Movie Quote of the Day (“Bull Durham,” Mangling Otis Redding)

Nuke LaLoosh (played by Tim Robbins) (singing softly as he strums his guitar on the bus) “Oh she may get wooly, women do get wooly, because of all the stress…”--Bull Durham (1988), written and directed by Ron Shelton

Nuke’s teammate Crash Davis (played by Kevin Costner) does not approve of this--er, unique--version of the lyrics of “Try a Little Tenderness” at all, and he proceeds to dress down his wooly-minded pitcher about the real words. For the sour but smart “player to be named later,” it’s all a matter of R-E-S-P-E-C-T--for a classic soul song, for the unspoken rules of a beautiful game, and for “long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days” with a beautiful woman.

The magic of Otis Redding can have this effect on people.

“Try a Little Tenderness” appeared on the soul singer’s Dictionary of Soul LP, released this week 45 years ago. Bing Crosby had sung this tune 30 years before, but by the time Redding was through, he owned it.

When Alan Parker directed his 1991 film about an Irish “soul” band, The Commitments, he correctly chose “Try a Little Tenderness” for the soundtrack. The song is played with all force possible, but it still doesn’t come close to Redding’s--which you can hear, in all its raw, incendiary live power, on the soundtrack for the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.

A few years ago, I heard, Cuba Gooding Jr. had become attached to a biopic about the great soul singer whose life tragically ended in a plane crash less than two years after “Try a Little Tenderness.” Then…nothing. If screenwriter Joe Esterhaz is to be believed (a big if), it appears that Gooding couldn’t believe the script from the Basic Instinct and Showgirls scribe didn’t have enough sex.

Well, maybe Esterhaz wasn’t the best person for this project. But can you name a good film that Gooding’s made in, oh, the last five years?

It would be a shame if this project were in Hollywood Development Hell now. A new generation could be reminded of the magnificent talent that the music industry lost 43 years ago, but that some new Crash Davis, somewhere, will always find a way to revere.