“The film, like the book, tells the story of the 1988 Permian Panther football team,” director Berg relates. “It focuses on six different players and their coach, Gary Gaines. We begin with the first day of full dress practice in August and end at the state championship game in December at the Houston Astrodome.”
During his many weekend trips to Odessa and Austin to observe and absorb the mood of this unique sports culture, Berg, like author Bissinger 15 years before, insinuated himself into the lives of the town and its citizens, “becoming a sideline regular, going into the locker room after games, wearing the school colors and riding the team bus with all these guys...a pretty surreal experience,” the filmmaker recalls.
These weekend trips also allowed Berg the opportunity and privilege to meet some of the real players in Bissinger’s story, guys like Brian Chavez, Don Billingsley, James ‘Boobie’ Miles and Chris Comer, four of the story’s main characters (Chavez and Miles still live in the Odessa area). These meetings also gave Berg the chance to contemplate whom to cast in the film’s key roles, notably Permian’s noble coach, Gary Gaines, and the six leading players highlighted in the screenplay.
As Permian’s embattled coach, Gary Gaines, Berg and Grazer tapped Oscar®- winner Billy Bob Thornton to embody what he calls “a complicated individual from a psychological perspective. Billy Bob was perfect because he’s never really played a guy like this and seemed to have that kind of complexity. Gaines, as pictured in the book, reminded me of Billy Bob.”
“I’d always been interested in having Billy Bob play Gaines in this movie for several reasons,” echoes producer Grazer about Thornton. “First, he’s very authentic. Even though he’s from Arkansas, he has that style, that Texas way of storytelling. He’s extremely interesting to watch just in terms of detail. And he can express the vulnerability that Coach Gaines has, because there’s an enormous amount of pressure on this coach to succeed—by the boosters, by the town itself. There’s so much emphasis put on these games and that pressure goes directly to Gaines. We have to see his vulnerability.”
“I try to do a different kind of character in every movie,” actor Thornton explains. “I don’t like to play the same person twice. This was a very well written script about an interesting subject. And I had never played a high school football coach before. My father was a high school basketball coach, so I wanted to have that experience. I usually pick movies by the script—if it’s a good character, a good story and something different than I’ve done before. That’s the criteria. This one fit the bill all the way around. “The way I played Coach Gaines in this movie was as a man who believes in the truth,” Thornton continues. “He is a competitive man that has honor and integrity. He wants to see if he can bring a championship to these people, this town, that so desperately want it. And he owes them, he’s responsible for this team. At the same time, it’s hard to bite the bullet when people accuse him of being less than the man to do the job.”
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