Trivia

Animator Glen Keane drew from real life inspiration when animating Silver's "You've got the makings of greatness in you" speech to Jim. In his words, "I was seventeen years old and I had been fighting for a starting position on the football team as a halfback. And there was another player who was competing for the same position and he was a heck of a lot bigger and the head coach's favorite guy. I worked really hard and I got the starting position on this game and I was very proud of it. The game started and I played three plays and got the ball once. Then the head coach took me out and put the other guy in for the rest of the game. I never played again and I was crushed. As a seventeen-year-old, that's your life. You want your chance to shine. I had it but the coach took it away."Afterwards in the parking lot, the assistant coach, Mickey Ryan, a great guy who spoke with his heart and always had a twinkle in his eye, put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Glen, you're gonna do great things. You're gonna get that starting position. That wasn't right what happened.' And I could see that he really cared. There were tears in his eyes and I started to cry too. I lived that scene with Jim and Silver on the boat when Silver encourages Jim after a big setback. It was one of those things where you try to animate what you lived through and hope you can even get close to it." See more