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FILM

The tale of a 1973 tennis match exposes old-fashioned sexism, which recently has become more prominent than ever

Emma Stone and Steve Carell in Battle of the Sexes.

Because their film Battle of the Sexes is about a 1970s tennis spectacle, what I want to know from the married movie-making couple Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris is who between them wins when they take to the courts themselves. "That is a battle that continues for decades," says Dayton, bearded and jaunty in a trilby hat. "It's all about long rallies," adds Faris, sitting beside her husband in an otherwise empty hotel meeting room. "We're very strategic with each other."

Wait, are we even talking about tennis? Should we be?

The much-hyped 1973 Billie Jean King-Bobby Riggs match was fairly tame, with King winning in three straight sets. So, Battle of the Sexes is about tennis in the way that the 2013 Jackie Robinson biopic 42 was about baseball. The televised hard-court match between the past-his-prime Riggs and the top-of-her-game King at the cavernous Houston Astrodome was nothing less than a prime-time chauvinism showdown.

Married movie-making couple Valerie Faris, left, and Jonathan Dayton.

The 1970s were a weirder, more sexist time. On the game show Match Game, the kiss-happy host Gene Rayburn was allowed to essentially sexually assault female contestants and panelist Richard Dawson blatantly flirted with attractive women. On the sitcom side, there was All in the Family, where Carrol O'Connor's Archie Bunker would do things such as argue that equality was unfair. "What's the point of a man working hard all his life, trying to get someplace, if all he's going to do is wind up equal?" he asked, raging on women's lib. Cue the canned laughter.

"Back then, it sort of felt like your grandpa's sexism," Dayton, 60, says. "It was accepted," Faris, 58, says. "It was the status quo."

Faris and Dayton are well-known for their charming 2006 hit comedy Little Miss Sunshine, which starred Steve Carell. In Battle of the Sexes (which stars Emma Stone as 29-year-old King and Carell as 55-year-old Riggs), we see self-possessed men dismissively calling women "little ladies." Brimming with patriarchal entitlement, the unctuous alpha male Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman) tells King that his Association of Tennis Professionals couldn't possibly pay female players anywhere near what male players were earning.

For the match against Billie Jean King, Bobby Riggs (played by Steve Carell) wore a yellow Sugar Daddy jacket.

For the match, Riggs wore a yellow Sugar Daddy jacket. Before the serving and volleying began, King presented Riggs with a small, wriggling oinker – symbolic for a chauvinist pig. There's an interesting line in the actual broadcast (which is incorporated into the film) in which sports broadcaster Howard Cosell observes that a faltering, outmatched Riggs had become the underdog during the match.

Riggs was not only a product of his times, but a symbol of how times were changing. "As feminism started getting attention and women started to ask for more, then the fight on the other side got intense and volatile," Faris says.

Fast-forward to today, in which sexism is more hostile in comparison to the turtle-neck times of the 1970s. A presidential candidate wins the U.S. election over a more qualified female opponent, riding an unapologetic tide of misogyny (and other things) to the White House.

The much-hyped 1973 Billie Jean King-Bobby Riggs match was fairly tame, with King winning in three straight sets.

"We began this before the rise of Trump," says Dayton, who with his wife took over the film when its co-producer and original director Danny Boyle left the project for T2: Trainspotting. "These issues are going to be here for a very long time."

The film's battle not only involves the women's lib movement, but King's personal confrontation. Although married at the time of the Riggs match, King was also involved in a closeted relationship with hairdresser Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough). "It was a very confusing time for Billie Jean," Dayton says. "If you see her in the original broadcast, after she's won, she is not joyous. She's spent."

According to the directors, it was hard for King to read the script and it was tough sending her the first edit of the film. "She's not really proud of having an affair," Faris says. King didn't admit to the relationship until 1981, when Barnett filed a lawsuit against the tennis star contending that she was entitled to a portion of King's property under California law.

Riggs was not only a product of his times, but a symbol of how times were changing.

In the film, Carell's Riggs is shown smiling in defeat, reconciling with his wife in the locker room. On the other hand, King is all alone. "It's her first serious relationship with a woman and it's happening at the worst possible time," Dayton says. "It's a victory," Faris adds, "but she doesn't get everything she wants."

As for Faris and Drayton, they seem to be well-matched. They don't finish each other's sentences, but they're clearly on the same wavelength. The game they play is doubles, then: game, set and movie.


Battle of the Sexes opens Sept. 22.