What Do The Critics Say?

"A long time ago I played under Friday night lights and let me tell you something, this movie gets it all right." Richard Roeper EBERT & ROEPER "... had me literally in goose bumps and with my heart going into overdrive." Steve Rhodes STEVE RHODES' INTERNET REVIEWS "You'll be surprised -- and thrilled -- by how completely this film engages you." Eleanor Ringel Gillespie ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION "A good sports movie with amped up sports action, good acting, and an ending that sneaks up on you with surprising emotional power." Robert Roten LARAMIE MOVIE SCOPE "Both a great sports film and a terrific commentary on human nature." Forrest Hartman RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL

"Black is positively riveting to watch; who would have expected the gangly kid who befriended Carl Childers in "Sling Blade" to now be muscling his mentor out of the picture?" Todd Gilchrist FILMSTEW.COM "Dizzying handheld camera shots make us part of every hard-hitting tackle" David Levine FILMCRITIC.COM "I'll stop short of calling it the greatest sports movie ever created, but it's certainly got to be up there in the top five." Sean McBride SEAN THE MOVIE GUY "Contains just the right mix of grunting, cheerleading and backbiting, of failure and success, of broken dreams and great expectations." Tom Long DETROIT NEWS "Friday Night Lights captures this aspect of team spirit with honesty and passion." Louis B Hobson JAM! MOVIES

The Inside Story

"Unparalleled realism and hard-hitting performances make Friday Night Lights one of the great sports movies." John Wirt ADVOCATE BATON ROUGE LA

