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COPYRIGHT 2005 Century Publishing
HOLLYWOOD AND FOOTBALL. They've made a winning team for nearly a century.
More than 200 motion pictures have been made using the gridiron as a backdrop. What makes the sport so conducive to the silver screen?
"Football lends itself to the audio-visual medium because it's driven by a great physicality," says A1 Ruddy, the creator and producer of The Longest Yard.
Frank Yablans, producer of North Dallas Forty, concurs. "It is a canvas where you have these gladiators lining up constantly together," he says.
"Football has a basic dramatic element of built-in conflict," adds Michael Chapman, who directed Tom Cruise in All the Right Moves. "There's readymade suspension. Am I going to win or are you going to win?"
Ever since Strongheart in 1914, moviegoers have embraced football on film. Hollywood has played to the Walter Mitty in all of us. Depending on your generation--be it Sammy Baugh, Johnny Unitas, Joe Montana, or Tom Brady--when haven't we imagined ourselves taking the snap and dropping back with the game on the line?
The better football films however, do more than play to our fantasies. Not only do they capture the sounds, images, and feelings of the game, they also represent the internal dramas inherent in both football itself and the sport as a metaphor for life with its elements of triumph and tragedy.
While they draw you in by making you...
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