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 Rob Brown plays football legend Ernie Davis in the tearjerker, The Express. |
LOS ANGELES -- Rob Brown enters the room with an athlete's grace, dressed down in jeans and an "I (Heart) BK" T-shirt.
He's not advertising himself as a fan of any burger chain. The 6-foot-1, 210-pound star of the tear-jerking true-life sports story The Express is simply representing his hometown of Brooklyn, N.Y. -- home of his alma mater Poly Prep high, where he was a running back for a nationally ranked top-10 football team.
It was there, at age 16 -- just as his legs were announcing themselves on the field -- he found another possible vocation as an actor. Specifically, he got cast to co-star opposite Sean Connery in the prep school drama Finding Forrester.
And it was during filming of Finding Forrester that Connery sat the kid down and told him to stay in school rather than chase shadows in the movie business.
"Sean emphasized telling me things that he felt no one had told him," Brown says. "He sat me down a few times in his apartment with a list of things to tell me about the business and life. One was that no one told him to get his education and it was one thing he regretted. He said, 'Never mind the movies, the movies will come.' I mean i don't know about that, but that's the type of guy he is. People like that -- you just soak up as much knowledge as you can.
"I actually owe him a call, 'cause he (left a voicemail) two weeks ago to catch up with what I'm doing. But my agents also told me, 'Don't worry about it, go to school.' So I'm still with them."
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What he did was accept a football athletic scholarship at Amherst College. He graduated this year with a degree in psychology.
There'd be other agents, of course, who'd be apoplectic at seeing a handsome young star give up prime years to crack books.
"Well, Jay-Z says 30 is the new 20, so technically, I'm 14," the 24-year-old quips about his "advanced" age.
In The Express, Brown plays Ernie Davis, a real-life college legend at Syracuse who, in 1959, became the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy. A dramatic counterpoint to the story is that he replaced a certain future NFL Hall Of Famer named Jim Brown at his position, and in fact was recruited by Brown to play for the tough ex-soldier Ben Schwartzwalder (Dennis Quaid) with whom Brown had a contentious but ultimately respectful relationship).
Jim Brown himself should probably have won the Heisman, but in the race politics of the time, it wasn't possible for an angry and blunt black man like him to win it. That breakthrough needed its own Jackie Robinson, someone whose cool and quiet grace under pressure extended to enduring racist catcalls from the stands at Southern schools. A story complete with its own ironic and tragic ending, Davis followed his hero Brown to the Cleveland Browns, where he was diagnosed with leukemia as a rookie. He died at 23.
For his part, when faced with what he sees as racist situations, Brown says, "I'm more like Jim Brown." Of Amherst, he says, "(it) isn't the most diverse place to get your college education and I definitely identify with that. (For the role) I guess I just basically had to magnify any problems I had as a black male in college. What I went through is not comparable to what Ernie went through and Jim Brown. They went through some stuff and I'm reaping the benefit.
"Overall, the way Ernie impacted people, he made people around him better by example and people would ask themselves, 'What would Ernie do?' And I do find myself rethinking things, like maybe I shouldn't be this combative to this officer right now, maybe there's a smoother way to handle this. Maybe I'm more mature as a function of getting to know Ernie."
Comeback vehicle though it may be (and Vanity Fair has named Brown one of its Bright Young Stars), Brown says his intent in The Express is not ego-driven. "I want to generate interest in Ernie. I played college football and didn't know about him. And there's probably NFL running backs who don't know who Ernie Davis was. I'm not old enough to remember Jackie Robinson, but I know who he was.
"I looked at it as an honour and a privilege to play that role. And it comes with a sense of responsibility."
It's no crying shame
LOS ANGELES -- Producer John Davis (Predator, I, Robot) admits he's out to make you cry with The Express, particularly if you're male. And it all goes back to Brian's Song.
The 1971 TV movie about the friendship between Gayle Sayers and his doomed teammate Brian Piccolo had a tremendous impact on me as a child," Davis says. "I don't know any guys who saw it and didn't cry."
Davis, a lifelong football fan, was six when the first black Heisman winner Ernie Davis died of leukemia at 23. "I always thought this story was as good as Brian's Song. This is an important story. I loved sports and I wanted to do this. I took it to Universal and there was an executive there whose father had passed away from leukemia, and he understood."
Davis stayed with the project for seven years, through three different owners of Universal.
Says Charles S. Dutton (Roc), who plays Ernie Davis' grandfather and moral compass: "When I talked to his classmates, the class of '59, to see seven, eight, nine guys in their 70s, 90 seconds after starting to talk about Ernie Davis start to weep ... to see Jim Brown, who ain't no vulnerable type guy, well up when he talks about Ernie Davis ... you know he had to be a special kind of kid for them to sustain that kind of emotional recall."
jim.slotek@sunmedia.ca