"This is a movie about life and loss and what football means to a town," said Kate Mara, one of the stars of "We Are Marshall," which probes all of the above.
Mara, who plays a cheerleader, went on to say that she knows "what football means to her family."
As well she should. Both of her great-grandfathers are football legends -- Timothy Mara, fabled founder of the New York Giants, and Art Rooney, the equally fabled founder of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The Niagara Falls Reporter was the only Western New York media outlet at the press event held for key cast and production members of the film.
Any film, even if it is based on true events, has to create vivid characters to maintain its momentum. Sometimes these invented characters -- or composites -- are stronger than the actual people about whom we should be caring. Mara plays one of these "invented" characters. The director of the movie is a man named McG (he made the "Charlie's Angels" films), who worked from a screenplay by Jaime Linden.
"We Are Marshall" is an emotional story about grit and determination in the face of gut-wrenching tragedy. On Saturday, Nov. 14, 1970, with lightning flashing around it, a charter jet carrying Marshall University's football team, its coaches, staff and prominent local fans, was returning from a game in North Carolina. It crashed in the Appalachian Mountains a minute before its scheduled landing in Huntington, W. Va. No one survived. In a split second, an entire football program vanished. The team was the heart and soul of the small town.
The movie follows the events leading up to the creation of a new Marshall football team, the controversy surrounding the use of freshmen (forbidden by the NCAA) and the city's inspirational support for the new coach and his squad. Nothing would be easy for the townspeople or the team.
Four players were not on the plane. Three were out with injuries and one had overslept. The film examines everyone's raw feelings, and you can imagine how the guy who overslept felt. Of late, few American movies about sports dare to discuss the death of athletes. They are mostly about misfits and reprobates who are formed into a cohesive unit.
In "We Are Marshall," the players are not so much misfits as they are lacking in experience. When the new football team took the field, they were led by the only man willing to take the job, head coach Jack Lengyel, played by Matthew McConaughey.
"He wasn't the last straw," McConaughey said during the press conference. "He was the only straw."
Lengyel was an outsider from Wooster, Ohio, hired by the university's president, beautifully acted by David Strathairn. The coach had to form the new team around the three injured men, a soccer kicker, basketball players and those freshmen. The fellow who overslept was so distraught that he never found the desire to play again.
Director McG said that in reality, the guy, who's known as Tom in the film, "changed his name twice" to avoid the spotlight that glared in West Virginia. Brian Geraghty plays Tom with a passionate sense of despair without wallowing in it. The movie expertly captures how essential football, especially Marshall University football, was -- and is -- to the community.
Lengyel's assistant coach is Red Dawson (Matthew Fox). Dawson worked for the ill-fated team and was at the final game, but he missed the flight due to a recruiting appointment. Dawson is visibly conflicted about stepping back onto the gridiron. For actor Fox, the fact that he "would be honoring people" helped him take the role.
Dawson is still alive and spent a lot of time with Fox, at one point telling him, "Well, you're gonna have to do a lot of crying."
Anthony Mackie plays another real-life figure, linebacker Nate Ruffin, who fought to continue the football program. A number of Marshall supporters and Huntington citizens didn't want the sport back on the university's agenda. Their grief was palpable and long-lasting. Mackie said that as an actor it was important for him "to know who Nate was as a person" and that "dealing with the player's grief" was one of the challenges he faced in creating his character's persona.
Another character crafted using dramatic license is steelworker Paul Griffen, an ardent football fan and soon-to-be grieving father who lost his son in the crash. The son was engaged to be married to Mara's Annie. Great Britain's Ian McShane plays Griffen, and I think his performance is the heart of the movie. His scenes with Mara are especially strong and meaningful. Griffen understands the need to carry on tradition and bring back football, but he is also wracked by intense sadness.
This character is a stand-in for so many in Huntington. It's essential that football returns and that audiences see the pride of rebirth, but it's also essential that the very same audience sees the pain of loss suffered by so many. McShane knows a lot about sports, but it's British soccer that's in his blood, not American football. His father, Harry, played for the United Kingdom's vaunted Manchester United squad throughout the 1950s, a team that also was crippled by an airplane crash.
It's a given that fans identify with their city's athletes. Legends rise and myths are created. "Sports is tribal," said McShane, "and in the case of Marshall football, which was the lifeblood of the city, the crash created something powerful. The players would be forever iconic. Forever young. Frozen in time."
The mystique of Marshall University's loss centers more around small-town existence than it does on football. The movie, which does have its share of football ups and downs, is really a study of how people remember the past but have to build for the future. McConaughey said that "We Are Marshall" is about "the long road back."
He's absolutely right. In Marshall's case, it's a road without end.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 19 2006 |