INT: Tom Brady

Tom
Brady is one of the most well known quarterbacks.
And if you are expecting to hear more about this football
superstar, you’re in the wrong place.
This Tom Brady is known for turning Rob Schneider into THE
HOT CHICK and not scoring a touchdown.
He also turned Rob into THE ANIMAL.
He has a long relationship with Mr. Schneider and he also
seems to have a good deal of experience with comedy.
He now takes on a bunch of college football players, and the
worst coach in the world in THE
COMEBACKS.

Here,
he gets a chance to lampoon all those sports films that made you
stand up and cheer, like RUDY, RADIO, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, NORTH
DALLAS FORTY and many others. How
will it all come about? Well,
with the few scenes we got to check out, it may make for a whole
lotta fun.

Hanging
on the set, we had a pretty good idea about why a director is so
busy. Tom was working his ass
off trying to get it all together. And
for good reason, an August release date and a bunch of young actors
with little experience. Add to
that a couple of seasoned vets too help shake things up.
But one thing Tom is known for is his calm, cool exterior.
Almost every actor (and crew member) said the same thing;
this dude can handle pressure. And
when we were lucky enough to have a few short moments with him, he
really did seem to be very relaxed. Although
we only spoke for a short time, he really gave us his undivided
attention and never seemed to be worried or stressed.
This is the guy that you’d want manning the ship when the
shit hit the fan. And he’s
also the guy you’d want to hang with after for a beer or two.

Tom Brady

So
it’s great to finally meet THE Tom Brady [the quarterback]…

The
next best thing… I was the original Tom Brady actually.

That’s
right.

Then
I heard about this young back-up guy at

Michigan

and I thought, “Oh, no one will ever hear of this

guy.

” now, I [seem] to be the other Tom Brady.

We’ve
been watching the filming, really funny. 
Just so many parodies and stuff from the given genre. 
What are you doing specifically to make this an even better
parody…?

The
thing that attracted me when I first read the script is it’s more
than just a parody movie like SCARY MOVIE… it had a great story
with a lot of heart that held up on its own anyway. 
The story of this coach that’s got his last shot at
redemption and he’s trying to hold his family together. 
And his rebellious daughter and her relationships; and it had
the potential to be a classic comedy movie on its own and then the
telling of this story we get to kind of make fun of all the
conventions and clichés of all those other, you know, melodramatic
or dramatic sports movies, football movies. 
So we get to kind of have our cake and eat it too. 
So we’ll get the big huge high laughs that a parody movie
gets but also hopefully hook everybody emotionally and tell a real
story; make you feel all the things you want to feel in a real
movie.

Well,
what was it about this script that you just had to make this movie
now.

A
couple of things; I mean on a commercial level the idea of a big
[over the top] sports movie hadn’t really been done yet. 
We saw this like, instead of a college football movie or a
parody movie, I read the script and I saw a real story and a real
great character and I thought… it had all those elements and then
what I had was sort of a vision for the, I always call it the
“ultimate sports comedy”.  I
never call it a parody or a spoof, I always call it the ultimate
sports comedy, especially with the, you probably haven’t seen any
of this stuff yet but we also keep cutting to the television and
covering ESPN style or FOX SPORTS style produced segments.

And
we take on tennis, we take on skateboarding, the X-Games, we take on
boxing, we take on… and the idea of the coach being the worst
coach in history.  Like
he’s responsible for the Bill Buckner error, for Mike Tyson biting
[Evander] Holyfield’s ear, for sending the Stanford Band after the
game was over; you see all these things. 
We really hit on every sport; there really is something for
everybody.  I saw the
enormity of that; we could have a movie that everybody could go to. 
Young or old sports fans, you know, adults could sit through
with their kids, and the kids would love to see it, kind of edgy but
really funny also.

Do
you feel, because you have an
August
release date, that there is more pressure than usual to get it
there?

Oh,
yeah.

How
do you deal with that pressure? 
Everybody was remarking on how cool under fire you are; how
do you do that, is it just natural?

That’s
good.  Yeah, part of it
is just being kind of low key but a lot of its deliberate too
because I think with, um I mean I did a couple of movies with Rob
Schneider and he’s a real funny guy and not the easiest guy to get
along with – I was just determined to set a tone of creativity and
fun, and I know that having been an actor myself and, you know,
I’ve done this before, you really get the most out of everybody,
actors, crew; its the most creative if everybody feels like
they’re happy to come to work and they’re safe and they can
experiment and they can really get… you know, so I sort of set out
at the beginning to do that.  And
I deliberately keep the business pressures, the studio pressures
away from the set and I carry them on my shoulders. 
And I’ll probably completely collapse in about two months.

You
gonna get Schneider to sit in the stands saying, “You can do
it.”…?

He’s
a… it’s one of the drafts, I don’t know if you read that
draft.  There’s talk
about doing that, there’s also a chance that we may get [Adam]
Sandler to come down…

That
would be great.

Get
the “waterboy” or something. 
But that’s just a rumor.

As
a kid were you really into football or is this something new?

Yeah,
I was a huge sports fan.  The
traditional baseball, basketball, football… I not only played the
games but I played the board games and the computer games, they kind
of kept me, I feel, away from that other stuff.