I graduated high school in 1999. That same year, James Van Der Beek was also a high school senior — at the fictional West Canaan High School in Varsity Blues.
(Van Der Beek is actually four years older than me and was in his early 20s while filming Varsity Blues. Dawson’s Creek premiered year earlier, making Van Der Beek a bonafide teen star, if no longer a teen.)
Jonathan Moxon (Van Der Beek) was quite a bit more studious than I was. Mox, headed for Ivy League school Brown University on a full-academic scholarship, secretly read Kurt Vonnegut tucked inside his playbook while warming the bench. He also had a much better arm than I, though until the great Lance Harbor (the late Paul Walker) went down with a devastating knee injury, Mox’s right arm was mainly draped around girlfriend Jules (Amy Smart).
Mox’s perpetually disappointed dad Sam (Thomas Duffy) had an especially small small town life. His older son had little interest in his high school football career — the only thing that matters in West Canaan — and the younger one (Joe Pichler) was defined by his fluidity about religion.
In the good old days, the good ol’ boy “played his heart out” for longtime Coyotes coach Bud Kilmer (Jon Voight), king asshole of West Canaan. Sam’s hustle and loyalty was the only reason Mox was on the roster, Kilmer said (though he’d later also call Sam “a no-talent pussy.”)
It’s a good thing Kilmer kept Mox around, because when he, Tweeder (Scott Caan), Billy Bob (the late Ron Lester) and the rest of the Coyotes needed a strong arm, Mox morphed into Henry Rowengartner (Thomas Ian Nicholas) from another ’90s sports movie, Rookie of the Year (1993) — after Henry’s cast came off. To choose another very-1993 metaphor, when his number was begrudingly called, Mox turned from Steve Urkel into Stefan Urquelle.
Mox’s rocket right arm was in there all along, of course. And to make QB2 behind “the best quarterback in the state” (Harbor), a guy with a full ride to Florida State University — in 1999, the number one football team in the nation and the consensus national champion — Mox had to show off something in all those tryouts and practices, no?
As it was, Mox didn’t sniff the field until there were three games and about a minute left in his senior season. Secretly the best backup in the Lone Star State, Mox immediately throws a dime on a “9” route by Tweeder, pegs the opposing team’s cocky mascot to stop the clock, and calls a halfback pass — the worst throw of the movie, courtesy of Wendell (Eliel Swinton) — back to himself to score the winning touchdown as a receiver as time (basically) expires. A star is born and an upgraded lawn billboard soon follows.
By all accounts, Van Der Beek couldn’t throw a football especially well; Peter Gardere, a University of Texas quarterback from the late 1980s/early ’90s, did all of the stunt throwing. Gardere is Texas-famously the only starting quarterback on either side of the UT-Oklahoma rivalry to win four straight games in the Red River Shootout.
Gardere, now 56, appears to sell commercial real estate these days. Van Der Beek never made it to see his 50s. The Dawson’s Creek star died on Wednesday in Austin, Texas — 35 miles from where most of Varsity Blues was filmed in Elgin, Texas — following a battle with colorectal cancer. He was 48.
Peter Gardere #10, Quarterback for the University of Texas Longhorns calls the play on the line of scrimmage during the NCAA Big-8 Conference college football game against the University of Oklahoma Sooners on 14th October 1989 at the Cotton Bowl Stadium in Dallas, Texas, United States.
Joe Patronite/Allsport/Getty Images
Twenty-seven years after its release, one Varsity Blues scene still sticks out to me above others — and no, it’s not Ali Larter in a whipped cream bikini. The scene I’m talking about takes place in the Moxon home, and is at most only tangentially about football.
Following an unexpected loss fueled by an all-night bender, Sam admonishes Jonathan for squandering his sudden position atop the depth chart.
“Your attitude’s wrong. Your tone of voice is wrong,” Sam scolds his first born. “This is your opportunity…”
“For you!” Mox barks back. “Playing football at West Canaan may have been the opportunity of your lifetime, but I don’t want your life!”
(And boy did Van Der Beek, who is from Connecticut, hammer that southern drawl for the line.)
We as young men felt that. Those five words were something we all wanted to scream at our parents at one post-puberty point or another, even if Joe Maglio was no Sam Moxon.
It was a weird time to be coming of age in 1999. I had a lot of anger, but no distinct reason for it. I had no outlet, and we collectively still had some innocence.
In January 1999, when Varsity Blues came out, the internet was still not a household thing and cell phones were mostly a running Zack Morris joke. Grunge was gone and the initial wave of gangsta rap had faded away — a look at the Billboard charts says we lived in a bubblegum, candy-coated world. It wouldn’t last. The same month Varsity Blues left most theaters, a pair of high schoolers in Ohio murdered 13 classmates and one teacher in what would sadly start a trend of school shootings that still exists today. Twenty-nine months later, terrorists flew a pair of airplanes into New York City skyscrapers. We now had reason to be angry.
After leading the Coyotes to a district title, Mox “never played football again,” a Van Der Beek (as Mox) voiceover ends Varsity Blues.
“For some of us, it ended without us knowing,” he says. “Maybe these were the last days.”
Were they ever.
Van Der Beek died on Wednesday, leaving behind a loving wife and six children.
“Our beloved James David Van Der Beek passed peacefully this morning,” Van Der Beek’s wife, Kimberly Van Der Beek, said in a statement on Wednesday. “He met his final days with courage, faith, and grace. There is much to share regarding his wishes, love for humanity and the sacredness of time. Those days will come. For now we ask for peaceful privacy as we grieve our loving husband, father, son, brother, and friend.”
Though he was taken too soon — and though I can only guess at this part — it sounds like James really wanted that life.