On the set of "The Rookie"

Rookie of the year

Austin and Texas -- a double-header for Disney film crew



BYLINE: Joe O'Connell, Austin American-Statesman    
DATE: June 1, 2001 
PUBLICATION: Austin American-Statesman 
SECTION: Lifestyle 
PAGE: F3

The idyllic country cottage has a screened-in back porch and a husband, wife and three adorable kids at the kitchen table enjoying a hearty breakfast.

It's also in the middle of a basketball court at the former Del Valle High School and surrounded by wires, cameras, giant wormlike air vents and the hot glow of the movie biz.

Welcome to Disney's "The Rookie," the only studio film to start production in Austin in 2001. Filming ends next week, weather willing.

Soggy turf moved cameras this day from a Thorndale ballpark to the high school doomed to close because of noise from the nearby airport. When the city took over Bergstrom Air Force Base, a deal was struck to build new Del Valle schools farther from the noise. Now brittle leaves scatter in silent high school hallways leading to the set.

Fake trees skirt the back porch. Australian Rachel Griffiths bids her kids adieu in a Texas twang and gives Dennis Quaid a peck on the cheek.

A few feet away first-time director John Lee Hancock watches on a monitor and instructs 7-year-old cutie Angus T. Jones to hold his spoon like a baseball bat, take a big bite of Cap'n Crunch and grin at Daddy Quaid.

"The Rookie" is destined to be categorized as a baseball film, and that's not a bad thing to producer Mark Ciardo, a former Milwaukee Brewer whose company was also behind the teen flick "The New Guy," which used much of the same local crew when it filmed here in the winter. It proved a boon to folks such as 14-year-old Trevor Nelson, who worked as a camera intern on both films and got to experience the ultimate film fantasy -- holding the slate at the start of each new take.

"Originally we were going to Vancouver," Ciardo said of "The New Guy" shoot. "In the end it was a random choice, but everybody was talking about Austin."

Both "The Rookie" and Texas were clearer picks this time around for Ciardo, who roomed during his first spring training with the film's real-life inspiration.

But Hancock, a laid-back, tanned Denis Leary look-alike, insists "The Rookie" is not a baseball movie, but simply a Texas film.

"As much as it's a movie with a backdrop of baseball, it's more than that," he said. "It's a Texas movie in the tradition of 'Hud' or 'The Last Picture Show.' "

Look at the stats: a true story of Jim Morris, a 35-year-old Big Lake science teacher and baseball coach who agrees to try out for the big leagues if his team makes the playoffs. They do, he does and he quickly is pitching in the majors for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Base hit.

Quaid grew up in Houston. Double.

And Hancock, a Longview native raised in Texas City, is Texas to the bone. His brother Kevin, lurking on the set, even played pro football. Home run and touchdown, bubba.

A Baylor grad whose law-school running buddies included Austin Mayor Kirk Watson (his eminence has a bit part as a school administrator) and Hyde Park Baptist Church attorney Richard Suttle, Hancock is a lawyer turned screenwriter turned director.

His crash course for the latter came when he penned "A Perfect World," starring Kevin Costner and directed by Clint Eastwood in Central Texas in the early 1990s.

Hancock's only directing experience is for television, but he steels himself with thorough preparation.

"It's fun, exhausting and at times terrifying," he said of directing. "Some days you feel you really accomplished something. Other times you're reminded it's a ticking clock and there's a lot of money being spent."

Yet the set is relaxed. Filming stops; Quaid gooses his make-believe son, who squeals and leaps from the stage gripping a rubber alligator. Workers relocate the camera and lift a kitchen wall magically into place for the next shot.

In the hallway two of the three triplets who portray the Morris toddler run in wide, laughing circles.

Hancock apologizes to Denise Spicher, mother of 5-year-old Rebecca of McKinney, for making her daughter eat too much cereal in take after take.

Spicher's eyes gleam and she says, "It hasn't quite hit me that this is going to be a movie."