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Clint Eastwood makes rugby’s day with his new film about Nelson Mandela, the 1995 World Cup, and how the sport helped bring blacks and whites together in racially-torn South Africa. In an exclusive interview with Matt Damon and three MORE of the film’s principals, Rugby Magazine gets the scoop on the making of the biggest American movie ever about rugby.
By Lois Elfman
It was a tournament that changed a nation. When he was elected president of South Africa in 1994 after decades of imprisonment, Nelson Mandela fought to bring the 1995 Rugby World Cup to his country because he saw it as a way to unite his people.
Rugby had long been one of the symbols of apartheid; considered a white man’s sport, while the black population of South Africa favored soccer. Mandela believed if he could get everyone loving rugby and behind the national team, the Springboks—a team even he had openly rooted against—a nation could unite and redefine itself. His mantra became, “One Team, One Country.”
It is an image stamped in history—Mandela, wearing a Springbok jersey bearing the number 6 of its captain, François Pienaar, and presenting the skipper with the William Webb Ellis Cup before 60,000 screaming fans chanting “Nelson, Nelson” after South Africa’s victory against the New Zealand All Blacks. Pienaar recalls looking up into the stands and seeing grown men crying and people hugging who probably had never said a civil word to each other.
“Hollywood could not write a better story,” Pienaar says. So they just had to tell this one.
A film about that historic tournament, Invictus, is opening nationwide on Dec. 11 and it might just change how millions of Americans view rugby. Directed by Academy Award-winning director and American screen icon Clint Eastwood, Invictus is the first American film about rugby to be produced by a major studio (Warner Bros.). Filmed entirely in South Africa, it stars Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela (Freeman is also an executive producer) and Matt Damon as François Pienaar.
The title of the film (which means “invincible” in Latin) comes from a short poem by British poet William Ernest Henley, which Mandela said served as an inspiration during his years of imprisonment.
Freeman had wanted to do a film about Mandela for a decade, but hadn’t found the right source for a project. When word began circulating about a book being written by John Carlin called Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation (published last year by Penguin Press), the focus for a potential film took shape. Anthony Peckham, a rugby lover who moved to the US from South Africa nearly 30 years ago, was brought in to write the screenplay. He had only Carlin’s book proposal as source material and actually completed the screenplay before Carlin finished his manuscript.
In a series of exclusive interviews with principals of the film, Rugby Magazine gets the inside story on the making of Invictus.
The Screenwriter
Anthony Peckham grew up near Durban, South Africa, an avid follower of the Springboks. During his high school years, he wanted to excel as a rugby player, but lack of size and speed relegated him to “C” team hooker, trying to avoid injury and humiliation. After moving to California, he fed his love of rugby by following local club teams. Although his pro-fessional screenwriting resume consists mostly of thriller film credits, he relished the opportunity to craft a story about a sport he loved and a homeland he has seen transformed. Before writing the Invictus screenplay, Peckham watched endless matches on YouTube and read as much as he could about the 1995 Springbok team. He also spent a week with Carlin picking his brain.
“One of my tasks in writing this script was figuring out a mechanism for explaining rugby to an American audience,” Peckham says. “I created one scene where the Springboks lead coaching clinics in the townships while they’re training for the World Cup. They explain the basic rules to the township kids who’ve never seen rugby before in their lives. The net result is that anyone who sees this movie in America will come away with a greater appreciation for the game and for how tough it is.”
According to Peckham, one of the film’s major story lines—and it’s all true—details how Mandela united two opposing groups of bodyguards protecting him; his old ANC (African National Congress) bodyguards and the group of white special branch bodyguards who’d protected the previous apartheid president.
“He made them work together,” relates Peckham. “The white guys were crazy about rugby but the ANC bodyguards hated the game, almost as a political stance. As the year unfolds, all the way through the World Cup, the white bodyguards explain the matches to the ANC group, which allowed me to explain rugby to the film audience in a very organic way.”
Peckham and Eastwood paid attention to every detail, which included bringing to South Africa a group of New Zealanders who could teach the actors the Haka, the traditional New Zealand dance that is included in scenes leading to the final match. “The rugby brotherhood got together to help the film be even better,” says Peckham.
