That Championship Season (1982 film)

1982 film by Jason Miller

That Championship Season is a 1982 American sports drama film based on the 1972 play of the same name. It stars Robert Mitchum, Martin Sheen, Bruce Dern, Stacy Keach and Paul Sorvino, who had also appeared in the play and was the only cast member who appeared in the play. The score by composer Bill Conti was supplemented by the West Scranton High School Band. A limited release 1200 copy soundtrack cd was released on the La La Land Records label in 2009. William Friedkin was originally going to direct the movie (he had worked with Jason Miller before on The Exorcist). Before he dropped out, Friedkin offered the part of Coach Delaney to William Holden. Holden was interested but died before he could accept the part. The stars and director were paid $250,000 each plus a percentage of the profits. The film did a great deal to help the reputation of the fledgling Cannon Films, who financed it.

As of September 2019, the film has a 71% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Los Angeles Times critic Sheila Benson observed similarities to the plot of the Robert Altman film Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, but said that while the Altman film "resonates deeply," Championship Season "doesn't even last until its over." She criticized Mitchum's performance as lacking power, and that the film was replete with racist dialogue without making it clear if the racism was embraced by the characters. Writing in The New York Times, Vincent Canby called the cast "excellent" and said Mitchum's "laid back, relaxed authority works very well for the coach, possibly because it hides for as long as possible the revelation that the coach is not only a sentimental bigot but an adolescent emotionally and as underhanded as any of his 'boys.'" But Canby criticized the upbeat ending as "unbelievable and, worse, attempts to balance in a wishy washy way the terrible truths that have been so carefully laid out earlier." New York Daily News critic Kay Gardella wrote that "Miller's vitriolic play loses much of its dramatic intensity on the screen." She praised the performances but said that Mitchum's performance "seems a little sluggish." Gannett News Service said that the Scranton locations sometimes serve only to "disguise the fact that it is essentially a play, not a movie." Critic Bernard Drew said that Miller had broken up his acts, which had sustained audience attention as a play, "into a series of confrontations." Diego Galán of El País wrote "Jason Miller makes his [film] with the wisdom of an orthodox narrator and a collaboration with five fine actors. Without them, the only dramatic situation in the film would be diminished".

Bruce Dern won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival. However, the film was not a hit at the box office, and it lost money.

In 1999, Sorvino directed an adaptation of the play for Showtime in which he played Mitchum's role as the coach. This version co starred Vincent D'Onofrio, Gary Sinise, Tony Shalhoub and Terry Kinney.

In 2004, the film was released on DVD by MGM Home Entertainment.