''Brian's Song'' is a 1971
ABC Movie of the Week that recounts the life of
Brian Piccolo (
James Caan), a
Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. They are one of two remaining ...
football player stricken with terminal
cancer
Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...
, focusing on his friendship with teammate
Gale Sayers (
Billy Dee Williams). Piccolo's and Sayers's sharply differing temperaments and racial backgrounds made them unlikely to become friends but they did, becoming the first interracial roommates in the history of the
National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is a Professional gridiron football, professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National ...
. The film chronicles the evolution of their friendship, ending with Piccolo's death in 1970. The production was such a success on
ABC that it was later shown in theaters by
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Trade name, doing business as Columbia Pictures, is an American film Production company, production and Film distributor, distribution company that is the flagship unit of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group ...
[ Thomas, Bob ("TV 'Brian's Song' on movie screens", ''The Dallas Morning News'', April 29, 1972, page 2] with a major
premiere
A premiere, also spelled première, (from , ) is the debut (first public presentation) of a work, i.e. play, film, dance, musical composition, or even a performer in that work.
History
Raymond F. Betts attributes the introduction of the ...
in
Chicago
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
; however, it was soon withdrawn for lack of business.
Critics have called the movie one of the finest
television movie
A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie, telefilm, telemovie or TV film/movie, is a film with a running time similar to a feature film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a Terrestr ...
s ever made.
[Harry Bowman. "Broadcast Beat V column 'Brian's Song' superior film", ''The Dallas Morning News'', November 27, 1971, page 7A.] A 2005 readers' poll taken by ''
Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American online magazine, digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, ...
'' ranked ''Brian's Song'' seventh in its list of the top "guy-cry" films.
The movie is based on Sayers's account of his friendship with Piccolo and coping with Piccolo's illness in Sayers's 1970 autobiography, ''I Am Third''. The film was written by
William Blinn,
whose script one Dallas television critic called "highly restrained, steering clear of any overt sentimentality
et conveyingthe genuine affection the two men felt so deeply for each other."
Plot
The movie begins as
Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. They are one of two remaining ...
rookie
running back
A running back (RB) is a member of the offensive backfield in gridiron football. The primary roles of a running back are to receive American football plays#Offensive terminology, handoffs from the quarterback to Rush (American football)#Offense ...
Gale Sayers arrives at team practice as an errant punt lands near him. Fellow rookie running back
Brian Piccolo goes to retrieve the ball, and Sayers flips it to him. Before Sayers meets with coach
George Halas in his office, Piccolo tells him – as a prank – that Halas has a hearing problem, and Sayers acts strangely at the meeting. Sayers pranks him back by placing mashed potatoes on his seat while Piccolo is singing
his alma mater's fight song.
During practice, Piccolo struggles while Sayers shines. Sayers and Piccolo are placed as roommates, a rarity during the racial strife at the time. Piccolo is afraid that he did not make the team, but Sayers makes the point that "if you didn't make the team, we wouldn't be placed together as roommates." Their friendship flourishes, in football and in life, quickly extending to their wives, Joy Piccolo and Linda Sayers. Sayers quickly becomes a standout player, but he injures his knee in a game against the
San Francisco 49ers
The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners and nicknamed the Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member ...
. To aid in Sayers's recovery, Piccolo brings a weight machine to his house. In Sayers' place, Piccolo rushes for 160 yards in a 17–16 win over the
Los Angeles Rams
The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Greater Los Angeles, Greater Los Angeles area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC West, West ...
and is given the game ball. Piccolo challenges Sayers to a race across the park, where Sayers stumbles but wins. Piccolo wins the starting
fullback position, meaning both he and Sayers will now be on the field together, and both excel in their roles.
Piccolo starts to lose weight and his performance declines, so he is sent to a hospital for a diagnosis. Soon after, Halas tells Sayers that Piccolo has cancer and will have part of a lung removed. In an emotional speech to his teammates, Sayers states that they will win the game for Piccolo and give him the game ball. When the players later visit the hospital, Piccolo teases them about losing the game, laughing that the line in the old movie wasn't
"let’s blow one for the Gipper."
After a game against the
St. Louis Cardinals, Sayers visits Joy, who reveals that Piccolo has to have another surgery for his tumor. After he is awarded the "George S. Halas Most Courageous Player Award", Sayers dedicates his award to Piccolo, telling the crowd that they had selected the wrong person for the prize and saying, "I love Brian Piccolo, and I'd like all of you to love him, too. And tonight, when you hit your knees, please ask God to love him." In a call, Sayers mentions that he gave Piccolo a pint of blood while he was in critical condition. Piccolo dies with his wife by his side. The movie ends with a flashback of Piccolo and Sayers running through the park, while Halas narrates that Piccolo died at age 26 and is remembered not for how he died but for how he lived.
Cast
Music
The musical theme to ''Brian's Song'', "The Hands of Time", was a popular tune during the early 1970s and has become a standard.
The music for the film was by
Michel Legrand
Michel Jean Legrand (; 24 February 1932 – 26 January 2019) was a French musical composer, arranger, conductor, jazz pianist, and singer. Legrand was a prolific composer, having written over 200 film and television scores, in addition to ma ...
, with lyrics to the song by
Alan and Marilyn Bergman.
Legrand's instrumental version of the theme song charted for eight weeks in 1972, peaking at No. 56 on the
''Billboard'' Hot 100. It also won the
Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition.
Reception
The film received acclaim and is often cited as one of the greatest television films ever made, as well as one of the greatest sports films.
The film was the most watched movie on U.S. television during 1971 and the most watched made-for-TV movie ever with a
Nielsen rating
Nielsen Media Research (NMR) is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre, films (via the AMC Theatres MAP program), and newspapers. Headquartered in New York City, it is best known for the #Nielsen TV ...
of 32.9 and an audience share of 48% until it was surpassed by ''
The Night Stalker'' in January 1972.
[
Beginning in Fall 1972, the film was made available to schools all over the United States by the Learning Corporation of America.]
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
reports that 85% of 13 critics have given the film a positive review, with an average rating of 7.50/10. The site's consensus is that "Buoyed by standout performances from James Caan and Billy Dee Williams, Brian's Song is a touching tale of friendship whose central relationship transcends its standard sports movie moments."
In his 2016 book co-written with Alan Sepinwall titled '' TV (The Book)'', television critic Matt Zoller Seitz named ''Brian's Song'' as the fifth greatest American TV-movie of all time, stating that the film was "The dramatic and emotional template for a good number of sports films and male weepies (categories which tend to overlap a bit)", as well as "an influential early example of the interracial buddy movie." ''Filmink'' magazine said the film "has a deserved reputation for the definitive guy cry movie – cancer, race, football, stoicism."
Accolades
Remake
Thirty years after its original airing, a remake was aired in 2001
The year's most prominent event was the September 11 attacks against the United States by al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror. The United States led a Participan ...
on ABC's '' The Wonderful World of Disney'' starring Mekhi Phifer as Sayers and Sean Maher as Piccolo.
See also
* List of American football films
References
External links
*
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{{Chicago Bears
1971 television films
1971 drama films
1971 films
1970s American films
1970s biographical drama films
1970s buddy drama films
1970s sports drama films
ABC Movie of the Week
American buddy drama films
American football films
American sports drama films
Biographical films about sportspeople
Chicago Bears
Columbia Pictures films
Cultural depictions of players of American football
Films about cancer in the United States
Films based on biographies
Films directed by Buzz Kulik
Films scored by Michel Legrand
Films shot in Indiana
Peabody Award–winning broadcasts
Sports films based on actual events
English-language biographical drama films
Films set in Illinois
English-language buddy drama films