FAITH Exclusive:
FAITH talks to Bill Paxton
about his new movie
The Greatest Game Ever Played
by Elizabeth Solsberg

Bill Paxton, the star of such movies as Twister and Apollo 13, directed his first Disney movie this year. The Greatest Game Ever Played will be in theaters September, 30. The Greatest Game Ever Played is the story of Francis Ouimet, a young immigrant who, in 1913, upset the greatest golfers of his time to win the US Open. Ouimet was an American amateur in a world of British professionals – playing a game known for its elitism. Accompanied by a 10-year-old caddy, he rocked the sports world and paved the way for golfers the world over.

FAITH recently interviewed Bill Paxton about his new film:

BP: I’m really excited about The Greatest Game Ever Played. It’s a great, inspirational true story.

FAITH: It sounds wonderful. I’ve seen the trailers and it looks like you did a wonderful job with it. I see that the main character, Francis Ouimet, has a huge scholarship named after him.

BP: He does. Let me tell you a story about that. His parents were both immigrants; he was first-generation. His father was from Quebec, French-Canadian from Montreal and his mother was from Ireland. It’s all based on an incredible book by Mark Frost – it’s a dual biography of Francis Ouimet and Harry Vardon, the British champion. Both these men came from modest circumstances and went on to become very well known in the sport. The book chronicles these two trains that are going to meet at the 1913 US Open.

What struck me was that they haven’t made too many dramatic golf films. I grew up around the sport – I’m not a big golfer myself, but I saw so much more in this story.

FAITH: I saw that you caddied for Ben Hogan when you were young.

BP: I shagged balls for him on a couple of occasions. When I was 8 years old, like Francis, we lived next door to a golf course in Ft. Worth, Tex. It was Shady Oaks Golf Course and it was Ben Hogan’s home club. I made all my extra money as a kid, like Francis did, fishing balls out of lakes and creeks. And caddying and shagging balls. Shagging balls sounds rather rude, but it’s just standing in a fairway while a man practices, usually with his five-iron – and you stand there and collect all the balls and bring back the buckets. With Ben Hogan, I didn’t have to move very far; I became the target – I mostly had to look out to keep from getting hit.

I related to this story personally. I had made one other film and I was looking to make my first major studio film. I was looking around, and I realized this was a safe that hadn’t been cracked. I think people think of a period golf film or any golf film and go, “Oh boy. This is going to be as exciting as watching paint dry.” But in film you can compress time and space in any way you want. For the men and women who play at a championship level, I’d liken it more to walking into the OK Corral. You’re playing yourself, you’re playing your opponent – it becomes like a shootout. And there was kind of a nice Camelot analogy to the whole story. Here was a boy who grew up outside the castle walls, who dreamed of Camelot of the country club – kind of the knights and their squires. I liken the players and their caddies that way – “Here sir, use the widowmaker here. Use the nine-iron.” And I’m the old club pro, the indentured servant really who you see in the pro’s shop. It’s called the pro’s shop – it’s a term left over from when it really was the pro’s shop. The resident professional would not only teach lessons, but he also forged clubs – the whole thing. He’s kind of a Merlin character who befriends the boy, the young Francis Ouimet.

It had some nice analogies; I kind of made it a golf western meets Camelot. There’s the fair maiden, the girl from the prominent family that he kind of worships from afar. But to me, the story is a faith-based story. It’s about following one’s dreams, sticking with something, hope, family

It’s a real American story in that’s it’s an immigrant story. You know, Bernard Darwin was a famous British sports writer who’s kind of the conscience of the piece, played by a great actor named Robin Wilcox. He says, in the final round, that Francis ends up in a three-way tie and he has to face these two Goliaths and it ends up being a kind of “David vs. Two Goliaths” kind of story.

FAITH: During the course of making this film, what did you learn about Francis’ character?

BP: Let me tell you about Francis Ouimet, from what I know based on my own research and Mark’s incredible book. Francis was a very selfless individual. He ended up with a 10-year-old caddie. Eddy Lowery, the 10-year-old caddie, had an older brother, Jack, who was supposed to caddie for Francis. But he got caught by a truant officer and didn’t show up. At first, Francis thought, gee – he appreciated Eddy’s offer but he didn’t think it was going to work out. But he was the kind of guy that, when he was in the middle of this whole thing, he’d be asking his caddie, “Are you ok?” He was one of those types of selfless people who can pull themselves out of any situation and see the other person’s point of view. When they wanted to name the Ouimet scholarship, which has been going on for several decades and has put many caddies through college, Francis said, “Do you have to call it that?” They explained that if they used his name they could raise more money and he agreed.

