Remember the Titans

The only thing more powerful than racism is Denzel Washington's charisma as a high school football coach

Four straight Fridays, four straight Denzel Washington movies. Welcome to DENZEMBER, a month-long celebration of the greatest actor who’s ever lived.

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Directed By: Boaz Yakin
Other Notable Films From Yakin: Fresh, Now You See Me, The Harder They Fall
Starring: Denzel Washington, Will Patton, Wood Harris, Ryan Hurst, Donald Faison, Hayden Panettiere
Screenplay By: Gregory Allen Howard
Movie Synopsis: At a newly integrated high school, the hiring of a Black football coach sparks immediate tension.
Signature Line: “Left side! …Strong side!”

THE INTRODUCTION
An accounting of time, and people, and context

The first time the executives at Disney read the script for Remember the Titans, they didn’t want it. And the second time they read the script, they didn’t want it. In fact, per Gregory Allen Howard, who wrote the screenplay after learning about the impact the real-life Titans had on the community of Alexandria, Virginia following his move there in 1996, nobody wanted it.¹

But then, an asteroid the size of Texas threatened all life on Earth and everything changed.

In June of 1998, Armageddon, a sci-fi disaster movie about a ragtag group of oil drillers who get sent to space to save the world, was released. And it opened big. It was instantly the number one movie in the country (it brought in $54.2 million in just its first five days²), and eventually the number one movie on the planet (it ended its global box office run at $553.7 million,³ nearly $73 million ahead of the second-place finisher⁴).

And, as fortune would have it, two of the guys who produced Armageddon for Disney (Jerry Bruckheimer and Chad Oman) were the same two guys trying to get Disney to buy Remember the Titans. The Monday after Armageddon’s opening weekend, Oman sent the script to the studio for a third time. “You made enough profit Saturday morning to pay for this whole movie,” Oman recalled telling them.⁵ “It’s important. You have to do it.”

And just like that, all the NOs that Howard had been hearing began being replaced with YESes.

Yes, Remember the Titans would get made. Yes, Academy Award-winner Denzel Washington would star in it. Yes, it would be a hit ($136.8 million on a budget of $30 million). Yes, Howard’s vision for the movie—an incisive look at race in America packaged as a feel-good story about America’s favorite sport—would be honored.

And, ultimately:

Yes, Remember the Titans would push its way into the uppermost echelon of sports movies.

THE VIEWING
A timestamped rewatch of Remember the Titans

0:50: Denzel Washington is here. He plays Herman Boone, the man hired to coach the football team at a newly integrated high school (T.C. Williams). And we’ll get to all the sports stuff in a second. First, though, I wanna say: The majority of this movie is set in 1971. And the first time I saw it, I remember thinking, “Man, 1971 isn’t that long ago to have still been integrating schools. That’s pretty crazy.” But then, while researching for this, I looked up when the last school district in the country was integrated. And do you know when it was? 20-fucking-16!!!!!! Kids were still going to segregated schools when LeBron won a championship in Cleveland. How the fuck?⁶

2:17: Ryan Hurst is here. He plays Gerry Bertier, an All-American linebacker for the all-white school that gets consolidated during the integration. The defining character of Hurst’s career will always be Opie from Sons of Anarchy, but this role is a very close second. It’s a perfect use of Hurts’s ability to combine his overwhelming physical attributes (he’s 6-foot-5) with his overwhelming ability to draw genuine emotion out of an audience. He’s wildly charming, and also absolutely believable as a top-level linebacker.

3:57: Will Patton is here. He plays Bill Yoast, the longtime head coach of the football team for the aforementioned all-white high school. I love Will Patton a lot. Back in October, I mentioned in the Halloween essay that he has a certain kind of Noble Dad manliness that always activates something in me. Him and Denzel partnering up in this movie is just like… I mean… let’s go out to the garage and build some stuff with our bare hands while we talk about what it means to be a Good Man™, you know what I mean?

