The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 24

LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR D5 MOVIES he believes, for these recessionary times. Nearly a year after Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger fired studio chief Dick Cook and replaced him with Ross, a cable television veteran, the movie company is assembling a film lineup that in many ways looks like the Disney of yesterday. The studio has stumbled recently with Up and films that were inherited from regimebut marketed by team. quote was shared with me from Steve Jobs, who said: you have a brand, like a bank account. With every offering, either making a withdrawal or a deposit on the said new production President Sean Bailey, referring to the Apple boss, who is also largest individual shareholder.

feel like these kinds of movies are real brand Directed by screenwriter Randall Wallace and written by Mike Rich, was produced by former major league pitcher Mark Ciardi and partner Gordon Gray. Ciardi and Gray, who had previously produced the hockey movie and the football story had wanted to make a film about Volponi, the 44-1 long shot winner of the 2002 Cup. Ciardi, Gray and Rich had discussed making a movie about Secretariat arguably a better horse than racing legends Seabis- cuit, Kelso, Citation and Man we know what the story Gray said, adding that there was no suspense he killed Rich, who previously had written and films focused on overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds, did research and decided that the most dramatic Secretariat movie would focus on Chenery, a Denver housewife and mother of four who took over her Meadow Farm. Under her leadership, the farm turned out Secretariat and, a year earlier, Kentucky Derby winner Riva Ridge. story came together pretty Ciardi said.

Lane wins in the end The movie itself, though, faced several obstacles. Disney said it would make only if Julia Roberts or Jodie Foster would agree to play Chenery. more, Cook and production president OrenAviv want Wallace to spend more than $35 million less than half of what Universal committed to When Roberts and Foster passed, Wallace was able to persuade the studio to hire Lane, who been in a $100-million grossing movie since Perfect in 2000. In a way, the studio was mimicking the strategy that Cook and Aviv used on which originally was offered to Roberts. When the star passed, Disney cast Sandra Bullock in her place (saving several million dollars along the way), and grossed more than $300 million worldwide.

has a well of dignity and quiet strength. And I believe Diane had that quality, that you see how tough she was until you punched Wallace said. exterior was soft and genteel and the interior was steel, and what I thought Penny needed to represents one of three genres of film the studio is pursuing under Ross, whose own film slate is at least a year away from reaching theaters. studio not only makes its own filmsbut also distributes movies from Pixar Animation Studio and superhero tales from Marvel Studios, along with the occasional live-action offering from DreamWorks. For Disney-branded films, Bailey said he is primarily focused on making movies that fall into three broad categories: family- friendly comedies with heart (Bailey and his team cite and epics that create worlds in of the and the upcoming and inspirational true stories Blind for Bobby the and The studio also will occasionally make movies aimed at a narrowly defined demographic next high school movie and the young adult adaptations and are current examples but is scaling back on adult dramas.

more grown-up Touchstone label is basically gone, and potentially expensive highbrow movies like a long-in-the-works hit-man thriller, face longer odds. Even though Disney wa- ger a lot of money in the making of the studio is placing big bets on a surprising number of big-budget projects helmed by prominent directors such as David Fincher, Sam Raimi and Guillermo del Toro. Fincher, fresh off Social is developing a remake of Leagues Under the amovie that Ross shut down under director McG, whose vision was deemed to be too dark. Raimi, of fame, is set to direct of prequel, while Del Toro, the filmmaker behind plans to remake Haunted But modestly budgeted stories like continue to factor in theatrical lineup. The studio and filmmakers aspired to make the racing movie more than a straightforward retelling of Big prowess on the racetrack sort of equine rags-to-riches story that one news account from the era described as compound of good genes, good training and good The superstar horse Landing on the covers of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated in the same week, Secretariat achieved the kind of pop culture fame reserved for only elite athletes like Joe Namath, Reggie Jackson and Mary Lou Retton.

script, which Wallace revised, was loosely adapted from sportswriter William book The Making of a Wallace took it and followed emotional journey and the obstacles she faced in trying to fulfill her vision for the farm in Virginia. have an approach to histori- cal stories which makes people really uneasy and that is you let the facts get in the way of the Wallace said. movie is not adocumentary, it is an impressionistic portrayal that, in those two hours you have, you have to capture what are the deeper truths. That means you have to synthesize and Wallace, who attended seminary and speaks with a rhetorical flourishes, used the gospel song Happy and a verse from Job to emphasize the spiritual themes of rebirth and transcendence. not a sports movie.

from the guy who created And much more akin to of Wallace said. never did want the movie to be about a given dogma. But I wanted a sense with each character that they were looking for some experience of the emphasizes isolation from her four children (who remained with her husband in Denver while she was in Virginia)and her high-stakes gamble to shore up the breeding tenuous finances by selling $6 million worth of syndication rights in Secretariat essentially, an ownership stake and breeding privileges in the broad-chested beast well before post time at the Kentucky Derby. said to me, know what your movie does? I understand how hard it was and how lonely I was until I saw your Wallace said after the 88- year-old Chenery watched the movie. Given the limited budget, Wallace re-created two of the races in the Triple Crown but used televi- sion footage for the Preakness Stakes.

