"the decision to focus on all seven black players was a mistake. Audiences find it hard to keep straight more than four characters of the same sex, age, and race."
In films that are ensemble cast based (rather than traditional star vehicles), isn't there some leeway given? For example, Seven Samurai and later The Magnificent Seven focused on more than four characters of the same sex, age, and race. And yet they did okay at the box office. Not saying that multiple characters in a film automatically mean profits at the box office; am saying that it can happen, IF the multiple character's backstories are compelling as well as well defined.
But my question does remain. It is possible to construct a well produced narrative based film with multiple characters of same gender, age etc (e.g. The Ten Commandments, peak DeMille)?
Not saying that its the rule in Hollywood as it obviously isn't, but that it's possible.
Scorcese's Goodfellas was an ensemble cast and had more than 4 characters, as was the Irishman.
Perhaps the best example of multiple characters in an ensemble based film working would be the Epic genre.
Granted, the 2006 NCAA basketball film doesn't sound very interesting, which might have been the problem with the screenwriters not developing the 7 characters to make them interesting. BUT...uh, 1986 basketball film Hoosiers, with Gene Hackman (the film does highlight the starting 5 Hoosier players) in addition to Hackman, Wooley, and of course Dennis Hopper.
Which then goes back to my point: for multiple characters in an ensemble cast, the screenwriter(s) job is to make each individual character interesting if not compelling for the audience to care and identify with their individual problem dilemma, etc etc.
Multiple supporting actors are not an ensemble. Hoosiers is about a basketball coach in Indiana. The main characters are played by are Hackman, Hopper, and Barbara Hershey. The basketball team members are there to move the plot along, and are just stock figures (the star loner, the goof who wins the big game, straight arrow kid with a troubled father, etc) You could make the same movie about the football team, the chess team, or the debate team without changing anything other than the competition scenes.
Hoosiers is the underdog story that was unlike the Milan Indiana team that was the smallest school to ever win a state championship in Indiana when all of the schools played in one division.
Hoosier is just another version of the underdog winning.
Growing up in Illinois before the tournament was divided into classes, we had similar stories. I think it was 1964 when the giant Chicago-area schools crashed out of the tournament and the finals included Cobden, IL vs Pekin, IL. Pekin is known for having the most offensive mascot name: the “Chinks”! (Really. Look it up). Pekin is supposedly directly opposite Beijing on the globe. Cobden had @ 1,000 residents. Cobden won.
It's some of that. It's also a Rocky style training montage film and a redemption story. The scene at the end where they play in a big gym for the first time is shocking in the way it takes you from this made uo seeming recent past to something that appeared perfectly contemporary in the 1980s.
Sure they are. Having up to 4 characters both main and supporting of same gender age and race was Steve's point. Mine is that it is possible for a film to explore more than 4 characters if they're drawn better and distinctively.
Traditionally an ensemble cast has tended to mean a cast where all the characters have roughly equal amount of time, and there is no one star that is expected to carry the picture by themselves alone. You can have multiple stars, but no one single star standing out above all others.
The Oceans Eleven remake (or even the original), Pitt Clooney Damon Garcia Cahn, and the various other white members of the Ocean crew exceed the number 4 (in dthe original except for Sammy Davis, they were basically white and all about the same age). The latter was a modest hit and the remake, the former, was a solid hit at the box office.
Stock figures or not, the film isn't necessarily simply a Gene Hackman star vehicle per se---it's an ensemble cast.
The original point remains. It is possible and it has been done from time to time where a film has an ensemble cast of more than 4 characters. For it to effectively work, however, requires the characters to be distinctive enough for the audience to carry about and identify with. And of course this isn't the majority of films made in Hollywood, which then as now tends to overwhelmingly favor star vehicles.
It remains on the screenwriter(s) to make sure that the multiple characters are drawn distinctively way before the cameras start to roll.
Sure, but "Glory Road" is only a fairly decent movie made by fairly decent talent, so limiting itself to four early 20s tall black guys with different personalities would have been more within its limits.
Before “Bourne Identity” Matt Damon was valuable in Hollywood because his boyish looks marked him out as clearly the junior partner when cast opposite e.g. Clooney or Pitt. A lot of the early “Bourne” reviews emphasized the surprise casting. In classic Hollywood there used to be those types like Montgomery Clift or Mickey Rooney (both of whom had problems as they aged) who were cast opposite more manly-looking actors like John Wayne or Burt Lancaster. As Steve has remarked many times, now Hollywood leading men are almost all fresh-faced types like Ryan Gosling and Leonardo DiCaprio.
“Goodfellas” isn’t a great example because there are only three principal characters and De Niro is supposed to be playing a generation older than Liotta. “The Irishman” indeed suffered from too many older white guys mumbling. In “The Godfather” Don Corleone has three sons who are cast to emphasize different phenotypic qualities, and his adoptive son (Robert Duvall) is very non-Italian looking. Similarly “The Big Lebowski” has a big cast but the Dude’s friends are opposite types (wiry Steve Buscemi and burly John Goodman) and the supporting players are differentiated by ethnicity: Germans, Mexicans, Brits.
Sometimes casts seem chosen to emphasize lack of differentiation: I’d imagine that the actors in “Full Metal Jacket” and “Black Hawk Down” were meant to meld together to some extent.
The "The Irishman" is an example that fits the point that there were more than 4 characters, unfortnately per Google, it was a box office flop. So perhaps there is merit to Steve's point but then one could counter that the multiple characters weren't all created distinctively.
The Godfather had 3 sons, but around the same age is also the Turk which is 4.
Here's where it gets tricky. Steve's point said nothing about dividing various characters into supporting and main; it ONLY said that perhaps there's a limit as to how many characters one can have before a film starts to get difficult to follow. And my point has been consistent--that that may or may not be relevant so long as multiple characters of an ensemble cast are drawn differently and distinctly from each other.
Also, the various Marvel films within the franchise the actors are basically are around the same age, and most of them are white, and yet there are clearly more than 4 characters.
Yet these films, for the most part, tended to make major amounts of money. Whether or not these characters were really distinctive or not can be left to others to decide.
Good points. "The Irishman" would have worked better 100 minutes shorter as "The Jimmy Hoffa Story." I'd mostly lost interest in Pacino over the years, but, wow, is he great at an advanced age in "The Irishman."