7:07: Wood Harris is here. We’re on a real heater with character introductions right now. My buddy Jason Concepcion and I used to do a once-a-week NBA podcast where we’d hand out pop culture-themed trophies to various basketball-related storylines. (For example, we’d give out the DENZEL WASHINGTON IN TRAINING DAY trophy to “whoever it was who had the best overall performance this week,” or the DANIEL PLAINVIEW FROM THERE WILL BE BE BLOOD “I’VE ABANDONED MY CHILD! I’VE ABANDONED MY BOY! trophy to “whoever it was who gave up on something this week.” Things like that.) I’ve been tinkering with the idea of adding something similar to the GOOD MOVIE essays. I haven’t exactly figured it all the way out just yet, but I know that if I do end up doing it it’s gonna include some version of a WOOD HARRIS I’M SO HAPPY THIS GUY’S IN THIS MOVIE trophy, because I am always so happy when Wood Harris is in something.

7:08: P.S. I got so excited about seeing him just now that I forgot to mention: Harris plays Julius Campbell, an extremely talented defensive end who’ll eventually team up with Bertier to turn trying to run past the line of scrimmage against the Titans into something akin to diving head-first into a woodchipper.

7:49: Hayden Panettiere is here. She plays Sheryl, Coach Yoast’s precocious young daughter. She’s wonderful in this. I feel fully confident arguing that her performance in this should earn her an invitation to the Great Performances By Child Actors In Movies That Aren’t Specifically For Kids dinner party.⁷

9:54: Coach Yoast is informing the white players (and their parents) that he’ll be taking a year off because he was passed over for the head coaching job at T.C. Williams. Several of the players threaten to boycott the season if he’s not their coach, including Alan (a slow-footed cornerback played by Ryan Gosling) and Ray Budds (a fullback played by Burgess Jenkins). Two things to mention here:

1. This was the first major role of Ryan Gosling’s career. There’s a great clip of him at the film’s premiere talking about what it was like to work with Denzel. Gosling says, “There wasn’t a whole lot of acting involved from us because when Denzel, like, looks at you, and he’s yelling at you, you’re, like, scared, you know? And you just do what he says. You don’t have to act really. He just makes you sort of be there.” I think that last part speaks to why (and how) Gosling would go on to become one of the finest actors of his generation. He always feels unshakably present in roles. And it makes a lot of sense in my head that it’s a trick he absorbed from Denzel, who does that same sort of thing.

2. Ray Budds is the most bigoted player on the team. He’s so racist, in fact, that Bertier (his best friend) eventually kicks him off the team for it. And so for the rest of this essay, anytime the name “Ray Budds” appears, it will be followed with “(Fuck Ray Budds).” Within the confines of the GOOD MOVIE universe, his legal name is “Ray Budds (Fuck Ray Budds).”

11:08: Donald Faison is here. He plays Petey Jones, a charismatic running back who eventually transitions over to the defensive side of the ball. The cast list for Remember the Titans is so fucking stacked, man. I mean, Donald Faison was in one of the best TV shows ever (Scrubs), two of the best high school movies ever (Clueless and Can’t Hardly Wait), one of the best new-stage-of-life movies ever (Waiting to Exhale), and one of the best musical comedies ever (Pitch Perfect), and he’s, like, SEVENTH on the call sheet for Remember the Titans. Crazy.

11:16: Here we go. Coach Boone is meeting his team for the first time. Denzel asserting his authority in a situation is ALWAYS compelling (the diner scene in Training Day; the Russian roulette scene in Malcom X; the street-side assassination in American Gangster; etc), but rarely has it ever been as fun as it is here. Being on the receiving end of one of his I’M THE ALPHA PREDATOR moments probably feels like standing under a waterfall and trying to stare up through the downpour.

13:09: Oh, man. Another favorite. Ethan Suplee is here. He plays Louie Lastik, a kind-hearted offensive lineman and the only white player who fraternizes with the Black players without being forced to.

13:10: P.S. Denzel notwithstanding, Suplee quietly has the strongest TOP FIVE MOVIES of anyone on the cast (Mallrats, Dogma, Remember the Titans, Blow, The Wolf of Wall Street).

13:11: P.P.S. In just a few minutes, we’re gonna watch Coach Boone lead his team through a training camp meant to help the players see past skin color. And by the end of camp, he’ll have done exactly that. Not counting Ray Budds (Fuck Ray Budds), the players will all like each other, and respect each other, and appreciate each other.

But if we look at the careers of several actors who play Titans, it becomes clear that Coach Boone’s race-forward football camp kind of backfired. To wit: Louie Lastik becomes a neo-Nazi in 1998’s American History X; Alan becomes a neo-Nazi in 2001’s The Believer; Bertier joins an all-white motorcycle gang in Sons of Anarchy; and Julius becomes a correctional officer who smuggles a gun into prison at the request of an imperious Black nationalist in Oz. That means four of the seven key members of the roster were radicalized in one direction or the other. That’s a 57 percent radicalization rate!

