Remember The Titans LINK

In Real Life: Gerry's girlfriend was named Becky, and she lived next door to Yoast. "She and Gerry broke up about (the time of the accident, described below)," he says in his DVD commentary. "They did break up. I don't know if Gerry's attitude and his association with his friends had anything to do with it. She told me it was because he had too many girlfriends." According to the 71titans.com Web site, "Emma is, at best, a composite of bad traits of a lot of people."

Remember The Titans

I used to love remember the titans as a kid but rewatching the movie made me realize how corny, unintentionally funny, shamelessly manipulative it was lmao. Literally one of the most cookie cutter movies about racism I've ever seen

"People say that it can't work, black and white. Here, we make it work every day. We still have our disagreements, of course, but before we reach for hate, always, always, we remember the Titans."

The 2000 Disney film "Remember the Titans" is best remembered as a heartfelt story about courage, brotherhood, and fighting racial bigotry in the name of football. It's also one of the highest grossing sports movies of all time. Directed by Boaz Yakin and written by Gregory Allen Howard, the film tells the true story of high school football coach Herman Boone and his team, the Titans, overcoming the racial tensions of the time and becoming a family along the way.

Marie Johnson Saadiqa-Turner was one of the four cheerleaders from George Washington High School chosen to take the bus to T.C. Williams. "I wasn't excited to go," Saadiqa-Turner told Northern Virginia Magazine. "GW was mainly a Black school. We weren't used to having the whites and Blacks together. When we came together, we were skeptical of who they were and what cheers they did." She recalled the GW girls as being more "soulful," while describing the girls from Francis Hammond High School as "rigid." They eventually learned each others' cheers and how to mix the styles to make it work, even managing to become friends. "By the second week of practice, we had come together. We became close," Saadiqa-Turner remembered.

As dramatic a moment this makes, it didn't really happen this way. The real-life team did tour the Gettysburg battlefield, but they had a tour guide and visited during a more reasonable time of day. Herman Boone remembered the tour guide as being very old, possibly in his 90s, and that he had been leading these tours for about 60 years (via ESPN.com) "He knew everything," Boone recalled. "As we stood there in that cemetery, (we) listened to him paint the picture of the thousands of young men who just fell dead."

In addition to Sheryl, Bill Yoast had three other real-life daughters who were not portrayed in the film. All of his daughters lived with their mom. Bill Yoast told producer Jerry Bruckheimer, "I have four daughters. I don't like to look like I only have one daughter." Sadly, Sheryl passed away in 1996 before the film was made, but her sisters were okay with the film version of the Yoast family. In the DVD commentary, Yoast remembered Sheryl as "not quite the football fanatic they show here."

Rufus Littlejohn, a linebacker on the 1971 Titans team, remembered the hoopla being confined to just the high school and neighborhood. "The day before game day, you'd wear your jersey around school and pump up some enthusiasm," Littlejohn told Northern Virginia magazine. "But as far as the rest of Alexandria, it was sort of ho-hum."

Craig Kirkwood, who played Titans quarterback Jerry "Rev" Harris: They sent me a script, and I read it in my apartment. I had a roommate at the time, and I remember reading this and I was like, "Dude, I will get coffee on this movie. I'll be a PA on this movie. I will whatever." The script was so good compared to a lot of the stuff I was reading at the time. A lot of the stuff wasn't written by Black writers, and I'm sorry, they just don't know how to write for Black characters when that's not your culture. I just loved the script, and I told my agent, "However you can get me in this room, get me in the room." They originally read me for Donald's part, for Petey. I read for Petey and they said, "Yeah, that's cool, but we're thinking about somebody else."

Donald Faison, who played Titans running back/linebacker Petey Jones: I went in on the audition, wore a tank top and shorts, cargo shorts. I wore the tank top because I had been a football player and I had been working out and stuff because it had been pretty much all I could do at the time. I remember Boaz saying, "You work out, huh?" In my mind, I was like, "Check." First part of the audition, check, look the part. We went through the audition and he said, "Very good." I went outside, and I remember running into Anthony Anderson and he was like, "Who are you auditioning for?" I said, "I'm auditioning for Petey." He said, "You should be freaking auditioning for Julius, man. Look how big you are." I'm like, "Whatever, dude!" He was auditioning for the assistant coach, Coach Hines. He said he wanted to audition for Julius but they were saying he's too old. He and I are about the same age. I remember thinking, "Aw, man. I didn't get the part. I'm going out for Petey Jones, and if they think Anthony's too old, they definitely think I'm too old." And then right away, it happened.

