Disney hopes ‘Secretariat’ can pull off family fun, sports drama

It didn’t look like Secretariat could pull it off. Coming out of the gate at the 1973 Kentucky Derby, the chestnut colt fell behind all but two horses and dropped more than nine lengths off the leaders down the backstretch. Under the whip from jockey Ron Turcotte, the thoroughbred suddenly blitzed the field, winning the Derby and the nation’s adoration.

That stirring come-from-behind race – the opening leg in the horse’s ridiculously lopsided Triple Crown triumph, the first such sweep in 25 years – is at the center of “Secretariat,” a Disney drama opening today about the legendary equine, unconventional owner Penny Chenery (Diane Lane) and eccentric trainer Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich).

It’s the kind of feel-good family film – “Secretariat” is rated PG – that evokes the quintessential Disney films of the era it’s set in: “Freaky Friday,” “Pete’s Dragon” and “The Love Bug.” At the same time, the movie recalls the studio’s rousing sports dramas of the past decade, a slate that includes “The Rookie,” “Remember the Titans” and “Miracle.”

Disney’s new top executives believe “Secretariat,” a project begun by their predecessors, distills their creative and commercial ambitions, and they are promising to make more modestly budgeted, uplifting films in its hoof prints.

“It’s a movie that speaks to who we are today and where we are going,” studio chief Rich Ross said of the film, which features a gospel song and a Bible quote and has evident heartland appeal – the perfect inspirational film, he believes, for these recessionary times.

Directed by “Braveheart” screenwriter Randall Wallace and written by “The Rookie’s” Mike Rich, “Secretariat” was produced by former major league pitcher Mark Ciardi and partner Gordon Gray. Ciardi and Gray, who had previously produced the hockey movie “Miracle” and the football story “Invincible,” had wanted to make a film about Volponi, the 44-1 long shot winner of the 2002 Breeders’ Cup. Ciardi, Gray and Rich had discussed making a movie about Secretariat – arguably a better horse than racing legends Seabiscuit, Kelso, Citation and Man o’War – “but we didn’t know what the story was,” Gray said, adding that there was no suspense “because he killed everybody.”

Rich, who previously had written “Radio” and “Finding Forrester,” films focused on overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds, did research and decided that the most dramatic Secretariat movie would focus on Chenery, a Denver housewife and mother of four who took over her father’s Meadow Farm. Under her leadership, the farm turned out Secretariat and, a year earlier, Kentucky Derby winner Riva Ridge. “The story came together pretty clearly,” Ciardi said.

The movie itself, though, faced several obstacles. Disney said it would make “Secretariat” only if Julia Roberts or Jodie Foster would agree to play Chenery. What’s more, Cook and production president Oren Aviv didn’t want Wallace to spend more than $35 million – less than half of what Universal committed to 2003’s “Seabiscuit.” When Roberts and Foster passed, Wallace was able to persuade the studio to hire Lane, who hadn’t been in a $100 million-grossing movie since “The Perfect Storm” in 2000.

The studio and filmmakers aspired to make the racing movie more than a straightforward retelling of Big Red’s prowess on the racetrack – a sort of equine rags-to-riches story that one news account from the era described as “a compound of good genes, good training and good luck.”

Landing on the covers of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated in the same week, Secretariat achieved the kind of pop culture fame reserved for only elite athletes like Joe Namath, Reggie Jackson and Mary Lou Retton.

Rich’s script, which Wallace revised, was loosely adapted from sportswriter William Nack’s book “Secretariat: The Making of a Champion”; Wallace took it and followed Chenery’s emotional journey and the obstacles she faced in trying to fulfill her father’s vision for the 2,600-acre farm in Virginia.

“I have an approach to historical stories which makes people really uneasy – and that is you don’t let the facts get in the way of the truth,” Wallace said. “A movie is not a documentary, it is an impressionistic portrayal that, in those two hours you have, you have to capture what are the deeper truths. That means you have to synthesize and condense.”

Wallace, who attended seminary and speaks with a preacher’s rhetorical flourishes, used the gospel song “Oh Happy Day” and a verse from Job to emphasize the film’s spiritual themes of rebirth and transcendence. “It’s not a sports movie. It’s from the guy who created ‘Braveheart.’ And it’s much more akin to ‘Chariots of Fire,’ ” Wallace said. “I never did want the movie to be about a given dogma. But I wanted a sense with each character that they were looking for some experience of the sacred.”

“Secretariat” emphasizes Chenery’s isolation from her four children (who remained with her husband in Denver while she was in Virginia) and her high-stakes gamble to shore up the breeding operation’s tenuous finances by selling $6 million worth of syndication rights in Secretariat – essentially, an ownership stake and breeding privileges in the broad-chested beast – well before post time at the Kentucky Derby.

“Penny said to me, ‘You know what your movie does? I didn’t understand how hard it was and how lonely I was until I saw your movie,’ ” Wallace said after the 88-year-old Chenery watched the movie.

Given the limited budget, Wallace re-created two of the races in the Triple Crown but used television footage for the Preakness Stakes. For the Derby, his cameras focused on the smallest details, like how the horse rolled its eyes and how the jockey curled the animal’s mane in his hand.

At the Belmont, where Secretariat set a world record for that distance just as he did in the Derby (marks that still stand), Wallace heightened the feat with a slow-motion start, emphasizing every footfall until the gates spring open.

“Hanging between there, like a rose between the two dramatic thorns, was the Preakness,” Wallace said. “I had heard that her family was left behind, and this was the most agonizing part to me. The sense that Penny has been presented with a choice, at the beginning of the movie, which was passion or family. And the miracle is that she gets both.”