14:23: Coach Yoast decided to take an assistant coaching position under Coach Boone. Look at these two Good Men™ being Good Men™ together.

14:42: When Coach Boone gives the offensive playbook to Coach Yoast and his assistant (Coach Tyrell), Coach Tyrell comments on how thin it is. Coach Boone responds, “I run six plays, split veer. It’s like Novocain. Just give it time, always works.” I think this is an exactly perfect offensive strategy for high school teams and below. Being able to run 50 different plays at a KIND OF OKAY level is never as effective as being able to run six plays at a DEVASTATINGLY CONSISTENT level.

15:19: Bertier tries to strong-arm Coach Boone into guaranteeing that a certain amount of positions on the team will be reserved for the white players. It ends with Coach Boone forcing Bertier to call him his “daddy” in front of everyone, which I imagine is the very last thing Bertier went into that conversation expecting to happen.

17:47: These two together… hell yes.

19:23: Opening day of training camp and we’ve already gotten our first race war skirmish. I wish HBO’s Hard Knocks was around back then. This would’ve made for an incredible season.

20:13: The part where Coach Boone gathers all the players and tells them that he expects them to play perfect football is such a great I’M DENZEL WASHINGTON moment. (“We will be perfect… in every aspect of the game. You drop a pass, you run a mile. You miss a blocking assignment, you run a mile. You fumble the football and I will break my foot off in your John Brown hindparts… and then you will run a mile. Perfection… Let’s go to work.”) The way he speeds up in certain parts and slows down in others; the way he stares through people rather than at them; the way he fills each pause with enough gravity to crumple a Ford F-150. He’s a bonafide, actual, legitimate one-of-one.

You know what? Let’s do this whole sequence for this week’s FOOTNOTES:

23:20: I am certain the reason Coach Boone is eating this grape with a spoon is because it’s part of a fruit salad or whatever, but a small part of me likes to imagine that this is just how Denzel Washington eats grapes in real life. And more still: That same small part of me also likes to imagine that it’s one spoon per grape, each grape a new spoon. “Denzel, I’m begging you,” his wife pleads each day. “The spoons! We have thousands of them! You have to stop!”

28:20: One of the players (Blue, played by Earl Poitier) asked for a water break, to which Coach Boone responded, “Water is for cowards. Water makes you weak.” Incidentally, that’s also what I say to the doctor when she tells me I need to start drinking more water or else my “blood is gonna turn solid.”

31:26: There are a ton of really insightful lines in Remember the Titans, but my favorite of the bunch comes right here. Bertier, the captain of the team, is giving Julius shit because he thinks Julius is a selfish, lazy player. Julius pushes back, saying that nobody on the team is looking out for anybody else, so he’s just going along with what everyone else is doing. Bertier, who doesn’t know he’s about to accidentally step into a bear trap, tells Julius that that’s the worst attitude he’s ever heard. Julius fields the criticism, rolls it around in his head for a couple beats, then looks at Bertier and says, “Attitude reflects leadership… captain.” Just really great writing from Howard in this.

33:18: In the interest of helping speed up the team’s journey toward unification, Coach Boone arranges an early-morning run for everyone. He rustles them out of their beds at 3AM and then leads them on a jog through the woods from Gettysburg College (where the camp is being held) to the Gettysburg National Gravesite. It’s a run that should’ve taken nine minutes (the gravesite is 0.8 miles from the college). When they get there, though, the sun is up. I searched the date and location of their run on SunToDay.org, a website that keeps a historical log of sunrise and sunset times, and the sun rose in the area that day somewhere between 5:48AM and 6:12AM. That means that Coach Boone stretched that nine-minute run into a run of approximately three hours. Even his lessons on humanity were intense.

36:01: It worked! It worked! It fucking worked! All the scheduled mingling + Julius’s talk with Bertier about leadership + the Gettysburg run and speech worked! Julius and Bertier just had their breakthrough moment! (“Left side! …Strong side!”) Let’s watch it together because I care about it dearly:

Fuck yes.

