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We Are...Marshall

buckeyemike

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This is the text of an article about the movie that appeared on Huntingtonnews.net. I found it on a Marshall fan site called Herdnation.com.

 

 

 

November 16, 2006

 

‘WE ARE MARSHALL’: The Season for Good Cheer, Santa, a Manger, and Christmas Classics…

 

By Tony Rutherford

Huntington News Network Writer

 

Huntington, WV (HNN) – ‘Tis the season for Angels We Have Heard on High. Or, at least, the retailers want us to get in the spirit. Part of the Yule traditions include watch movie classics --- about a man who wished he had not been born, about a miser who is taught charity by three ghosts, and about a little girl whose Santa has a white beard and goes by the name Kris Kringle.

 

So how does a football team, a plane crash, a city known for churches on nearly every block, and the team’s “resurrection” a few decades later to play for championships fit into the picture?

 

Interviewing Reggie Oliver, the quarterback of the 1971 team, he has told everyone that he was blessed. And, during the 90s, the football teams were touched by miracles. But fate seems to have placed a movie between the goal line as a contender for modern Christmas classic.

 

When Basil Iwanyk started to make a movie about eight soccer players (“I hate soccer. You could not watch soccer if you paid me,” Iwanyk said), an associate producer at Thunder Road Productions reminded him of the Marshall plane crash.

 

“Who would want to see a movie about a plane crash,” asked Iwanyk, who held the title of youngest creative executive at Warner Bros. before a stint as President of Intermedia Productions, the largest independent film corporation. Iwanyk had returned to Warner’s to helm Thunder Road Productions.

 

After developing a script, Iwanyk “googled” Keith Spears, vice president of communications, at Marshall. Spears would tell President Steven Kopp that some people from Hollywood were coming to talk about making a movie about the plane crash.

 

The newly installed university president asked, “How often does this happen?”

 

“Every two or three years,” Spears replied, adding that nobody had ever come through with the money to make a world class picture.

 

When Iwanyk and crew flew into Huntington on a Sunday night, Red Dawson, the assistant coach of the 1971 team, met them at the airport.

 

“It was embarrassing to look Red in the face to tell him why his story is so compelling. I was talking to this man about what happened to him,” Iwanyk explained. Dawson had been on the fringes of the university community since leaving his assistant coaching position after the 1971 season.

 

He told a crowd as a first time speaker at the Nov. 14, 2006 memorial service that he had attended quite a few of them. Noting they were mostly at night, “I could see and I could hear, but I couldn’t be seen.” He stayed in the shadow of a sycamore tree.

 

One the Sunday night after listening to Iwanyk’s “pitch,” Dawson left the producer off the hook emotionally. “Listen,” Dawson said looking straight into Basil’s eyes, “I trust you. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I trust you.”

 

Fate would bring another to the team, an action director who wanted to grow. McG had directed two of the largest grossing features (“Charlie’s Angels” and sequel) for a first time feature director. He was set to work on a superhero flick, but McG had a fear --- of flying across the ocean.

 

Iwanyk and McG’s paths crossed at Warner Bros., where Iwanyk handed McG the script for a dramatic, inspirational film.

 

Before making any commitment, McG having already researched the true story flew into Tri-State Airport anonymously. He went to the site by the hill to see the site where 75 players, coaches, fans, and crew perished in the crash. Raised in a religious family, McG got on his knees. “I truly asked God to speak to me in the spirit of the 75 people that were lost in that sacred place,” the director told an audience gathered at the induction ceremony of himself and Iwanyk into the Marshall University Lewis Business College Hall of Fame.

 

Iwanyk felt humbled by the award -- “They put us in the Hall of Fame before they saw the movie.” But, over the weekend, his dad told him, “they are not honoring your talents or lack of talents, they are honoring your integrity and your heart.”

 

Part of that came from what McG called avoiding Hollywood’s bad rep with “true stories” and telling this one “cleanly and honestly” while being “very open every step of the way.”

 

Those steps, admitted Iwanyk, were not easy in which to walk. “It was more than just a movie. It was people’s stories and people took it extraordinarily serious. The town gave us their collective heart and that’s something that you can’t take lightly.”

 

The induction ceremony was more than just another awards dinner. As inductee John Rulli, Simon Property Group Inc. told the gathering, “there’s a sense of magic here … Marshall is tightly woven like a piece of Egyptian fabric.”

 

The “inclusion” of the filmmakers into the “family” worked both ways, too. I asked someone from the party about a local topic. They gave me permission to quote them. Then, an MU community member respectfully approached me and asked if I would not. Though trivial at the time, it made me a believer in the “bond.”

 

This community member showed the same poise and grace as our out-of-town guests in looking out for one another. That’s not Hollywood. That is Huntington. But, it is exactly what a family member would do.

 

On Tuesday night, Nov. 14, 2006, thirty-six years after the fatal crash, an advance screening of “We Are Marshall” took place in South Bend, Indiana at the College Football Hall of Fame’s Stadium Theatre. After the screening a six month exhibit opened there including costumes from the film, authentic items from 1970 and 1971, and exhibits from the 90s “playing for championships” years that includes memorabilia from Chad Pennington, Byron Leftwich, Randy Moss and Mike Barber.

 

The Herald Dispatch’s David Walsh, who himself has journalistic roots on the tragic night, quoted Frank Loria Jr., whose father Frank was an assistant coach that perished in the crash. “It had to be great. It was,” Loria also grasped the football as a metaphor for life symbol imagined by the filmmakers on the screen. Walsh quoted the real Jack Lengyel as stating, “I’m in awe.”

 

Marshall University President Stephen Kopp had previously told the press in Huntington, “This powerful story …for the ages…will rival those [films] that endured for decades.”

 

As Huntington’s story of working through tragedy unfolds for the world, the acceptance of the movie makers into the Marshall University fold illustrates the “big picture” that both McG and Iwanyk stressed concerning the universal hope and healing aspects of the rise from the ashes. At Hollywood test screenings the movie scored in the 90s, which is the highest for any Warner’s picture in 20 years.

 

The acceptance of self-labeled professionals and artists from the “insane” world of movie making into the arms and hearts of small town America redirects me to McG’s words: “There a lot going on in the world…we could use a little bit more understanding. I think it begins with good people. I’ve seen so much of that here. I can’t possibly thank you enough. I’m so proud to represent Marshall University in the small way that I do.”

 

McG’s mother, Karin Nichol, summed up the apparent chance assembly of a team by fate to make a movie:

 

“What a wonderful experience” the filming of “We Are Marshall” had been for her son. And, she added, that a Man Upstairs must have had a hand on McG. Paraphrasing her words, Mrs. Nichol explained, “If he had made ‘Superman Returns,’ he would not have been available for “We Are Marshall.”

 

Thus “WAM” has already served as a catharsis for many survivors and those far and distant alumni from the Marshall family. Without having seen the production, my bet is the film making “keepers of the flame” underwent their own “catharsis” while producing and editing the picture.

 

As Iwanyk concluded at the induction ceremony, “I hope you guys never forget us once this movie is long gone, released, and everybody’s happy. You guys will be in McG and I’s heart for the rest of our lives.”

 

 

with credit to "ShawHerd" from Herdnation.com

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