{"id":10483,"date":"2015-09-02T11:19:06","date_gmt":"2015-09-02T15:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?p=10483"},"modified":"2015-09-02T11:28:22","modified_gmt":"2015-09-02T15:28:22","slug":"driven-towards-unity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2015\/09\/driven-towards-unity.html","title":{"rendered":"Driven Towards Unity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"Woodlawn | Official Trailer | Now Streaming\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0xb8fhck0ks?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The film \u201cWoodlawn\u201d is based on the true story surrounding the Woodlawn High School football team in Birmingham, Alabama during the 1970s where racism was fluid. This changed through a young team, influencing an entire city to put down their hate in exchange for hope.<\/p>\n<p>Written by the Erwin Brothers, the larger than life story follows the rise of African American running back Tony Nathan, his coaches, rivals, and the power of faith in the midst of great darkness. The interracial team made headlines, not for racial tension, but for winning on and off the field. In the midst of chaos\u2014a healing takes\u00a0place.<\/p>\n<p>Nic Bishop\u00a0stars as\u00a0Woodlawn coach Tandy Gerelds, who struggled to patch together a winning football team until he found Nathan. Authenticity was crucial to Bishop, as the Australian actor worked to create a southern accent, and gain a better understanding of Gerelds. \u201cIt all starts with the script I\u2019m given, and they [Erwin Brothers] gave me a very detailed description of who this man was or is. So I start making notes from the very first read through, and then I go through a process of research. I was really lucky to have a wealth of photographs, and interviews, some newspaper articles, and journal entries written himself in his own journal.\u201d Bishop described the coach as being a fair man, but a realist. He was a disciplinarian, and believed in hard work. Bishop said his favorite line in the script was when Gerelds turned to assistant coach Jerry Sterns (Kevin Sizemore) and said \u2018I believe in what I can see.\u2019 He\u2019s very much driven by his own belief system Bishop shared.\u00a0 But \u201che will stand behind his players, his family, or anyone he believes in. He was a good, honest man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With the country being so divided emotionally, politically, and racial discrimination seen today&#8211;the film comes at a good time. Perhaps the story can be used as a bridge. \u201cI think that sense of unity, that sense of hope\u2014that sense of standing together as one regardless of our faith, or belief system, or our ethnicity\u2026 if we all stand together and aim towards a more positive way to live, then you can kind of conquer anything.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong>Jon Voight is Paul &#8220;Bear&#8221; Bryant, Sean Astin plays\u00a0chaplain Hank Erwin, and Caleb Castille makes his acting debut as Tony Nathan.\u00a0&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/woodlawnmovie.com\/\">Woodlawn<\/a>&#8221;\u00a0hits theaters nationwide Oct. 16.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The film \u201cWoodlawn\u201d is based on the true story surrounding the Woodlawn High School football team in Birmingham, Alabama during the 1970s where racism was fluid. This changed through a young team, influencing an entire city to put down their hate in exchange for hope. Written by the Erwin Brothers, the larger than life story&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[1332,2783,2605,1161,2780,2781,2782,2767],"class_list":["post-10483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebrities","category-movies","tag-inspirational-movies","tag-caleb-castille","tag-faith-based-film","tag-football","tag-jon-voight","tag-nic-bishop","tag-sean-astin","tag-woodlawn"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Driven Towards Unity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2015\/09\/driven-towards-unity.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Driven Towards Unity\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The film \u201cWoodlawn\u201d is based on the true story surrounding the Woodlawn High School football team in Birmingham, Alabama during the 1970s where racism was fluid. This changed through a young team, influencing an entire city to put down their hate in exchange for hope. Written by the Erwin Brothers, the larger than life story&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2015\/09\/driven-towards-unity.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-09-02T15:19:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-09-02T15:28:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Corine Gatti\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Driven Towards Unity","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2015\/09\/driven-towards-unity.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Driven Towards Unity","og_description":"The film \u201cWoodlawn\u201d is based on the true story surrounding the Woodlawn High School football team in Birmingham, Alabama during the 1970s where racism was fluid. This changed through a young team, influencing an entire city to put down their hate in exchange for hope. Written by the Erwin Brothers, the larger than life story&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2015\/09\/driven-towards-unity.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2015-09-02T15:19:06+00:00","article_modified_time":"2015-09-02T15:28:22+00:00","author":"Corine Gatti","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2015\/09\/driven-towards-unity.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2015\/09\/driven-towards-unity.html","name":"Driven Towards Unity","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website"},"datePublished":"2015-09-02T15:19:06+00:00","dateModified":"2015-09-02T15:28:22+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/3013f619d142ceac521a13c1921d991a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2015\/09\/driven-towards-unity.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2015\/09\/driven-towards-unity.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2015\/09\/driven-towards-unity.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Driven Towards Unity"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/","name":"Idol Chatter","description":"Beliefnet Entertainment blog, TV blog, Movie blog, Religion in entertainment blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/3013f619d142ceac521a13c1921d991a","name":"Corine Gatti","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/51f\/51fa4157b4c0c24fbc082089eb7db284x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/51f\/51fa4157b4c0c24fbc082089eb7db284x96.jpg","caption":"Corine Gatti"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/authors\/c\/corine-gatti-santillo.aspx"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/author\/cgatti"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10483"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10491,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10483\/revisions\/10491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}