36:39: Kip Pardue is here. He plays Ronnie “Sunshine” Bass, a transfer student from California whose father (a military man) wants him to play on Coach Boone’s team. The movie positions his dad as an upstanding human (he says he believes that if Black and white boys can fight a war together, they should be able to play football together), but what about this: What if he’s less invested in promoting racial harmony and more interested in his son getting a championship ring? What if he looked at the Titans roster, saw that they had two players who were very likely about to put up All-American seasons, knew the team was headed toward greatness, and so that’s why he wanted Sunshine to be on the team? What if this is the original KEVIN DURANT JOINS THE WARRIORS situation?

36:40: P.S. As soon as Bertier sees Sunshine, he starts harassing him because he thinks Sunshine might be gay. We’re less than twelve hours from Bertier getting past his racial animosity and he’s already replaced it with another kind of prejudice. The bigot part of his heart was really like, “Aye, man. I’m starving in here. You gotta feed me something.”

39:23: Sunshine approaches Bertier in the locker room and kisses him. When Bertier tries to fight Sunshine, he easily dodges several of Bertier’s attacks before Julius steps in and breaks up the fight. Two things about this moment:

1. When Julius asks Bertier why they’re fighting and Bertier looks at him exasperatedly and says “He… kissed me, man” is such a great line reading from Hurst. He seemed like his feelings were genuinely hurt over it.

2. We find out later that Bertier absorbed his prejudices and biases from his mother, who is openly bigoted. Imagine what that conversation was like on the ride home after the team got back from camp and she was like, “So, how was camp, Gerry?” and he was like, “Pretty good, pretty good. The team’s looking great. Our defense is gonna be real strong. Oh, and also a hippie kissed me and I’m best friends with a Black guy now.”

42:42: During the final practice of camp, Coach Boone walks around and conducts a call-and-response with the team, shouting various things at them as they shout various things back at him (Coach Boone: “What is pain?!” The team: “French bread!”). The best one is when Coach Boone shouts, “What is fatigue?” and the team shouts back, “Army clothes!”

The year after this movie came out, the Philadelphia 76ers miraculously stole Game 1 of the 2001 NBA Finals against the juggernaut Lakers behind an unreal performance by Allen Iverson.⁸ In the postgame press conference, a reporter asked Iverson if he was fatigued after playing 52 minutes in the game, to which he responded, “I’ve been waiting for this opportunity all my life. I’m not thinking about fatigues. Fatigues are army clothes.” I am 100 percent certain that Iverson watched this movie nine months earlier, heard the line, and then prayed every night for a reporter to ask him if he was fatigued so they could have this exact exchange.

45:07: Aw, man. The players are immediately reminded of the terribleness of the real world as they arrive back home to a school mired in protest. A hundred or so angry white parents are picketing the arrival of the Black students, and dozens of the white students let it be known that they’re none too pleased about the school being integrated, including Emma, Bertier’s girlfriend, who stares a hole through Julius and ignores his invitation for a handshake when Bertier introduces them to one another.

48:00: Coach Boone has just been informed by the guy who pushed for him to be hired that the school board agreed on a backdoor deal to fire Boone and replace him with Yoast if the Titans lose even one single game. Those are the stakes for him. It’s either go undefeated or go on unemployment.

48:40: Nicole Ari Parker is here. She plays Carol Boone (Coach’s wife). Three years before this, she played an adult movie star named Becky Barnett in Boogie Nights. Going from Boogie Nights to Remember the Titans is a crazy level of emotional whiplash. It’s like going from black tar heroin to a nice mug of warm tea.

50:06: Petey, who says the pressure that Coach Boone has been putting on him is only making him play worse, gets switched over to defense by Coach Yoast. He’s gonna be taking over for Alan, who’s about as effective at cornerback as a reclining chair with a football jersey draped over it.

51:33: …Aaaaaaaaaaaaand the Titans are 1-0. Their new defense—anchored by Bertier and Julius, and now supplemented by Petey—proved impenetrable. Coach Boone still has a job.

56:12: The next day, Coach Boone asks to speak with Coach Yoast about him moving Petey over to defense. Yoast thinks that Boone is gonna thank him, but instead Boone points out that Yoast, good as his intentions may seem, is coddling the Black players because he sees them as less mentally strong than the white players. (“I come down on Bertier, I don’t see you coddle him. I come down on Sunshine, I don’t see you grab his hand, take him off to the side. … Now, I may be a mean cuss, but I’m the same mean cuss with everybody out there on that football field. The world don’t give a damn about how sensitive these kids are, especially the young Black kids. You ain’t doing these kids a favor by patronizing them. You’re crippling them. You’re crippling them for life.”) It’s such an interesting conversation, and one that, to his credit, Coach Yoast is receptive to.

