So, I got thinking about that movie, ‘Rudy’, the other day. Specifically, what Joe Montana had to say about it. You know, Montana, the legend, he was actually there at Notre Dame around the same time.
I remember reading or hearing somewhere that Montana wasn’t exactly doing cartwheels over how the movie portrayed things. Something along the lines of, yeah, Rudy was there, worked hard, but the whole super dramatic sack at the end, maybe it wasn’t quite the tear-jerker event the film made it out to be. Montana seemed kinda matter-of-fact, like, it’s a movie, folks, not a documentary.
Thinking Back…
It actually dragged up a memory from an old job I had. We were working on this big project, a real team effort. Loads of late nights, pizza boxes piling up, everyone pitching in. We had this one guy on the team, let’s call him Dave. Nice enough guy, showed up, did his bit, but honestly? He wasn’t exactly pulling all-nighters or coming up with the breakthrough ideas. Most of that heavy lifting fell on a couple of other folks.
Anyway, we finally finished the project, huge success for the department. And somehow, when the big bosses started talking about it, Dave’s name kept coming up. He’d apparently had a ‘key conversation’ with someone important, or he was the one presenting the final slides, I don’t know. Suddenly, the story became ‘Dave’s project’. It was weird.
- We all knew the real grind.
- We knew who really pushed it over the line.
- But the narrative was set.
Nobody wanted to be the sour grape, you know? Going around saying, “Well, actually…” just makes you look bad. So, we just kind of nodded along. Dave got the pats on the back, maybe even a little bonus or something. The rest of us just got the satisfaction of knowing the job was done, I guess. It felt a bit hollow, though.
Seeing those comments from Montana about Rudy kinda reminded me of that feeling. You see the big, inspiring story unfold, the one everyone loves. But then you hear from someone who was actually in the huddle, and they remember it slightly differently. Not necessarily taking away from the person, but just… adjusting the spotlight a bit, adding that dose of reality.
Movies need heroes, simple stories. Real life? It’s usually a lot more complicated, more people involved, less clear-cut. It just is what it is.