"Black Hawk Down" is pretty awesome, but I couldn't keep track of the huge cast of crew cut white guys.
"The Right Stuff" is a three hour epic that portrays Chuck Yeager and four of the seven Mercury astronauts. Five great performances, but that seems like about the limit.
I respectfully disagree with Pacino cast as Hoffa. His NYC brogue is fairly thick. The best Hoffa (visually, and in voice) remains Jack Nicholson in DeVito's Hoffa. Jack IS Hoffa. He's into the character the second he steps on screen and it certainly helped that he resembled so much the real Hoffa. Also Jack brings an energy or...vibrant intensity to the role that Pacino doesn't. He doesn't know how to play an Irish Midwesterner in the same way he does know how to play Lefty Guns in Donnie Brasco, which is set in 70's Brooklyn.
I'm sorry, but I can't get past the fact that he's doing a poor imitation of Hoffa and he doesn't look at all like Jimmy Hoffa. Not sure why Scorcese didn't just cast Nicholson as Hoffa, especially as he's around Pacino's age.
Obviously more than 4 characters is not the norm for Hollywood, but it can be done. But that's on the screenwriter(s) to make it happen before the cameras start to roll.
I'm terrible at telling screen characters apart and remembering their names. If you want me to understand a movie with an ensemble of seven black actors I need an old one, a young one, a fat one, a guy with a beard, maybe a short one, a super tall one and a guy who always wears a Mush Mouth hat, like in the Seven Samurai (as far as I remember).
Uh Seven Samurai had no mush mouth character (lol).
Funny because I can watch a film with 7 white actors and not get confused--assuming for a moment that each character is well defined (e.g. as in the magnificent seven)
So perhaps that's the answer: a film with an ensemble cast that has multiple characters isn't a problem, so long as the characters are well defined, distinctive, and stand out from one another. This of course is up to the screenwriter(s) to craft each character as distinctive. That's on them to get it right even before the cameras start rolling.
The Magnificent Seven had several famous and distinctive actors, Yul Bryner the bald guy, Charles Bronson (whatever he is) Steve McQueen.
When I saw LA Confidential in the theater I was terribly confused because I didn't realize two actors weren't the same character (Guy Pierce and Russel Crowe maybe? Russel Crowe wasn't known to me yet). After the show my mom told me she had the same problem. It made the plot hard to follow.
That's what I've been getting at. Also the script was written in such a way that helped to bring out the diverse characters' personalities. That's how a multi character ensemble cast can be done the right way.
Funny, because I like LA Confidential and had no problem at all telling Pierce and Crowe apart--one wore glasses, was nebbish and a thinker, while the other one was taller and bulky hulky.
In fact, the screenwriter for LA confidential won the Oscar for best screenplay. And it was a damn fine script and excellent depiction of LA in the early 50s.
I like them both, but for different reasons. To each their own. Kim Basinger won the Academy Award for her performance—who would’ve seen that coming? And yet Guy Pearce wasn’t even nominated.
Did Dave Chapelle comment there was only really room for one black comic movie star at a time? It was Chris Rock, then Kevin Hart, and we’ll see who comes next.
Your point is well made but Brenner, McQueen and Wallach, as the villain, dominate the film. Bronson and Coburn were not yet stars, Buchholz was German and virtually unknown to American audiences, and Dexter and Vaughn never became big stars. Dexter had an interesting life. He was pals with Frank Sinatra and saved Sinatra from drowning during the filming of "None but the Brave." He also married singer Peggy Lee, a marriage that lasted less than a year.
The Magnificent Seven was an ensemble cast, it wasn't a Yul Brynner vehicle. It had more than 4 different and directly defined characters. One thing that the film did better than Kurosawa's is that the antagonist's perspective was shown and the character was distinctively drawn.
Vaughn became a bankable star directly due to this film. Vaughn was on the hit TV show "The Man from Uncle", which made him a major star during the 60's. Also, Vaughn was a much bigger star when compared to Brad Dexter who remained a simple everyday character actor. But in the ensemble piece of Magnificent, Dexter's character shines through and he amply contributes to the picture, which is greater than the sum of its parts.
Another interesting item about Brad Dexter--he's mentioned in Harlan Ellison interview on Youtube regarding his encounter with Sinatra. Sinatra tried to bully Harlan in a club and sent Brad Dexter after him (Brad Dexter also filled in as occasional Sinatra bodyguard), but though he was nearly a foot taller, Ellison knocked him out. The episode was later recounted in Esquire's Gay Talese's essay "Frank Sinatra has a Cold".
The film also made Bronson and Coburn into stars (they were slowly moving up the ranks prior to Magnificent; they became stars directly due to this film). Coburn would become a superstar due to his later work in The Great Escape and perhaps Charade)
Interesting story about Dexter and Sinatra. Both Coburn and Bronson are favorites. Same year as The Magnificent Seven, Bronson did a Twilight Zone with Elizabeth Montgomery that was very good. He was still making his way up. And I still get a chuckle over Coburn's Schlitz Light commercials of the late 70s. He even admitted, "Yeah, the commercials were better than the beer."
Ellison had a gift of gab and was an amazing full of fun storyteller. Prior to Magnificent, Coburn was in an awesome little Western called Ride Lonesome ( with Randolph Scott, James Best (future Dukes of Hazard Roscoe P Coltrane) Lee Van Cleef, and Bonanza/Trapper John MD Pernell Roberts. Though the part was relatively small, Coburn shines through--perhaps it was on the strength of this film that he was cast in Magnificent as the film was released less than a year prior. Ride Lonesome was directed by Budd Boetticher, and was part of the Rannown series of films (a series of A- or B+ budgeted films that Scott made in mid to late 50's, and briefly highlighted by Martin Scorcese in the DVD intro).
"Brad Dexter also filled in as occasional Sinatra bodyguard... though he was nearly a foot taller, Ellison knocked him out."
I don't believe that for a second. I met Ellison at a sci-fi convention in the '60s and the only way he was going to knock someone out is if that someone was a child. That way it could be an even match size-wise.
In the interview, Ellison mentions that he had learned a trick with a pool cue on how to knock someone out. He explains it in the video, and Esquire essayist Gay Talese confirms the incident in his Sinatra essay as Talese was an eyewitness to the event.
Either watch the Youtube video interview of Ellison's explanation or read Talese's essay "Frank Sinatra has a Cold" for the explanation of Ellison's encounter with Dexter.