The Action Expert
With as much as 30 minutes of game action in Invictus, the rugby sequences are crucial in generating the film’s sought-after emotional impact. The filmmakers knew it was essential to produce an authentic depiction of rugby and the reenactment of those 1995 World Cup matches, so a company called Sports Studio was brought in to assure that every detail of the rugby was spot on.
Sports Studio has staged the action sequences for such sports films as Coach Carter, Semi-Pro, We Are Marshall and The Game Plan, as well as Miracle, the story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team that won the gold medal in Lake Placid. Sports coordinator Aimee McDaniel asked Eastwood and Freeman if she could follow a similar casting approach as in Miracle, where instead of hiring actors and teaching them hockey, for most of the minor roles she hired hockey players, and the director and other members of the creative team taught them to act.
“Mr. Eastwood kind of loves that raw character anyway,” McDaniel says. “Probably about 99 percent of the players in the film are actual rugby players who play in some type of league in South Africa.” In order to accurately reflect the ethnic diversity of the opposing teams, some rugby players in the film came from New Zealand and Tonga.
McDaniel worked hand in hand with Pienaar’s former Springboks teammate Chester Williams and two local coaches during a two-and-a-half-week training camp where Matt Damon and all the player/actors learned the actual plays from the 1995 World Cup. Prior to that camp, she spent about six weeks studying film and breaking down the action within the context of the script.
“We taught these guys what happened in those ’95 matches in as much detail as possible,” McDaniel explains. “We told them, ‘You need to pass the ball here. There’s a ruck here. Then we get a scrum here.’ Then we would film them practicing and show them what they did or didn’t do right. Of course, Mr. Eastwood is a little organic. As things develop he likes to really get into the action.” So there were periods where Eastwood filmed free play and McDaniel says the players loved showing off for the director.
“We want it to look like it’s not rehearsed, but this is based on a true story,” McDaniel notes. “At the same time, you want real action.”
McDaniel estimates that 28 to 30 days of the shoot were spent filming action sequences and Eastwood tried to fill the stands at the stadiums in order to effectively depict the energy. The New Zealand game was shot at Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg with 5,000 cheering extras. When the players portraying the New Zealand team ran out on the field to perform the Haka, the extras spontaneously booed. When the South African team ran out, they cheered and called ou names of members of the ’95 team.
For the semifinal against France, which was played at night, Eastwood and company staged only the last two minutes of the game and they didn’t bring in an audience. “The guys asked, ‘Where’s our crowd? We really like when they’re out there cheering.’”
Longtime rugby enthusiasts will notice one inaccuracy in the film’s rugby action based on how the game was played 14 years ago. “Back in ’95, when they would throw the ball in the line-out, the guy had to jump before you could lift him. Nowadays you’re able to lift your guy and you’re already stable,” McDaniel says. “Our line-out guys had a hard time jumping and then being lifted.”
Chester Williams was concerned that the first look most Americans would get of rugby would appear uncoordinated. After conferencing with Eastwood, McDaniel and Williams decided to keep the line-out new school. “I figured as long as we all knew it and we all embraced it, that’s what we’d do,” she says.
In the end, McDaniel says, she and other American members of the film crew became instant fans of rugby. While on location, they attended Stormers games, a South African rugby union team. “Rugby now has at least another 40 American fans,” she says.
The Captain
With South Africa sports teams barred from international competition for a number of years during the age of apartheid, rugby was a relatively small part of François Pienaar’s life during his early 20s. He attended university and studied law, and he played in local competitions. When South Africa was allowed back into the international sporting arena in late 1992, Pienaar started playing for the Springboks, becoming the captain in 1993.
“When we came out of isolation, we had to learn quite a bit about where the game of rugby had gone,” Pienaar recalls. “Those years were a very steep learning curve for us. After we heard the World Cup would be coming to South Africa it created incredible excitement for the players. Everybody tried to make that team, to play in front of their home crowd.”
Pienaar’s close relationship with Mandela, whom he calls “Madiba,” is a significant part of the film’s storyline, so Pienaar was brought on as a consultant. His role was not to help stage the rugby action; rather he was responsible for working with Matt Damon to capture the emotions and energy of the time. Pienaar also took Morgan Freeman and producing partner Lori McCreary to see a rugby match at the Cape Town venue where South Africa played Australia in the opening match of the 1995 World Cup.