57:02: Aw, man. Bertier was supposed to go play basketball with Julius, but his mother forbids him from going. This lady sucks. She probably gets along really well with Bertier’s girlfriend.

1:01:42: Things have been teetering between the players as the real world does everything it can to drive a wedge between them. It all culminates in another race war skirmish like what happened at training camp, except but this time it happens at school. Thankfully, Bertier and Campbell, who’ve been icy to one another since Bertier no-showed Julius for basketball, were nearby enough to stop things before they got too out of hand. I just love these two so much. I wish we’d have gotten some sort of buddy-cop drama with them as the leads. An End of Watch situation, or maybe a The Nice Guys situation, even a Blue Streak situation. I think that would’ve been really good.

1:03:03: Here’s my theory: Tony Scott watched this scene where Denzel shares some screen time with Hayden Panettiere, saw how incredibly charming and effective Denzel was while sitting across from a little white girl, and was like, “Get me Dakota Fanning on the phone immediately!” That’s how we got Man on Fire.

1:05:10: The team held a players-only meeting to try and recapture the good energy they had as a group at training camp. It wasn’t working at first, but then Louie Lastik started singing church hymns and everyone was cool again. And listen, I don’t wanna pit the great white singers against each other (I’m talking Celine Dion, Michael McDonald, Amy Winehouse, Donny Klang from season 4 of MTV’s Making the Band), but only one of them was able to sing racism away: Louie motherfucking Lastik.

1:07:40: The Titans—who are 2-0 and are beginning to feel themselves—have a new pre-game warm-up that involves performing a little song and dance before the game starts. Look at number 48. See how much more graceful and coordinated he is than the other players? Do you know which guy that is? The hand should be a dead giveaway.

It’s…

The king of the dance floor, Ryan Gosling.

1:09:10: Aw, man. Ray Budds (Fuck Ray Budds) intentionally missed a block because he wanted the quarterback (a Black player nicknamed “Rev” because he’s very religious) to get laid out. Rev broke a bone in his hand. He’s out of the game. Coach Boone is inserting Sunshine for his first action of the season. Let’s watch Sunshine get some revenge for Rev on the defender who injured him:

The eight best parts:

1. Coach Boone lying about how many brothers and sisters he had to take care of when he was younger so as to inspire Sunshine.

2. The look Sunshine gives Louie when he says, “Just let him through. Trust me,” about the defender Louie'’s supposed to block.

3. The way Sunshine shoves the defender’s teammates as they come over to try and help him up.

4. The opposing coach asking for an unnecessary roughness penalty on Sunshine after he lays out the defender.

5. The way Petey says, “Ooooh, you see that, man? That’s a baaaad white boy, man.”

6. The way Coach Boone’s assistant says, “We got ourselves a football player.”

7. The 30-yard pass Sunshine whips across the seam.

8. And the way Sunshine points at the defenders he wants his teammates to block as he scrambles for a touchdown. (This is one of my very favorite football things.)

1:13:31: …Aaaaaaaaaaaaand Ray Budds (Fuck Ray Budds) is officially off the team. Bertier made the executive decision to kick him off when he realized that Ray Budds (Fuck Ray Budds) intentionally missed the block that led to Rev getting injured. Good riddance.

1:15:27: Time for some good vibes, babyyyyyyyyyy. Over these next two minutes, we get (a) Julius having a run-in with a white police officer that seems like it’s gonna go south but ends with the police officer telling Julius that the Titans defense is the best he’s seen in 20 years; (b) Julius meeting Bertier’s mom and giving her a hug big enough that it lifts her off the ground; and (c) a montage of the Titans running up their undefeated streak to 9-0, set to “Long Cool Woman” by The Hollies. I wanna watch a movie that’s only made up of montages. Like, from the opening credits to the closing credits. Just montage after montage after montage.

