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Carl Weathers Boxes The Comebacks
By Fred Topel | Images property of Fox Atomic.
The Comebacks
Carl Weathers was in the ultimate underdog sports movies, in fact an entire quadrilogy of them. After Rocky, he did another landmark sports film, Happy Gilmore. Now in The Comebacks, he spoofs the very sports movies that made him a star. One would imagine he's offered many genre retreads, so he's a bit picky about what he accepts.
Carl Weathers Talks The Comebacks
"I turned down stuff or just passed on stuff that didn't appeal to me for whatever reason," said Weathers. "It doesn't have to be about sports. It can be about anything. Certain things, quite frankly, at the end of the day, unless they're paying you drop dead money, what's the point? They're just not worth doing because at the end of the day, you're endorsing something by doing it."
In real life, Weathers played football before turning to acting. As a fan, he's not looking for movies to be the definitive athletic experience. "I don't know that there's any particular sports movie that I would prefer watching over another. I like good movies. It's not about genre. It's not about the setting. It's not about that particular world that the movie seems to be taking place in. It's about whether or not it works, whether or not there's something in it that I find interesting, that I find entertaining, that I may or may not learn something from. Something that appeals. At the end of the day, I just want to go to a movie to have a good time like everybody else. At the end of the day, it's like okay, there's great, great so-called films and others are just movies, man. If I'm going to go to something, I want it to be something I'd enjoy no matter what, even if the enjoyment brings tears, but I do want to be able to walk out of the theater and go, 'Wow, that was a good time.'"
The Comebacks
In The Comebacks, he plays Freddie Wiseman, a mentor who gets Coach Fields (David Koechner) back into sports for one last shot at glory. Weathers did not have to watch any other sports movies to know how to play a coach.
"You have to ask yourself what is a coach? There are probably as many coaches as there are in terms of personality and styles of coaching and approaches to the job as there are players, athletes. So to go in, it's not so much I'm going to be a coach, because I don't know what that is until you define the person and how the person tends to go about communicating what they're trying to communicate. But when you do go in and you see a human being who has things that they want. They happen to do this job."
Wiseman would be playable even he weren't based on 1000 other movie characters. "In The Comebacks, you've got a guy who simply wants to be a winner and he's stuck with a guy who's the absolute opposite, who everything this guy touches turns into mud. It's a catastrophe. At a certain point, Freddie Wiseman just decides the best way to become a winner is to take this guy out. I'll coach myself. Well, everyone who wants to do something does not necessarily have the chops to do it. Freddie in his own way finds out at the very end that best laid plans don't necessarily always work out, but Freddie is resilient. He bounces back up at the end. He'll take the coach out no matter what."
The Comebacks opens to theaters on October 26th.
For the trailer, poster and more movie info, go to The Comebacks Movie Page.
Fred Topel
Sources: Images property of Fox Atomic.
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