For those who like a story that is truly inspirational, look no further than the Peter Berg, Brian Grazer film, "Friday Night Lights" a true story based on the best selling book, "Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team and a Dream" by Pulitzer Prize winning author H G 'Buzz' Bissinger. And just in case you get the impression that this is a film that is a vehicle for American Football, or "Gridiron" as it is called 'down under', forget it. While it may take a little getting used to at the start, this is a remarkable story of a Texas town, its love for football, how that love consumes it from September through December each year, and how the 1988 high school football season affected the lives of the team and coaching staff of the Permian Panthers the most winning team in American High School football history. "Friday Night Lights" is an inspirational film and one that the books author, H G 'Buzz' Bissinger, in an interview pointed out is not a rah-rah film. "It is a terrific film. I am proud as the writer of the book and also proud of Pete for making a film that stands on its own. Not everything that was in the book is in the film because the result would have been a ten-hour movie given the book's complexity. Choices had to be made and Pete essentially made a film that is character-driven. But the structure of the film follows quite closely the narrative of the book. And it is not your typical rah-rah feel good film. It has moments of tremendous poignancy. It is evocative like the book was evocative, but it is also gritty and raw and authentic." Amongst the many good points that combine to make this an excellent film are a couple of standouts. Viewers aren't bogged down by long game segments and the cast are very convincing. Once again, Academy Award ® winner Billy Bob Thornton shows how accomplished a journeyman he is. It's easy to believe he is Coach Gary Gaines. Gaines, who has a coaching record of 121-96-6 in twenty seasons as a head coach, has taken teams to nine playoff appearances in 17 years and still coaches today wasn't all that impressed with Bizzinger's book which detailed the 1988 season when he was coaching the Permian Panthers in Odessa, Texas. Word has it that he accused Bissinger of betrayal over the passing years. 'Buzz' made contact with him after the film was completed. "Gaines was deeply upset with the book when it was published. His feelings bothered me because we had become quite close during the year I was there. We had not spoken in 15 years and that bothered me as well. So I went to see him unannounced, not to apologize for what I had written, but to see if we at least could declare truce. The meeting was quite wonderful and he was quite gracious." In those ensuing years, Gaines has shown what makes champions used his coaching skills to inspire many young men including Zach Thomas, the all-american line-backer at the Red Raiders who went on to play for the Miami Dolphins. Gaines has won district championships at Petersburg, Monahans, Odessa Permian and San Angelo Central high schools. It appears that both Bizzinger and Gaines have done well over the years since 1988. Bizzinger's 1990 book "Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team and a Dream" still sells around 50,000 copies annualy and over the years his work has been recognized with a Pulitzer Prize, the Livingston Award, the National Headliner Award, and for reporting, the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel. Many will remember the recent film "Shattered Glass" with which Bissinger was associated. It was Bissinger's article in Vanity Fair that exposed the truth about Stephen Glass, a highly respected journalist working for "The New Republic" newspaper. So how did this inspirational story make it to the big screen? Credit for "Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team and a Dream" making it to the big screen lies with two people. Academy Award ® winning producer Brian Grazer ["A Beautiful Mind"] and the late, great Director Alan Pakula ["Klute", "All the President's Men", "Sophie's Choice" and "The Pelican Brief"] who was tragically killed in a freak automoble accident in 1988 when another vehicle ran over a piece of pipe which then flew into the windscreen of Pakula's car, shattering it. "The book Friday Night Lights was something I had read very early on," recalls Grazer. "The late, great director, Alan Pakula, introduced me to the book. Alan was going to direct the movie. Since his death, I've stuck with the project for 14 years, waiting for the right timing and combination of talent to bring it to the screen, being respectful and mindful of what Alan would have brought to the film. I've been in love with the story since the beginning and committed to turning it into the kind of film it deserves to be." Grazer who has been in the film and television industry for some twenty years and whose movies have earned $US10.5 billion in worldwide theatrical, music, and video grosses was true to his word. After all, he felt a real affinity with the young men from Odessa Texas. "I'm not so sure that what these kids went through in Odessa was all that different from my own adolescence in the San Fernando Valley," Grazer says. "Odessa's values were those of America. This is a story about a period in boys' lives where everything is being formed-that's what I loved about this story. And in Odessa, the football arena just intensified it. Having been there and witnessed this phenomenon myself, I remember it was one of the most intense experiences I've ever had." Billy Bob Thornton says the film "is about the obsession with high school football in Texas." Billy Bob remembers the years when his father was a high school Basketball coach. "I grew up watching my dad as a high school basketball coach. When the Arkansas Razorbacks lost, my dad was in a bad mood for two or three weeks, and it affected the whole household." So what is it that stands out for Billy Bob in "Friday Night Lights"? "What's also great about this story and Berg's movie is that it's not just about football. It deals with the actual people. So when you see the football games, you care about the people playing them, because you know who they are." That is something I made note of earlier. You get to 'know' these young men intimately. Director Peter Berg, who helmed the comedy "Welcome To The Jungle" is also familiar with the pressure young men face playing high school football and with his second cousin Bizzinger's book. He made no secret about wanting to direct the film. "I played football in high school," Berg reveals. "I thought it was one of the most mature and complex looks at high school sports that I'd ever read. It's an intense, coming-of-age drama about that culture. I thought it was one of the few stories that talked about high school sports in a way that really captured all of the different elements,the good, the bad, the family elements, the elements of friendship-and, in a pretty sophisticated way, the essence of what it's like to be 16, 17, 18 years old and playing in front of your entire community." But what was it really like playing for the Permian Panthers? Odessa attorney and captain of the 1988 team Brian Chavez explains. "It was almost like the Army or the Marines. The coaches were like drill sergeants. We didn't have that paternal, father/son type relationship or anything like that. People aspired to play Permian football, to play on Friday night and to try and win the state championship." And what was the feeling like, turning out for a game? "Just saying the words 'Friday Night Lights' sends goose bumps up and down my spine," Chavez said. "Seeing those lights and the fans and this football atmosphere brings back those memories of holding hands with my teammates, turning the corner and seeing just a sheet of black…and 20,000 fans screaming and yelling for you. It's a feeling that's indescribable!" While many 'Aussie Rules' fans may not like it, when it comes to the big screen, try as we might; those big hits, the school bands, the sideline shots, the cheerleaders and touchdowns are something our national sport just can't quite capture in a film. While some may dismiss "Friday Night Lights" as a film filled with adrenalin and testosterone, this is worth seeing for its feel, its highs and lows, but most of all because it's a great study in the human spirit thanks to solid performances from cast members such as Jay Hernandez ["The Nomad"], Derek Luke["Antwone Fisher"] and Lucas Black ["Crazy in Alabama" and THE TV Series "American Gothic"]. Crew Bytes "FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS" was .......
directed by Peter Berg ["Very Bad Things" and "Welcome To The Jungle"] screenplay by David Aaron Cohen ["V I Warshawski", "The Devil's Own" and "Quantum Project"]; and Peter Berg ["Very Bad Things"]; costume design by Susan Matheson ["Family Attraction", "Best Laid Plans", "Dancer, Texas Pop 81", "Crazy/Beautiful" and "Honey"]; production design by Sharon Seymour ["Reality Bites", "The Truth About Cats & Dogs", "The Cable Guy", "40 Days and 40 Nights" and "Bad Santa"]; set decoration by Carla Curry ["A Texas Funeral", "Ready To Rumble", "Serving Sara" and "The Alamo"]; cinematography by Tobias A Schliessler ["My Kind of Town", "South of Wawa", "The Omen" and "Welcome to the Jungle"]; art direction by Peter Borck ["The Spitfire Grill", "Stealing Time", "Bad Santa" and "Breakin' All The Rules"] produced by Academy Award winner Brian Grazer ["The Grinch", "Blue Crush", "8 Mile", "The Cat In The Hat" and "The Missing"]. Casting About "FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS" stars .......
Lucas Black ["Sling Blade", "Ghosts of Mississippi", "All the Pretty Horses" and "Cold Mountain"]; Garrett Hedlund ["Troy"]; Derek Luke ["Antwone Fisher", "Pieces Of April", "Biker Boyz" and "Spartan"]; Jay Hernandez ["Crazy/Beautiful", "The Rookie", "Torque" and "Ladder 49"]; Lee Jackson ["Friday Night Lights"]; Lee Thompson Young ["Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story"]; Tim McGraw ["Black Cloud"]; Grover Coulson ["Night Vision"]; Dr Carey Windler ["Friday Night Lights"]; Brad Leland ["Winners Take All", "Love and a .45", "World Without Waves" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"] with Connie Britton ["The Brothers McMullen", "No Looking Back", "The Next Big Thing" and "Looking For Kitty"] as Sharon Gaines and Academy Award winner Billy Bob Thornton ["Pushing Tin", "The Man Who Wasn't There", "Bandits", "Monster's Ball", "Intolerable Cruelty" and "Bad Santa"] as Coach Gary Gaines. What It's All About

