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Last updated December 1996
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"The film's strong point is undoubtedly the photography of Brian Tufano, who shoots the final and the endless training sessions on the watery Thames with a real feeling of what it must be like to kill yourself in one of the toughest marathons." (15/11/96)
Mirror headline: Crew what a torture
Geoff Brown in the Times:
"True Blue never makes the characters or the issues seem important. Who cares who sits in the boat? Who cares who wins?" (14/11/96)
Derek Malcolm in the Guardian:
"It's a good enough plot, but to make it into another Chariots of Fire you need to get rid of the Americans earlier and concentrate more on the heroes." (15/11/96)
Geoff Brown in the Times:
"The trouble is, neither cast, nor script, nor Ferdinand Fairfax's dull direction, makes either side in the conflict worth embracing... True Blue is a grey, damp experience, a little film striving to be big." (14/11/96)
Alexander Walker in the Evening Standard:
"The US freshmen form no personal ties with anyone in town or gown, no girl friends, no eccentric profs, no colourful mishaps. They behave like bad sports. For a film pitching its appeal at US audiences, I'd say they've thrown the box office out with the bilge water." (14/11/96)
Simon Rose in the Mirror:
"The characterisation of the rowers is so sketchy, it's impossible to work out who is who...These hunks never appease the women viewers by getting their tops off." (14/11/96)
Evening Standard headline: Bored out of their sculls in the river
Alexander Walker in the Evening Standard:
Rupert Walters's screenplay is 'docu' without the 'drama' - and I'm not sure it's very 'docu' at that. American accounts of these events differ radically from the home-grown ones." (14/11/96)
Gavin Stewart, mutineer and stroke of Oxford 1987:
"True Blue might best be described as Chariots of Fire meets Rocky IV. Nostalgia for a probably non-existent golden age of amateur sport and a healthy dose of xenophobia are combined with great photography, rousing music and the idea that ultimate in modern training for a rower is running round the woods in a blizzard." (Times 12/11/96)
Alexander Walker in the Evening Standard:
"There is more than a cup riding on the Oxford or Cambridge sculls in True Blue. Below the waterline is 1million of tax payers' money [from the National Lottery]... So the gamblers' cash, originally intended to buy or build things of 'benefit to the community', has been diverted and recycled into the stake money for gamblers' dreams that may benefit only lucky film producers...Channel 4's production arm and Booker Entertainment, co-financiers of the film [total budget 3.5million], are well-heeled companies... [The Arts Council] giving such outfits public money is like handing over your loose change to Jimmy Goldsmith." (14/11/96)
"The three main premises of the book and film are that the American rowers didn't want to train hard, that they started the 'mutiny' and that the result was good for the Boat Race. None of these accords with my memory....
- "We often spent six hours doing two hours' training. Worse, Oxford's loss in 1986, its first since 1975, prompted Dan [Topolski] not to reasses his programme but merely to increase it. If I had turned up at Oxford that year having rowed internationally, I would have been horrified at the time-wasting and lack of quality training.
- "As for the Americans starting the 'mutiny', well they didn't. The 'mutiny' happened because the squad had lost respect for Donald Macdonald as president, not least because he made it clear that he had a guaranteed seat... The spark was the decision to set aside the result of a trial between Donald and one of the Americans, giving them both seats and dropping another (British) rower. The Americans began by supporting British rowers, not the other way round.
- "Winning the race was personally more of a relief than a victory... For 1988 , the college captains elected as president one of the infamous non-rowing Yanks - a nice irony and a public sign that all was not as it had been portrayed. A lot changed, including the training programme, helping Oxford to win the next five races." (Times 12/11/96)
"With hindsight I should have been much tougher much earlier and it could have all been sorted. The Americans would probably have rowed, it could have been the greatest crew ever. But I let it go on because I couldn't believe anyone wanted to undermine the enterprise."
"When I wrote the book it was a very cathartic experience. The film is ten years after the events so it's bringing back some painful memories that I had forgotten, and it is a toe-curling experience watching someone playing yourself. He's a good actor. But I'm sure I'm not as glum as that."
"The days of students coming here just to row died in the Eighties. These boys have to study hard. The sacrifices they make are truly heroic."
Andy Lobbenburg, Isis cox promoted to the Blue Boat in 1987, quoted in the Telegraph Magazine (November 2)
"It's a great pity that the film is going to end up glorifying Dan and Donald, because had they managed the situation betterthere would never have been a mutiny. I don't think it was the boat club's most glorious hour."
