Super Bills: Buffalo's Super Bowl dream comes true in Second String

Toronto Sun - May 26, 2000
By CLAIRE BICKLEY

I was saved by the Bills.

Just as Gil Bellows was calling my bluff, he was called back in front of the camera.

The actor was confessing to being one of the weaker football-throwers in the cast of Second String, a wishful-thinking cable TV comedy in which the Buffalo Bills win the Super Bowl. Shot entirely in Toronto, the movie is about to wrap production.

What, I sneered facetiously to Bellows, do you throw like? A girl?

"I think there's a lot of girls out there who probably wouldn't enjoy you saying that," said the ex-Ally McBeal-er, warming toward high dudgeon, and then querying my own athletic credentials.

Two older brothers, I responded. I can heft a ball, I said. But, um, not in these shoes.

"Not in these shoes?" Bellows hooted, swivelling in search of a ball he could borrow. Then, alas, action beckoned. He was off the field. I was off the hook.

It was an unseasonably hot and humid day earlier this month when Bellows and his castmates lined up outside Scarborough's Birchmount Stadium, waiting to be cued for a shot of them running into the dressing room. Each paused to snag a pita snack from a passing catering staffer. I had never observed actors chowing down seconds before a scene.

"Before a scene. After a scene. During a scene," joked the catering man. "I'm the most popular guy on the set."

That's what it's like on a production where the actors are big, even when their parts are small. Four dozen locally cast extras and secondary cast members were chosen for their ability to look like the real NFL thing.

Most of them dwarf Bellows, who plays an insurance agent drafted into quarterback action by the Bills, desperate after losing their entire first string roster to food poisoning on the eve of the playoffs. Richard T. Jones, from Judging Amy, is cast as Bellows' old college-ball pal, a wide receiver who made it to the bigs but never became a starter.

"It's so brutal in there," Jones quipped with mock delicacy. "I like tea and nice little easy sports, like golf."

Jon Voight plays the Bills coach.

Ted Turner's U.S.-only cable network, TNT, will air the movie in January. There are no plans yet for a Canadian broadcast.

Because Second String is an NFL-authorized production, it uses real team names, logos and game footage.

"The effect is the realness of it all," explained producer Bob Roe. "The downside is layers of approval. It's a lot of extra stumbling around and legal wrangling."

It took TNT two years to win over the NFL. Then it needed permission from every team the movie features.

"Of course, almost any team would have said, 'Sure, we want to win the Super Bowl in a movie.' But then you have to find four teams that lose games to the Buffalo Bills, and they have to approve the script, too," Roe said.

Script approval was the NFL's price.

"No (showing players) swearing or doing damage to property, anything illegal," Roe said in listing some of the rules. "You know, they have enough legal problems within the players' system already. They don't want it to be advertised in a comedy movie."

Originally, it was the San Francisco 49ers -- not the Bills -- that screenwriter Tom Flynn sent limping toward Super Bowl glory.

Then director Rob Lieberman got on board. Second String brings the native Buffalonian's career full circle. He started out 31 years ago at age 19 making coaching films for the Bills.

"I think that they're kind of like the anti-Cinderella team. I think they're in the national consciousness for being losers of Super Bowls," Lieberman said of switching Cinderella to his hometown team, which he still roots for from afar -- and defends, after a fashion.

"They're not losers. I mean, to win the American Football Conference four years in a row is not anything to be ashamed of, you know. Just the fact that they didn't win the Super Bowl, that's something to be ashamed of," he said, laughing.

"Many teams go the distance and someone has to lose. It's to do it four times in a row. I mean, by the time you go the fourth time, you go, 'For crying out loud.' You feel like the Susan Lucci of football. 'Come on already, win.' "

Celebrity cameos

Adding realism to the action are sports celebrity cameos. Real Bills quarterback and former Argos hero Doug Flutie was required to suffer from food poisoning and toss a bedpan at a TV set.

"It wasn't a challenging role. I wouldn't say it's like Richard III, you know. But I think he did a very fine job," Lieberman said.

Bills defensive back Donovan Greer, play-by-play man Van Miller, analyst Mike Ditka and ESPN's Chris Berman also get a slice of screen time.

Making sure it all looks real is the film's football co-ordinator, Mike Fisher. His credits include the coming Denzel Washington film Remember The Titans, Last Boy Scout, Everybody's All American and Arliss. He has seen plenty of other filmmakers drop the football.

"Varsity Blues and all those movies, the football action is, like, so ridiculous," he said. "It's like one guy running down the field and 25 guys ricochet off him. I'm like, 'Oh, brother.' "

Bellows' athletic abilities have improved every day on the job, Fisher said.

"You know, it's not like learning the violin or something. This is hard."

Despite Bellows' own humble assessment of his throwing skills, the actor is in his best shape since he played a white-trash desperado in Love And A .45. He trained for three months, cut out sugar and carbs and dropped 25 pounds of sympathy weight he'd gained while his wife was expecting. A football coach in L.A. put him through pro-level drills.

"When I wasn't working on the set of Ally McBeal, I was training for this. It was painful, you know. There was a week there where I didn't know if I was going to be able to do this movie because I could barely get out of bed," he said.

As the heat rose in the Birchmount locker room, even the aroma was becoming authentic. But it was testosterone that hung heaviest in the air.

Testosterone zone

"All these guys, all this testosterone. But it's fun guys. We haven't had one bubble of real arguments or bad behaviour," Voight said. "We've had an awfully good time. We watched one of the basketball games together in Gil's room. Everybody was there and Richard had his two little babies there -- little babies -- and we were shouting and talking, you know, that trash talking, all through that thing, and we were just laughing, just having a wonderful time. It was just a group. You'd say this group must have been together forever, and we'd just known each other a couple of days when that happened."

Bellows, so fresh off Ally McBeal's estro-set, also was enjoying spending six weeks as a member of an all-boys club.

"I love it. It's way better," he said. "Women have more issues at work than men do. Men, they just want the catering to be good, they want to look good in their clothes and that's about it. They don't spend an hour and a half in the makeup trailer. They're not catty. I'm not saying those women are. I'm just saying it's predisposed. You get a group of women together, it's a little different dynamic than a group of guys."

Hey, who's tossing around those 'throw like a girl' stereotypes now?


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