I’m not sure the filmmakers behind the new documentary “Screwball” set out to make a baseball movie that explains America—but they did.
We tend to turn preachy and moralize when we talk about PEDs in sports, but “Screwball” is more like a Coen Brothers caper with Carl Hiaasen vibes. Biogenesis wasn’t some sophisticated conspiracy—it was a clown car pileup. Bosch’s clinic was an operation run by wannabes who couldn’t shoot straight, improbably entangled with some of the best baseball players in the world. Whatever could go wrong, eventually did, and that included Major League Baseball’s own clumsy investigation into the matter.
The Florida-born Corben and producer Alfred Spellman were behind “Cocaine Cowboys,” the 2006 documentary about the Miami drug trade in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and as in that film, “Screwball” has an undercurrent of love for the Sunshine State’s rich tradition of start-over hustlers and “gray market” economies. Mostly everybody in “Screwball” is on the make, trying to be someone bigger than they appear to be—some figuratively, others literally.