Well, the claim that he used a club rather changes the story. But your final sentence is not in evidence true. Perplexity: "When Dexter—a Sinatra associate—intervened aggressively, Ellison struck him in the solar plexus with a pool cue, disabling him. This detail, omitted from Gay Talese's Esquire profile "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," was later documented in other accounts of the encounter." (citing https://fanac.org/fanzines/Riverside_Quarterly/Riverside_Quarterly0902.pdf)
How seriously you take the claim in a mimeographed fanzine is up to you.
Then it all comes down to Gay Talese, still alive by the way, confirming this detail, since Talese was there in the club and witnessed the (alleged?) bruhaha between Dexter and Ellison.
Even I could tell Bronson and Coburn apart from the other white actors the first time I saw them. Distinctive looking/talking actors is a good cheat to help with audience members like me. Extremely different names help too. I have so many TV shows now that I watch and some reviewer will write about one of the characters and I have to look up the name to see who it is.
The good: only player to win MBA MVP and rookie of year in same season. Hit two clutch free throws to win Washington Bullets only NBA title in 1978.
The bad: lazy, terrible coach and GM of Bullets/Wizards. Put franchise in a rut that has lasted for 40 years. Possibly the most depressing franchise in all of sports. Haven’t played a truly meaningful basketball game in 46 years. What other franchise can say the same?
My favorite Wizards moment was a playoff game against the Cavs early in LeBron's career. Late in the game, Gilbert Arenas went to the line for two critical free throws. LeBron walked from midcourt to whisper in his ear, and he missed both.
The Bullets/Wizards had many problems after 1980. Owner Abe Pollin was self-made and a bit cheap. He came from the age when pro basketball wasn't rolling in the money like it is now. After the Bullets core got old- Hayes, Unseld and Dandridge- the Bullets wallowed around .500 for about a decade. They made the huge mistake in drafting some mediocrity named Kenny Green one pick ahead of Karl Malone circa 1985. Lucky Malone. Most of the 90s were terrible for the Bullets. Then there was the Arenas era where the Wizards couldn't get good enough.
The Bullets had Moses for two years and couldn't advance out of the first round of the playoffs. After making the NBA finals in 1979, they only won one series until 2005; beating the New Jersey Nets 2-0 in a mini-series in 1982
The Bullets last made the conference finals in 1979, which was so long ago that their opponents were the San Antonio Spurs, as back then they, the Houston Rockets, and New Orleans Jazz were all in the east. Only once the Dallas Mavericks were born did the NBA reälign and put the three Texas teams in the west
the City of Alexandria combined three high schools into one. The football team has more than 22 returning starters and easily won the state championship. And the film totally ignored who integration affected female students.
I worked with a guy who went to TC Williams during the championship season. He says things weren't too chummy, chummy. There was a lot of animosity between the races. Today, I believe Williams has been renamed because old TC was the worst thing you can be- a "racist." Alexandria's gentrification has forced out some of the black and white blue-collar population. Alexandria is filled with $1 million + townhouses, mostly owned by white lefties. It also has a large Hispanic population of about 20 % who live in the old white blue-collar parts of Alexandria.
I was in a still all white 6th grade. A few rocks were thrown at buses at my sister's 10th grade newly junior high, but it was nothing like the Boston busing riots. I learned very little during an unpleasant integrated 7th, so was put in a private school for 8-12. The only black guy my older brother's "gang" kept up with for years had been their teacher.
The large '40s garden apt complex near us wanted to convert to condo, the City wouldn't let it, so the owners deliberately let it be trashed for the rest of the 70s. By the time I left in '92, native blacks were largely confined to public or subsidized housing, except for Dad's neighbors from DC, who doubled the size of their large house and vacationed in Europe.
Ironically, I believe none of the black players of Texas Western ever made it in professional basketball while two white Kentucky players, Louie Dampier and Pat Riley, had fine pro careers. Dampier was an ABA All-Star and Riley was third guard on some excellent Lakers teams. He later was an outstanding head coach for the Lakers.
Texas Western, located in El Paso, isn't basketball country. Mexican-Americans weren't made for basketball. To compete, Texas Western had to recruit cross country. Where I live in West Virginia, few of our college football and basketball players are from the state. West Virginia recruits heavily from Virginia and Florida.
Steve is right about how difficult for film audiences to follow more than four major players in a film. As a teen, I remember watching "A Bridge Too Far", a massive World War Two film with about twenty stars. By film's end I was still asking, "Who is Sean Connery playing?" and "Who is Robert Redford playing?"
Just a bit of trivia. The actor Sherman Hemsley died in El Paso where he retired. El Paso's black population is rather small, about 3 % in a city 81 % Hispanic.
If I could amend and extend my remarks, Dave Lattin of Texas Western had a marginal five year pro basketball career and Willie Worsley caught on for a year in the ABA.
Screenwriter William Goldman's famous memoir "Adventures in the Screen Trade" has a chapter about how "A Bridge Too Far" should have been awesome but wasn't quite.
"A Bridge Too Far" went on too long and it was an Allied defeat rather than a victory. "The Longest Day" was as long but had a better tempo and was an Allied VICTORY. At the end of the "A Bridge Too Far" was a dull fifteen-minute monologue of Liv Ullman musing on how bad war is.
Helmsley was very funny and he made "The Jeffersons" a fine show. The woman who played Jefferson's mother was also very funny. The actor who played Jefferson(Henry?) on "All in the Family" had other commitments so "The Jeffersons" settled on Helmsley when that was spun off.
Can't recall if I told this story here, but about 15 years ago there was a sergeant in the SFPD, at Richmond station, who was a doppelganger for Sherman Hemsley, both looks and voice. I tripped across him because a guy on the street who I'd punched called 911 and reported that I'd pointed a Beretta 92 at him. So after 8 cops spent 10 minites looking under every parked car for the fictitious gun, Sherman showed up and yelled at me, "why you gotta cause so much trouble?" I replied, "Aw, you're just upset I was a better basketball player than you," which caused the young whote cops to crack up. So Sherman came back with, "Oh yeah? Well my dick's bigger than yours!"
I'm afraid I shall have to disagree, A Bridge Too Far is in the pantheon (up there with Zulu and Battle of Britain). The fact that it is a defeat brings perspective in the same way that the death of Sgt Elias death as a result of treachery adds to Platoon.
