Spend wisely, Seahawks

For many Seahawks fans, keeping Geno Smith isn't a matter of talent but a matter of value and ambivalence: Seaside Joe 1816

Among the many similarities between Hollywood and the NFL there is also this: Spending more money doesn’t always buy you better quality.

Today, I’m going to cover NFL spending habits, what the Seahawks got right and wrong in free agency last year, and why most fans might actually just be ambivalent about Geno Smith rather than for or against him. First, it is imperative that we talk about The Deer Hunter.

Cimino’s Exit (the non-football part of the article)

Every successful actor in history is reliant on the few critical hits that will be offered to them in their careers, and most often it is the first one that sets them on a path to become successful. Consider Michael Cimino’s 1979 masterpiece The Deer Hunter and ask yourself how much different movies would have been in the last 40 years without it:

Before Meryl Streep won her first Oscar for Kramer vs. Kramer, she got her first nomination for The Deer Hunter. Before Robert DeNiro won his first Oscar for Raging Bull, he was nominated for The Deer Hunter. And before Christopher Walken requested additional cowbell, he won an Oscar for The Deer Hunter.

Give these actors the appropriate credit for their work, as you would give to Seahawks players for putting in the hours to become great with or without the belief of others in power who choose to employ them, but don’t forget that even if Michael Cimino never made another movie again in his career that he still changed the course of the film industry forever because of The Deer Hunter.

And as many of you already realize, Cimino would soon know the feeling of “you’ll never make another movie in your career” because his follow-up, Heaven’s Gate, became the preeminent example of a “box office bomb”; the gold standard of anti-gold. So why do I feel like I know so much more about the making of Heaven’s Gate, a movie I’ve never seen, than the making of The Deer Hunter, a movie that I love?