The making of a miracle: to recreate the United States' greatest Olympic event, filmmakers taught skilled players how not to act

"There's a lot of people in this building who do not know the difference between a blue line and a clothesline. It's irrelevant. It doesn't matter because what we have, have had, is the rarest of sporting events. An event that needs no buildup, no superfluous adjectives. In a political or nationalistic sense, I'm sure this game is being viewed with varying perspectives but manifestly it is a hockey game. The United States and the Soviet Union on a sheet of ice in Lake Placid, New York."

THAT IS HOW AL MICHAELS began the ABC television network broadcast of the 1980 Olympic event voted the single greatest sports moment in the 20th century by Sports Illustrated and the basis of a motion picture currently in release by Disney.

"Miracle" is the inside story of how a group of unheralded college hockey players led by unorthodox coach Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell) came together when no one thought they could to defeat the Soviet Union--considered by many the greatest team in the history of the sport--and eventually win the gold medal for the USA and in the process have an impact far broader than they ever imagined.

>From an event seen by minions, how do you replicate a miracle? Director Gavin O'Connor decided to cast talented hockey players that had potential to be taught acting rather than the other way around.

"I guess ignorance is bliss," O'Connor says. "People thought I was nuts but that was my easiest decision. My feeling is 'Can I get actors to play at the level that I needed them to play,' which was Olympic-caliber, which is impossible, or, 'Do I get kids who can play the sport at that level, have a physical resemblance to the players, are from the same region as the players with the local dialect, can shoot righty or lefty like the real player, and then teach them how to not act?'"

To find those players. O'Connor, with casting agents Randi Hiller and Sarah Halley Finn, enlisted the help of Reel Sports Solutions, a firm that specializes in creating realistic sports sequences for film and television productions. Holding tryouts in major cities across the country, more than 4,000 applicants vied for the 21 key roles. In Vancouver, where the film was shot, 1,500 applicants applied for 65 positions to fall out the European and Soviet teams.

Five former NHL players were cast for critical roles as part of the Soviet team: Mike MacWilliam (N.Y. Rangers), Sasha Lakovic (New Jersey Devils), Todd Harkins (N.Y. Islanders), Bill Ranford (Edmonton Oilers), and Randy Heath (N.Y. Rangers). In addition, attorney Roger Watts put his taw practice on hold for several months to portray esteemed Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak.

The U.S. team included Billy Schneider playing the role of his father, Buzz.

"Once they passed the hockey tests. then they got into a room with me to see if they can not act," says O'Connor. "It was just about behaving truthfully. I put them through a lot of improvisational work. It really was a matter of finding kids who were born with the acting gene and never knew it."

Next the players spent weeks at a pre-production camp in Vancouver to become familiar with each others games as well as the 1980s era skates, sticks, and padding.

Most important was learning the complicated playbook. "Gavin wanted to see the whole play develop, not just the goal scored," says Reel Sports Solutions' Rob Miller, who broke down the actual Olympic footage and with partner Mark Ellis, O'Connor, and cinematographer Danny Stoloff, storyboarded a playbook involving more than 130 plays.

With the players and plays in place, now came the crucial process of shooting the games. "Capturing the action in this picture was much more complicated than in "the Rookie" (a baseball feature starring Dennis Quaid)," says Gordon Gray, co-producer of both films along with Mark Ciardi. "To ensure safety yet get the natural free-flowing action of the sport required tons of practice."

To make the movie realistic as possible, O'Connor covered every play from television angles with five cameras. "We also rigged a skate dolly so we could move it 360 degrees. We'd then go down on the rink using a pogo cam, a device that's never been used on the ice. We got a hold of this kid, Scotty Waugh, who could operate the camera and skate like the wind. It's astounding what this guy did. He was fearless."

While the filmmakers were passionate about getting the game details accurate, just as important as the hockey sequences was capturing the drama of what this team meant to the country at a strange time in its history.

"These kids infused hope and inspiration in a country when it needed it most," O'Connor says. "I opened the movie with a credit sequence that walks the audience through the decade of the '70s. I thought it was important to flame the film with that without banging the audience over the head with a history lesson. The hostage crisis in Iran, gas lines, high interest rates, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, these were important moments to dramatize. The approach was to never make the scene about that but to always be pushing characterization while these moments were illuminated."