- Title: 'Concussion' director says changes on horizon for NFL
- Date: 24th December 2015
- Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (DECEMBER 21, 2015) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) "CONCUSSION" DIRECTOR, PETER LANDESMAN, SAYING: "The big number is that Pop Warner, which is the little league football where small children join, it's down as high as 35 percent, what that says is those kids, those elite athletes at 6, 7, 8, 9 years old, are not playing football. Th
- Embargoed: 8th January 2016 18:44
- Keywords: American football NFL Will Smith Concussion Peter Landesman brain injury Alec Baldwin
- Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES / UNIDENTIFIED FILMING LOCATIONS / LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
- City: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES / UNIDENTIFIED FILMING LOCATIONS / LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
- Country: USA
- Topics: Film
- Reuters ID: LVA0043F7N0AN
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: The director of football head trauma film "Concussion" says the beloved American sport may already be in the early stages of "a seismic shift" as parents are dissuaded from letting their children play football amid safety issues.
"It's perfectly possibly that fifteen years from now, the complexion of the league, who plays this game will have changed so much that it's still central and people watch it but it's just not the center of attention. It's not everything, it's that we don't build Thanksgiving and Christmas days around these games, " writer-director Peter Landesman told Reuters.
"Concussion," out in U.S. theaters on Christmas Day, stars Will Smith as Nigerian forensic pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu, who uncovered the degenerative brain disease Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) in former Pittsburgh football players that died sudden and tragic deaths.
The Sony Pictures film comes at a time where head trauma is a hot button topic in the multi-million dollar NFL industry.
But a change could be taking place at a grassroots level, as writer-director Peter Landesman said the numbers for Pop Warner football, a children's football league, have noticeably dropped.
"The big number is that Pop Warner football which is the little league football where small children join, it's down as high as 35 percent, what that says is, those kids, those elite athletes at 6, 7, 8, 9 years old are not playing football, they're playing baseball, they're wrestling, they're running, they're playing lacrosse so if you extrapolate through the pipeline upwards those kids will not show up in the NFL, that number is just going to get bigger that just tells me that there's a seismic change coming for the sport," Landesman, a former news journalist and war correspondent, said.
The director said the film is meant to give audiences information so that they can make up their own minds about the safety of the sport.
"I would never tell another parent or another teenager or an adult what to do. I've made a decision for myself because I know. The film again at the end, at the end of the movie, the film embraces what a conflicting problem this is, the movie ends on triumph and vindication and also this kind of melancholy embrace, embracing of the reality, you know I have a 12-year-old son that wants to play football, you know there's no scenario in which I will ever let him strap on a helmet," Landesman said.
"Concussion" explores Omalu's perseverance to make his CTE research known to the NFL, but the corporation, portrayed as a faceless, and at times, manipulative Goliath, tries to quash his findings - details that Landesman said he uncovered through his own sources at the organization.
"I think they didn't quite know what the beast they were dealing with, I think that the film is a powerful indie, in addition to being an important ride, an emotional experience and an amazing, transformative performance by one of our biggest stars, the movie's also an expose. The truth is the NFL, that every time we turn on our televisions every Sunday, the NFL continues to cover up the problem in a really aggressively, and in a way that I personally feel is insulting to the intelligence of not just its players but its audience," Landesman said, speaking on the NFL's early cover-ups of CTE research.
Sony this week said it will offer all NFL team owners, players and their families free screenings of "Concussion."
While the NFL did not respond for comment on the screenings, the organization has previously said regarding the movie, "we welcome any conversation about player health and safety."
"The NFL is a corporation, they're selling grapefruits, they're selling cars, they're selling widgets, so they're about the bottom line. In terms of welcoming the conversation, what else are they going to say, that's what they have to say. They're not going to say we're not going to talk about this, we're shutting it down, because that doesn't make them seem very good. That being said, I think that the NFL is doing everything they can do on this issue. They have concussion protocols and they're talking about it, they're letting players talk about it, I think the problem is there's a very limited range of things they can actually do," Landesman said in an interview to Reuters ahead of the film's Christmas day opening.
Also starring in the film directed by Landesman are Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Alec Baldwin.
"Concussion" opens on December 25. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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