September 7, 2007
The Films That Are How We Know Football: An Interview with Steve Sabol (Part 2) Posted by Allen Barra at 04:15 PM EST This is the conclusion of the interview that begins here. Is it fair to say that from the very start you were self-conscious about the mythology of pro football? Absolutely. We thought of ourselves as filmmakers, romantics, and storytellers. We never used video, always film. Video is too immediate, too right now. Film has texture and context. What was the film where it all came together for you? In 1965 we did the league’s first promotional film, They Call It Pro Football. If my dad’s 1962 film of the Packers-Giants was Birth of a Nation, then They Call It Pro Football was Citizen Kane. That was the film where we first used the big background score and had John Facenda as narrator. We premiered it at Toots Shor’s restaurant in New York, and the commissioner, Pete Rozelle, said, “This isn’t a highlight film, it’s a movie. From that time on we had Pete’s full support. He never tried to curtail our creative freedom, even though what we did was sometimes a bit too avant-garde for some of the more conservative owners. The music used by NFL Films has always been distinctive. From the start you never went for the rah-rah college marching band sound. You always use a full orchestral score. Why? For as far back as I can remember, I was always captivated by orchestras. When I was a kid in Philadelphia, my friends would run home and turn on American Bandstand. I’d brag my ginger snap cookies, go to the TV, and turn on Victory at Sea. I was enthralled by Richard Rodgers’s music, and I liked big thundering sort of songs—at summer camp I used to love singing stuff like “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?”—things like that. Marching bands sounded tinny. A lot of the NFL owners wanted John Philip Sousa–type music in the back of their films. I always loved the sound of cellos and timpani, and especially French horns. And until 1983 we had the “voice of God,” John Facenda, doing the narration. [The Philadelphia Phillies’ Harry Callas currently does the NFL Films voiceovers.] Where did you find Facenda? Twenty-four years after his death, people still ask about him. They ask, “Where in the world did you find him?” He was a local Philadelphia news anchor. Most people’s jaws drop when I tell them that he wasn’t a football fan. When I gave him the copy to read, I’d say, “Do you want to see these highlights?” or something. He’d say, “No, No, that’s okay. I don’t need to.” He actually recorded his voiceovers without seeing the images. I think the words Facenda read were as much a part of NFL Films’ style as the images and the music. Whose prose poetry was Facenda reading? I’m afraid that would be mine. As a kid, one of my favorite poets was Kipling, and one of my favorite sportswriters was Grantland Rice—you know, “Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the four horsemen rode again . . .” That kind of stuff. One of my favorite NFL Film productions was a profile of Vince Lombardi. Let me read you some of the text: “Lombardi —a certain magic still lingers in the very name. It speaks of duels in the snow, in the cold November mud . . .” And here’s something from your profile of the old Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach: “His passion was football. His obsession was winning. A championship was his destiny.” Are those your words? Yes, in all their splendid pomposity. Of all the games that NFL Films has covered and all the specials you’ve produced and all the Emmys you’ve won over the decades, what would you say you’re proudest of? Of when people come up to me and say, “You know, I didn’t watch the game when John Elway went the length of the field to win the game for Denver” or “I missed that drive in the 1989 Super Bowl when Joe Montana took the ’49ers down the field in the last two minutes, but I saw them happen in your films, and I felt like I was there.”
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