Glory Road is a prime example of the underdog sports flick done well but with a substantial twist. The team, the 1966 Texas Western NCAA champs, turned love of the game into something that galvanized the sport: the desegregation of college basketball, gallantly led by coach Don Haskins to a championship win about something greater than them all.

Josh Lucas, the blue-eyed, charismatic star of Around the Bend, Stealth and a collection of under-the-radar movies that have positioned him as Most Likely to Inherit the Hollywood Leading Man mantle, plays Haskins to smart, good old boy with a purpose perfection. He’s matched by a winning Derek Luke, so memorable as Antwone Fisher not long ago, performing with command as team guard and natural leader Bobby Joe, with a burning desire play his own way, on and off court. A film like this needs real movie star heat to make it fly, and these guys have wattage to burn.

I caught up with them recently to talk about the politics of Glory Road, how things have changed—and stayed somewhat the same—in the four decades since that revolutionary victory.

Lee Shoquist, ReelMovieCritic: Josh, you have said that you take on roles that scare you. What scared you about Don Haskins?

Josh Lucas: Obviously, I had a real man sitting there watching me play him. I also had basketball royalty around me ¾ Tim Floyd, coaching me for a year about coaching, Pat Riley…. I think the problem with these sorts of movies is that they are usually just generic coaching, and I had these guys watching me and basically coaching me about what makes a great coach. But I felt a big responsibility in the sense that this man—a powerful, intimidating force of passion—was there. It is not that I wasn’t a basketball fan, but I had never really gotten into understanding the game or seeing, in this sense, what makes a particularly great NCAA coach. I got to know it pretty well, and I had to be able to improvise in character as Haskins ¾ the way that Haskins would coach!

LS: What makes a great coach?

JL: Not just taking a good player and making them great. It is an ability to understand strengths and weakness, and enhance and challenge. Also, in the case of Haskins, it is that life sense. He really pushes people to be better; filled with something great.

LS: Glory Road is a bit different from other sports films. At its heart, this is not really a movie about basketball, is it?

JL: There is not that much basketball in this story. There is a huge social significance of this film. Many people have no idea that basketball was segregated, much less segregated forty years ago. So those are huge elements to what separates this one apart. There is also a David and Goliath element to it. But there are really big elements to this movie where people consistently come out and thank you for making it¾ wow! The (players) are the ones that really did it, obviously.

LS: Haskins inadvertently revolutionized the NCAA just by trying to assemble the best team.

JL: The game was completely changed within one year because of this event. It probably would not have happened had it been in one of the bigger colleges, because it would have worked in slowly, as opposed to this case where he did not have a team that he could put together. The athletic directors back then were like, 'We just want the guy to run the dorm!’ Basketball was like, ‘Oh, yeah, you can be the basketball coach too, Don, sure!’ Really, literally that was their thing because it was all about football. But within one year, the NCAA was instantly desegregated. These guys were given a chance to get an education in a way they had not up that point.

LS: Derek, do you have a new appreciation for the sport after seeing it through this lens?

Derek Luke: It is an untold skill. You think these guys get on the court and it is like pushing and bouncing a ball, and shooting the hoops. Just to go on the court is like real poetry. Just hitting them at the right time and being there is electrifying. For me it is like acting, because the game is more than the game. If you talk to the athletes who play, it is much more. For me, in my mentality, it is confirmed that everything I do and every choice of movie that I get, is connected. I have been more attracted to roles that say something, as opposed to just making a fictional character.

LS: Josh, your showdown with Jon Voight’s Adolph Rupp packs a real punch.

JL: Voight! We tried to stay sort of in the actual relationship of Haskins and Rupp in a sense that we both stayed on the periphery of each other, were watching each other and competitive of each other in a way. We stayed away from each other. We were both creating in that way ¾ watching, and the differences and similarities of the intensity with which we both work. There are not structured conversations between the two of us. It’s all just about looks! And that’s what Haskins talks about too--the incredible admiration that he had for Rupp. The competitive sprit of these guys was relentless. It bordered on obsessiveness.

LS: How do you think the climate in the U.S. today regarding racial issues connects with this Glory Road?

