IN 2000, DENZEL WASHINGTON STARRED IN REMEMBER THE TITANS, a very great and enjoyable movie that, per IMDB.com, was about: “The true story of a newly appointed African-American coach and his high school team on their first season as a racially integrated unit.” And this will either come as a great shock to you or no shock at all, but Remember the Titans isn’t precisely a true story. Parts of it were fudged a bit to make it a more enjoyable experience.

Some of the changes were small changes, and when you hear them you go, “Oh. Well, I suppose that makes sense, what with Disney being in charge and all.” (For example, in the movie, a brick gets thrown through a window into Denzel Washington’s home. In real life, it was a toilet that was thrown the window.¹) Some of the changes were medium changes, and when you hear them you go, “Oh. Well, I mean, I guess technically that does make it a more powerful moment.” (For example, in the movie, one of the white coaches replaces a white player with a black player during a game because the white player can’t cover an opponent. In real life, that player swap happened during the days between games.) And some of the changes were gigantic changes, and when you hear them you go, “Wait. What the fuck? Why’d they do that?” (For example, in the movie, Gerry Bertier, the team’s All-American linebacker, gets into a car crash before the championship game and is paralyzed from the waist down. In real life, he got into the accident when he was driving home from an awards banquet after the season had already ended. He played in the championship game.)

So, again, it’s not precisely a true story, but it is still an upper tier sports movie, and perhaps the best football movie that’s ever been.²

In Remember the Titans, Denzel Washington is selected to coach a high school football team during the school’s first year of integration.³ The players quickly form into two separate packs based on race,⁴ so Denzel comes up with a plan: He decides that when the team is away at football camp, he’s going to arrange it so that the black players and the white players have to interact with each other as often as possible.

He makes it so that they have to sit with each other on the buses, and that they have to eat together in the cafeteria, and that they have to room together in the dorms, and that they have to talk to each other and learn facts about each other to report to the group. And there are problems at first, for sure—fights and arguments and such break out. But by the end of the camp, mostly all of the players like each other and get along and no longer appear to feel the same sort of racial animosity that was present before camp.

And that’s the beginning of what this chapter is about. The idea is to figure out if Denzel’s race-forward football camp actually worked long-term for the players, or if it was more one of those situations like when you say you’re going to start eating healthier and then after two days of salads you realize you don’t know where to find healthy food so you’re just like, “Fuck it. I guess let me go ahead and grab a couple of these Wendy’s junior bacon cheeseburgers for dinner today.” And the way we’re going to do that is by looking at which actors played which characters, then digging around through the other movies that those actors were in to see if there are some obvious examples of it having worked or not worked.

Here’s an easy example to understand: Ethan Suplee plays Louie Lastik in Remember the Titans. And Louie Lastik is this very funny, very charming offensive lineman who is the most open-minded of all the players on the team. To wit, he’s the first white guy to join the black players when they all meet up, and he’s the first white guy to make friends with the black players, and he’s the only white guy whose first interaction with Denzel is a polite and accommodating one. He’s already pretty well situated as a person, and so you would think that attending the race-forward football camp would only strengthen his general good feelings toward everyone. But it doesn’t. It actually radicalizes him. And the way you know this is because Ethan Suplee also plays a hateable and loathsome neo-Nazi named Seth in American History X.⁵ So if you ask, “Did Denzel’s race-forward football camp work for Louie Lastik?” The answer is, “No. No, Denzel’s race-forward football camp did not work for Louie Lastik because Louie Lastik became a neo-Nazi in 1998.”

Here are two questions you may have asked yourself while reading the section above this one:

Question 1: Wait. Didn’t American History X come out before Remember the Titans? Wouldn’t that mean that actually the race-forward football camp helped a great deal?

Question 2: And are we talking about if Denzel’s race-forward football camp worked for Louie Lastik, or are we talking about if Denzel’s race-forward football camp worked for Ethan Suplee?

And here are two answers to go along with those two questions:

Answer 1: You are correct. American History X did come out before Remember the Titans. But for this exercise, we’re going to use the date that a movie is set in to determine if the camp worked, not the date that it was released. Remember the Titans is, for nearly the entirety of it, set in 1971. So any movies that Ethan Suplee was in that were set after 1971 would be eligible to be used as proof in an argument for or against the race-forward football camp working for Louie Lastik. Any movies set before 1971, however, would not. So that means American History X is eligible, meanwhile something like Cold Mountain, where Suplee plays a confederate soldier who becomes a deserter, would not be eligible because it was set in 1861.

Answer 2: We’re talking about the characters, not the people who played them. Just picture it like if we took all of the movies that Ethan Suplee was in and replaced all of his characters with Louie Lastik. It goes like that for everyone.

Not counting Louie Lastik, there are eight key players on the team who attended Denzel’s race-forward football camp that we need to look at, as well as one non-player. We have:

• Sheryl Yoast: She’s the nine-year-old daughter of Bill Yoast, Denzel’s main assistant coach. (She’s played by Hayden Panettiere.)

• Julius Campbell: He’s a co-captain of the team and a star player for the defense. (He’s played by Wood Harris.)

• Gerry Bertier: He’s the other co-captain of the team. He’s also a star player for the defense. (He’s played by Ryan Hurst.)

• Petey Jones: He’s the player I mentioned earlier who takes the place of the white player who’s too slow to keep up with the person he’s supposed to be covering one game. (He’s played by Donald Faison.)

• Alan Bosley: He’s the white player who gets his spot taken by Petey. (He’s played by Ryan Gosling.⁶)

• Jerry “Rev” Harris: He’s the quarterback. They call him “Rev” because he really loves Jesus. (He’s played by Craig Kirkwood.)

• Ray Budds: He’s Gerry Bertier’s best friend. He’s also very racist. Bertier eventually has him kicked off the team because he intentionally misses a block that leads to Rev getting injured. (He’s played by Burgess Jenkins.)

• Ronnie “Sunshine” Bass: He’s the backup QB who has to step in after Rev gets hurt. He’s the very handsome and gentle-spirit hippie of the team. (He’s played by Kip Pardue, which is funny because if I was writing a movie and had to come up with the name of a character described as “very handsome and gentle-spirit hippie” I would almost certainly land on “Kip Pardue.”)

• Blue Stanton: He’s a fun lineman who just wants everyone to relax. (He’s played by Earl Poitier.)

Right at this moment, we are nine chapters into the book. And I would hope by now that you would understand that while each chapter definitely has a core question it’s trying to answer, answering that core question is, in many cases, not the actual point of the chapter. The actual point of each chapter is some version of some kind of insight about some kind of thing. And while I generally like to leave those things to be discovered by the reader at whatever pace it is that the reader happens to discover them, I want to state it very clearly and plainly here: The actual point of including this chapter in Movies (And Other Things) is to celebrate Denzel Washington, perhaps the most purely talented actor and undeniable movie star that we have ever gotten. Everything about him is mammoth. His stare feels like words and his words feel like monologues and his monologues feel like you’re standing under a mega waterfall and looking up into the stream. Never one single time has a movie been worse off because Denzel Washington was in it. Never will it.