1:17:01: …Aaaaaaaaaaaaand the good vibes are over. This sorry fuck talking to Coach Yoast just told him that he’s arranged for the Titans to lose their next game (the Northern Virginia Regional Championship Game) so that Coach Boone will get fired and Coach Yoast can take over the job he was supposed to have. (A smaller subplot in the movie is that Yoast is up for induction into the Virginia High School Football Hall of Fame. This guy he’s talking to basically tells him that if he doesn’t go along with the plan he’s gonna lose his spot.)

1:18:11: The refs are calling penalty after penalty on the Titans. It’s clear that this is what that guy speaking to Coach Yoast meant earlier when he said he’d arranged for the Titans to lose. What’s Yoast gonna do about it?????????

1:19:49: FUCK YES. HERE WE FUCKING GO. COACH YOAST HAS SEEN ENOUGH. He was fine with Bertier using a racial slur in front of Coach Boone in their first meeting. And he was fine with white parents protesting the arrival of the Black students at the school. And he was even fine with someone throwing a brick through Coach Boone’s living room window while he and his family were at home. But a crooked referee rigging a game is a step too far. For the first time in the entire movie, Coach Yoast is fired the fuck up. He chews out the referee, threatens to expose everyone over their conspiracy, then gathers his defense and delivers the most stirring, most electric, most unforgettable Fire-’Em-Up speech in the movie:

I don’t want them to gain… another yard. You BLITZ! ALL! NIGHT! And if they cross the line of scrimmage, I’m gonna take EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU OUT! You make SURE! They REMEMBER! FOREVER! The night they played the Titans!

GOD, I LOVE THIS MOVIE. I WANNA TAKE A BITE OUT OF THE FUCKING SUN RIGHT NOW.

1:20:30: BERTIER AND CAMPBELL WERE SO KEYED UP BY COACH YOAST’S SPEECH THAT THEY BLEW UP THE OFFENSIVE LINE AND QUARTERBACK ON THE FIRST PLAY OUT OF THE HUDDLE. THEN MY BOY BERTIER RAN OVER TO THE OTHER TEAM’S COACH, POINTED IN HIS FACE, AND THEN THE MOVIE CUT TO A MONTAGE OF BERTIER AND JULIUS LAYING OUT SOME FUCKING 2001 RAY LEWIS-LEVEL OBLITERATIONS TO THE OTHER TEAM’S PLAYERS. LOOK AT THIS SHIT:

AFTER THE MONTAGE OF MURDER, WE GOT AN IKE AND TINA TURNER NEEDLE DROP (“I WANT TO TAKE YOU HIGHER”), THEN COACH YOAST LOOKED AT COACH BOONE…

…GROWLED, “RUN IT UP, HERMAN! LEAVE NO DOUBT!” AT HIM, AND THEN BY THE END OF THE SEQUENCE THE TITANS WERE UP 44-14.

YOU KNOW WHAT? THE WHOLE SEQUENCE IS LESS THAN THREE MINUTES LONG. LET’S WATCH IT TOGETHER:

THIS IS THE GREATEST MOVIE THAT’S EVER BEEN MADE.

1:21:53: P.S. One of my favorite small things about the scene is how, as the Titans score touchdown after touchdown, the movie repeatedly cuts back to the crooked ref as he has signals for each score. Look how fucking annoyed he is:

😂😂😂😂 It’s such a perfect little touch.

1:22:12: Prior to the game, the other head coach had called Coach Boone a “monkey” in the news. After the game, Coach Boone offers him an olive branch by trying to shake his hand. When the other coach ignores the gesture and walks past him, Coach Boone calls to him, then tosses a banana in his direction. Three things about the interaction:

1. Being petty as a response to someone else being shitty > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

2. Remember when Terrell Owens hid a Sharpie in his sock before a game because he wanted to do a touchdown celebration where he signed the football immediately after scoring? This is like Coach Boone’s version of that, except even better.

3. The other coach doesn’t drop the banana or try to throw it back at Coach Boone or anything like that. He just sort of carries it away in shame. I wonder what he ended up doing with it. Do you think he ate it on the bus ride home?

1:23:36: After the game, Bertier’s girlfriend tells him that she’s gonna try to not hate Black people anymore. That’s how good of a defensive end Julius is. He played the racism right out of her heart.

1:24:21: A crazy thing to think about: Hayden Panettiere, who was only 10 years old when Remember the Titans was being filmed, has one-on-one scenes with Will Patton, one of the most underrated actors who has ever lived, and Denzel Washington, a two-time Oscar winner. And she fucking crushes in them. What a showing from her.

