‘The Boys In The Boat’ Producer Grant Heslov Says He & Director George Clooney Worried Their Stars Couldn’t Row To Save Their Lives – Contenders Film L.A.
deadline.comThe biggest story of the 1936 summer Olympics in Berlin was Black track and field star Jesse Owens winning four gold medals and putting the lie to Adolf Hitler’s theories of race supremacy.
A less-heralded U.S. gold medal triumph over host country Nazi Germany glides onto screens this Christmas with The Boys in the Boat from MGM Amazon Studios, directed by George Clooney.
It was a technically grueling, on-the-water shoot with a group of young actors who had to learn the sport from scratch, Clooney’s longtime producing partner, Grant Heslov, said Saturday during a panel at Deadline’s Contenders Film Los Angeles event.
At one point they feared they had made a terrible mistake, Heslov said in conversation alongside the movie’s editor, Tanya Swerling. “So we cast these guys and we hired them for an extra three months to train — a solid three months of real rowing training with Olympic rowing coaches, the whole nine yards, two sessions a day, and on and on,” Heslov said. “So they’ve been training for maybe a month and a half, and George and I finally show up to the training facility … and we go out on these little boats, we watch them row and we look at each other.
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