Ex-Receiver Makes Action Believable In Sports Flicks

(From The USA Today -- by Michael Hiestand)

MARK ELLIS played college football and planned to go into coaching. Now he oversees combine drills, holds training camps, passes out playbooks and breaks down plays on film. Ellis isn't a coach, although he says "there's only one thing different" about his job -- We all know who'll fumble, throw the interception -- who'll win."

Ellis is a technical adviser for coordinating and casting sports action in movies, TV, even music videos. He oversaw football action in THE LONGEST YARD, a remake of the 1974 film making its debut next week in which the guards once again end up playing the inmates but with 21st-century twists. This time, the prison game supposedly airs on ESPN2, with CHRIS BERMAN calling the action.

That isn't the strangest ESPN role you're about to see on the big screen -- Teen sensation LINDSAY LOHAN will play an ESPN Production Assistant in the upcoming HERBIE: FULLY LOADED, in which the famed love bug returns to race in NASCAR.

Ellis, a former wide receiver at APPALACHIAN STATE, says it "had never crossed my mind to work on a movie" until he got a chance offer to work the 1993 film THE PROGRAM, best known for being blamed for real-life deaths supposedly inspired by its onscreen players recklessly lying down in the middle of a freeway.

But for Ellis, that led to choreographing the football action in films such as THE REPLACEMENTS, ANY GIVEN SUNDAY, and JERRY MAGUIRE. After choreographing high school football in the 1999 film VARSITY BLUES, producers MIKE TOLLIN and BRIAN ROBBINS gave Ellis opportunities to create footage for movies involving other sports.

Movies have a long tradition of presenting sports action that, to real fans, seems fake. But Ellis says because "America is oversaturated with sports today," moviemakers are now "convinced you can't fool the public anymore."

He cites last year's MIRACLE, a movie based on the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, as an example "of how far Hollywood has come." Ellis oversaw tryouts across the USA that drew more than 5,000 hockey players and produced the onscreen U.S. team. In Ellis' training camp before shooting started, the ersatz Olympians skated in the morning and took afternoon acting classes.

"Now, we find athletes who can pull off the action and hope they have, as we call it, the acting gene," he says. "Hollywood has changed. They don't sit across from actors and say, 'By the way, did you ever play ball?' Now, the athletic evaluation is part of the casting process."

Unless you're a big star. THE LONGEST YARD's ADAM SANDLER was cast without being timed in the 40. Then ESPN's SEAN SALISBURY, a former NFL quarterback, got a call -- "At first, I thought it was a joke" -- to tutor him. Salisbury recalls reacting as a critic -- "I asked who was going to play the (1974) BURT REYNOLDS role and heard, 'ADAM SANDLER.' I thought, 'That's not right!'"

But after first playing catch with Sandler in a park, Salisbury worked off and on with him until shooting ended in November. He says "the Hollywood thing was a great thrill" and Sandler is "one of my best friends."

Salisbury stops just short of saying, "Luv ya, babe!" But maybe not for long -- Ellis got Salisbury a role in BENCHWARMERS, a baseball-themed movie, starring DAVID SPADE and ROB SCHNEIDER that is now being shot.

"I play an idiot Little League coach who chews kids out," Salisbury says.

"He plays a hard-core jock coach, a screamer," says Ellis, approvingly.

Ellis' Columbia, South Carolina-based REEL SPORTS has a database of more than 5,000 people, many with sports experience, who want to play movie athletes. Those parts can involve three months of training and pay up to $300 daily.

Ellis' upcoming projects include casting female volleyball players for an MTV movie called RUMBLE and football players for INVINCIBLE, in which MARK WAHLBERG plays VINCE PAPALE, who didn't play college football but managed to make the PHILADELPHIA EAGLES at age 30 in 1976.

Ellis notes evolving movie technology includes "pre-visualization," where ideas for sports action can be rendered in an animated form and then filmed to project what they'd actually look like onscreen. But some basics, he says, aren't changing. Former star athletes like MICHAEL IRVIN, now an ESPN analyst, usually have acting potential because "they're coachable" and "they're natural hams." Especially Irvin, he says -- "He gets it. He eats up the camera."