Robyn Douglass who plays Dave's love interest, sorority girl Katherine. Douglas makes Katherine interesting, showing some depth as she's torn between her Greek life and this quirky supposed Italian student aka Dave. Douglass appeared in a few TV shows in the 80s but appears to have given up acting in the early 90s. Hart Bochner (son of actor Lloyd Bochner) plays BREAKING AWAY'S villain role as confident frat boy and Little 500 adversary Rod from Texas.  Bochner would play another college student in Roger Spottiswoode's slasher film TERROR TRAIN (1980) with Jamie Lee Curtis. But Bochner's best remembered role is as Bonnie Bedelia's sleazeball co-worker in John McTiernan's action film DIE HARD (1988) with Bruce Willis. Look for PJ Soles (HALLOWEEN) as Katherine's fellow sorority sister (Soles was dating Dennis Quaid at the time) and John Ashton (BEVERLY HILLS COP, MIDNIGHT RUN) as Quaid's local cop brother. 

Director Peter Yates would have an eclectic film career.  He would reteam with screenwriter Steve Tesich on EYEWITNESS (1981), a Hitchcock like thriller starring William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver. Yates worked in every genre from crime dramas like BULLITT and THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (1973) to adventure in THE DEEP (1977) with Nick Nolte and Jaqueline Bissett based on Peter Benchley's novel to the period drama THE DRESSER (1983) starring Albert Finney based on a stage play and even directing the fantasy dud KRULL (1983).  Yates's BREAKING AWAY seems like an anomaly in his filmography, a sweet film capturing a slice of life in the heartland of the United States. It may be one of the best films set in America made by none other than an Englishman.

Little did I know that my friend's mother taking us to see BREAKING AWAY that hot summer July day would change my view of watching movies.  There was more out there than horror and fantasy films. Movies about normal people in normal situations could be just as engaging. I believe the next normal film I would see in this vein would be Robert Benton's KRAMER VS KRAMER (also 1979) about of all things -divorce and its consequences on the couple and their only son. In my own way, I was "breaking away" from just watching one type of film to enjoying all types, styles, and genres. My cinematic journey was about to begin.