The constant victory theme of so many of the sports films is, though enjoyable as entertainment, trite. Sport and competition is about loss and its acceptance. In every league all but one team loses, every year and in every contest only one can be victorious. Achieving a draw in test cricket, going to a replay in the FA Cup, going to the seventh game in a World Series, all either about avoiding or delaying the ultimate defeat are emblematic of sport.
I imagine Hupp's players remember him and each other fondly and perhaps even now still have bonds that makes Kentucky (the state) a stronger and better place. What of seven stars from across the country and even abroad, in anything but victory what else can bring them together (and this can only apply to one team). What family and friends can cheer one of their owns striving and success. It also likely encourages the pernicious lowering of academic standards with winning ball games becoming the driver of supposed academic institutions.
Perhaps, I'm just down as I watched England win 3-0 but only two members of the eleven had two English parents and seven were of partial African descent or actually African.
Perhaps I'm odd wanting to watch Englishmen play for England but that brings us back to the valuable lesson of a Bridge Too Far about loss and learning to live with defeat😏
He did win that title with the Heat almost 20 years ago, but I concede those were not like the Showtime Lakers. I must ask though: what do you think the age range of the readers of this Substack are?
Texas Western center Dave Lattin was drafted 6th by the Warriors by didn't have a very successful career. Dampier was without question the best player on either team,
The problem is that the more diverse the population gets, the lower the common denominator becomes. Yes, diverse peoples can find common ground for the purposes of comity and harmony. But those things wind up being primal and basal, and not exactly haute culture.
Who doesn't like a little bit of structured violence?
"The Fast and the Furious" franchise cleaned up multi-racially, esp men. But who doesn't like low rumbling growls and "mine is faster than yours?"
By the way, a key to John Wooden's success at UCLA was his political liberalism which appealed to Lew Alcindor(the future Kareen Abdul-Jabbar) and Bill Walton. Wooden's liberal politics were not outspoken but a quiet, reserved Mid-Western variety best compared to the sport's fiction of John R. Tunis. Moreover, Wooden was a star at Purdue during the beginning of the Great Depression which shaped his views. Without Alcindor and Walton, I'm not sure UCLA wins five of their national championships during the Wooden era. Wooden was also adept at signing southern California talent like Gail Goodrich and Sidney Wicks.
I happened to follow Bill Walton and a pretty young lady down Rush St. in Chicago for about a mile. Walton, who downplayed his height as only 6'11", was a specimen.
I was walking home in the same direction as Walton and not surprisingly, he tended to walk reasonably fast, so trailing about 15 feet behind him through the nightlife district of Chicago was not inconvenient and allowed me to check out the reactions of people walking past him. Back then in the later 20th Century, Rush St. denizens tended to be Big Ten frat bros and sorority sisters. This was a number of years after his comeback in 1986 on the NBA's all time best white team of the 67-15 Celtics of Bird, McHale, Walton, Ainge, and about three pretty good white role players. So, Walton was a legend but also a little obscure: college player of the year three times in the early 1970s, NBA Finals MVP in 1977, NBA MVP in 1978, then many years of injury and obscurity, before one more NBA title as a great sixth man in 1986.
Every single person who walked past reacted to Walton with amazement. About one out of three guys would recognize him and tell their friends: "That's Bill Walton!" None of the young ladies knew who he was, but they were in awe of this incredible 7'-1" 260 pound physical specimen who had the swagger befitting a legend.
The coaches were being paid millions and refusing to allow their players the ability to transfer to many schools, the lawsuits wrote themselves. If the coaches are making real money, then everyone gets to make money.
Yep, if the NCAA and its member schools weren't so greedy, they wouldn't be in the mess they are in now. Jim Bouton noted in Ball Four that if the owners weren't so hard-line against the players they never would have unionized in the first place
My favorite story of basketball recruiting was when AL McGuire was recruiting Jim Chones, whose mother was from the Old Country, and Al brought his Irish mother along. Al and his mom walked in the house, the ladies retired to the kitchen, Al, Jim and his dad made small talk in the living room and a few minutes later the ladies walked in the living room and Jim's mom said "You are going to Marquette and that is that." Jim never knew what hit him.
John Ford was very good at working ensemble casts but the main action revolved around the main players, often John Wayne and a few other big stars like Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart or Maureen O'Hara. Ford had all those character actors that seemed to show up in Ford's films.
One of my favorite Hollywood photos is Ford having his regular 4 PM tea with the cast of "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." Ford with John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Vera Miles, Lee Marvin, Lee Van Cleef, Strother Martin, Andy Devine, Woody Strode, Edmond O'Brian, Jeanette Nolan and John Qualen.
"the decision to focus on all seven black players was a mistake. Audiences find it hard to keep straight more than four characters of the same sex, age, and race."
In films that are ensemble cast based (rather than traditional star vehicles), isn't there some leeway given? For example, Seven Samurai and later The Magnificent Seven focused on more than four characters of the same sex, age, and race. And yet they did okay at the box office. Not saying that multiple characters in a film automatically mean profits at the box office; am saying that it can happen, IF the multiple character's backstories are compelling as well as well defined.
But it's kind of a tour d' force to pull off: e.g., Peak Kurosawa.
But my question does remain. It is possible to construct a well produced narrative based film with multiple characters of same gender, age etc (e.g. The Ten Commandments, peak DeMille)?
Not saying that its the rule in Hollywood as it obviously isn't, but that it's possible.
Scorcese's Goodfellas was an ensemble cast and had more than 4 characters, as was the Irishman.
Perhaps the best example of multiple characters in an ensemble based film working would be the Epic genre.
Granted, the 2006 NCAA basketball film doesn't sound very interesting, which might have been the problem with the screenwriters not developing the 7 characters to make them interesting. BUT...uh, 1986 basketball film Hoosiers, with Gene Hackman (the film does highlight the starting 5 Hoosier players) in addition to Hackman, Wooley, and of course Dennis Hopper.
Which then goes back to my point: for multiple characters in an ensemble cast, the screenwriter(s) job is to make each individual character interesting if not compelling for the audience to care and identify with their individual problem dilemma, etc etc.
Multiple supporting actors are not an ensemble. Hoosiers is about a basketball coach in Indiana. The main characters are played by are Hackman, Hopper, and Barbara Hershey. The basketball team members are there to move the plot along, and are just stock figures (the star loner, the goof who wins the big game, straight arrow kid with a troubled father, etc) You could make the same movie about the football team, the chess team, or the debate team without changing anything other than the competition scenes.
