Slap Shot
Slap Shot is a 1977 American sports comedy film directed by George Roy Hill, written by Nancy Dowd, and starring Paul Newman and Michael Ontkean. It depicts a minor league ice hockey team that resorts to violent play to gain popularity in a factory town in decline.
Dowd based much of her script, as well as several of the characters, on experiences of her brother Ned Dowd who played minor league hockey in the 1970s.
While Slap Shot received mixed reviews upon release and was only a moderate box-office success, it has since become widely regarded as a cult film.
Plot
In the fictional Rust Belt city of Charlestown, Pennsylvania, the local steel mill is about to permanently close and lay off 10,000 workers. This indirectly threatens the existence of the town's minor league ice hockey team, the Charlestown Chiefs, which is struggling with a losing season, incompetent players, and increasingly hostile spectators. Player-coach Reggie Dunlop, like most of the team, has no employment prospects outside hockey. As a money-saving measure, the team's penny-pinching manager, Joe McGrath, signs the young, immature Hanson Brothers.After seeing Charlestown fans responding positively to violence, Dunlop unleashes the Hansons, whose play mainly consists of brutalizing the other team. To motivate the players, he leaks to a newspaper a fabricated story about a potential sale to a community in Florida, hoping that if the team becomes popular enough, it will happen. The brawls bring fans to the games, increasing attendance, and the Chiefs start winning.
Ned Braden, the team's top scorer, refuses to take part in the violence; Dunlop attempts to get him to fight by exploiting his marital troubles, encouraging but failing to get Braden's wife Lily to leave him due to his coldness. Games devolve into bench-clearing brawls, which become increasingly violent. Dunlop offers a $100 reward to any player who assaults Tim McCracken, the player-coach of the rival Syracuse team. The Chiefs rise up the ranks to become contenders for the league championship. Dunlop attempts several times to reconcile with his estranged wife Francine, who wants a divorce and to take a job on Long Island. After Lily moves in with Dunlop to get away from Braden, Dunlop takes her to meet Francine, and the women commiserate over their difficulties in being married to hockey players.
Eventually, Dunlop meets the reclusive team owner, Anita McCambridge, and learns that his efforts to increase the team's popularity and value through violence have been for naught, as McCambridge would make more money if she folded the team as a tax write-off. Dunlop decides to abandon the strategy of violence for the championship game, believing it to be his last, and the rest of the team agrees. Their opponents from Syracuse have stocked their team with violent "goons.” After the Chiefs are crushed during the first period while playing a non-violent style and getting booed by their fans, McGrath tells them that National Hockey League scouts, whom he invited, are watching the game.
Dunlop and the rest of the team, except Braden, switch back to brawling, much to the delight of the fans. When Braden sees Lily cheering for the Chiefs, he enters the rink and performs a striptease, adding to the audience's enjoyment and breaking up the fight. When McCracken protests this "obscene" demonstration and sucker-punches the referee for dismissing him, Syracuse is disqualified, granting the Chiefs the championship. With the Chiefs folded, Dunlop accepts the offer to be the player-coach to a Minnesota team, intending to bring his teammates with him. In a parade held for the Chiefs, Dunlop fails to convince Francine to stay with him and watches her drive away.
Cast
Development
The original screenplay by Nancy Dowd is based in part on her brother Ned Dowd's experiences playing minor-league hockey in the U.S. in the 1970s. At that time, violence, especially in the low minors, was a selling point of the game. Dowd would call his sister “from these various towns—Utica, Syracuse, New Haven—and tell me how he was being beaten-up and having his teeth knocked out.” That, she told The New York Times, “sort of fascinated me.”Dowd was living in Los Angeles when she got a call from Ned, a member of the Johnstown Jets hockey team. He gave her the bad news that the team was up for sale. Dowd spent a month with his team doing research for a movie. She worked her own notes and from tape recordings that her brother had made for her in the locker room and on the team bus. She was paid $50,000 for the screenplay, which took four months to complete, and was present during the entire filming.
The movie was filmed in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, and in central New York State.
Nancy Dowd used Ned and a number of his Johnstown Jets teammates in Slap Shot, with Ned playing Syracuse goon Ogie Ogilthorpe. He later used the role to launch a career as a Hollywood character actor, an assistant director, and eventually a line producer. The characters of the Hanson Brothers are based on three actual brothers: Jeff, Steve, and Jack Carlson, who played with Ned Dowd on the Jets. The character of Dave 'Killer' Carlson is based on then-Jets player Dave "Killer" Hanson. Steve and Jeff Carlson played their Hanson brother counterparts in the film. Jack Carlson originally was written to appear in the film as the third brother Jack, with Dave Hanson playing his film counterpart Dave 'Killer' Carlson. However, by the time filming began, Jack Carlson had been called up by the Edmonton Oilers, then of the WHA, to play in the WHA playoffs, so Dave Hanson moved into the role of Jack Hanson, and Jerry Houser was hired for the role of 'Killer' Carlson.
