Baltimore Colts and Diner Guys: Pro Sports Fandom and Personal Identity in Barry Levinson's Diner (Movie Review‪)‬

Barry Levinson's first film as both writer and director, Diner (1982), was a sleeper hit across the nation. While studio uncertainty regarding how to distribute the film meant that Diner almost never saw the light of day on the East Coast of the United States (Chase C8), the film was widely praised by critics when it was released. Janet Maslin of The New York Times, for example, described it as a "fresh, well-acted and energetic [film that] "makes a great deal of sense" (C3). Featuring a talented cast of then-rising stars--including Mickey Rourke, Paul Reiser, Daniel Stern, Tim Daly, Steve Guttenberg, Kevin Bacon, and Ellen Barkin--Diner also benefited from its meticulous sense of period detail. One critic noted that its "closely-observed details of 50's life" are authentic enough "to recall the waning days of the Eisenhower era--the clothes, the attitudes, the social climate" (Wells 12). Novelist/screenwriter Robert Ward said of Diner that "it really captures something [...] about America at that time. I mean in a realer way than, say, American Graffiti. Not as idealized" ("My Dinner With Barry" 34). Diner achieved that degree of verisimilitude because, as an up-and-coming young filmmaker, Levinson listened to and benefited from Mel Brooks's advice that "you should really write about that which you know" ("Films of Barry Levinson"). Accordingly, Levinson drew upon his own and his friends' status as devout fans of the city's National Football League team, the Baltimore Colts. The motif of Baltimore Colts fandom in Diner becomes an important means by which the filmmaker sets forth the major theme of his film--that young men's immaturity and fear of commitment can retard their attempts to build successful relationships with the women in their lives, and to construct meaningful adult lives generally.