Kurt Russell hasn’t socialized with his Miracle co-stars for a very good reason

If you’ve ever been to a hockey game before (especially a playoff game), you know it’s one of the most exciting experiences in sports. So it’s strange that Hockey wasn’t grinding for more movies. “Slap Shot” is clearly an indisputable sports movie classic, while “The Mighty Ducks” franchise may have done more to popularize the sport in the United States than the Edmonton Oilers selling Wayne Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings.

All of these are important factors in promoting America’s greatest game of ice, but if I were to point to one seismic moment that shook the country and turned them addicted, there’s only one answer: the U.S. men’s hockey team’s shocking upset of the juggernaut Soviet Union team at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. The match was not broadcast live, so the entire country was glued to their television sets later in the day, unaware that the exhilarating result was waiting for them. I was only seven years old at the time, and I can remember it all clearly.

They called it “Miracle on Ice,” and it was such an exciting and dramatic game that it was only a matter of time before someone turned it into a movie. Surprisingly, it took 24 years, but director Gavin O’Connor, working from a screenplay by Eric Guggenheim, He made the movie “Miracle” starring Kurt Russell As coach Herb Brooks. The players were all relative newcomers who had made very few films, and certainly had not worked with a star of Russell’s caliber. So the actor made a strange choice: he stayed away from the boys until it was time to film. This may seem like an arrogant creative decision, but Russell did it for the benefit of his co-stars.

In a 2004 interview With Blackfilm.comRussell explained that he was drawing on his own experience as a young actor when he took this approach. When the star was first starting out, he would take some time to get to know his co-stars and fraternize with them off-camera. This was all well and good until he had to do the scene. Russell then found himself laughing during the takes because the man he spoke to off camera was so different in personality.

Russell soon realized that this goofy game of pretend was just a job. So when? He was creating a “miracle” that could be watched again With so many young men having little or no experience acting in front of the camera, he was sensitive to the awkwardness and insecurity they might feel if he wandered around on set – not because he’s an idiot, but because these guys grew up watching his films. According to Russell:

“I didn’t want them… to go through the process of getting to know Kurt and then seeing Kurt be Herb. And to have any kind of confusion there, or any kind of change to make. I said that would be dangerous. They would have enough to deal with. So I thought the best thing to do was stay away from them.”

It works because every kid in this movie reminds me of many of the hockey players I grew up with. They’re clearly connected to each other, and that’s a big part of what makes the movie so special. And because Russell is a man’s man, he finally invites the boys over for drinks and a game. Per Russell, “I think there were only about two nights to go, and I had them all come into the room and we had a few beers and I said, ‘Yes, good to see you.’ But they understood. They really understood by then.”