Paul Newman, claiming that he swore very little in real life before the making of Slap Shot, said to Time in 1984:
Newman stated that the most fun he ever had making a movie was on Slap Shot, as he had played the sport while young and was fascinated by the players around him. During the last decades of his life, he repeatedly called Reg Dunlop one of his favorite roles. Al Pacino wanted to play the role of Reggie Dunlop but director George Roy Hill chose Paul Newman instead.
Nancy Dowd rejected suggestions that the film was sexist and said that she considered herself to be a feminist.
Production notes
Yvan Ponton and Yvon Barrette dubbed their own voices for the film's translated French version. The film is one of few mainstream American films that was translated in colloquial Québécois French and not Standard French. Heavy use of Quebec expressions and foul language has made this version of the film a cult classic among French-speaking Canadians, where lines from the movie such as "Dave est magané" and "Du hockey comme dans l'temps" are common catch phrases.The movie was filmed in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and used several players from the then-active North American Hockey League Johnstown Jets as extras. The Carlson Brothers and Dave Hanson also played for the Jets in real life. Many scenes were filmed in the Cambria County War Memorial Arena and Starr Rink in Hamilton, New York; the Utica Memorial Auditorium ; Onondaga County War Memorial ; and in other Johnstown locales. Coincidentally, the Johnstown Jets and the NAHL folded in 1977, the year Slap Shot was released.
Although much of the film takes place during the fall and winter seasons, when hockey is in season, filming at the Utica Memorial Auditorium took place from June 3–4. Similarly, in Johnstown, Newman is wearing a coat as though it should be cold, but there is no snow on the ground and the trees are in full bloom.
The Reggie Dunlop character is based, in part, on former Eastern Hockey League Long Island Ducks player/coach John Brophy, who receives homage by his last name being used for the drunken center of the Hyannisport Presidents. Coincidentally, Brophy would later coach Dave Hanson, who played Jack Hanson, with the Birmingham Bulls in 1978.
In one scene announcer Jim Carr remarks that Ned Braden is "a college graduate... and an American citizen!" – both unusual distinctions for a pro hockey player of the time. In real life, Michael Ontkean is Canadian, but played hockey for and graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 1970.
Syracuse Bulldogs rookie goon Ogie Ogilthorpe, who was mentioned throughout the film but never actually seen until the final playoff game, was based on longtime minor-league goon Bill "Goldie" Goldthorpe. Like Ogie Ogilthorpe, Goldie Goldthorpe is also infamous for his rookie season in professional hockey when as a member of the Syracuse Blazers he amassed 25 major fighting penalties before Christmas.
The Broome County Blades in the film were based on the Broome Dusters. One scene was specifically drawn from events that occurred in Binghamton, New York. In the film the Hanson brothers wear black-rimmed, Coke-bottle eyeglasses, and in one game get into a fight immediately after the opening faceoff; in reality, both Jeff and Steve Carlson did wear that style of glasses, and did indeed get into a long fight right after an opening faceoff. Coach Dick Roberge:
A scene in the film shows the Hanson brothers jumping the Peterborough Patriots during pre-game warm-ups. This is based on events in a mid-'70s North American Hockey League playoff series between the Johnstown Jets and the Buffalo Norsemen. The Jets had a black player on their roster, and during a playoff game held in North Tonawanda, New York, a Norsemen fan held up a derogatory sign stating that blacks should be playing basketball. The next game in the series was held in Johnstown, and the Jets retaliated by attacking the Norsemen players during the warm-ups, with a huge brawl erupting. The Norsemen players and coaches then returned to the dressing room and refused to come out to start the game. The game was awarded to the Jets by forfeit, as was the playoff series since the "win" gave the Jets the needed number of victories to capture the series.
Another scene is also based on a real-life event. In the film Jeff Hanson scores a goal and is hit in the face by a set of keys thrown by a fan. The Hansons then go into the stands after the fan and Jeff Hanson punches the wrong fan. After the game the Hansons are arrested for the incident. In real life a similar incident occurred in Utica, New York, in a game between the Johnstown Jets and the Mohawk Valley Comets. Jeff Carlson was hit in the face by a cup of ice thrown by a Utica fan and went into the stands after the fan with brothers Jack and Steve. All three were arrested and Dave Hanson gathered the money for bail for the Carlson brothers.