On this day in 1997, HBO presented Larry Gelbart’s penultimate telemovie, a sharp satire about a pro football team being pursued hotly by warring media barons – one played by Ben Kingsley, the other by Gabriel Byrne.
Gelbart, one of the writer-producers responsible for adapting
M*A*S*H to the small screen, started writing for television back in the 1950s, for Red Buttons and Sid Caesar. His stage, screen and TV credits are numerous and impressive, but near the end of his career (Gelbart died in 2009), he did his last and best works for HBO, starting with 1993’s brilliantly funny adaptation of
Barbarians at the Gate, starring James Garner as an embattled tobacco executive.
Weapons of Mass Distraction was another corporate comedy-drama along those same lines, and with quite a cast. In addition to the two leads, it featured Jeffrey Tambor, Illeana Douglas, Jason Lee, Mimi Rogers, and Paul Mazursky. Stephen Surjik directed.
Here’s the original trailer for the HBO telemovie: