Greetings & GeneralMac, et al Thoroughbred Racing Aficionados
With Compliments
Paramount movie "Let It Ride"1989 Racing classic shot on location @ the late "Hialeah Race Track", Florida
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex2HhAKRrCE
So welcome & enjoy-
Eddessa_Knight with Racing Light
"Jay Cronley was one of my heroes. And if you are a horseplayer like me then he probably was to you too. He wrote a novel “Good Vibes” that was turned into the movie “Let It Ride” which to me is the quintessential horse racing flick.
Cronley, 73, passed away last Sunday from a heart attack. He was a columnist for the Tulsa Tribune, Tulsa World and for espn.com. But we knew him from “Let It Ride.”
To some, movies like Phar Lap and Seabiscuit are at the top of horse racing film heap. But for me, it is hands down “Let It Ride.” There isn’t a year gone by since its release in 1989 that I haven’t watched it. Again and again.
Sometimes a movie just falls into place. As if the script was written for each specific actor or actress. I can’t imagine anyone but Richard Dreyfuss, Jennifer Tilly, David Johansen or Terri Garr playing their exact roles.
In fact, Cronley wrote in a 2001 espn.com piece that the adaptation from novel to big screen was “just right. It is the novel.”
“Let It Ride” is about a down and out horseplayer Jay Trotter, played by Dreyfuss, who one day has an epiphany of sorts at the race track. Trotter cannot lose. It is a dream all horseplayers have had.
There are so many quotable lines but the most often used may be “You could be walking around lucky … and not even know it.” It is the answer to why you should place a bet every day of your life.
Cronley pointed out a little known fact about “Let It Ride.” The producer was Ned Dowd who “liked to gamble.” That goes in the plus column as a big check mark."
Dowd’s sister Nancy wrote the screenplay for both “Let It Ride” and for the movie “Slap Shot,” which is a hockey comedy based upon her brother’s career as a minor-league player. There is a smartness to “Slap Shot” and “Let It Ride” because of the talented people involved with the films actually having lived the life.
Cronley has said that “Let It Ride” is based upon a true story. One day at Will Rogers Downs Cronley wrote he won the whole pool for a trifecta one race and then half of the trifecta pool for the next race. He literally did let it ride.