JL: There is a question of this country being sort of re-awakened about racial issues—what went down in New Orleans, certain people’s feelings about the president, this administration, the government. The country is being challenged right now, and the fact of the matter is, as different as basketball is, and as non-overt as racism is now, there are still undercurrents that are so powerful and disturbing and unequal. The wonderful response that I have seen to this movie is how it seems to say ‘People are people. Men are men. What is the issue here?’ I think if that can be put out into the world and young people can see it being done in a playful way and that you’re rooting for the better team as opposed to- it’s not a movie that’s trying to pound social issues, but it’s definitely pretty clear cut about what this guy did and what he believed. There is a line at the end with Pat Riley saying, ‘This was the Emancipation Proclamation of 1966.’

It’s pretty amazing that Haskins was living in the dorm with his family and ended up where he did. When things got bad for Haskins, it was actually after the story. He was tough enough going through and getting where he got. He had racism coming at him in a way that was very, very difficult, because he had done something to change the country. I think it was very tough for him. To have violence threatened against your children and to keep going was pretty astonishing.

LS: Any real-life racism creep onto the set during the shooting?

JL: There was a nasty moment of racism that happened the only night that we all went out as a group before we all started filming. Someone made a pretty nasty comment about one of our Black players and then one of our white players jumped him, and there was a whole sense of this team being bonded by that and awakened to the fact that things haven’t changed that much. The actors said, ‘We’d never take that today.’ That’s the difference. It’s totally, overtly unacceptable now as opposed to back then where you had to walk a tightrope with your response.

LS: Things certainly seem to have changed for Black athletes today.

DL: Yesterday, I saw a woman who had three boys, and it was like me and my two other brothers, and like my mother when she was raising me. She said, ‘Meet my new NBA star!’ That’s cool. I don’t ever remember coming to a screening with my mom. I’m not saying that those things were not available. I’m just saying that things are changing; that those kids have respect and a joy. I think one of the things that they can see (looking at Glory Road) is, ‘I can’t complain about anything. I’ve got everything I need. They had nothing.’

Race relations are different than they were in the 60s. But sometimes you can really know where you can go if you really know where you can’t go. I was in South Africa, and there, if you give someone an education, that is almost as good as giving them a diamond ring or buying a house. It is like a seed. They want to do something with it. When I read the film, it inspired me, and hopefully it will be taken different places, (and mean) different things for different people.

LS: Derek, your work in Antwone Fisher is one of the great movie performances. But I have to think there might be parallels between the subject in Glory Road, and what it might be like for young Black actors today in Hollywood looking for roles like that one.

DL: Glory Road is pretty much my story, because when we met the real Don Haskins, he said to the guys, ‘Everything you do is connected to a greater purpose. Even you telling the story.’ That purpose has something to do with your purpose and reality in life. And for me, every man has a DNA or description on his heart to follow; that is where your treasure comes about. In Hollywood, I’ve been blessed with opportunities to play some very interesting, significant characters. I like to dream. I fight anything that opposes my dream. I look at it that way. After you shoot an Antwone Fisher…. It was a dream come true. I always dream- I always saw big films. I just cannot accept the reality in my heart that I cannot do what I see.

LS: How do you think the audience will respond to the truth in Glory Road?

DL: People are having a broader taste for the truth. Pop films are great, but it is commanding Hollywood to take an examination. The movies (Hollywood) has been putting out lately that they have been expecting big numbers to happen, it has been the opposite—the independent films. The people are requesting the truth. So much has changed with 9/11 and the war. There is an appetite for information.

LS: Josh, you travel between big commercial films and small independents. What is that yin/yang dynamic about for you?

JL: I am just trying to help my movies be seen. It has been very, very disappointing when a very good movie is not seen, and I think Undertow is a strong example of that, where the studio does not know how to market it or…. So a movie like Stealth is really trying to build up somewhat of a name value, so people say, ‘That guy does good movies. Let’s go see this small movie.’ But there is almost no similarity in making them.

LS: Which do you find more satisfying?

JL: Undertow was remarkable that way. It is incredibly fast, shooting from the hip, really grubby, grubby filmmaking where you are lucky to get one or two takes in situations where you are coming into places and stealing shots, as opposed to something like Stealth, which is completely and totally controlled. You are in a green environment for seven months. Those green screens actually have a neurological impact! The crew starts to go crazy. You have to actually get out and take two weeks to get away from it, and rejuvenate. It is an incredibly different style of filmmaking.