A season on the brink

Yes Bob Knight has won three national championships at IU, but has he ever won a Tony Award? The actor that is portraying him in ESPN's first original movie, "A Season on the Brink," has. Brian Dennehy, whose resume includes an Emmy and Golden Globe, was chosen by executive producer Stanley Brooks and director Robert Mandel to tackle the role of the infamous former IU coach for the adaptation of John Feinstein's best-selling novel that details the 1985-1986 IU men's basketball team.\nBut why choose Bob Knight to be the subject of the first of what could be many TV movies? To Brooks, the question is really, "Who else?"\n"John Wooden, Dean Smith, Coach (Mike Krzyzewski); all of those guys are boring," he says. "If you're going to make a movie about the Army, you wouldn't use Dwight Eisenhower as your general, you'd use Patton." \nCo-starring in the made-for-TV film is James Lafferty as former IU standout and current University of Iowa men's basketball coach, Steve Alford. Also portrayed in the movie are former IU players Delray Brooks (Al Thompson), Andre Harris (Yorick Parke), Todd Jadlow (Mike Weekes), Stew Robinson (Patrick Williams) and Daryl Thomas (Michael James Johnson). Knight's former coaching staff is represented in the roles of Dan Dakich (Dan Becker), Ron Felling (Gary Hudson), Kohn Smith (Duane Murray) and Joby Wright (Benz Antoine).\nBrooks says in deciding the roles for ESPN's maiden project, actors were considered based on their acting and basketball abilities as well as their resemblance to whomever they were portraying. \n"It all happened so quick," Lafferty says of the audition process. "I was hired and flown out to Winnipeg in a span of four days, so I only really had time to watch (game tapes), read the book and study Alford."\nBut when it came down to selecting the role of Coach Knight, Brooks says they wanted someone who not only resembles Knight in appearance, but who could truly recreate the complexity of the nation's most controversial coach. Brooks says there was only one man who was up for the job.\n"We wanted someone who could capture the essence of Knight," he says. "There wasn't anyone but Brian Dennehy."\nDennehy, who is busy performing in "The Iceman Cometh" in Chicago, says in press releases issued by ESPN that taking on the role of the volatile coach was difficult. \n"It isn't easy as an actor to figure out where the real Bobby Knght is," Dennehy says, "because despite the fact that he has this great honesty and this great openness, he is very careful about making sure you only get to see who he wants you to see." \nBrooks says Dennehy's performance is one of the finest he has ever seen, and it will be the finest the simulcast television audience of ESPN and ESPN2 will ever see.\nIn the film, Dennehy tackles many of the controversial moments that occurred during Knight's reign as head coach, including the famous chair-tossing incident in a home game against Purdue. While no action shots were filmed on location in Bloomington, or in any other college gym, ESPN recreated Assembly Hall in the home of the former Winnipeg Jets hockey team because the arena's red seats closely resemble those in the Hoosiers' home. With information and help from all IU department heads, especially the arts department, the film does contain shots of Assembly Hall's exterior, the Sample Gates, the Student Building and various other on-campus locations. Brooks also says all of the Big Ten schools were surprisingly helpful when asked for permission to use team logos and mascots. \nDespite not being able to use the actual locations where Knight's team played, the script does remain close to the original book by Feinstein. So close in fact, that Brooks even refers to the novel as the production crew's "bible." Crews also conducted interviews with fans, former players and former coaches, including Felling who currently has a court case pending against Knight for allegedly violating his civil rights, assault, battery and for inflicting emotional harm. Lafferty says production officials contacted Knight and Alford, but they were too busy to discuss the film.\nSo the film had no choice but to stay close to the book's text, which includes both Knight's compassionate side -- when he shows Alford his appreciation before the end of the season -- and his nasty side -- such as when he berates Thomas in front of other players. The latter of these instances are where the movie gets its "parental discretion advised" tag for strong language.\nBut a new look at the coach is what Brooks says he hopes will come from the film.\n"My hope is people who (see the movie) who are lovers of Knight and apologists for him will be taken back by his language and treatment of players," Brooks says. "I also hope people who don't like him will be surprised about his compassion." \nTo help with the film's realism, some shots included are from actual game footage. The problem with this is the actors had to have knowledge of the actual game at hand so they could reproduce the actions of those they were portraying. Lafferty describes the difficulty in this and notes that game footage was kept on the set to guide the actors and film crew in the production of the basketball sequences. Another thing that hampered the actors' ability in portraying their counterparts was skill level.\n"It was difficult because (Alford) was a college player, and I only played in high school," Lafferty says. "I had to learn a lot of footwork and basketball skills as far as realistically playing college basketball. The hardest part was physical play to where we were actually running up and down the court for 14 hours of stop-and-go basketball. \n"You know in real life there are like one or two-hour games that stop at points, but in this, we play for five or 10 minutes, and we always had to go as hard as we could because we had to make it like real basketball. We were all pretty sore and worn out by the end of the day."\nNow that the production is done, the promotional campaigns have begun for Sunday's release date. Billboards line Indiana highways and interstates with the image of Dennehy in the famous red sweater. Small icons pop up in the bottom left corner of the TV screen during ESPN daily programming, counting down the days to show time. A Web site, www.aseasononthebrink.com, provides the anticipating fans with in-depth information on IU basketball, including a Bob Knight "quote-of-the-day." \nSoon it will be time for the fans' reactions. Brooks knows Indiana takes its basketball seriously and he anticipates a huge response to the television movie. So large in fact, that he expects the movie to be the highest rated program in the 20-plus year history of the cable sports network.\nLafferty says the coach's popularity could prove Brooks right.\n"I am a little anxious to see how people will react to this movie," he says. "From my standpoint, I've never been a huge Indiana basketball fan or a huge Bob Knight fan, but as far as people who have followed him from the beginning, they're going to have a different take on this whole thing. They might think we got some things wrong or some things dead-on, so I'm interested to see"