I’m a coxswain. Here’s what I think of the rowing in The Boys In The Boat.
Does George Clooney's underdog sports film know its skegs from its stroke seats?
Film Features Rowing
There are very few things rowers love more than watching other people row badly. Annual “Head Of The Charles Destruction” and other boat crash videos regularly rack up thousands of views on YouTube. Many rowers I’ve met love to reference in regular conversation an infamous incident where a team rowed directly into a pole. There are few things more gratifying than watching a big, beefy dude in a gym unknowingly treat a rowing machine like a children’s toy. So you should know that it brings me absolutely no joy to say that George Clooney’s The Boys In The Boat absolutely nailed the little quirks and intricacies of its central sport.
Before critiquing pop culture for a living at The A.V. Club, I critiqued rowing for almost a decade as a coxswain on various teams throughout high school, college, and adulthood (which the rowing community delightfully calls “masters”). That means I was the small person who sits in either the front or back of the boat, steers, and yells a lot. I love the sport and I personally think it’s thrilling to watch, but thus far Hollywood hasn’t exactly agreed with me. There are a few notable exceptions, of course. The Social Network is a big one. But in general, if a movie features—or even centers on—crew, the details of the rowing itself have been so unrealistic that it’s been hard (at least for me) to buy into anything else the film is trying to do.
The Boys In The Boat, an adaptation of Daniel James Brown’s 2013 book about the true story of an underdog team from the University of Washington who went on to compete for the United States at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, is different. I knew it would be before anyone even picked up an oar. Before main character Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) is selected for the team, coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton) delivers a brusque speech to the assembled group of potential recruits: “Eight man crew is the most difficult team sport in the world. The average human body is just not meant for such things. It’s just not capable of such things. But average is not gonna get a seat on my boat. So good luck.” My roommate started laughing as soon as Ulbrickson finished, but it took me a second to process what about the speech was funny. Yes, it’s self aggrandizing and ridiculous, but it’s also the exact way every coach I’ve ever had has talked about the sport. Rowers suffer from a whole host of martyr complexes; George Clooney did his research.
The actual rowing scenes are no different. Former Olympic coach Terry O’Neill really earned his stripes here turning a group of eight Hollywood guys who’d never stepped foot in a shell into a team that could believably compete among the best in the world, at least visually. Their catches were clean and even. The boat was set. If I had gotten to drive any of those races, I would have been slapping the water in triumph as well.
To comment on every other true-to-life moment would be to retell the entire story of the film, so I obviously won’t do that here. But I do want to highlight a few details that made me and other friends and former teammates I’ve talked to about it smile. First off, all of the rowing-specific lingo is spot on. While the film doesn’t really explain what any of these terms mean, it was weirdly exhilarating to hear words like “engine room” (the powerhouse rowers in the middle of the lineup), “skying” (when a rower dips their oar handle too low before dropping their blade into the water), and “feather” (when an oar blade is parallel to the water) on the big screen. Luke Slattery, who plays the team’s coxswain, also nails what we call “rhythm speak,” or using your voice during a race to match the cadence of the boat and help the rowers get in time with one another. When he repeats “as … one” over and over like a mantra, that’s what he’s doing. Yes, we sit in dark rooms the night before race day and visualize every stroke, and yes, people frequently puke after finishing tough pieces. Coxswains still get thrown into the water after winning a race (it’s cold!), but at least we don’t have to wear those giant cones strapped to our face anymore. That’s a win in itself.
Rowers may be self-serious, pretentious, and consistently unavailable to people who don’t regularly wake up at 4 a.m. All of that is true. But the experience of forming ironclad bonds with your teammates, striving towards a communal goal, and crossing the finish line knowing that you’ve left absolutely everything you have out on the water is something that sticks with you forever. The Boys In The Boat is absolutely right about that too.
30 Comments
Elvis played a coxswain one time. He made so many darn mistakes, we were just laughing at him.
Guess that’s why he didn’t join the Navy.