He was kind of shy around crowds; he had a true gentility about him. He was a kind and gentle man who was a great ambassador of the sport. He was a people booster and he went on to become prominent in the stock world. But he always kept his love of golf.

He was a friend of presidents. He and Eisenhower were good friends. President Bush, Sr. is a real fan of the book. President Clinton has seen the film and loved it. President Bush, Sr. said his father, Prescott Bush, was a good friend of Ouimet’s.

FAITH: How did you like working with Shia LeBeauf, who plays the lead in the movie? I just saw him in Shaker Heights and he’s great.

BP: I needed a different kind of performance. I needed a guy who was a little more restrained. He was worried about not looking physically like the man. But when you make a movie like this, you’re dealing with characters that people really don’t know what they look like. This is one of the greatest sports upsets that no one remembers. No one remembers what the man looked like; it’s more important to boil down the essence of the person you’re playing. I’d go to Shia and say, “This guy was really selfless, so when you’re in the middle of this, I want you to show compassion for Eddy and your mother and other people.”

Francis wasn’t really a rebel, although he was going against the wishes of his father, who was a staunch working-class man. So there’s a kind of reverse prejudice there, where the father won’t accept that his son wants to play this sport which, at the time, was this kind of elitist sport played by rich men and their sons and professionals who were looked down upon. It was really an amateur sport and the word amateur comes from the Latin for “love of.” Those were the kinds of things I tried to instill in Shia’s performance, and also a kind of stillness. He’s used to chewing up the scenery.

FAITH: Shia’s performance seems really low-key in this. And really critical.

BP: I’ve played a lot of leading roles and I’ve learned that you’re really the person taking the audience through this odyssey, adventure; this story. You’ve really got to let the supporting actors chew up the scenery. You’ve got to be the anchor, in a way. I don’t want to see you doing too much. I want to be able to watch you and project my own thoughts as I’m watching you in that dark room up on that screen. It’s a hard thing to learn, but he learned it well. And I put him in with a top-flight of actors. Stephen Dillane, who plays Harry Vardon, is one of the great actors of the stage today. He’s done Macbeth and Hamlet. We acted together and we just happened to go out and play a round of golf one day when we had the day off. He said he hadn’t played in years but I could see he had a muscle memory and a really good swing and I thought he’d be fantastic. I was able to convince the studio of that too.

FAITH: I noticed that you have the nickname “Wild Bill” from playing pranks on the set. Did you prank anyone on this set, or when you’re the director do you not do that?

BP: When you’re the director, you can do anything. I don’t know – that was a moniker from back in the day. It was given to me by Frank Rodham, the director of The Lords of Discipline, so I was probably quite an excitable boy back in those days.

But I was very passionate about this project. It was a lot to undertake and to pull off. You’re pulling off the period, you’re pulling off making a film about a sport that people think of as pastoral and making it exciting to watch. I kind of threw everything but the kitchen sink at this thing. I used every technique I’d ever learned. I was in dead earnest through this thing – we had a lot of fun on the set but it was a lot of work too.

FAITH: It looks like a beautiful result; it looks gorgeous.

BP: It is. We gave the film a kind of old Kodachrome look. It’s one you can take your children to and your parents. It’s so rare that this kind of product comes out. I know if people find this movie, they’ll really enjoy it and it will mean something to them and they’ll feel very entertained and they’ll walk away with something.

FAITH: What do you want them to walk away with?

