Three of the guys who play Permian Panthers in the film - Lucas Black, Garrett Hedlund, and Lee Thompson Young - talk about training for the movie and high school football fever.
LUCAS BLACK, GARRETT HEDLUND AND LEE THOMPSON YOUNG INTERVIEW:
Lucas, you’ve worked with Billy Bob Thornton a few times now. How has your relationship changed over the years?
LUCAS BLACK: Well, it’s kind of funny. When I found out I was doing this film I was real excited because, of course, it’s a football movie and I grew up playing football all my life. And then finding out that Billy Bob was going to be the coach kind of put the icing on the cake. I love working with Billy Bob. He knows me a lot more than other people do, just because he kind of watched me grow up and knows how I was raised. My mother was with me on “Sling Blade” and we worked a lot during that film so, in this movie, it worked real well for me for him to be the coach. He helped me tremendously get to places emotionally, to get where I needed to be in some of those scenes, because he kind of knew my background and how I felt about things.
Garrett, how was your experience working with Tim McGraw who plays your father in this movie?
GARRETT HEDLUND: Tim and I really got along right off the bat. It’s pretty funny because I grew up in a small town in Minnesota. It was about 2,500 [people] and I lived way out on a farm about 30 miles out. We had one country station in our town and Tim was all over it. Actually, when I was 10, Faith (Hill) was playing at our county fair. It was right when [she] and Tim had just gotten together and she brought him out on stage. It was really surreal for years to go by and find out I’m playing his son in a movie.
Lucas, could you talk more about the emotional places Billy Bob Thornton helped you get to?
LUCAS BLACK: Yes. My guy kind of goes through some troubles and really has a secret in this life that he hasn’t told anybody. [He] really doesn’t have a father figure, anyone to look up to, except Coach Gaines. His coach was his mentor and basically his father. He looked up to him for things. He kept his secret the whole time. He didn’t want to tell anybody that he knew he had negative thoughts and kind of went through anxiety attacks. It helped him after he released his feelings toward his coach to perform on the field. But Billy Boy helped me out in some of those scenes. He knows how I am competitively. Some of those scenes, the bedroom scene especially, he would say things that weren’t in the script to get me to get the feeling of the scene to where it needed to be.
Where is your twang from?
LUCAS BLACK: Alabama.
So you’re familiar with the whole high school football fever thing?
LUCAS BLACK: Oh yeah. That’s what drew me to the film. That’s basically my high school life, exactly. The town that I’m from looks at football the same way that Odessa does. I was real excited to go to Odessa and see if there were a lot of differences, and see how the people reacted to football there. It was totally the same. The only difference is they spend a lot more money on it and they really, really put their athletes in a position to succeed and to have a collegiate career.
What was it like to wrap your heads around all the pressure these guys had on them to succeed?
LUCAS BLACK: Being a quarterback, you feel like you have to be a leader and you don’t want to let the team down. So that automatically puts all the pressure on you there. It’s basically for your teammates, for your guys, and what kind of companionship and relationship you have toward them.
GARRETT HEDLUND: It’s just a lot that these guys are holding on their shoulders at such a young age. There’s a lot they’re dealing with, the town pressure or support, their home life, all of that causes a sense of internal insecurities. These guys are realizing how crazy it is that they’re going through all this at such a young age.
