USA: AMERICAN PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON ATTENDS WASHINGTON FILM PREMIERE OF DENZIL WASHINGTON'S LATEST MOVIE "REMEMBER THE TITANS"

Record ID: 390155

  • Title: USA: AMERICAN PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON ATTENDS WASHINGTON FILM PREMIERE OF DENZIL WASHINGTON'S LATEST MOVIE "REMEMBER THE TITANS"
  • Date: 26th September 2000
  • Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (SEPTEMBER 21, 2000) (REUTERS) SCU (SOUNDBITE) (English) DENZEL WASHINGTON, BEING ASKED ABOUT THE FILM'S MESSAGE, SAYING "I don't know, what is the message, I mean, we can all work together. It depends upon what you're bringing to it, I took my kids to see it, they were like, football is good. What is the message: it's a good picture
  • Embargoed: 11th October 2000 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA & WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES AND VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Environment
  • Reuters ID: LVA9KERYRHXK58Z2Z7T792KZZYE9
  • Story Text: Bi-coastal premieres for the American football film "Remember the Titans" more closely resembled the Super Bowl, as the movie was feted by an arena sized crowd, marching bands, fireworks and the actual President of the United States, Bill Clinton.
    In what was billed as the largest movie premiere ever, The Walt Disney Co. filled the giant sporting arena, The Rose Bowl, with thousands of high school football players, coaches, cheerleaders and parents for a special screening of its new movie, "Remember the Titans."
    "You make movies, hopefully millions of people go to see them but you never see them with millions of people, or even thousands of people, or even hundreds of people, really, said the film's star, Denzel Washington, somewhat taken aback by the sheer spectacle of the event. "So to see a film that I'll share at one night with a crowd of 50-some odd thousand, that's unique, it's great."
    And only days later, Bill Clinton, clearly relishing his last months in office, joined Washington for the east coast premiere of a film in which Washington portrays a coach who integrated a local high-school football team and led it to the state championship.
    It's the true story of a team from Alexandria, Virginia, the T.C. Williams Titans. The year is 1971, and the school board has been forced to integrate a mostly white school with students from a mostly black school.
    Herman Boone (Washington), a black coach who recently moved to the area, has been given the head coaching job over Bill Yoast (Bill Patton), a white coach with seniority. Yoast reluctantly decides to stay in a lesser position. Together, the coaches must learn to trust each other and unite a group of players divided by prejudice and ignorance.
    A self-described "race man" who walked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Boone is also a born drill sergeant who makes his attitude perfectly clear at the outset: "This is no democracy.
    This is a dictatorship. I am the law."
    Faced with aggressive, competitive, muscular young men of both races whose mutual mistrust erupts into sporadic racial brawls, Boone forces them to deal with one another by assigning opposite-race roommates and adopting other measures.
    He also demands not just excellence but perfection from his players, which adds to the pressure.
    Washington has no doubts there is much to be learned from the movie but is quick to ascribe more to it than its mere morality. "I don't know, what is the message, I mean, we can all work together. It depends upon what you're bringing to it, I took my kids to see it, they were like, football is good.
    What is the message: it's a good picture, and it's a positive sort of film and it's a very, very good film, one I'm proud to be a part of."
    In training at a rural facility at a safe remove from society at large, the guys are put through brutal drills, including forced runs in the middle of the night. By the time they return to Alexandria, the kids are in fighting shape and so freed dof their old suspicions and biases that they seem genuinely shocked by the protests and uproar that greet the first day of school; thrown together in the front lines of racial strife, the footballers have survived the first battle and, should they be able to forge a winning season, are in a position to lead the way for the rest of the community.
    The film's second half charts the team's path to the state championships, with the series of briefly reenacted games embellished by illustrative details of the unsavory racial climate.
    But no matter how many times a racist rears its ugly head, virtue triumphs. "It did have a big impact on the city, and first it brought the team together, they came together, which had an effect on the school and then the city, whatever color you were, rallied behind, they see these kids playing together and winning together, they sort of rallied behind," said Washington.
    The film, which was shot in Georgia rather than Virginia, was directed by first-timer Boaz Yakin. It opens in theatres around the United States on September 29.
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