"It is admirable how the movie delves into the psychology of a pathological need to win. A fantastic film." ...... Mike McGranaghan AISLE SEAT

Odessa, Texas is the home of the Permian Panthers, a high school team with a proud tradition that includes winning four state championships in 1965, '72, '80 and '84. This year everyone in the town has high expectations that second year coach Gary Gaines can take them to the top. Odessa lives for the Panthers and the hype and pressure leading up to the season and the teams first practice session is huge. The year is 1988 and a win will ensure that those who are in a championship team will get the football scholarships that will get them out of Odessa and into college football. For the town, which is in a bust cycle, the only thing left to give them hope is that their team can win. Each of those chosen to represent the town knows that failure is not an option. When the Panthers lose their star player Boobie Miles early in the season and their winning streakcomes to a stop, huge cracks appear in their confidence. Can the Permian Panthers claw their way back? Coach Gary Gaines, threatened with non-renewal of his contract if the team doesn't get back in the winners circle, must dig deep and remould the team before all hope of saving the season disappears. No-one wants a championship more than Mike Winchell who is really under the hammer at home to live up to his fathers football prowess as a former winning Panthers player. The Verdict "It takes a little getting used to, this gritty, gutsy film but when you do, boy what an inspirational and powerful story of human endevour it tells. An energy charged, very interesting film that takes the viewer into the razzle, dazzle and psyche of high school football. Billy Bob Thornton is outstanding in the role of Coach Gary Gaines. The talent of Lucas Black, Derek Luke, Jay Hernandez and Connie Britton stands out adding weight to the feeling of credibility that makes "Friday Night Lights" decidedly Recommended Viewing." The Cast

Billy Bob Thornton Lucas Black Garrett Hedlund Derek Luke Jay Hernandez Lee Jackson Lee Young Tim McGraw Grover Coulson Connie Britton Connie Cooper Kasey Stevens Ryanne Duzich Amber Heard Morgan Farris Laine Kelly Gavin Grazer Turk Pipkin Dr Carey Windler Tommy Kendrick Brad Leland Lillian Langford Christian Kane

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Coach Gary Gaines Mike Winchell Don Billingsley Boobie Miles Brian Chavez Ivory Christian Chris Comer Charles Billingsley L V Miles Sharon Gaines Mrs Winchell Flippy Melissa Maria Jennifer Gaines Comer's Girlfriend Trapper Skip Baldwin Dr Rogers Odessa Doctor John Aubrey Nancy Aubrey Brian

The Crew Directed by Peter Berg From the book "Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream" by H G Bissinger Screenplay by David Aaron Cohen and Peter Berg Produced by Brian Grazer Original Music by Brian Reitzell/Explosions in the Sky/David Torn Cinematography by Tobias A Schliessler Film Editing by Colby Parker Jr and David Rosenbloom Editing of Documentary Segment by Gabrielle Fasulo Casting by Janet Hirshenson and Jane Jenkins Production Design by Sharon Seymour Art Direction by Peter Borck Set Decoration by Carla Curry Costume Design by Susan Matheson Run Time 118 minutes Rated PG [AUST] Copyright ©2005 - Universal Pictures - All Rights Reserved Copyright Protected © 2005 - The Movie Pages & Impact Internet Services - All Rights Reserved