Dennis Quaid stars as Ben Schwartzwalder in The Express (Universal)
Dennis Quaid has starred as football players in films like Any Given Sunday and Everybody's All American . But for The Express he hangs up his cleats and takes on the role of coach.
DENNIS QUAID: It's easier in some ways because you don't have to take the hits and standing around in cleats made in 1959 is hard on the back. Let the young men do the hitting.
Quaid plays is Ben Schwartzwalder, head coach of Syracuse University for 25 years.
DENNIS QUAID: I feel a responsibility when I play a real person to capture a person spirit to play them honestly not idealistically.
One of the players Schwartzwalder coached was Jim Brown. Quaid says he was fortunate enough to be friends with Brown who gave him insights into Schwartzwalder's character.
DENNIS QUAID: He said they butted heads quite a bit & hellip; but how much respect he had for him he made him a better football player and he shaped character.
Rob Brown stars as Ernie Davis in The Express (Universal)
In the film, Brown helps Schwartzwalder recruit a fast, impressive young player named Ernie Davis in 1959. Because of the social climate of the times, Quaid says the film is more than just a football movie.
DENNIS QUAID: It also looks at racism as it existed in late fifties and early sixties and that speaks to where we are today and how far we have come and how far we need to go. You know we have an African American who may be president. But it is a look back and I think we've looked back as it was honestly.
At the game played in the South, Schwartzwalder forbids Davis from taking the ball into the end zone for fear it would cause a riot.
DENNIS QUAID: That incident actually happened. Ben was thinking of his team there was real fear that it would spark a riot and people would get hurt thinking of his team but at the same time that doesn't make it right.
Quaid says that many people under the age of 40 or 45 say they were unaware of some of the conditions that existed less than a generation ago in the U.S.
DENNIS QUAID: They're shocked that that's the way it used to be I grew up in Houston in the late fifties and sixties, and I remember separate restrooms, separate drinking fountains, and separate places to sit at movies, the black people sat in the balcony with separate concession stands. Complete separation and certainly more overt in the south than in the north.
The Express (Universal)
In The Express the football field is a place where people of very diverse backgrounds are forced to work together for a common goal and what happens on the field proves to have broader implications. Ernie Davis was both a stellar athlete and a man willing to work for social change. Quaid says he was someone who lived fully and gracefully. &
DENNIS QUAID: Ernie Davis embodied that, he had a quiet grace, he transcended football and transcended color and was an amazing human being.