Phil Symes, publicity agent of true Blue (Telegraph Magazine, November 2):
"There may be a few discrepancies . This is a dramatisation, inspired by certain events...But essentially it is the true account of what happened."
Clive Parsons, producer of True Blue (Telegraph Magazine, November 2):
"We decided it was probably a good idea to change names for legal reasons."
Tony Ward, mutineer and Blue (Telegraph Magazine, November 2):
"We weren't approached by the film-makers until after the script was written and filming was about to start. At that stage the approach smacked of tokenism and we felt that we didn't want to help promote a film that seemed a very one-sided account of what happened."
Ferdinand Fairfax, Director of True Blue (Telegraph Magazine, November 2):
"The film is very much one person's view which has been challenged by a lot. For as many people as you talk to there are as many versions."
Rupert Walters, script writer on True Blue (Telegraph Magazine, November 2):
"Ferdi did most of the research. But I talked to people in the squad caught on the fence." Had he spoken to the rebels? "No, not personally. But the notions of truth are so difficult, if you did too much research you'd not know which way to go."
"You could see how Topolski would drive people utterly crazy - he's such a mercurial character. The Americans had a point."
Ferdinand Fairfax, Director of True Blue (Telegraph Magazine, November 2):
"The truth was not my primary objective. I'm not the slightest bit interested in making a docu-drama. I don't mean to be disregarding, but I'm interested in dramatic play-space, not in depicting actual events."
"The worst thing about reporting sport - and I was once a racing correspondent - is having to mix too long with its practitioners. Frankly, I generally found the horses more intelligent than the jockeys and trainers. Why should Oxford and Cambridge oarsmen be so different?
"In True Blue, they are not. Jolly decent, a bloody nuisance or just a mite indistinguishable from lead, they cavort across the screen either loving or loathing Dangerous Dan Topolski, and trying, with might and main, to convince us as actors that they really are the leading young oarsmen of their genration.
"But I have to admit that this is, however accurate or inaccurate, a sort of Yanks versus Us sage that makes you want to take sides. God knows what the Americans will think of it."
Derek Malcolm in Regatta:
"It looks marvellus and makes even an idiot like myself, who was once a cox, remember all those ghastly, bitterly cold winter mornings which looked beautiful but were absolute hell to be out in. You had to have stiff upper lips even to contemplate such a life and, I alsways thought, flaccid lower appendages."
"Johan Leysen, who is Belgian, has a good shot at Topolski, who is not, and whom even Marlon Brando would have difficulty characterising. But not far behind comes Dominic West as the Oxford President. Actually, there are no bad performances, on or off the river."
" I had a beer with Dominic West [who plays Macdonald in the film] at the time that they were filming some of the crucial meeting scenes.I also met some of the other actors and it struck me how they all end up really getting into their characters. Those who play the Americans went to great lengths to explain to me how their stance was being misunderstood, and, amazingly, I found myself coaching Dominic... to make sure that he won his arguments."
"Inevitably, the film is a precis. The key, I hope, is that it is entertainment...It will be a pity if it resurrects old conflicts. By now, I hope everyone has put all this to one side."
- Ferdinand Fairfax, Director of True Blue.
"I did not set out to make a docu-drama... I had a distinct policy of not demonising anyone. Everyone has a different version of events and I am aware that Topolski's book [True Blue] is just as biased as the Americans' accounts."
Headline in Sunday Telegraph, 15 September 1996.
"Race mutiny film reopens old wounds"
Chris Huntington, mutineer, in Sunday Telegraph:
"They have made a movie that is full of caricatures...settled for stereotypes and simple polarisation of the good British versus the bad Americans."
Michael Suarez, a Jesuit priest who plays a pivotal role in the film:
There was culpability on both sides. Where the film is not balanced is that it doesn't show that the mutineers went back on their word..."(Sunday Telegraph).
Chris Huntington:
"Michael Suarez was such a peripheral figure who for cinematic and artistic reasons has been given a central role in the film. It has gone to his head."
Tom Cadoux-Hudson, member of the crew and former British international world medalist:
"There are great chunks missing from the story. What doesn't come across is what remarkable athletes the Americans were."
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© Copyright REGATTA Magazine, 1996.
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