1:26:01: There’s (obviously) a bunch of stuff in this movie that got changed from the real-life version. For example, Movie Coach Yoast has only one daughter, and she stayed with him after he and his wife got divorced because she loved him and football so much. In real life, Coach Yoast had three daughters, and none of them stayed with him after the divorce. Or for another example, the Titans in the movie are the only team in the district who come from an integrated school. In real life, all of the schools had been integrated for a number of years before the Titans had their championship run. But the most egregious change:

In the movie, Bertier gets into a car crash that paralyzes him from the waist down just a couple hours after he and Julius lead their team to a victory in the regional championship game. In real life, he got into a terrible car crash, yes, but it didn’t happen until AFTER THE SEASON WAS OVER. They chose to put it right here instead so we could watch this kid we’ve all come to love and root for suffer a terrible, terrible tragedy.

1:27:09: The coaching staff and the team are all at the hospital because the news about Bertier’s crash has spread. What a fucking devastating moment this is. The nine most emotional parts.

1. When Julius presses Coach Boone to tell him how bad Bertier’s injuries are, and so Coach Boone finally tells him that Bertier is paralyzed from the waist down, and Julius pushes Coach Boone’s hands off him and says through his insta-tears, “Don’t say that to me. Don’t say that to me.” 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 (Wood Harris is all-caps OUTSTANDING in this scene. It very well may be the single greatest acting moment of his unquestionably great acting career.)

2. Julius’s first instincts being to find Mrs. Bertier in the crowd of people and begin apologizing to her while he’s still crying. (“I’m sorry, Mrs. Bertier. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”) 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

3. The way Julius’s voice breaks when he says “Yes, ma’am” after Bertier’s mom tells him that Bertier doesn’t wanna see anyone but him. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

4. The way Julius’s mouth is open as he enters Bertier’s room (it makes him look like a 5-year-old), and then the way he closes it when he sees Bertier because he wants to be strong for his friend. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

5. The way the nurse tending to Bertier tells Julius that only family is allowed in the room and Bertier says, “Alice, are you blind? Don’t you see the family resemblance? That’s my brother.” 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

6. The way Julius tries to take blame for the accident, and Bertier tells him that the crash was in no way his fault. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

7. When Julius says, “You can’t be hurt like this. …You’re Superman.” 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

8. The way Bertier starts crying when Julius begins talking about how they’re gonna be friends forever and one day they’ll be old, fat men together living in the same neighborhood not having to worry about the animosity between white and Black neighbors.

9. And the way the scene ends when Bertier holds up his hand and softly says “Left side…” and then Julius grabs it and affirms back, “Strong side.” 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

1:33:08: Okay, here we go. Final game. The state championship. The Titans are taking on Marshall High School, a terrifying team coached by Ed Henry, who’s sold in the movie as the greatest coach in Virginia High School history (“over 250 wins in 30 years”).

1:36:31: As soon as Marshall saw that Alan was starting at cornerback rather than Petey (who got benched because he got frustrated and quit playing during the previous game), they immediately started targeting him. He gave up three straight catches for three big gains, including a touchdown where he wasn’t within five yards of the receiver. Petey tries to give Alan some tips on covering Marshall’s receivers, but tips aren’t gonna remove the concrete from Alan’s feet. The Titans are toast if he stays in the game much longer.

1:38:31: Halftime. Marshall is up 7-0. The Titans haven’t been able to get anything going at all. And in a very surprising turn of events, Coach Boone basically tells the players in the locker room that they can’t beat Marshall. Thankfully, Julius steps in and gives the motivational ra-ra speech the team needs.

1:40:18: Alan, who knows he’s outclassed, tells Coach Yoast that he wants to give his spot up to Petey. When Yoast puts in him, Petey responds by immediately laying out a receiver, completely shifting the tone of the game. The Titans are the aggressors now.

1:42:37: The Titans have officially shut the faucet off for Marshall. Everywhere they turn, there’s a Titan defender waiting for them. This shit is as good as over. And if it feels like I’m kind of breezing through this last game, it’s because I am. Because this is another one of the situations where the movie drifts away from real life: In the movie version, the Titans score a last-second touchdown on a trick play after Coach Boone finally takes a bit of advice from Coach Yoast.⁹ (They have Rev run a weakside reverse with Sunshine serving as his lead blocker.¹⁰) In real life, the Titans cruised to an easy victory (28-0). They were so dominant in the championship, in fact, that they gave up literally negative 5 yards of total offense for the entire game. But that doesn’t make for that exciting of a game to watch in a movie. So here we are.

