The Loneliest Runner

When I saw this film I was both horrified and encouraged. I was horrified because, at the time, I was a teen bed wetter myself and sitting with the family watching this made me feel very embarrassed. No one said anything to me about it, but I was very self-conscious and uncomfortable. At the same time, I was very encouraged that, finally, I knew that I wasn't the only teen with that problem. My folks weren't as negative to me about my bed wetting as the mother depicted in the film, but they made me feel that I was an embarrassment to them as it was the "big family secret" that was always referred to as "Paul's problem." It took many years before I was able to build up a decent level of self-esteem, and this film helped me along the way. I hope parents today are more aware of how teen bed wetting can affect a kid's entire life; perhaps we need more films like this.

Very sweet film about the humiliating beginnings of a marathon runner (adult played by Michael Landon). Young Michael, played by Lance, was a bedwetter. As he grew, his mother, a dominating woman, would humiliate him by hanging his sheets out the window to dry, so Lance would run home as fast as he could to pull them in before any of his school chums saw it. Movie expresses the hidden humiliation behind teenagers who are bedwetters, and makes an important statement on the longlasting affects of handling this problem in an unhealthy way.

There's no way I would have ever come across this movie but for belonging to a film club that views movies dealing with the theme of running. Landon has admitted that this poignant bed wetting story was autobiographical; frankly I doubt the squeamish subject matter would have ever been broached (let alone made into a feature length TV movie) without the backing of someone as powerful in television as Landon was in the 70s. Obviously the pain of the experience stayed with Landon because there are strong psychological conflicts and images at work here that seem likely to have come from real life, including the stained bedsheets hanging out the window and the pained, carefully modulated performance by Brian Keith as the father who can't quite stand up to his castrating and selfish wife or his own private demons.

Is it credible and well acted? Definitely. Does Landon demonstrate startling balls and emotion in his blazingly frank depiction of the material? Unquestionably. Is this studiously observed treatise on the ultimate in childhood embarrassment and ridicule going to be uncomfortable and maybe even a bit of a bummer for you? Probably.

The mother and ostensible villain of the piece is overly caricatured and some of the attitudes of the 1940s are oversimplified but still, I have to admit I was moved by the story. The ending packs power and Landon the writer provides Landon the actor (looking very Bruce Jenner-like in his Olympics clothing) with a wonderful line when Rafer Johnson asks him how he got into running and Landon responds by saying he owes it to his parents. That line cuts in several directions at once. Good movie for fans of Landon or Keith, who both turn in excellent work and whose lives were both ironically cut short years later.

then there's all likelihood that you remember seeing this movie as a kid. i was seven when i saw it on TV and it burned permanent images in my head of the sheet hanging outside of the windows and the humiliation the kid endured. through my life i've referred to it only to find that a large majority of people my age were also scarred by this movie, remember the same images and respond the same way when it's brought up: with a wide-eyed sense of excitement and horror.

a true generational flick.

only recently when one peer said, "hey, 'james at 15' played the kid." was i able to track down the name of it.

yay for the internet!

Turns out it is and it isn't.

It's a good small simple 70s movie. It was produced by that boring Prairie show actor.

Overall a nice nugget of a film that explores bed wetting, self-esteem and parenting.

The sound track put me to sleep. That's good though because if you can put me to sleep then you are a good movie exceptional to DC movies.