Hoosiers struck me as a re-telling of David and Goliath, not a story about a coach, despite Hackman’s compelling performance.
Hoosiers is the underdog story that was unlike the Milan Indiana team that was the smallest school to ever win a state championship in Indiana when all of the schools played in one division.
Hoosier is just another version of the underdog winning.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnderdogsNeverLose
Growing up in Illinois before the tournament was divided into classes, we had similar stories. I think it was 1964 when the giant Chicago-area schools crashed out of the tournament and the finals included Cobden, IL vs Pekin, IL. Pekin is known for having the most offensive mascot name: the “Chinks”! (Really. Look it up). Pekin is supposedly directly opposite Beijing on the globe. Cobden had @ 1,000 residents. Cobden won.
It's some of that. It's also a Rocky style training montage film and a redemption story. The scene at the end where they play in a big gym for the first time is shocking in the way it takes you from this made uo seeming recent past to something that appeared perfectly contemporary in the 1980s.
Sure they are. Having up to 4 characters both main and supporting of same gender age and race was Steve's point. Mine is that it is possible for a film to explore more than 4 characters if they're drawn better and distinctively.
Traditionally an ensemble cast has tended to mean a cast where all the characters have roughly equal amount of time, and there is no one star that is expected to carry the picture by themselves alone. You can have multiple stars, but no one single star standing out above all others.
The Oceans Eleven remake (or even the original), Pitt Clooney Damon Garcia Cahn, and the various other white members of the Ocean crew exceed the number 4 (in dthe original except for Sammy Davis, they were basically white and all about the same age). The latter was a modest hit and the remake, the former, was a solid hit at the box office.
Stock figures or not, the film isn't necessarily simply a Gene Hackman star vehicle per se---it's an ensemble cast.
The original point remains. It is possible and it has been done from time to time where a film has an ensemble cast of more than 4 characters. For it to effectively work, however, requires the characters to be distinctive enough for the audience to carry about and identify with. And of course this isn't the majority of films made in Hollywood, which then as now tends to overwhelmingly favor star vehicles.
It remains on the screenwriter(s) to make sure that the multiple characters are drawn distinctively way before the cameras start to roll.
Sure, but "Glory Road" is only a fairly decent movie made by fairly decent talent, so limiting itself to four early 20s tall black guys with different personalities would have been more within its limits.
Before “Bourne Identity” Matt Damon was valuable in Hollywood because his boyish looks marked him out as clearly the junior partner when cast opposite e.g. Clooney or Pitt. A lot of the early “Bourne” reviews emphasized the surprise casting. In classic Hollywood there used to be those types like Montgomery Clift or Mickey Rooney (both of whom had problems as they aged) who were cast opposite more manly-looking actors like John Wayne or Burt Lancaster. As Steve has remarked many times, now Hollywood leading men are almost all fresh-faced types like Ryan Gosling and Leonardo DiCaprio.
In a somewhat related story, Bill Simmons & Company just released a "Rewatchables" podcast ep on the Nick Nolte early-90s college basketball film "Blue Chips," which featured Bob Knight, Rick Pitino, Jim Boeheim, Anfernee Hardaway, Shaquille O'Neal, Bobby Hurley, Bob Cousy, and 1990s Indiana player Matt Nover, who was a real 1950s throwback https://www.theringer.com/podcasts/the-rewatchables/2025/03/24/blue-chips-with-bill-simmons-chris-ryan-and-van-lathan
“Goodfellas” isn’t a great example because there are only three principal characters and De Niro is supposed to be playing a generation older than Liotta. “The Irishman” indeed suffered from too many older white guys mumbling. In “The Godfather” Don Corleone has three sons who are cast to emphasize different phenotypic qualities, and his adoptive son (Robert Duvall) is very non-Italian looking. Similarly “The Big Lebowski” has a big cast but the Dude’s friends are opposite types (wiry Steve Buscemi and burly John Goodman) and the supporting players are differentiated by ethnicity: Germans, Mexicans, Brits.
Sometimes casts seem chosen to emphasize lack of differentiation: I’d imagine that the actors in “Full Metal Jacket” and “Black Hawk Down” were meant to meld together to some extent.
The "The Irishman" is an example that fits the point that there were more than 4 characters, unfortnately per Google, it was a box office flop. So perhaps there is merit to Steve's point but then one could counter that the multiple characters weren't all created distinctively.
The Godfather had 3 sons, but around the same age is also the Turk which is 4.
Here's where it gets tricky. Steve's point said nothing about dividing various characters into supporting and main; it ONLY said that perhaps there's a limit as to how many characters one can have before a film starts to get difficult to follow. And my point has been consistent--that that may or may not be relevant so long as multiple characters of an ensemble cast are drawn differently and distinctly from each other.
Also, the various Marvel films within the franchise the actors are basically are around the same age, and most of them are white, and yet there are clearly more than 4 characters.
Yet these films, for the most part, tended to make major amounts of money. Whether or not these characters were really distinctive or not can be left to others to decide.
Good points. "The Irishman" would have worked better 100 minutes shorter as "The Jimmy Hoffa Story." I'd mostly lost interest in Pacino over the years, but, wow, is he great at an advanced age in "The Irishman."
"Black Hawk Down" is pretty awesome, but I couldn't keep track of the huge cast of crew cut white guys.
"The Right Stuff" is a three hour epic that portrays Chuck Yeager and four of the seven Mercury astronauts. Five great performances, but that seems like about the limit.
I respectfully disagree with Pacino cast as Hoffa. His NYC brogue is fairly thick. The best Hoffa (visually, and in voice) remains Jack Nicholson in DeVito's Hoffa. Jack IS Hoffa. He's into the character the second he steps on screen and it certainly helped that he resembled so much the real Hoffa. Also Jack brings an energy or...vibrant intensity to the role that Pacino doesn't. He doesn't know how to play an Irish Midwesterner in the same way he does know how to play Lefty Guns in Donnie Brasco, which is set in 70's Brooklyn.
I'm sorry, but I can't get past the fact that he's doing a poor imitation of Hoffa and he doesn't look at all like Jimmy Hoffa. Not sure why Scorcese didn't just cast Nicholson as Hoffa, especially as he's around Pacino's age.
