This summer, the upcoming Paris 2024 Summer Olympics will be held July 26 – August 11.
For the first time in history, the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games will not take place in a stadium. Thousands of athletes will parade in boats along the Seine, the river that flows through Paris, in front of hundreds of thousands of spectators.
A total of 40 sports are in the Olympics, including rowing.
On Christmas Day, George Clooney’s new film, THE BOYS IN THE BOAT, is set for release – and it’s a terrific film!
Based on the best-selling book by Daniel James Brown, The Boys In The Boat tells the story of the bootstrapping University of Washington junior varsity rowing team that — against all odds — went on to represent the USA at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
A true underdog tale about working as a team, The Boys In The Boat depicts a beautiful landscape for the social and economic conditions of the time. Deftly navigating the staggering disparity between the haves and the have-nots leading up to World War II, Clooney and team deliver a heartwarming and bold tale of perseverance and unity.
In August 2017, PBS’s AMERICAN EXPERIENCE profiled their story in “The Boys of 36”. Catch it on Apple TV+, and Prime Video.
The new film stars Joel Edgerton, Callum Turner, Peter Guinness, James Wolk, Sam Strike, Thomas Elms, Jack Mulhern, Luke Slattery, Bruce Herbelin-Earle, Wil Cuban, Thomas Stephen Carey, Joel Phillimore, Hadley Robinson.
Around the turn of the century, particularly into the 1920s, rowing was hugely popular. Lately, its domain are colleges and certain country club circles, and the sport often flies under the mainstream radar. Though it still has its fans — ask someone from the Northeast about the Head of the Charles and you’ll get an earful — everyone worked hard to create excitement for a sport that has become more niche.
But rowing crew is not for the faint of heart. It’s a commitment. It’s not just a movie gimmick. Training for the film was rigorous, and rightly so. Actors attended mandatory training sessions twice a day involving weight training, cardio, and everything they’d be doing if they were rowers on a college team. Rowing coaches Terry O’Neill (aka Bad Cop) and Nick Harding (aka Good Cop), put them through the paces from day one.
And in the beginning, they were… not great, says Heslov.
Says Turner, “When we started rowing, we were useless. Terry O’Neill brought his friends down that he rowed with, and they’re all in their seventies. Terry gave this amazing speech about how rowing is his life, and he said, look at these guys behind me, these are my friends from rowing and you guys are going to make friends for life. There were tears in his eyes, really, he’s an emotional guy. I gave him a hug and we got in the boat, and we rowed so badly. They looked at us and they looked at Terry and the look on their faces was like, “what are you doing?”
“But to the trainers’ credit, about four weeks later we went back out there and they were rowing as a team,” Heslov says. “And then as we started shooting they kept practicing.”
The score (Alexandre Desplat), cinematography (Martin Ruhe) and Production Design (Kalina Ivanov) are fantastic.
Although Desplat is a master of composition, when it came to this film, he was as green as Joe the first day he showed up at rowing practice. “I had never worked on a sports movie,” Desplat reveals. “This one was a good way of starting!” He used this fresh take to his advantage, navigating the uncharted waters from a unique perspective.
Even with perfect attention to detail, there’s still one thing that even the best filmmakers can’t control: Shooting on the water. “I mean, I did The Perfect Storm, I knew what I was getting into.” says Clooney, chuckling.
That didn’t make it any easier.
“There is not one thing about shooting on the water that’s fun,” he continues. “Everything is slowed down. Try running through your swimming pool. You can’t just say, “let’s line up eight boats across with nine guys in each of ‘em, and start the race.” There is a current so the boats all start moving around and they’re not in straight lines, and our boats are moving. If the wind blows, everything’s moving around you. Everything is constantly moving.”
Everyone loves an underdog story and THE BOYS IN THE BOAT is the one movie to see during the holidays.
At the end of the day, the message of pulling together is important.
“We forget that we are all in this stew together and our differences really aren’t that much and there aren’t that many. ,” Clooney says. “Ninety-nine percent of us get along every day and really wish the best for one another and try to work it out. I think that this film reminds us that we are all in this together, and we’re actually on each other’s sides.”
