Happy Valley

"Happy Valley" is the name of the bucolic Penn State University campus, as well as the title of Amir Bar-Lev's 100-minute documentary exploring the culture, cost and aftermath of deifying college football and its coaches.

In November 2011, assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was charged with 40 counts of child sex abuse, and a report revealed emails that venerated 40-year head coach Joe Paterno and other school administrators were aware of Sandusky's predatory behavior over the years but did little to protect the victims.

The aptly-named Paterno spent his career parenting his players, shepherding their high graduation rates plus impressive wins and overall stats, and not allowing names on team jerseys in order to keep everyone humble and united within the "JoPa" family. When he refused a million-dollar offer to be a pro coach for the New England Patriots, Paterno became State College's hero, a "lexicon of integrity," God to Jerry's Jesus, both coaches considered saviors and saints.

Meanwhile, Sandusky was creating his own perverted family, starting the free "Second Mile" summer children's camp that was essentially a front for him to lure mostly at-risk, underprivileged kids for him to seduce with attention and gifts, then abuse and rape. He and his wife Dottie even legally adopted some kids, including Matt, who is interviewed throughout the film. His biological mother fought the court order to have him removed from his impoverished surroundings because she was uncomfortable with the intense attention Sandusky lavished on her son. But she was forced to hand him over, and Matt eventually testified against his adoptive father about his lifetime of sexual abuse.

Sandusky was given a life sentence as a serial child molester, and the school's board of directors removed Paterno as head coach, as well as statues of him and his winning records around campus. He died of cancer three months later. The NCAA fined the college $60 million and banned them from bowl games for four years. But Bar-Lev focuses the film what the community did, and still does, to enable a culture of hero worship and winning at all costs.

Penn State has now transferred the town's evangelical pigskin passion to new coach Bill O'Brien, selling shirts saying "O'Brien's Lions" and "Billieve." The doc also examines the value, and liability, of symbolic dads versus real dads.

The DVD extra is a PRX radio interview with Bar-Lev, who references the rise and fall of the formerly beloved Bill Cosby as our country's latest unlearned lesson about sanctifying public, but flawed, human and occasionally felonious, figures.

"Happy Valley"
DVD
$22.99
http://www.musicboxfilms.com/happy-valley-movies-115.php