Obviously more than 4 characters is not the norm for Hollywood, but it can be done. But that's on the screenwriter(s) to make it happen before the cameras start to roll.
I'm terrible at telling screen characters apart and remembering their names. If you want me to understand a movie with an ensemble of seven black actors I need an old one, a young one, a fat one, a guy with a beard, maybe a short one, a super tall one and a guy who always wears a Mush Mouth hat, like in the Seven Samurai (as far as I remember).
Uh Seven Samurai had no mush mouth character (lol).
Funny because I can watch a film with 7 white actors and not get confused--assuming for a moment that each character is well defined (e.g. as in the magnificent seven)
So perhaps that's the answer: a film with an ensemble cast that has multiple characters isn't a problem, so long as the characters are well defined, distinctive, and stand out from one another. This of course is up to the screenwriter(s) to craft each character as distinctive. That's on them to get it right even before the cameras start rolling.
The Magnificent Seven had several famous and distinctive actors, Yul Bryner the bald guy, Charles Bronson (whatever he is) Steve McQueen.
When I saw LA Confidential in the theater I was terribly confused because I didn't realize two actors weren't the same character (Guy Pierce and Russel Crowe maybe? Russel Crowe wasn't known to me yet). After the show my mom told me she had the same problem. It made the plot hard to follow.
Sometimes casting directors just have a type.
That's what I've been getting at. Also the script was written in such a way that helped to bring out the diverse characters' personalities. That's how a multi character ensemble cast can be done the right way.
Funny, because I like LA Confidential and had no problem at all telling Pierce and Crowe apart--one wore glasses, was nebbish and a thinker, while the other one was taller and bulky hulky.
In fact, the screenwriter for LA confidential won the Oscar for best screenplay. And it was a damn fine script and excellent depiction of LA in the early 50s.
LA Confidential: great.
Magnificent Seven: silly.
I like them both, but for different reasons. To each their own. Kim Basinger won the Academy Award for her performance—who would’ve seen that coming? And yet Guy Pearce wasn’t even nominated.
Surely you liked it if you saw it as a kid.
Did Dave Chapelle comment there was only really room for one black comic movie star at a time? It was Chris Rock, then Kevin Hart, and we’ll see who comes next.
Your point is well made but Brenner, McQueen and Wallach, as the villain, dominate the film. Bronson and Coburn were not yet stars, Buchholz was German and virtually unknown to American audiences, and Dexter and Vaughn never became big stars. Dexter had an interesting life. He was pals with Frank Sinatra and saved Sinatra from drowning during the filming of "None but the Brave." He also married singer Peggy Lee, a marriage that lasted less than a year.
The Magnificent Seven was an ensemble cast, it wasn't a Yul Brynner vehicle. It had more than 4 different and directly defined characters. One thing that the film did better than Kurosawa's is that the antagonist's perspective was shown and the character was distinctively drawn.
Vaughn became a bankable star directly due to this film. Vaughn was on the hit TV show "The Man from Uncle", which made him a major star during the 60's. Also, Vaughn was a much bigger star when compared to Brad Dexter who remained a simple everyday character actor. But in the ensemble piece of Magnificent, Dexter's character shines through and he amply contributes to the picture, which is greater than the sum of its parts.
Another interesting item about Brad Dexter--he's mentioned in Harlan Ellison interview on Youtube regarding his encounter with Sinatra. Sinatra tried to bully Harlan in a club and sent Brad Dexter after him (Brad Dexter also filled in as occasional Sinatra bodyguard), but though he was nearly a foot taller, Ellison knocked him out. The episode was later recounted in Esquire's Gay Talese's essay "Frank Sinatra has a Cold".
The film also made Bronson and Coburn into stars (they were slowly moving up the ranks prior to Magnificent; they became stars directly due to this film). Coburn would become a superstar due to his later work in The Great Escape and perhaps Charade)
Interesting story about Dexter and Sinatra. Both Coburn and Bronson are favorites. Same year as The Magnificent Seven, Bronson did a Twilight Zone with Elizabeth Montgomery that was very good. He was still making his way up. And I still get a chuckle over Coburn's Schlitz Light commercials of the late 70s. He even admitted, "Yeah, the commercials were better than the beer."
Ellison had a gift of gab and was an amazing full of fun storyteller. Prior to Magnificent, Coburn was in an awesome little Western called Ride Lonesome ( with Randolph Scott, James Best (future Dukes of Hazard Roscoe P Coltrane) Lee Van Cleef, and Bonanza/Trapper John MD Pernell Roberts. Though the part was relatively small, Coburn shines through--perhaps it was on the strength of this film that he was cast in Magnificent as the film was released less than a year prior. Ride Lonesome was directed by Budd Boetticher, and was part of the Rannown series of films (a series of A- or B+ budgeted films that Scott made in mid to late 50's, and briefly highlighted by Martin Scorcese in the DVD intro).
Ellison had quite a career. The Star Trek episode is considered the best of the original series.
It's definitely a good episode. I prefer "Mirror Mirror" as well as "Bread and Circuses" and also the sometimes overlooked "All Our Yesterdays".
"Brad Dexter also filled in as occasional Sinatra bodyguard... though he was nearly a foot taller, Ellison knocked him out."
I don't believe that for a second. I met Ellison at a sci-fi convention in the '60s and the only way he was going to knock someone out is if that someone was a child. That way it could be an even match size-wise.
In the interview, Ellison mentions that he had learned a trick with a pool cue on how to knock someone out. He explains it in the video, and Esquire essayist Gay Talese confirms the incident in his Sinatra essay as Talese was an eyewitness to the event.
Either watch the Youtube video interview of Ellison's explanation or read Talese's essay "Frank Sinatra has a Cold" for the explanation of Ellison's encounter with Dexter.
So it did happen.
Well, the claim that he used a club rather changes the story. But your final sentence is not in evidence true. Perplexity: "When Dexter—a Sinatra associate—intervened aggressively, Ellison struck him in the solar plexus with a pool cue, disabling him. This detail, omitted from Gay Talese's Esquire profile "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," was later documented in other accounts of the encounter." (citing https://fanac.org/fanzines/Riverside_Quarterly/Riverside_Quarterly0902.pdf)
How seriously you take the claim in a mimeographed fanzine is up to you.
Then it all comes down to Gay Talese, still alive by the way, confirming this detail, since Talese was there in the club and witnessed the (alleged?) bruhaha between Dexter and Ellison.