Good story, Emma!
You’re a what?
Genuinely honored to see my 2014 high school Head of the Charles fuckup immortalized in an AV Club article lmao
Tell us more
I’m at 1:17 of the linked vid at the top of the article – tl;dr another boat illegally cut us off before going into the bridge (iirc they were penalized for it, but they didn’t yield) so I ended up cutting too close to the bridge and bashed my rower’s oars against the concrete. Fun times lol, was genuinely really cool to race Charles despite the crash.
That’s great. I admit I was hoping you were in the “Ignatius stop rowing!” vid, but still cool.Were you the cox?
So this is as educational a film about rowing as we’re likely to ever see?
There might be one of those things from the 50’s that they used to mock on MST3K.
If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a pole.
How do you feel about Oxford Blues?
Not as authentic as Mississippi Delta.
The rowing is the least of Oxford Blues’ crimes against authenticity.
What about The Boy In Blue?
What about his balls?
This is a great little write-up, thank you. I’m always more interested in sports movies that can get it all correct, even if I can’t tell. The level of care shows.
I’m a University of Washington grad(class of 2010).
Why you swain-of-a-cox!
Did you go there too?
to prove it, let’s do the secret handshake…
“Genius of the Restoration!”
My dad rowed crew and almost made alternate for the 1964 Olympic team. He can’t wait to see this.
Heh.Coxswain.
Were you an irascible coxswain?
The crew I was on was quite the experience…in some ways like a ‘typical’ team sport, but oh so very different. Any team sport had camaraderie and that whole ‘team thing’…but there is a fundamental difference that I think makes your crew almost like family (and, much like family, there may be guys you cannot stand but you defend to the death because they are YOUR crew). In typical team sports, everyone has to work together toward a goal (winning, natch), but they each have their role and do, more or less, their own thing. There is an individuality to it, even though it is a team thing, In crew, you HAVE to work in concert, doing essentially the same thing (well, except the coxswain, but they are arguably the glue anyway)…being ‘in tune’ with your crew isn’t just important, or even critical, it is necessary. Without it, you fail, period. You can’t just ‘ignore your differences to concentrate on competing’ and all that stuff…you have to get over them, you have to believe in each other and trust all the guys in your shell, regardless of any other issues. I’m looking forward to seeing this film.
From my friends who rowed, one major observation is that the team has to be disciplined enough to harmonize with the lowest common denominator. There’s no such thing as hero ball in crew.
My dad was a sports writer, mostly covering the NFL/Patriots so he did a lot of random stuff in the off-season. One of his favorite gigs was covering the Eastern Sprints in Worcester, MA on Lake Quinsigamon, usually held in early May. I loved going to it as a kid and in the late 70’s/80’s it was still a big deal with thousands of spectators. Seeing the coxswain getting tossed into a still very cold lake was a highlight. He loved this book and would have loved the movie.
My grandson rows crew and this really gave me a greater appreciation for the sport. Loved the movie.
As a former baseball player, it always takes me out of movies seeing actors look completely unnatural when “playing” the game. Major League is one of my favorite movies but watching Chelsie Ross pitch was tough (Sheen obviously knew what he was doing, and Haysbert had a nice swing). That’s why it was such a pleasant surprise in Everybody Wants Some when the players finally got on the field, and all could actually whip it around. Apparently a couple of them were college players and Wyatt Russell played minor league hockey so he just moves like an athlete.
Great write up!I am 63 years old; just saw the movie last night and enjoyed it immensely. Even though my “rowing” experience is five decades old and limited to summers spent on a lake alone in a rowboat at Girl Scout Camp, the technical aspects of the sport, the crew’s positioning, the terminology and the construct of the boast as shown in the movie all seemed authentic and made sense to me on a visceral level. But I couldn’t be sure, and so I did some searching and woo-lah, found this article. Thank you!I’ve never even been to a Regatta, but in my next life, pretty sure I want to be a coxswain.
; )