![]() ![]() In the midst of violent, impassioned racial tensions in Birmingham, Alabama, new football coach, Tandy Gerelds, was struggling to create a winning football team at Woodlawn High School-one of the last schools in Birmingham to integrate. This riveting true story of courage, strength, and football at the height of racial tension in Birmingham, Alabama tells the story of Coach Tandy Gerelds, his running back Tony Nathan, and a high school football game that healed a city. ![]() “The more people who support our films by voting for us with their movie tickets, the more we’re going to be allowed to tell Alabama stories.Now a major motion picture starring Jon Voight, Nic Bishop, and C. We’re really excited for the state to embrace this story, the nation as well,” Andy said. “Our desire is to tell a story authentically, in a way that represents what happened. “This is the movie that got me and Jon into telling stories.”Įssentially, the story follows Tony Nathan and the relationships he forms during his high school football career - relationships with his father, a young woman named Johnnie who would later become his wife, Woodlawn’s Head Football Coach Tandy Geralds, and Alabama Head Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, played by Academy Award-winner Jon Voight. “Other stories have come and found us along the way, but ‘Woodlawn’ is a movie we’ve wanted to do since we were kids,” Erwin said. Their father, depicted in the movie by Sean Astin of “Lord of the Rings” fame, was the chaplain for Woodlawn’s football team, and he would often tell them the story as they got ready for bed. The Erwin brothers first heard the story of Woodlawn as a bedtime story. It was amazing to film in that environment.” “Once you see it in full, you will see the place come back to life, reliving the history there. “It was surreal to film at Legions Field,” Erwin said. And to recreate the 42,000 people in attendance, the filmmakers used more than 2,000 extras and animation technology to fill in the stadium. The scenes were filmed at Legions Field, where the original game took place. ![]() That’s rare in this business,” he said.Īt the movie’s climax, the film depicts the 1974 rivalry football game between Woodlawn and Banks High School, the largest high school football game in Alabama’s history. “We were able to camp out there and really own the space for the amount of time we needed to film the movie. And for the interiors, they worked with the Alabama Film Office, which helped them find an empty middle school built around the same time as Woodlawn. Though the building is still a working high school, they were able to film around the exterior of the building. “I like a textured world that is lived in and something that feels like there is a story that can be told by the location-where there is a history you can see.”įor Andy, Woodlawn High School provided this type of location. In Alabama, there are so many beautiful locations that haven’t been seen. I go out to Los Angeles a lot, and you see locations there that you’ve seen before. “As a filmmaker, beyond the film incentives, there are so many locations that are fresh here. Going into production, the main challenge the team faced was creating a world set in the 1970s, so the filmmakers relied heavily on finding the right locations. (Nathan is played by newcomer Caleb Castille, whose father and brothers played for Alabama.) Jon and Andy spent three years developing the script for “Woodlawn,” interviewing eye- witnesses and key characters like Tony Nathan, the story’s protagonist and Woodlawn’s star running back who went on to play for the University of Alabama and the Miami Dolphins. ![]()
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