1:45:26: …Aaaaaaaaaaaaand it’s over. The Titans are state champions, Coach Yoast and Coach Boone both respect each other, everything is good and wonderful and perf—

1:45:59: Ah shit. I forgot the movie finishes by jumping back to where it started, which is at Bertier’s funeral. (He was killed in a drunk driving accident ten years after his Titans won their championship. That’s why all the players and coaches and parents were back together again.) Look at Julius holding Bertier’s mom’s hand. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

1:47:01: The final beats of the movie are updates on the real-life versions of several characters. I wish every movie did that. Even (and sometimes especially) the ones that aren’t based on true stories. Like, I wanna know what Hannibal Lecter got up to after he escaped in The Silence of the Lambs, or what the next couple years of work were like for Jake Hoyt after Training Day, you know what I mean?

1:48:10: The movie’s over. Good movie.

UNEXPECTED SIMILARITIES
Things that the most recent movie we covered (Gone Girl) has in common with this week’s movie

• Both movies have scenes where a family moves to a new state. (In Gone Girl, Nick and Amy move from New York to Missouri. In Remember the Titans, Coach Boone and his family move from North Carolina to Virginia.)

• Both movies have scenes where the main character gets interviewed by the press.

• Both movies have characters whose parents don’t approve of a relationship they’ve formed. (In Gone Girl, Amy’s parents do not like that she’s with Nick. In Remember the Titans, Bertier’s mom doesn’t like that she’s friends with Julius.)

• Both movies have scenes that take place in a hospital after a terrible tragedy has taken place.

• Both movies do not have any characters who are voted into the Virginia High School Football Hall of Fame.

THE EXIT LIST
One final list

Ten Other Football Movies That Are Almost As Much Fun to Watch As Remember the Titans

• Friday Night Lights (2004): Why couldn’t they have followed them for a season where they win the championship rather than lose it???

• Any Given Sunday (1999): Of all the coaches from this list, Al Pacino’s Tony D’Amato is the one I’d most like to see Denzel have a go at.

• Rudy (1993): This only has a score of 80% on Rotten Tomatoes but it has a score of 100% with dads.

• Brian’s Song (1971): “Fun” if you like to cry, I suppose.

• The Replacements (2000): Gene Hackman has incredible Coach Energy.

• Necessary Roughness (1991): A personal favorite from my childhood.

• The Longest Yard (2005): The Adam Sandler version.

• The Waterboy (1998): Is Adam Sandler our greatest fictional football athlete?

• Draft Day (2014): I don’t care, shut up.

• Little Giants (1994): There’s an entire generation of people who know what goes in the blank spot here: The annexation of _____________________________.

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DENZEMBER continues next week with… Man on Fire

You can stream it for free on Roku.

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​​This essay was edited by Hannah Giorgis Yohannes. The FOOTNOTES video was produced by Richie Bozek.

1. “I pitched it to every entity in Hollywood, which is the truth,” Howard told ESPN in 2020. “And they all rejected it.”

2. Over $108 million in today’s money.

3. Over $1.1 billion in today’s money.

4. Saving Private Ryan.

5. He said this in that same ESPN article.

6. It was a district in Cleveland, Mississippi. A federal judge had to step in and officially make them do it in 2016 because the efforts they’d taken to do it on their own over several decades were deemed a failure.

7. Some other attendees: Natalie Portman for Leon: The Professional, Alex Hibbert for Moonlight, Dakota Fanning for Man on Fire, Keisha Castle-Hughes for Whale Rider, Jodie Foster for Taxi Driver, Haley Joel Osment for The Sixth Sense, Tatum O’Neal for Paper Moon, Abigail Breslin for Little Miss Sunshine, Dafne Keen for Logan, Linda Blair for The Exorcist, Rohan Chand for Bad Words, Quvenzhané Wallis for Beasts of the Southern Wild, and Justin Henry for Kramer vs. Kramer.

8. Editor’s note: Very conflicting day for me as a Southern California girl with a huge crush on AI. — Hannah

9. SYMBOLISM!

10. MORE SYMBOLISM!