Jonathon Jackson discusses, "The Making of Slap Shot: Behind The Scenes Of The Greatest Hockey Movie Ever Made, Revised 46th Anniversary Edition" (SportsLit S7E05)
The author who captured the spirit of the 1977 sports comedy talks about its staying power, how it was made, and who he would choose to play Reggie Dunlop and Ogie Ogilthorpe in a remake.
There is always a kinship with authors who produced a book after bashing away in the community daily newspaper game for several years. Local news is vital — just look at how much we are missing it these days — but it can feel creatively confining, so hat’s off to Jonathon Jackson and anyone else who has actually taken up that oft-heard advice of “why doncha write a book?” Jackson’s effort led to his The Making of Slap Shot: Behind The Scenes of the Greatest Hockey Movie Ever Made (J. Wiley and Sons, 2010; Double J Media, 2023).
Jackson, who is now working on his master’s thesis in history at the University of Waterloo, started his research in 2006 while he was a reporter at his hometown Owen Sound Sun Times. The paper is in the Postmedia chain, so suffice it to say he had some career and life disruption by the time the book was released in 2010.
“At the time, I don’t mind talking about it now, I lost my marriage, and then my job — one after the other,” Jackson relates in our episode that was posted on Nov. 11, four weeks after the book was re-related on his imprint, Double J Media (you can buy it on Amazon). “There were a lot of stops and starts, and stops and starts, as I tried to navigate my new life as a full-time single father of three, as well as freelance enough so I could make some money so I could feed these three young people who I had to keep feeding … but things were meant to go that way, and I came out a better writer for it.
“… Strangely enough, the solace I found was in the writing, late in the process, knowing that someone wanted to take a chance. That drove me the last few miles … I would think it’s a little like running a marathon.”
When Jackson said that, I was kind of relieved I didn’t cannily pre-empt his candor. One of my favorite lines in Slap Shot is the introduction that sportscaster Jim Carr gives when Ogie Ogilthorpe finally appears as a left wing for the Syracuse Bulldogs, the archrival of the Charlestown Chiefs: “This young man has had a trying rookie season, what with the suspensions, the notoriety, his subsequent deportation to Canada and that country’s refusal to accept him. Well, I guess that’s more than most 21-year-olds could handle.” There was consideration to working that into the intro, but it seemed like showing instead of letting the star of the show, our guest, tell.
Above is a link to the episode, which is also available through all your podcast platforms. And you can find links to purchase Jackson’s book, and all of our featured books, through sportslit.ca. Now here are some notes on the episode.
INTRO
0:00-17:40. You should have seen how long my fanboying over Slap Shot was before the compromised third or fourth draft. The crux of it is a contention that director George Roy Hill, writer Nancy Dowd, editor Dede Allen, the Paul Newman-led cast, and the crew made a true piece of art. That is borne out by the fact that not everyone got the movie right away. True art is like that. It threatens people, leads to them relaxing their boundaries, pulling back the curtains, and letting in some light.
Jackson’s book details that the critical reaction to Slap Shot was split. Frank Deford, man of letters at Sports Illustrated when it was the bible for sports fans who read, disliked it. Pauline Kael, the great film critic of The New Yorker, liked it. Another nugget that Jonathon includes in the book is that Slap Shot won an award in Japan as the best foreign film in 1977 (i.e., non-Japanese). Please keep in mind this was in one of the greatest years of American cinema of the 20th century, with the releases of Annie Hall, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Julia, Saturday Night Fever, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Star Wars: A New Hope, The Turning Point.
Personally, it is the innermost circle of favorite sports movies. A League Of Their Own, Bull Durham, Fever Pitch, and North Dallas Forty round out the all-time top five.
INTERVIEW
17:40-24:10. We cover the “angst” of writing the book that Jackson alludes to in the quote high up.
24:10-28:20. “I set out to write the kind of book I wanted to read.” If it wasn’t evident in my voice, I like books about the making-of a classic movie. It could be obscure and niche, but I like that.
For anyone wondering, this was the comedy bit about the “awkward origins of basketball” that I referenced.
28:20-32:00. Jackson relates the steps he went through to re-acquire the rights to his book after its original publisher was bought out in the early 2010s.
32:00-37:40. “I was captured — agog was a better word … I think that was when I decided to be a writer.” Jackson talks about how he found the Slap Shot franchise — in ink-on-paper form. Remember novelizations of popular movies? As an Xennial, I definitely did. It’s how I get references to the first two Back To The Future movies. I have never seen either film in its entirety.
37:40-46:30. The film’s writer, casting director, and editor were all women, which made it a more filled-in world where women, as Jackson notes, are not “just appendages of men.” Dede Allen (1923-2010) brought a sharp eye to the final cut of the film, and I thought it would be interesting to hear Jonathon read a passage that describes how she went to work after principal photography in Johnstown, Pa., wrapped.
The timing is on our side. The centennial of Allen’s birth is coming up on December 3, this Sunday. I also felt like Slap Shot is a good movie to study for the value of character actors and writers — very topical in the wake of the WAG and SAG-AFTRA strikes in the U.S. movie and TV industry that lasted throughout the summer of 2023. Our episodes are meant to be evergreen, but we can still use a text to comment on events that are going to have knock-on effects on what we get to watch for the next few years.
46:30-49:10. The late great Dan Jenkins wrote in 2007 that Slap Shot was “the best sports movie of the last 50 years.” That carries weight if you are aware that Jenkins (1928-2019) was from Fort Worth, Texas, and had zero personal interest in hockey. And, as Jackson mentions, the film adaptation of his novel Semi-Tough was released in theatres. It brought in more revenue than Slap Shot, but it was not, and is not, very good. So it was a class act for Jenkins to say the less profitable movie was better than the one loosely based on the book.
There is one funny story about the making of Semi-Tough. In the movie, the late Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson play two lifelong buddies and football stars who are in a love triangle with a lifelong friend, played by Jill Clayburgh. Reynolds had played some football at Florida State, and made The Longest Yard. But when the football players cast as extras asked if he had ever played football, Reynolds said, “Nah, I was a drama major.” Kristofferson, who had not played football in his youth, bluffed the other way, “Yeah, I was really good, before I got hurt.” So in the football action sequences, Reynolds was treated with kid gloves, and Kristofferson was shown no mercy.
49:10-53:45. “You can’t lampoon things like that anyone… somewhere between the 1970s and 2020s, we lost the ability to laugh at things that are uncomfortable. We think that we have to be sufficiently appalled.” Given the material in Slap Shot, we needed some discussion about the type of humour in the movie, and deconstructing the simplifications about wokeness and everyone-is-too-sensitive-today.
Celebrity deaths seem to be the one space for laughing at things that affect people. At least that is my theory.
53:45-1:06:07. “If they ever remake it, Jared Keeso would be perfect to play Reggie Dunlop.” We close out with a look at what is next for Jonathon Jackson, and pull on our puffy directing pants to cast for a remake. Who would play general manager Joe McGrath? Or the biggest goon in hockey today, Ogie Ogilthorpe?1
That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind.
Some footnotes: I mention that Emmy Rossum has already played Kathryn Walker, the actress who appears as Anita McCambridge in Slap Shot’s Act 3 reveal. That role of Rossum’s was in the 2018 comedy A Futile And Stupid Gesture. Walker was the life partner of National Lampoon co-founder Douglas Kenney (1946-1980).