“The attention to detail in the film was just phenomenal, “Pienaar says. “I was blown away by it.”
His first meeting with Damon took place at Pienaar’s home, and he cooked dinner. “When I opened the door, the first thing Matt said to me was, ‘I’m much bigger in the movies,’” Pienaar says. (Damon later relates the same story, adding that he was looking up at Pienaar, who at 6-foot-3 is several inches taller than the actor.) Over dinner, Pienaar tried to convey to Damon the atmosphere of the time and the enduring value of the events.
“During the course of the tournament, everybody in South Africa started to get excited about this team and supported it,” Pienaar says. “Words can’t describe what it was like to be there. This feeling that went through one’s body was incredibly emotional and there was incredible pride in what we were doing. You wanted to play harder than you’d ever played before in your life and then some.
“It was also about how you embrace pressure,” he adds. “If you don’t like pressure, you shouldn’t be an athlete. If you don’t want to push your body to where it’s never been before, then you won’t win any major competitions. Rugby is a total team game. Everybody needs to sing off the same hymn sheet because it is how well you play together that will make you champions.”
Pienaar says he is amazed by how much people in South Africa still talk about that now-famous World Cup competition and he hopes that emotional energy will carry over to Americans who see the film.
“American athletes are just amazing,” he says. “I’ve always said that if America decided to take this competition seriously, then rugby will truly become a global sport. Hopefully this movie will give them that kick-start they so desperately need and so deserve.”
The Star
When Matt Damon attended Harvard University, some of his college buddies played rugby so he knew a little bit about the game before signing on to play François Pienaar in Invictus. He also knew he had to get into perhaps the best shape of his life.
“If you talk to François, South Africa won that ’95 World Cup because of their players’ fitness, among other things,” Damon says. “It was a sheer act of will and discipline that gave them the edge. François talked me through their training regimen and it was incredible the shape those guys were in.”
Prior to going on location, Damon spent months sprinting and lifting weights in order to bulk up and look somewhat like the 6-foot-3, 235-pound Pienaar in his playing days. Although when it came to his legs, the actor asked his director for some help.
“You’re kind of genetically stuck with the legs you have,” Damon explains. “I worked hard on my legs, but each of François’ legs is like two of mine. So I showed up on set in terrific shape and very strong, but I said to Clint, ‘You’re going to have to do some kind of digital thing on my legs because have you seen Francois’ legs? They’re like tree trunks.’”
Damon performed a lot of the action sequences, but knew when the free play started he had to let his stunt double, Jonathan Smith, step in.
“If you’re in a ruck or a maul, there’s no way to predict where anybody is going to go,” Damon says. “It really is a chaotic event. We couldn’t guarantee that my nose wouldn’t get broken, which would shut the film down.” The actor remembers how his college roommate broke his nose almost every week. “When he’d walk in the door,” Damon says laughing, “my first question was, ‘What minute?’”
Although Damon had seen his share of rugby matches in college, the preparations for Invictus gave him deeper insight and appreciation for the sport. Spending time with Pienaar also helped him shape his portrayal.
“The rugby stuff was helpful, but it was much more helpful to spend time with Francois and try to capture his integrity and natural leadership ability,” Damon explains. “He climbed Kilimanjaro while I was there and I was talking to friends who went up with him. He literally got them to the top of the mountain. When they were feeling weak, like they couldn’t go on, he would start singing. He would run backward up the mountain even though he was hurting too.
“It’s his leadership style. François is just one of those guys who can inspire people around him. He doesn’t ask for anything from you that he’s not willing to give himself. If I got that part of him right [in the film] then I’ve done the job well.”
During the shoot in South Africa, Damon was deeply moved by people who could tell him the minutest details of the ’95 World Cup and how the tournament affected their lives. He says this added to the sense of responsibility he felt for getting what was put on film right. He also hopes Invictus helps build a fan base for rugby in America and that movie audiences “will see the players as the gladiators they are.”
Perhaps the sport might even find a place in Damon’s next Bourne film. Will Jason Bourne remember he used to play wing forward?
“Maybe that’s the final piece of his memory,” Damon says. “It all comes back to him and he leads America into their first World Cup.”
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