For the Derby, his cameras focused on the smallest details, like how the horse rolled its eyes and how the jockey curled the mane in his hand. At the Belmont, where Secretariat set a world record for that distance just as he did in the Derby (marks that still stand), Wallace heightened the feat with a slow- motion start, emphasizing every footfall until the gates spring open. between there, like a rose between the two dramatic thorns, was the Wallace said. had heard that her family was left behind, and this was the most agonizing part to me. The sense that Penny has been presented with a choice, at the beginning of the movie, which was passion or family.

And the miracle is that she gets Because a feel-good movie, Wallace chose not to include subsequent divorce. But Ross said willingness to follow her passion through adver- sitiesmakesthe film relevant to contemporary audiences. is about a woman who bet the farm, literally and Ross said. we were going to tell the story and the perfect happy ending for a Triple Crown winner, that would be a very uninteresting movie. This is not about that.

we at Disney talk about believing in dreams, the dreams do not have to be our princess and fantasy. This is someone who believed in her dream a dream that she could do what no one had done before. That to me is the ultimate Disney dawn.chmielewski@latimes.com john.horn@latimes.com Disney looks for winning formula from John Bramley Disney Enterprises BEYOND THE TRACK: Disney and the filmmakers wanted to make the movie more than a retelling of race success. In almost any sports movie, diehard fans are bound to notice a few details the filmmakers flubbed, and is no exception: Jockeys wear silks at the barn, for instance, and they mount their horses in the walking ring, not at the stables. But for racing aficionados like myself, the Disney biggest misstep may be its near-complete omission of Angle Light, the horse that defeated Secretariat shortly before he went on to capture the Triple Crown in 1973.

In the film, Sham is portrayed as sole antagonist. But in reality, Sham and Secretariat were vexed by Angle Light. Two weeks before the Kentucky Derby, in the Wood Memorial at the Aqueduct track in New York, Angle Light defeated Sham and Secretariat, who ran second and third even though they were considered the early Derby favorites. The importance of Angle Light cried out to be a juicy addendum to Even Penny Chen- ery, owner, was hoping that Angle Light would get more screen time. think the only mention of his name in the film was the race call of the Wood Chenery said.

Instead, the movie suggests that Sham won the Wood. In real life, Secretariat and Angle Light were trained by Lucien Laurin (who was hardly the nightclub comedian persona portrayed in the film by John Malkovich). That left the pint-sized Canadian trainer in the sticky position of running both horses, with different owners, in the same race. Author William Nack, whose book was the source material for the movie, told the story well. He recounted how Laurin, his view blocked by spectators as the horses hit the wire in the Wood, had to hear from Chenery that Angle Light had beaten her horse.

And how, a few days before the Derby, Chenery upbraided Angle owner in a Louisville restaurant while Laurin, caught trying to serve two masters, looked for a trapdoor. The bubble burst on Angle Light when he finished 10th in the Derby. The makers of would have been better served had they written Angle owner, Edwin Whittaker, into the story and reduced the plutocrat Ogden Phipps to the marginal figure he was. I could see James Cromwell, who played Phipps, as a convincing Whittaker, going headtohead with Penny Chenery in their public Louisville showdown. only involvement in the Secretariat story in real life was furnishing the sire (Bold Ruler) which Chenery used to breed the colt in a foal-sharing arrangement then losing Secretariat to Chenery in what is arguably the most life-changing coin flip of all time.

In the film, Phipps is omnipres- ent, offering Chenery $7 million for the horse that got away. Chenery says. were never any offers for Secretariat. There might have been one informal offer, but I never heard how much it was for, or where it was coming Will many moviegoers, not having been around for Triple Crown sweepand also not even being racetrackers, take at face value and not nitpick their way through the making? say so. representatives of the film keep pointing out, it is not a wrote Steven Haskin on the website of The Blood-Horse magazine.

Yeah, yeah, I know. But I would have felt a whole lot better had Angle Light won the Wood Memorial for a second time. Bill Christine covered horse racing for The Times for 24 years and writes about the sport for horseraceinsider.com and the Daily Racing Form. Associated Press WINNING STREAK: Secretariat began his Triple Crown run in 1973 at the Kentucky Derby. loss: rival Angle Light The horse beat Secretariat two weeks before the Kentucky Derby but is all but absent from the movie.

Bill Christine CMYK.