Panettiere: I can even remember what the room looked like and our director, Boaz Yakin, being really excited about my performance. I walked out feeling like I had gotten the job, and in all my years in the business, that was one of the only times I had ever felt that sure of myself.

Kress: I remember Jerry saying to me, "He doesn't look like a football player." I said, "I know, but he's so good." [We had to] somehow try to make that work, so we did. There is Ryan Gosling in that movie, which is crazy.

Faison: I was very excited. I couldn't believe it. I remember running into Stacey Dash at some party at the Skybar and her being, "Yo, you doing that Denzel Washington movie?" I was like, "Yep." She was like, "You motherf---er." I was like, "Yeahhh."

Faison: Since then I've seen Denzel out so much, and he's such a great person. ... He is the dopest person you will ever meet. He is just so cool. When making the movie he was very hard on us, though. He was very much Coach Boone. I remember us being like, "Let us get pictures with you." He was like, "After we're done, all of that is going to be available to us. But let's finish this first, guys." And I remember thinking, "Wow, that sucks." But then after it was done, he kept his word.

Faison: Denzel came one day and got on the sled, and we had to push him 100 yards, nine of us, just so he could see what it would be like to be the coach. I remember being like, "Ah, man, I love you Denzel, but I wish you weren't here right now. I really wish you were gone right now, dude." All that stuff ... they taught us how to do up-downs, taught us how to do where it's three players and one jumps over the other and rolls and then jumps over the other person. It's called monkey rolls or something like that. We had to learn how to do all of that so when we got to shooting, we would be able to do it. We were in such good shape by the time we were shooting.

Kirkwood: It was amazing. It was early, early morning. Had the fog machines going, and I remember reading the script, that was the scene that really made an impression on me. So to be in it at the time was a culmination of a lifetime of work up to that point.

Faison: All of us were waiting for our moment to do our scene with Denzel. We each have a moment in the movie. Every character. Ethan was the first one to get the scene done, if I remember correctly.

Faison: By the time Ethan got to shoot that, I remember we were all laughing and we were pissed because we couldn't sit next to each other. The movie is about segregation turning into integration, right? They kept segregating us, and we'd turn around and it'd be on Denzel and Ethan. We'd all switch sides and go and sit with each other because we were all friends at this point.

Faison: He would do things like, "Do me a favor, Ryan. Lie down on the floor and pretend that you're dead so we can sing, 'Na na na na, hey hey, goodbye.'" So we could feel the emotion in that s---. And we would all be like, "All right." So Ryan would lie down on the floor and we'd be like, "Na na na na." Then you'd feel that, like, "Oh my god, OK." And you look up and Wood's got tears coming down his eyes. You'd be like, what the s---? So the hospital scene, when we got to that point, I remember the rehearsals for all of this stuff, so we're all very melancholy in that scene. It really did feel like one of our own had gotten injured and wasn't going to be able to play in the game with us.

Yakin: They filled it up and had like five drive-in-sized screens. They filled it up with like 30,000 high school students. I remember jets flew overhead and there were people parachuting down into the stadium. There was a moment where my girlfriend was like, "Is that for the premiere?" I said, "I don't know."

Fisher: Hayden Panettiere was a little girl, and we were standing before we take our seats and there's a big crowd there and she's kind of like, "I can't see anything." I remember I picked her up and held her so she could see. I just remember that. She's this little girl like, "I can't see a thing. I'm too little." She's someone, obviously she didn't play football, but she was someone when we were filming the movie that I'm like, "This girl is going to be a big star."

Panettiere: I remember feeling like a princess. The premiere was massive. We got to ride around the stadium in golf carts, waving at the crowd. It was like being a Disney princess for a 10-year-old.

Later at the motel, a woman, Hayley, and a young child, Oliver, show up to find out about the body that was snatched from the morgue. The woman finds Prometheus on the bed and when he returns to life, he remembers her and she introduces him to his son, who has the same affliction as Prometheus, beginning when he turned 7. The boys decide to figure out what to do about the curse from Zeus in order to save the kid from dying each day. 041b061a72