for all his credits) told those of us from faith-based publications and online journals that there was even more to the story than made it into the film. Don Haskins played high school basketball with his best friend, an African American, when they were growing up in Oklahoma. Haskins was recruited to play college ball, but not his friend who was the better player; Haskins never forgot that he got a college education, but his friend did not. When asked why he chose to produce this film, Bruckheimer said that he likes stories about characters with depth, great themes and an involved plot. Then he added, \u201cAs filmmakers we are in the transportation business; we\u2019re here to give you a great ride.\u201d Bruckheimer also said that he believes that athletics and music have done more for civil rights in this country than any march ever did.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>\u00a0<\/p>\nJohn Voight plays Adolf Rupp the legendary coach of the Wildcats of the University of\u00a0Kentucky. (One of the journalists, from Ave Maria Radio in\u00a0Detroit, asked the first question \u2013 about what Voight felt like playing Pope John Paul II. I wish I had had a video camera. Obviously Voight, who was raised Catholic, was very moved by filming in Krakow, Poland, and meeting \u00a0<\/span>and having tea with Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz who had been John Paul II\u2019s secretary and assistant for almost forty years).<\/span> I think the Ave Maria guy earned himself a promotion for the seven or so minutes he got from Voight about playing the Pope for the CBS special. Voight was inspiring to watch and listen to as he recalled the experience.) Voight does a tremendous amount of research about the roles he plays. He said that Rupp was always open to learning; he was born poor and came up the hard way and he did not believe in spoiling his players.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>\u00a0<\/p>\nI know from a friend who lives in\u00a0Lexington,\u00a0KY and from one of the journalists also from\u00a0Lexington, that people there are worried that Rupp will be portrayed as a racist. This is not so. Voight studied television footage of Rupp and read his speeches from where the brief dialogue he utters in the film is taken. The writers told us that they discovered nothing in their research that pointed to Rupp as a racist. But he didn\u2019t have much respect for the upstart Haskins and his team and dissed him at the press conference before the championship game. \u00a0<\/span>In the film Rupp\u2019s wife Esther (Catherine McGoohan) befriends Mary Haskins (Emily Deschanel; Bones<\/i>) at a party where she was being badly snubbed \u2013\u00a0 <\/span>and this actually happened as well.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>\u00a0<\/p>\nMehcad Brooks who plays Harry Flournoy (and Alfre Woodard\u2019s son on Desperate Housewives<\/i>), and Al Shearer who plays Nevil Shed, were both at the junket, and they were a treat. Brooks comes from\u00a0Texas and he said that the story of the West Texas Miners was a bedtime story for him growing up. He said that they all had to go to a two-week basketball training camp to get ready for the film and it was like a descent into hell. The real Don Haskins even came one day, Shearer told us, learned which characters they were playing, and then coached them for two hours \u2013 calling them by the names of their characters. Brooks said playing the part made him realize what it was like in the 1960\u2019s when other ball players did not \u201creciprocate your existence.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>\u00a0<\/p>\nAll the team actors actually played ball in the film; they were either actors who could play or players who could act.\u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>\u00a0<\/p>\nSo the question is: how much of the story is true? The writers, Chris Cleveland and Bettina Gilois, both from the greater El Paso area who grew up hearing the story of Coach Haskins and the year the Miners and wanted to tell it. There are two scenes in the film where the team is viciously treated because of the black players. Did this really happen? \u201cWe had from 50-100 racial incidents to work from,\u201d Bettina Gilois told us. \u201cEach player had thingsdone to him, so we had to find a way to show the truth of what happened in a two-hour movie. We decided to condense all the incidents into these two. So no, these exact incidents didn\u2019t happen, but others, some very serious, actually did. Plus there were the death threats and hate mail\u2026\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/font><\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/span>First time feature director, James Gartner, and the writers, assured us that 80% of the film is factual, but it\u2019s all true. The film has a deliberately gritty look to it, unlike the classic Hoosiers<\/i> or even Bruckheimer\u2019s earlier Remember the Titans<\/i>. Gartner chose to make this film because of the powerful story, although Bruckheimer has offered him other films before. After seeing the film, Haskins called him and told him how pleased he was with how the film turned out, at how accurate it is.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>\u00a0<\/p>\nThe question remains: why did Haskins play all his African American team members that day? Was it a basketball decision or a political statement? Josh Lucas, who plays Haskins in the film, said it was probably both, plus Haskin\u2019s remembered anger at how his best friend was not given a chance to play college ball, or get a college education. \u201cHaskins was a complex character; he was charismatic but he also had rage. I think he\u2019s more complex and difficult than Bobby Knight.\u201d By not playing Armstrong Haskins showed what he was willing to risk \u2013 and believe in \u2013 to win.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>\u00a0<\/p>\nJosh Lucas told us something no one else mentioned: within thee weeks of the Miners winning the NCAA Championship, 100% of all the colleges and universities in the country who had basketball programs began recruiting African American players. I was a teenager in 1965. Between the escalation of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, I don\u2019t remember much else that made news \u2013 and certainly not about basketball and the Movement. I met Lucas on the elevator on the way down after the interviews ended and asked him again if this information was accurate, and he assured me that it was.\u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>\u00a0<\/p>\nThe story of the Miners\u2019 victory that day so long ago has waited too long to be told.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>\u00a0<\/p>\nThis is a film about a time in American history that young people need to know about. Someone told us that after one of the screenings in\u00a0El Paso a mother wrote to say thank you because her ten year old son could not believe that black people were treated that way and the film had given her a chance to sit down and talk to him about racism and its effects on people and society. To me, this is one of the gifts that cinema provides for us: a \u201cspace\u201d to talk about things that matter.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>\u00a0<\/p>\nThe film plays humor, heart, grit, courage, perseverance, determination, and self-sacrifice against racism very well; I got a little teary a few times. But it is not manipulative like\u00a0most feel-good movies are; in fact, this is not a pretty film \u2013 don\u2019t forget that. It is a true story about real people with basketball as the backdrop, and it will inspire you.\u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>\u00a0<\/p>\nSome of the funny incidents, like when the coach called David Lattin\u2019s mom to come and get him to study, actually happened; also, the player (and it may have been Lattin, I cannot recall) started fainting; they discovered he had an enlarged heart. The coach didn\u2019t want him to play, but his mother came and interceded for him. In actual fact, he also had two small strokes that same year but they decided to leave that detail out of the film. Too much story to tell\u00a0and none of the usual clich\u00e9s here. <\/font><\/p>\n<\/em><\/font>\u00a0<\/p>\nGlory Road<\/strong><\/em> is on Bruckheimer\u2019s super highway and it\u2019s a great ride.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get ready for an amazing film about the 1960\u2019s, when race and basketball kissed, and a new era in American athletics began.\u00a0 \u00a0 Most of this review is based on the interviews at the press junket for the film last Sunday here in\u00a0Los Angeles. First seeing this really good film and then attending an awesome […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"The](\"https:\/\/movies.themoviebox.net\/images\/gloryroad\/main.jpg\")
<\/font><\/p>\n