The movie, Gridiron Gang, was based on a true story of the Kilpatrick Mustangs and their season in 1990. This was an American football team that was at the juvenile Camp Kilpatrick in Los Angeles, California. At this camp they ended up making a football team for the kids who chose to be free from jail, and to experience something else. Just like in the film, Sean Porter comes in and tells the boys about making a football team. At first it’s really hard because of the Camp Board and all the gang members that are there and on the football team. The coach of this team feels like this is a good way for them to start bonding though, and getting along. It’s also a way that they can maintain order and make the kids mind. This makes it a good opportunity too for the kids to get out and be active instead of being involved in gang violence in the prison. Also shows how they start minding like the coach and stuff and respecting each other. During this the kids have a really rough time at first because some are in different gangs so they don’t like each other, but after a while they learn to like each other and actually become friends. Some of them even start sticking up for each other and the coach gets really close with all the kids.
Inaccurate stuff about the movie.
In real life, the coach Sean Porter
wasn’t fully responsible for the sports program at Camp Kilpatrick. The camp
athletics actually started in 1986 with a basketball team. Then, in 1988, the
Camp developed an eight-man football team, and then expanded to eleven-man in
1990, which Sean influenced. Also in the
movie they had cheerleaders. In real life they did not have cheerleaders,
especially girls that were shipped in from a local correctional facility. These
cheerleaders were added as a sense of humor towards the movie “Gridiron Gang”.
Accurate stuff about the movie.
In the movie Gridiron Gang some accurate things are that they used the names of the real people in real life in the movie. The sports program at Camp Kilpatrick was actually started in 1986 with the formation of a basketball squad. Then in 1988, the camp added an eight man football team, which Sean Porter was influential in developing. In 1990, while under Coach Porter, the program went into a full season with an eleven-man football team. This shows a lot of accurate things that happened in the movie, like in the movie it showed how they have conflict because of gangs. That’s also how it was in real life, but yet they still made it and were able to have a team and succeed in that. Also, just like in the movie, they cried after their first football game because they lost by a lot and didn’t know how to handle it because that had never happened to them. Willie Weathers, who was a character in the movie, was based on a real person named Michael Black. He went and played for Washington State after this camp and then went into the NFL. Also the coach’s mom in the movie was really sick and passed away, and that’s what happened to the coach in real life.