Even I could tell Bronson and Coburn apart from the other white actors the first time I saw them. Distinctive looking/talking actors is a good cheat to help with audience members like me. Extremely different names help too. I have so many TV shows now that I watch and some reviewer will write about one of the characters and I have to look up the name to see who it is.
Wes Unseld
The good: only player to win MBA MVP and rookie of year in same season. Hit two clutch free throws to win Washington Bullets only NBA title in 1978.
The bad: lazy, terrible coach and GM of Bullets/Wizards. Put franchise in a rut that has lasted for 40 years. Possibly the most depressing franchise in all of sports. Haven’t played a truly meaningful basketball game in 46 years. What other franchise can say the same?
My favorite Wizards moment was a playoff game against the Cavs early in LeBron's career. Late in the game, Gilbert Arenas went to the line for two critical free throws. LeBron walked from midcourt to whisper in his ear, and he missed both.
The Bullets/Wizards had many problems after 1980. Owner Abe Pollin was self-made and a bit cheap. He came from the age when pro basketball wasn't rolling in the money like it is now. After the Bullets core got old- Hayes, Unseld and Dandridge- the Bullets wallowed around .500 for about a decade. They made the huge mistake in drafting some mediocrity named Kenny Green one pick ahead of Karl Malone circa 1985. Lucky Malone. Most of the 90s were terrible for the Bullets. Then there was the Arenas era where the Wizards couldn't get good enough.
The Bullets had Moses for two years and couldn't advance out of the first round of the playoffs. After making the NBA finals in 1979, they only won one series until 2005; beating the New Jersey Nets 2-0 in a mini-series in 1982
The Bullets last made the conference finals in 1979, which was so long ago that their opponents were the San Antonio Spurs, as back then they, the Houston Rockets, and New Orleans Jazz were all in the east. Only once the Dallas Mavericks were born did the NBA reälign and put the three Texas teams in the west
How do you not play a meaningful game in 46 years? Unfathomable
"Wes Unseld... only player to win MBA MVP and rookie of year in same season."
Wrong. Wilt Chamberlain also won NBA MVP and Rookie of the Year. Might be why the NBA Rookie of the Year award was renamed the Wilt Chamberlain Award.
Sorry off-topic but seems like iSteve-y material: https://archive.ph/yRr60
Huh, Hollyweird can't be trusted to accurately show history. Who knew?
I heard that "Titans" took some liberties, too. The state championship game was a 27-0 rout after an undefeated season.
Can integration be called a success if the school system population drops in half in the 70s, as it did in Alexandria?
the City of Alexandria combined three high schools into one. The football team has more than 22 returning starters and easily won the state championship. And the film totally ignored who integration affected female students.
I worked with a guy who went to TC Williams during the championship season. He says things weren't too chummy, chummy. There was a lot of animosity between the races. Today, I believe Williams has been renamed because old TC was the worst thing you can be- a "racist." Alexandria's gentrification has forced out some of the black and white blue-collar population. Alexandria is filled with $1 million + townhouses, mostly owned by white lefties. It also has a large Hispanic population of about 20 % who live in the old white blue-collar parts of Alexandria.
I was in a still all white 6th grade. A few rocks were thrown at buses at my sister's 10th grade newly junior high, but it was nothing like the Boston busing riots. I learned very little during an unpleasant integrated 7th, so was put in a private school for 8-12. The only black guy my older brother's "gang" kept up with for years had been their teacher.
The large '40s garden apt complex near us wanted to convert to condo, the City wouldn't let it, so the owners deliberately let it be trashed for the rest of the 70s. By the time I left in '92, native blacks were largely confined to public or subsidized housing, except for Dad's neighbors from DC, who doubled the size of their large house and vacationed in Europe.
OT, but yet again: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14532103/pennsylvania-politician-staged-hate-crime-planted-noose-desk.html
Link for the Daily Mail-paywalled: https://archive.ph/gn02l
Ironically, I believe none of the black players of Texas Western ever made it in professional basketball while two white Kentucky players, Louie Dampier and Pat Riley, had fine pro careers. Dampier was an ABA All-Star and Riley was third guard on some excellent Lakers teams. He later was an outstanding head coach for the Lakers.
Texas Western, located in El Paso, isn't basketball country. Mexican-Americans weren't made for basketball. To compete, Texas Western had to recruit cross country. Where I live in West Virginia, few of our college football and basketball players are from the state. West Virginia recruits heavily from Virginia and Florida.
Steve is right about how difficult for film audiences to follow more than four major players in a film. As a teen, I remember watching "A Bridge Too Far", a massive World War Two film with about twenty stars. By film's end I was still asking, "Who is Sean Connery playing?" and "Who is Robert Redford playing?"
Just a bit of trivia. The actor Sherman Hemsley died in El Paso where he retired. El Paso's black population is rather small, about 3 % in a city 81 % Hispanic.
If I could amend and extend my remarks, Dave Lattin of Texas Western had a marginal five year pro basketball career and Willie Worsley caught on for a year in the ABA.
Screenwriter William Goldman's famous memoir "Adventures in the Screen Trade" has a chapter about how "A Bridge Too Far" should have been awesome but wasn't quite.
Sherman Helmsley was awesome.
"A Bridge Too Far" went on too long and it was an Allied defeat rather than a victory. "The Longest Day" was as long but had a better tempo and was an Allied VICTORY. At the end of the "A Bridge Too Far" was a dull fifteen-minute monologue of Liv Ullman musing on how bad war is.
Helmsley was very funny and he made "The Jeffersons" a fine show. The woman who played Jefferson's mother was also very funny. The actor who played Jefferson(Henry?) on "All in the Family" had other commitments so "The Jeffersons" settled on Helmsley when that was spun off.
Can't recall if I told this story here, but about 15 years ago there was a sergeant in the SFPD, at Richmond station, who was a doppelganger for Sherman Hemsley, both looks and voice. I tripped across him because a guy on the street who I'd punched called 911 and reported that I'd pointed a Beretta 92 at him. So after 8 cops spent 10 minites looking under every parked car for the fictitious gun, Sherman showed up and yelled at me, "why you gotta cause so much trouble?" I replied, "Aw, you're just upset I was a better basketball player than you," which caused the young whote cops to crack up. So Sherman came back with, "Oh yeah? Well my dick's bigger than yours!"
