All language subtitles for Spielberg Completist OWEN MARSHALL, COUNSELOR AT LAW Eulogy for A Wide Receiver (1971).en

when Steven Spielberg was first offered

a directing gig on the series own

Marshall counts were a law he turned it

down he'd been asked to direct an

episode about an opera singer but he

hated that script so he was offered

another episode this one about a high

school football controversy he agreed to

direct this episode but only on the

condition that the script be rewritten

so the show's creators gave in to his

demands and let him make it the way he

wanted the resulting episode entitled

eulogy for a wide receiver is much like

Spielberg's two episodes of the

psychiatrist in that it's fallen into

the cracks of obscurity over the ensuing

decades and it's very hard to find

luckily like some of the other episodes

in this series I was able to find a copy

of it at the Powis Center for Media and

Beverly Hills and there I got to watch

it for the first time for the most part

I enjoyed it

Anson Williams from Happy Days plays a

high school football player who dies of

exhaustion after an intense game and

right away I felt very bad for this kid

he's under so much pressure by everyone

around him that when he suddenly dies I

thought the rest of the episode was

gonna be about Owen Marshall and his

team of lawyers suing the kids

aggressive coach played by Stephen young

so imagine my surprise when I realized

the episode was actually about the

lawyers defending the coach of all

people this is a challenging thing to

try to achieve and Spielberg to his

credit almost succeeds the problem is

that the coach just isn't very likable

he's a scary guy and you do kind of want

to blame him for the kid's death a big

court case Falls making this the first

courtroom drama of Spielberg's career

and the courtroom sequence itself is

pretty well directed I loved Lou

Frizzles performance as the prosecutor

Lou Frizzle was one of the great

character actors of the 1970s I

especially loved him as the pharmacist

in Robert Mulligan's summer of 42 and

evidently Spielberg enjoyed working with

him here because he later cast him as

the bus driver and do

but the one who really commands the

episode is Olli majors as Owen Marshalls

assistant just Brandon who's assigned to

the case because he used to be a

football player himself younger

audiences these days are probably most

familiar with who he majors for his

hilarious cameo in Scrooge says the hero

of the night the reindeer died but in

this episode Spielberg gets a nice

dramatic performance out of him in a

stirring courtroom speech there's also a

good speech by the kid's father who

tearfully admits that he allowed his son

to play football even when he knew that

he had a heart condition that was a very

sad scene Joan darling who worked with

Spielberg on his brilliant psychiatrist

episode par for the course

appears briefly in this episode as well

she and her real-life husband Bill spawn

Oh were hanging out a lot with Spielberg

during this period and it's nice how he

kept giving her parts in his TV episode

the biggest problem that I had with

eulogy for a wide receiver was the

ending ultimately nobody is really

blamed for the kid's death

from what I understood it gets ruled as

nothing more than an unfortunate

accident caused by drugs and peer

pressure but what really bothered me is

how the coach and the other players just

kind of laugh about it at the end and to

me this completely undermine is the

terrible tragedy of the kid's death

which really should have been the main

focus of the episode although the

episode is emotionally affected to some

degree as a statement on death it just

doesn't compare to par for the course

which set the bar incredibly high for

Spielberg's television career still

eulogy for a wide receiver does have its

moments I'm glad I got to see it but the

copy I watched had a lot of technical

problems in fact some scenes were

missing bits and pieces of visual and

audio not to mention how badly

tinted some of the visuals a look now

much like Spielberg's to episodes for

the psychiatrist this one is in

desperate need of restoration so I hope

someone at NBC Universal gets to work on

it and quick before time runs out

if you'd like to know more about the

making of eulogy for a wide receiver

check out Joseph McBride's biography of

Spielberg

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