Glory Road, the true story of the 1966 Texas Western Miners basketball team, the first college team to win the NCAA championship with an all-black starting lineup, is an inspiring story directed by James Gartner and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. Justin Pleiss, of ReviewExpress.com, talked about this great family film with Bruckheimer and some of the stars.  

JUSTIN: We heard Lucas was as tough a coach as Haskins. How hard was it to get into shape for this movie?

Mehcad Brooks: Wow man, we had a rigorous basketball camp. We nicknamed it WD-40 Camp, because we were all rusty. He (Al Shearer) nicknamed himself the Tin Man.

Al Shearer: I hadn’t played ball in 12 years. This hand was constipated, this hand was in a coma, and my vertical leap was like a millimeter high. All in all my shooting skills were gone. Two days before we started shooting the movie I broke my foot, so I had to play with a broken foot for four months.

Josh Lucas: I played basketball for one season when I was a sophomore in high school, and I was ridiculously bad. The tough thing about making this movie was I had to learn basketball. I had to be able to coach in a sense, be on the sidelines screaming. I really had to understand the game, coaching, and more than anything I had to understand the eccentric or unique way that Haskins coached because he was so rare.

JUSTIN: What’s so special about this movie?

Jerry Bruckheimer: I think this is an especially important story to tell today because a lot of kids no longer realize how hard the players and coaches in the ‘60s had to fight to bring them the incredible opportunities that exist now.

Al Shearer: It’s just a tremendous story that I wanted to be a part of re-creating. James Gartner did a phenomenal job directing the movie. You feel so much like part of the game, that you want to stand on your feet, clap and cheer. The movie is funny, it’s sad, it’s motivational, it’s everything.

Mehcad Brooks: I enjoyed the introduction to all the players because you get to know these guys and their personalities. The most exiting 10-15 minutes of the movie for me is the championship game. You really feel like you’re watching the game, you’re cheering along.

Derek Luke: My story is kind of a Glory Road similar story. I worked at a gift shop, but I had a dream which in some ways had obstacles, because people were saying, “you know you can be everything except an actor.” Then Denzel Washington comes into the gift shop where I’m working and says, “Well I just hired you.” (for Antwone Fisher). What’s so special to me was the game. In talking to the real players, they said it was never about basketball, it was about being excellent. Coach Haskins demanded they focus on excellence. They turned around and racism was in front of them, but as they pursued excellence, they passed it in the race, so it was about so much more then those difficulties. Compared to what I’ve been complaining about, this (story) puts things in perspective.

Josh Lucas: There’s a scene where I walk into my house and have a conversation with my wife and walk in and lay down with my son. The reason why it’s a memorable scene is because you realize what this guy was risking. He dealt with circumstances that are so difficult; like that he cared so much about what this team was capable of doing, that he couldn’t spend much time with his children.

JUSTIN: Did the diversity of that 1966 team bring the cast closer together?

Josh Lucas: It did two things. It did something similar to what happens in the movie. It tore them apart, and also brought them together. We went through some difficult times in the making of this movie, and it’s like any great relationship where it’s not an even road. There are highs and lows, and when you start to survive these, you start to understand that there are going to be good times and bad times and the more you get through them, the more you end up at a higher respect for each other. That’s what these guys went through, not necessarily just the ‘66 team, but in the making of this movie as well.

Jerry Bruckheimer: These kids really bonded with one another. Of course, we worked them hard and that helped bring them closer. I guess they even hated our basketball advisors for a while because they worked so hard. But that was all part of trying to make a movie that feels so real; the audience is swept up in the story.

(This article also appears on www.reviewexpress.com.)

Photo of Justin Pleiss courtesy of ReviewExpress.com.