BP: To me it’s a “movie-movie.” To me the idea of a golf movie seems limiting in many ways. I really made the movie for people who would say to me, “You know, I detest the sport.” They’re going to walk out of that movie and say, “That was a good movie.” That’s what I really want and that’s what I worked tirelessly to do. We mapped out a lot of this with storyboards and a lot of preparation went into the execution. The movie has been strangely anointed and going back to Francis Ouimet, in Norton, Mass., just outside Boston, there’s a new golf course where they play the Deutschebank Open. That’s where the Ouimet scholarship is located and they also have a couple of rooms in this giant clubhouse that are dedicated to Mass. golf history. And when I first got hired to do this in Nov. 2003, I made a trip through Boston for two days. I met with Bob Donovan who runs the scholarship fund and he showed me around. One of the rooms has a lot of Francis’ personal effects in it and there is a machine that plays a loop of his voice in an interview. And hearing that voice, I thought, “God, I have a real responsibility here to honor this man and his story as well as all the other characters involved.” So I had a real sense of purpose, but I feel like there’s been a great kind of influence on this movie. It’s hard to pull off a big film and have all the departments show up, but every person in every department: Renee April, our costumer; Shane Hurlbut, my cinematographer; Elliot Graham, my editor; all the actors in the movie – it felt like it was preordained or something. I can’t believe I made the movie – it’s very odd to me.

FAITH: Do you think there’s something it has to say in terms of its overall theme about hope and perseverance?

BP: Oh, doubtless. That’s really what the relevance is of the story. And the idea of dignity over humiliation. Triumph over adversity. Those classical themes; and going back to David vs. Goliath, the odds might seem insurmountable. You only fail when you give up, when you quit trying. And I’ve been trying for a long time out here. I’ve got a little Francis Ouimet in me.

FAITH: Do you have a church relationship?

BP: Well, you know I was raised as a Roman Catholic and you don’t travel far from that. I was an altar boy for years and I grew up doing the Friday Vespers service. It was a big part of my upbringing in Ft. Worth, Tex. My father was not in any organized religion, but because of my mom, who is a really staunch Catholic, I went to Catholic school until I was in the eighth grade and I remember the nuns and the brothers and the priests. It gave me a background and a set of moral beliefs.

Francis Ouimet lived the Christian ideal. You see it in the movie; you see it in his family. You see it in how he deals with the world – he has a true Christian ethic in terms of “live and let live,” “turn the other cheek,” “love one another.” That all comes through. I guess I still have kind of an innocence – I don’t know how because I’m kind of a wayward guy. But the film has a real goodness because the story is rooted in something real that people will relate to – of all ages and all faiths.

The opening titles of the movie have a bit of an homage to the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. You’ve got to remember that the whole movement in England was those guys going into their grandparents’ closets and getting out their Victorian and Edwardian clothes that they brought back into vogue. You’ll see a little bit of that in the film. Bernard Darwin almost looks like John Lennon in Sargent Pepper with the little granny glasses and the big muttonchops.

FAITH: Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about the movie that I haven’t already asked you?

BP: It’s a movie for everyone. It’s not exclusive, like the sport itself. It’s for all ages.

FAITH: I know my daughter said she wanted to see it when she saw the trailer.

BP: How old is she?

FAITH: She’s about to be 14.

BP: You know what? She’s going to love it. There’s a lot of humor and a lot of entertainment. The music is sensational. I did it without a lot of jingoism. The event itself was a real Anglo-American event because at the time, it was the 18th US Open. Up to that time, only one American had won the cup. There was quite a rivalry, but I didn’t play up the nationalism.

The biggest message I’d like to get through in all my work is a message of tolerance – you’d think that was a message that would have already gotten out there in 2005, but it’s still important. We’ve got to celebrate more of our diversity – we keep getting branded as Americans but we’re a melting pot. We’re from everywhere. And I love that idea in this story – you see these immigrant parents, you see this kid who’s growing up as the first generation in this new country. That’s what makes this country great. I think the movie celebrates the greatest things about being American – our diversity.

I think the movie’s going to be a crowd-pleaser, but I’m sweating it out, Elizabeth that we don’t have enough P and A behind the thing. I know it’s the best film to come out of that studio this year in terms of quality and integrity and I made it look like fifty million but I did it for half that.

FAITH: I hope it does really well, because people complain about not having enough family entertainment; when good ones come out, we need to go see them.

BP: I think the movie could be a best-picture contender, without saying that in a conceited way. You see the costumes, the lighting, the editing, the music, the acting, the story. Every level of it – there’s something to enjoy and savor.

FAITH: You’ll be seeing this in our October issue.

BP: My mother will be so proud; she will be so proud.
FAITH: We’ll send you an extra copy of the magazine for her.