Legacy of Remember the Titans remains strong 20 years later

It was another star-studded Saturday night in Southern California. The limos arrived. The celebrities strolled down the red carpet. The cameras flashed. The Blue Angels flew overhead. The Rose Bowl premiere would be the granddaddy of them all, packed with tens of thousands of people, viewing massive projection screens placed on the field.

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It was another star-studded Saturday night in Southern California.

The limos arrived. The celebrities strolled down the red carpet. The cameras flashed. The Blue Angels flew overhead.

The Rose Bowl premiere would be the granddaddy of them all, packed with tens of thousands of people, viewing massive projection screens placed on the field.

Disney spent $3 million on the affair. The audience would remember the Titans.

“It was by far the craziest premiere I’ve ever been to,” veteran actor Ethan Suplee said. “It was the most people I’ve ever seen watch a movie in my life. It was at that point that I realized, ‘Oh, this movie is a really big deal. They must be excited about it to throw this kind of a coming out party.’ ”

Executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer was in the midst of making a string of incredibly profitable movies, including “Bad Boys,” “Dangerous Minds,” “The Rock,” “Con Air” and “Armageddon.”

None of his test screenings ever went as well as “Remember the Titans.”

“Titans tested higher than any movie Jerry had ever made,” screenwriter Gregory Allen Howard said. “They knew it was a hit.”

It was the movie no one wanted to make. It was the movie no one thought would be made.

“Remember the Titans” was released 20 years ago Tuesday, grossing $136.7 million on a $30 million budget.

“That was just the beginning. It sold 20 million [units] in DVDs, when they were at their apex,” Howard said. “Almost everyone in America has seen it. I’m not exaggerating when I say that. Even today, they run it on basic cable relentlessly. I still get the residual checks.”

Football — and star Denzel Washington — attracted the audience. The heartwarming tale of racial healing extended the movie’s life span, based on the undefeated 1971 T.C. Williams (Alexandria, Va.) High School team, which was the second-ranked team in the nation and played under newly named head coach Herman Boone — played by Washington — the only black head coach in Northern Virginia at the time.

The success of the film turned real team members into motivational speakers. The Coast Guard Academy showed the movie in leadership development courses. Inspiration was a viewing away.

“Whenever anybody recognizes me, they want to talk about the impact it had on them, not just as one of their favorite movies,” said actor Burgess Jenkins. “What I heard a lot from black and white kids is they found similar experiences through sports and what a great job it did of depicting that and making it easier for them to tear down walls. Teams watched the movie together, built morale, made them want to come together as teammates and friends. What kind of movie makes an impact like that?”

The subject matter was serious, yet the rare movie Suplee appeared in that he felt comfortable showing his children, following the suggestion of Disney Studios chairman Peter Schneider to eliminate expletives and racial slurs.

“It wasn’t geared towards kids, but the entry level was anyone,” Suplee said. “Anyone could watch it and get something out of it.”

Howard hated Hollywood.

So, he moved in 1996 to be near family in Alexandria. There, the screenwriter stumbled into a strange and beautiful sight.

“I’m from a Navy family. I’ve lived all over,” Howard said. “This was the first time I lived in a city that was socially integrated after five. Normally people work together, but after five o’clock they go their separate ways. Here, people went to church together, socialized together, went to bars together. I’d just never seen that level of integration.

“As a newbie, I asked people, ‘How is this possible?’ They said, ‘You won’t believe this, but a football team integrated our town 25 years ago: The Singing Titans.’ I said, ‘I don’t believe it. I’ve never heard of such a thing.’ So, I did my research and found out T.C. Williams High was a mile and a half from where I lived.”

Howard’s first meeting with Boone was blown off by the coach, believing the movie idea was a joke. Players were equally skeptical.

“Collectively, I think we all said, ‘Bulls–t,’ ” former Titans center Bob Luckett said. “There’s no one that’s gonna do a movie about us.”

No studio wanted to.

For three months, Howard flew back and forth to Los Angeles to pitch the story, hearing one rejection after another. He heard enough. He decided to stop the pursuit. Then, he heard a familiar tune while driving.

“I got my burning bush when I turned on the radio and the [Titans’] theme song was playing — ‘Na, na, na, na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye’ — so I called my agent and I said, ‘I’m gonna write it on spec.’ He says, ’You’re crazy.’ I said, ‘I know but I got a sign,’ ” Howard said. “I usually didn’t even turn on the radio. If that song hadn’t been playing, there would have been no ‘Titans.’ I would have quit.”

Howard spent the next eight months working on a script.

“It was scary. I didn’t have any money coming in,” Howard said. “But I strongly believed in it.”

The pages didn’t produce any more interest. The rejections piled back up.

“I was so depressed. I was really thinking about leaving the business,” Howard said. “I felt if the industry didn’t want to make this then I was probably gonna leave and go to grad school and get a PhD and teach history.”

Howard finally received one response. It was from Chad Oman, Bruckheimer’s junior producing partner.

“Jerry always wanted to make a high school football movie. He actually wanted ‘Friday Night Lights,’ but lost in the bidding war,” Howard said. “They optioned it for the astronomical sum of $20,000. I still didn’t think the movie was gonna get made.”

Then, Washington was attached.

“When I broke in seven years earlier, he was one of the first people I met. He wasn’t Denzel with a capital ‘D’ back then, one of the biggest stars in Hollywood,” Howard said. “I knew him enough to go visit him. He was skeptical at first. He had just done ‘Hurricane’ Carter. He said, ‘I don’t know. I just did a sports movie. I’ll let my wife read it.’ And his wife told him he had to do it.”

