All week, we're honoring the best coaches in Hollywood history, based around our 16-coach bracket-style tournament, in which readers like you decide who's the most inspiring coach ever to appear on film. We're down to the final two, so vote early, vote often, vote here! But all this celebration of fictional coaches (or fictional representations of coaches) begs the question: What do real-life coaches think about the guys who play them on-screen? For the third in a series of pieces addressing this topic, we turn to Coach Carter himself.
One day, Ken Carter was just a normal dude, teaching and coaching the basketball team at California's Richmond High School. The next day, he decided to bench his team because of its poor academic performance, and he was suddenly a celebrity—dealing with national attention that eventually led to the film Coach Carter.To learn more about what his experience has been like, we talked with the real Coach Carter about watching his life turn into a movie, the genius of Mr. Samuel L. Jackson, and why we don't all have to win in the end.
Media Platforms Design Team
When they first approached you about making a movie, what went through your head?
When the gentleman, [producer] Brian Roberts, first called me, I hung up the phone. Twice. I thought it was one of my friends playing a joke on me. I was getting a lot of publicity, but I had never thought about a movie. I was just being a teacher and a coach at the school, doing what I loved to do.
When he called the third time, the first words out of his mouth were, "If you hang up again, I'm not going to call you back." Luckily, I looked at the caller ID. He introduced himself and told me what other movies he had made. As he was talking, I was typing his name into the computer. I was still a little skeptical. But after I looked it up and we talked, I thought that it could be interesting. I told him that what they had reported in the papers was pretty good, but the lives of the kids outside of the basketball team were extraordinary, too. That's exactly what happened. When you look at the movie Coach Carter, it's 98.5 percent correct. I was on the set every single day shooting that movie.
Media Platforms Design Team
Did you have to battle to keep the story from getting too Hollywood?
At first, a couple producers were saying, "You know coach, you have to win the last game." That was about a two-month fight. Discussions going back and forth as we worked on other things. But truth to the word, when you lose your final game, your season is over. So that was it. They started to see it. The second draft of the script was so strong. They thought it was really, really powerful. The making of the movie is just as interesting as the movie.
How so?
I never had an agent for a long time when I was dealing with the producers. There was a lot of trust there. They had to tell the story accurate, period. That was my main thing. I was a consultant. I turned over all my files, my personal notes that I had about the season and about each and every kid. I turned the contracts that [the players and I] signed over to the writers. They were able to go through and make it really accurate.
Samuel L. Jackson plays you. What's it like to see yourself up on the big screen?
[Laughs] You mean Mr. Samuel L. Jackson? I call him Mr. Samuel L. Jackson. In four months of shooting the movie, Mr. Samuel L. Jackson never stumbled on one single line. Not only did he know all of his lines, he knew everyone else's lines, too. The gentleman had a photographic memory. He's a true professional. Every day he showed up. He was extremely prepared. You see a lot of the young actors, like Channing Tatum. It was his first time ever being in a movie. Same with Ashanti. Mr. Jackson was able to coach them along as we were shooting the movie.
Some of the kids you see on the team had never done any type of acting. I wanted every shot that we put in the movie to be a made basket. We spent three months training the actors on how to play basketball. We found real basketball players and taught them how to act. We were actually playing games. That was live scrimmages. When they missed their shots in practice, I made the actors do 100 push-ups. After the first three days or so, they started putting in the extra time so they wouldn't miss their shots.
Media Platforms Design Team
What did you teach Mr. Samuel L. Jackson about coaching and playing you?
Believe it or not, Mr. Jackson is a sports fanatic. Football, basketball, you name it. I watched him transition into me within the first 15 minutes of us meeting. It was amazing. I'm looking at him do me, with my hand movements and my speech pattern. Our plays were named after my sisters. He asked me what their names were and what the plays were. When we got on the court, we'd run an out of bounds play and he'd be tapping his head, saying, "Hattie Jean. Hattie Jean." When we wanted to run a high pick and roll, he's hollering out, "Run Linda. Run Linda. Run Linda." He knew all the plays.
* This article is part of The Code, an editorial partnership between Esquire and Ford F-150.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pr%2FQrqCrnV6YvK570qmmq6yjZLavwMSrraKdp6h8on%2BYcWlyZ6edrrV5yK2qZqSZoLJuxc6uqWakmZuybrnAnZxmoZ6pvG65zq%2BgnmWTpK6ktIycmKuslad8