Out of print for more than 30 years, now available for the first time as an eBook, this is the controversial story of John Wooden's first 25 years and first 8 NCAA Championships as UCLA Head Basketball Coach. This is the only book that gives a true picture of the character of John Wooden and the influence of his assistant, Jerry Norman, whose contributions Wooden  ignored and tried to bury.

Compiled with more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach. The players tell their stories in their own words.

Click the book to read the first chapter and for ordering information. Also available on Kindle.

Monkey Man (0/10)

by Tony Medley

121 minutes.

R.

I struggled on how to rate this piece of dung. Zero or One? Finally, I decided that there was not an iota of redeeming social or entertainment value that I could justify giving it a One.

Produced and Directed by Dev Patel who developed the story himself, which says a lot about him, from a script, such as it is, by Patel, Paul Angunawela, and John Collee, the silly story is just a tool to show one gory, ghastly, graphic fight after another.

It starts with Kid (Patel) getting the bejesus kicked out of him in the ring as Monkey Man, a stooge who wears a monkey face to get beaten up night after night by popular fighters. Who he is and what happened to him isn’t explained until the 70^th minute. In the meantime, the film meanders around the darkest, dreariest parts of an unidentified city in an unidentified country but is probably India.

Kid rambles through an hour of violent nonsense, getting in fights and apparently infiltrating a mob, being hired as a waiter. The cinematography is dark, but, unfortunately, not so dark that you can’t see anything (which would have been a blessing). What you see is dank, dismal, and disgusting. There are no relationships established. There are some pseudo philosophic pretenses that are laughably absurd.

The soundtrack is loud and unappealing. The fights are ridiculously over the top and eye-averting, exacerbated by the phony sounds that make every blow sound like an atomic bomb exploding.

I am surprised that Universal would distribute deplorable trash like this, but despite what I say, don’t be surprised if it makes a lot of money and is nominated for awards by the mindless cretins who now control Hollywood. This is a violent, depressing movie that glorifies a life dominated by revenge, not a film that aspires to produce cultural relevance. Rather, it seeks to lionize depravity and vigilantism.