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KURT RUSSELL (Herb Brooks):
“I met Herb twice, but it was two full days and we talked about everything under the sun. It’s a lot of fun for an actor to have the opportunity to play someone. It’s confining, because the minute you see someone, you have your vision of how they appear to you, that may not be how they think of themselves.”
BILLY SCHNEIDER (plays his father Buzz Schneider in the movie):
“My mother called me and said they were making a movie about my father’s game, and they were looking for people who could skate. I thought, ‘I can make a couple of hundred bucks as an extra.’ I don’t know to this day when they found out that I was Buzz’s son – even into the shooting there were people coming up to me, saying, ‘I didn’t know you were playing your father, how neat is that?’”
BUZZ SCHNEIDER:
“It was overwhelming to see the movie, I had tears coming down my face. It was something that Billy got to be a part of, that happened 23 years ago. It’s hard to believe.”
NATHAN WEST (Rob McClanahan):
“I worked with Rob a lot, we had a lot of contact, which was great. I wrote him a 10-page questionnaire that he had to answer. I said, ‘You’ve got to answer these questions, or I’m moving in!’”
EDDIE CAHILL (Jim Craig):
“I watched hours and hours of raw interview footage of Jim. I didn’t meet him until right before we began shooting, when he came up to Vancouver. And what he did was give me the confidence to go forward, because I had his blessing. I could do him justice, because he told me I could.”
CRAIG on how he heard of Brooks’ death:
“I was in the Oklahoma City Airport and I got a call from ESPN. They had left me a voice mail saying, ‘Oh my God, Jimmy. I’m so sorry.’ Then I looked up and on the television they were showing Herb Brooks. He was our patriarch, so a piece of us was missing.”
RUSSELL:
“Herb was a guy who said, ‘I’ll be your coach, but I won’t be your friend.’ I’m usually a pretty outgoing sort with whomever I’m working with. But for this role, like Herb, I felt it would be better if I maintained some sort of distance from the rest of the cast.”
CRAIG:
“We [the team] never cared if there was a movie, because we had moved on. It was the passion of Gavin O’Connor that had us interested, because to us it would be a legacy. All of it is incredibly accurate.”
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THE CONCEPT:
