My orphan wife and I found "12" very satisfying and highly emotional, given we are both orphans. (I spent 9 years at the Tarrant County Children's Home, cross town rivals of the Masonics in '58 when we beat them for the industrial league state basketball championship. Two of the "12 Mighty Mites", Charles Sealey and Jack Whitley, became my football coaches at Poly High in '61. Whitley flew a B-25 in WWII and Sealey was a paratrooper. Whitley also became superintendent of the Tarrant County Children's Home prior to my time there. My mother--Poly class of '38--likely attended the games with Poly depicted in the film.) This film has some great acting and a good script, although it seems a bit fast paced. I didn't want it to end. Friday Night Lights was the ultimate in the Texas high school football drama genre, so author Jim Dent and the film team had a high bar to jump over. The Fort Worth Masonic Home teams of the Depression years provided just the right material. All Dent had to do was get it down on paper. Hollywood did the rest. "12" is about a team overcoming amazing obstacles in the quest for the championship, a story we've heard a thousand times. But not about a team of orphans. It's characters that make a story interesting, and the film (and the book) excel when the focus is on these downtrodden cast-offs. But bits and pieces were left out that would have made them more real and compelling. You can learn a lot about people sitting across from them over a meal. Someone cooked 3 meals a day,7 days a week, for the 150 orphans and staff at the Masonic Home, yet we never see them even in the dining room. Teenage boys talk a lot about girls, yet the subject rarely came up. In an orphanage everyone has daily and weekly chores, but the subject of chores goes unaddressed. Is this an orphanage or a boarding school? What about families? Orphanages have visitation, yet the subject of family visitation was AWOL except in one powerful scene when a mean mother shows up unannounced to claim her now popular son 10 years after dumping him. It would have been more realistic to show the mother struggling to recognize her son, whose appearance would have changed dramatically during those 10 years. The film's two 2 dimensional villains were caricatures--the larcenous, paddle-happy administrator and the cruel Poly High football coach. This storytelling faux pas nearly destroyed the film's credibility. The film will be a major success for two reasons: a) it's a great Depression-era story of hope and triumph over adversity and b) it cracks open a new storytelling franchise--orphan life in America. If the film makes a lot of money it will pave the way for more realistic stories about the American orphan. For this reason alone, I take off my hat to Jim Dent, who had the courage to take on the challenge and then convince Hollywood to make it into a film far better than his thoroughly entertaining book. Dent has inspired me to finish my memoirs about living in the children's home, COUNTY KID and THE ADOPTIMIST. Jim Dent, for profit or whatever reason, has single-handedly made America finally face the fact that this country has orphanages.

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