I'm afraid I shall have to disagree, A Bridge Too Far is in the pantheon (up there with Zulu and Battle of Britain). The fact that it is a defeat brings perspective in the same way that the death of Sgt Elias death as a result of treachery adds to Platoon.
The constant victory theme of so many of the sports films is, though enjoyable as entertainment, trite. Sport and competition is about loss and its acceptance. In every league all but one team loses, every year and in every contest only one can be victorious. Achieving a draw in test cricket, going to a replay in the FA Cup, going to the seventh game in a World Series, all either about avoiding or delaying the ultimate defeat are emblematic of sport.
I imagine Hupp's players remember him and each other fondly and perhaps even now still have bonds that makes Kentucky (the state) a stronger and better place. What of seven stars from across the country and even abroad, in anything but victory what else can bring them together (and this can only apply to one team). What family and friends can cheer one of their owns striving and success. It also likely encourages the pernicious lowering of academic standards with winning ball games becoming the driver of supposed academic institutions.
Perhaps, I'm just down as I watched England win 3-0 but only two members of the eleven had two English parents and seven were of partial African descent or actually African.
Perhaps I'm odd wanting to watch Englishmen play for England but that brings us back to the valuable lesson of a Bridge Too Far about loss and learning to live with defeat😏
The "Rocky" sequels in which Rocky wins are pretty good, but the first "Rocky" movie in which he loses is an all-time classic.
I find it amusing that you feel the need to explain who Pat Riley was
I don't assume all my readers are as vastly knowledgeable about sports history as you are.
The antecedent of "you" in my comment was Derek Leaberry
Pat Riley is probably a non-entity for men under forty.
He did win that title with the Heat almost 20 years ago, but I concede those were not like the Showtime Lakers. I must ask though: what do you think the age range of the readers of this Substack are?
I forgot about Riley in Miami. I know he did a tour with the Knicks.
Texas Western center Dave Lattin was drafted 6th by the Warriors by didn't have a very successful career. Dampier was without question the best player on either team,
Right. I did correct myself. I just got into sports then and I vaguely remember Lattin as a reserve forward for some mediocre teams.
The first paragraph.
The problem is that the more diverse the population gets, the lower the common denominator becomes. Yes, diverse peoples can find common ground for the purposes of comity and harmony. But those things wind up being primal and basal, and not exactly haute culture.
Who doesn't like a little bit of structured violence?
"The Fast and the Furious" franchise cleaned up multi-racially, esp men. But who doesn't like low rumbling growls and "mine is faster than yours?"
Once again, not haute culture.
By the way, a key to John Wooden's success at UCLA was his political liberalism which appealed to Lew Alcindor(the future Kareen Abdul-Jabbar) and Bill Walton. Wooden's liberal politics were not outspoken but a quiet, reserved Mid-Western variety best compared to the sport's fiction of John R. Tunis. Moreover, Wooden was a star at Purdue during the beginning of the Great Depression which shaped his views. Without Alcindor and Walton, I'm not sure UCLA wins five of their national championships during the Wooden era. Wooden was also adept at signing southern California talent like Gail Goodrich and Sidney Wicks.
I happened to follow Bill Walton and a pretty young lady down Rush St. in Chicago for about a mile. Walton, who downplayed his height as only 6'11", was a specimen.
When you say “follow”?
I was walking home in the same direction as Walton and not surprisingly, he tended to walk reasonably fast, so trailing about 15 feet behind him through the nightlife district of Chicago was not inconvenient and allowed me to check out the reactions of people walking past him. Back then in the later 20th Century, Rush St. denizens tended to be Big Ten frat bros and sorority sisters. This was a number of years after his comeback in 1986 on the NBA's all time best white team of the 67-15 Celtics of Bird, McHale, Walton, Ainge, and about three pretty good white role players. So, Walton was a legend but also a little obscure: college player of the year three times in the early 1970s, NBA Finals MVP in 1977, NBA MVP in 1978, then many years of injury and obscurity, before one more NBA title as a great sixth man in 1986.
Every single person who walked past reacted to Walton with amazement. About one out of three guys would recognize him and tell their friends: "That's Bill Walton!" None of the young ladies knew who he was, but they were in awe of this incredible 7'-1" 260 pound physical specimen who had the swagger befitting a legend.
Biggest human I ever saw was James "Big Cat" Williams, offensive lineman for the Bears at a Cubs game. 6-10, over 400 pounds. Just staggering.
The scariest person I've ever seen was wrastler George "the Animal" Steele on televison. Fake wrastlin.
A seven footer is a pretty impressive.
Rupp was right, recruiting is unseemly. College teams are mercenary organizations today.
The coaches were being paid millions and refusing to allow their players the ability to transfer to many schools, the lawsuits wrote themselves. If the coaches are making real money, then everyone gets to make money.
Yep, if the NCAA and its member schools weren't so greedy, they wouldn't be in the mess they are in now. Jim Bouton noted in Ball Four that if the owners weren't so hard-line against the players they never would have unionized in the first place
The NCAA member schools even screwed up the transfer portal because they got greedy.
That’s a much later symptom of an earlier illness
My favorite story of basketball recruiting was when AL McGuire was recruiting Jim Chones, whose mother was from the Old Country, and Al brought his Irish mother along. Al and his mom walked in the house, the ladies retired to the kitchen, Al, Jim and his dad made small talk in the living room and a few minutes later the ladies walked in the living room and Jim's mom said "You are going to Marquette and that is that." Jim never knew what hit him.
John Ford was very good at working ensemble casts but the main action revolved around the main players, often John Wayne and a few other big stars like Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart or Maureen O'Hara. Ford had all those character actors that seemed to show up in Ford's films.
One of my favorite Hollywood photos is Ford having his regular 4 PM tea with the cast of "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." Ford with John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Vera Miles, Lee Marvin, Lee Van Cleef, Strother Martin, Andy Devine, Woody Strode, Edmond O'Brian, Jeanette Nolan and John Qualen.
Quentin Tarantino was born to make the Woody Strode biopic.
How much of your AmConMag stuff isn't online? I better continue to hold on to my back issues.
It's getting harder to find my stuff via search engines, especially for me because Google clearly deprioritized me a number of years ago.
Yandex actually isn't bad at finding stuff like this. Certainly for "unpopular" content.
I was today years old when I learned Don Haskins was white