|
'Believe in Me' shows power of heart |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Written by Dixie Reid
|
|
Friday, 23 March 2007 |
|
|
|
|
The last thing he wanted was to coach a girls' basketball team, and all that the girls wanted was to be treated like the boys.
In the mid-1960s, in a small Oklahoma farming community, a reluctant newcomer becomes legendary when he turns a rag-tag bunch of high school girls into state basketball champions. The story is based on fact, but the movie "Believe in Me" is about much more than basketball.
Jeffrey Donovan stars as Coach Clay Driscoll, with Samantha Mathis as his savvy wife, Jean. They arrive in fictitious Middleton, where Driscoll is hired to coach boys but is abruptly handed the girls' team instead.
Wild-haired Bruce Dern plays the villainous town banker Ellis Brawley, who also runs the school board and fights the young coach every step of the way. Brawley doesn't believe in equality for girls, saying, for instance, that their ragged uniforms and hand-me-down boys' team sweats are good enough.
"It fascinates me that women's civil rights weren't affirmed until 1964," says writer-director Robert Collector from his home in Montecito, Calif. "What girls take for granted 40 years later, they don't understand that women fought for those rights. These young women wanted to play as badly as the men did, and they found a way to get it done.
"Girls were mistreated. The playing field was not level. This story needed to be told," Collector says of the time before Title IX, the part of the 1972 Education Act that mandated gender equality in sports.
Collector was a longtime Hollywood scriptwriter and re-writer who had been looking for a project to direct when his wife gave him the young readers' novel "Brief Garland." It was written in the 1970s by Harold Keith, longtime sports information director at the University of Oklahoma.
After Collector secured the screen rights, he was asked if he would care to meet the real coach depicted in the book.
"I thought I was optioning a novel," Collector says. "I didn't realize that everyone in Oklahoma who knows about this guy knows that his uncle wrote a book about him. Basically, everything happened, but (Keith) had to novelize it because everyone was still alive."
Keith fashioned the novel around the experiences of his nephew, Jim Keith, who never wanted to coach girls but after his first season in little Sayre, Okla. (Middleton in the movie) spent the balance of his career coaching nothing but. He retired with 613 career wins as the girls' coach in four Oklahoma towns, starting with Sayre.
Jerry Ann Bibb, one of Jim Keith's early stars in Sayre, recently told The Oklahoman newspaper: " ... Maybe we weren't necessarily the fastest or the best, but we could out-think people. He could convince us that we could do something that sometimes I don't think we really could."
Collector chuckles. "You can't underestimate the power of the human heart. I'm a sap, and I believe that."
He shot "Believe in Me" mostly in Clovis and Portales, neighboring small towns in eastern New Mexico. They pass admirably as Oklahoma burgs, minus the red dirt.
Anyone familiar with girls' basketball in the mid-'60s will get a kick out of the Lady Cyclones' almost comical practice wear, which resembles children's puffy playsuits. And an opposing team plays in matching pink dresses.
As much as he insisted on authenticity, Collector didn't address the way the girls' game was played back then. Each team fielded three guards and three forwards on opposite sides of the court, and they weren't allowed across the center line. They play full-court in "Believe in Me."
"I didn't get into it, because that's a different game, and I'm not sure (audiences) would understand it."
Otherwise, he says, "I wanted like hell to get it right. I wanted it to be real."
As an example, when he auditioned Donovan, Collector asked him to read the coach's halftime speech. Donovan delivered it with bluster and authority. That's not what I want, Collector told him. That might work fine for boys, but not for girls.
"With women, it's much more emotional," he says. "That's why Coach Driscoll never towers over them. He looks them in the eye. And, normally in a sports movie, the coach's wife doesn't have that much to do, but I wanted to paint a picture of a positive marital situation wherein they both know — especially the husband — that the wife is the smarter of the two. He has tremendous respect for her and so he has respect for the girls."
Samantha Mathis, during a phone call from Los Angeles, says, "Unlike a lot of scripts I read, this is a traditional wife who is real. Jean is really the backbone of the relationship. Then we met the real Jim and Jorene Keith, and there is such strength in their relationship, and the way she supports him is remarkable."
The Keiths, who still live in Oklahoma, spent a few days in New Mexico during the "Believe in Me" shoot. Mathis and Donovan joined them for pie one night.
Mathis says that, by getting to know them, she was inspired by their deep love and devotion for one another, and the way in which Jorene Keith still champions. She put those qualities into her interpretation of Jean Driscoll.
"The movie, as much as it is about women and their empowerment through athletics, it's about the opportunity they are given to step up and play to their strengths, not to be well-behaved but be strong," Mathis says. "As Jean says (to her husband): 'Tell them if some girl pushes them, to push back, and harder.'
"It's as much that story as it is one man's journey of how his life is changed by coaching girls." | Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register. |
|
|  | "Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is Alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world's one, and only truth." | |
|  | We're not that bright, even though in our own little world, we're geniuses. We like 80s hair bands and one-hit wonders, but among us we have respectable tastes, too. Metallica, Iron Maiden, U2. Pursuit of all things trivial is a lifestyle, not just a game. We like some sports, love other sports, and can find something to say about anything. We watch TV and movies and we've read a book or two, even a few classics (Yes, Classic Comics count!)
We call it insight, you call it what you will. | |
|  | Felix Wong is an outdoor enthusiast living in Fort Collins. A mechanical engineer by day, he is especially passionate about bicycling, running, and backpacking. | |
|  | Hola Amigos! I'm Sandra. I like to believe that people are 70 percent good and 30 percent dumb. I'm stickin to that story. Reading this blog might make you want to be good, but probably just dumb. | |
|  | Donovan Henderson is editor of NEXTnc. | |
|  | Here at Nextnc we have some characters. Get a sneak peak behind the curtain and find out what amusing antics our staffers get themselves into on a weekly basis. | |
|  | What is up FoCo?
I am a recent college graduate of Minnesota State University Moorhead. After recieving my B.A. in English and Mass Communications this past August I moved down to Colorado.
I enjoy long walks on the beach, candlelight dinners, and heavy metal. My hobbies include reading and writing, music, movies, and getting drunk. Some of my favorite contemporary authors include Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, and Kurt Vonnegut. My top movies are anything directed by Kubrick. I enjoy listening to anything that rocks.
Right now I am just trying to get to know Colorado and FoCo better. Mostly in order to find the best drink specials on each day that ends in Y. So if you know where I can get a cheap drunk on, let me know!
--Drew | |
|  | Life's little morsels of inspiration, observation and encouragement seen through the eyes of the Nextnc reporter.
| |
|  | Ms. Giles currently lives in Colorado where she stars in her own private reality show. She writes aphoristic accounts of her life, taken completely out of context, and embellished with characters and situations disguised to resemble something close to interesting. | |
|  | over and out | |
| | My name is Michelle Turley and I'm 28 years old. I live in Severance with my hubbie, Brandon. We have 2 dogs and a cat. We enjoy camping, four-wheeling, and just being in the mountains. I like to cook, clean (go figure), flea market, and play poker. I have so much to say about poker... | |
|
|