Filming in Georgia would commence in two weeks. Training camp came first.

Each day would begin at 6 a.m. Actors would put on jerseys, pads and helmets. A group of ex-pros and college football players ran the drills, putting the cast through hours of authentic practice.

“We were doing two-a-day practices in 95-degree heat,” Jenkins said. “[Bruckheimer] clearly had us do that to bond as a team. It was a phenomenal experience and we really came together and built strong friendships that translated to the screen. But those practice were absolutely brutal. I was in a lot of pain. There were a number of times we were throwing up out there.”

As if playing under Boone and assistant coach Bill Yoast, the young actors knew their place beside Washington and co-star Will Patton.

“There was for sure a separation of the young guys goofing off over here and the adults who are very serious actors over there,” Suplee said. “When [Washington] would come around, he demanded respect. He was very much a coach and we were standing up a little taller, a little more professionally.”

Another future A-lister lurked in the locker room: 19-year-old Ryan Gosling.

“Right away, I was incredibly impressed by him,” Suplee said. “He made some character choices that I still am inspired by. He had a very small role with not a lot of lines, but he did some stuff that didn’t distract at all from the scenes, and yet planted himself and his character so firmly as part of the movie.”

At best, Bruckheimer believed the film — which spent $1 million on the memorable, Motown-heavy soundtrack— could make a small profit. The famed producer was content breaking even. He had “Gone in 60 Seconds” and “Coyote Ugly” also coming out in 2000.

“We got our two other movies that are gonna make money this year,’ ” Howard recalled Bruckheimer saying. “It was just that we loved this movie and we wanted to make it.”

When he wasn’t on the sideline, Boone wanted to be on his boat.

The upgrade made it even more enjoyable.

“When I met Boone, he had this little rickety boat I thought I would tip over. After the movie, he had a 45-foot yacht because he was making so much money,” Howard said. “They became celebrities in their own right.”

Seen as Washington through the nation’s eyes, Boone became a popular public speaker, who made as much as $12,000 an appearance. Yoast cashed in, too, often appearing alongside his old friend.

“Yoast called me every year and thanked me. Herman kind of went off on an ego trip,” Howard said. “He was a bit of a megalomaniac to begin with just the success of the football team.”

Some players profited, too. Some were never mentioned on screen. Some were bothered with the creative license taken with their lives.

Gerry Bertier’s car accident and paralysis serves as motivation before the title game, rather than occurring afterward, as it did in reality. Boone is a new hire in the movie, but actually had been an assistant with the team for two years. A bus driver, not Boone, made the emotional speech at Gettysburg. Yoast had four daughters, not just Hayden Panettiere’s character.

The team also had been integrated six years prior — a three-school merger took place in 1971 — and despite Washington’s quote that other teams “don’t have to worry about race,” the Titans’ opponents were integrated in real life, too.

Perhaps most understandable was the filming of a last-second, title-winning play, in lieu of the true 27-0 win.

“There are some team members who think, well, it wasn’t exactly correct. So what? Who else is telling any part of your life to the rest of the world?” former Titans linebacker Rufus Littlejohn said. “You should be proud that a four-month slice of your life got worldwide acclaim. There’s no way you can take the lives of a 100 or so people and condense all of it into 90 minutes and tell everybody’s story exactly accurate.”

Much was, though, like when Julius Campbell (Wood Harris) visited Bertier (Ryan Hurst) in the hospital, and when Boone forced black and white players to sit together on bus rides.

“I don’t like fictionalizing and I only do it when I have to. Real life doesn’t play out in the structure of a movie,” Howard said. “It’s never going to be note perfect. But the spirit has to be right. I’d say, in terms of accuracy, it’s probably close to 80 percent. I didn’t violate the spirit of the piece.

“The toughest thing I had to do was when Jerry called me and said we had to cut out the sisters. We talked to Yoast and he cried. We’re cutting out half his family. … Sheryl’s sisters got over it because Yoast was making so much money.”

In December 1971, President Richard Nixon said, “The Titans of Alexandria saved the City of Alexandria.” In 2008, Senator Barack Obama made a campaign stop at T.C. Williams High School, praising the movie that made “men cry.”

One was President Bill Clinton, who attended a premiere at Washington’s Uptown Theatre on Sept. 30, 2000.

“Bill had been crying during the movie, saying it’s about the workings about the heart and he gave an extemporaneous speech and it was wonderful,” Howard said. “It just moved people and showed them how to deal with each other racially, which is what people still are trying to figure out today.”

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was impacted, too. Just days before his death in 2011, Jobs asked future CEO Tim Cook to watch the movie at his house.

“Tim said it was kind of strange because Jobs was not a sports fan, but they watched it and discussed it,” Howard said. “It was his way of saying, ‘You can be a bastard, like Herman Boone, and I was, and it’s for a greater good.’ ”

Boone died in December, seven months after Yoast passed away, 11 months after losing Campbell.

The firsthand stories are fading, but the message never ages.

“The movie is timeless, as applicable then as it is today, as it will be 50 years from now,” Suplee said. “We have to stay on top of remembering these kinds of things so we don’t make these mistakes again.”

It was the movie no one wanted to make. It was the movie no one thought would be made.

“As teenagers, we didn’t know it was bigger than just playing football,” Littlejohn said. “When we talk to kids now, sometimes we tell them, ‘You never know what aspect of your life could be in a movie.’ Think about that. That might say something about how you should live. What kind of movie do you want to be made about your life?”

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