I made all my money around golf courses as a kid. My dad was a member of the club and my big thing was really looking for golf balls. It was like being on an Easter egg hunt every day. Me and my dog Poochy would scour the course when I was eight years old. I relate to this story of a kid growing up next to a golf course because I grew up next to a golf course in Fort Worth, Texas. It was Shady Oaks Country Club, Ben Hogan's home club. It was almost like having Harry Vardon out there on the third hole.

Is that what sparked your interest in this film when you first heard of it?

Well yeah, it did. Also as a filmmaker I saw a great opportunity that is kind of rare in this business. I saw an opportunity to crack a safe that no one had cracked. Golf was really a sport that had never gotten the kind of cinematic treatment I think it deserved, whereas boxing, football and basketball have these great films. I thought that the filmmakers that had gone before me had been kind of seduced by the pastoral nature of the sport and hadn't seen the inherent drama or the inherent cinema that could be squeezed out of it.

TV golf always shows you where the ball goes and I wasn't trying to keep up with it I wasn't interested in that at all. I was more interested in what was going on in the guys' eyes. I wanted to have some fun with the camera. In my last film I didn't call attention to the camera at all. I'm always reticent to do that because you run the risk of taking the audience out of the solution you have carefully crafted. So with this I knew very early on that the camera was going to have to be a character and I would have to really add some torque to the whole thing.

I was surprised for a film set in this time period how many modern camera techniques you used, like when you zoomed in on the hole and the lady bug animation...

Oh yeah, the lady bug was kind of a piece of whimsy, but you've got to remember that this is a sport that is played in the natural world and I thought that would be a fun way to write that. Also, the rain montage, instead of just being gun fighters that are out to kill each other, I also wanted to show that on some days you're out there in the rain in a situation where you're just fighting to stay alive in the elements and we shot that in a combat-like way, to create that fight like a combat situation, just trying to survive. So we threw all of these techniques in. I never lost track of the characters, the characters are the heart of the story, but I wanted to celebrate the game and I also wanted to make the movie for an audience that might not even like the story, might not understand it and might not relate to it at all.

You've been a part of so many films from Aliens to Apollo 13. Is there a certain satisfaction making a film that anyone can see whether they are 5 years old or an adult?

There is a satisfaction, whereas Frailty - I'm very proud of the film - but I knew it was going to have a limited audience, because it was a pretty intense movie. One thing I've got to say is, I didn't have to compromise this to make it family friendly. I didn't compromise this to make it for Disney. I thought the story was inherently suspenseful, it didn't need profanity or sex and violence to help tell the story. It was just a story that had its own originality and it's a great underdog story. You've got the class struggle, you've got this great theme, you've got the innocence of youth, you've got all these things going on. The movies I watched for this movie were Tombstone, Star Wars, Color of Money, Saving Private Ryan... I think it is kind of ten and up, you know five year olds. This movie is adult content. It is because of the nature of class struggle and all of that, you have to have a little maturity to appreciate it. I mean there's Eddie, but Eddie is almost there for the adults. The movie becomes almost this buddy picture about half way through that really lights it up.

I saw the film last night. My girlfriend came with me and afterwards she said, "I just love what a good guy Francis was." It was so great to see this character who respected everyone.

You know, he was that guy. That was the other thing, you see someone who has courage and he's not necessarily overtly courageous. He has the innocence of youth and the desire, but he is facing not only adversity on the golf course because he's a caddy who's trying to play a game that's played by the rich and privileged in a wealthy and privileged class, but then he's dealing with his father who has his own bigotry against these rich people because he's a working man. He's the guy stuck in the middle, but everything I read about Francis and all the people I've spoken to that knew him say that he had a real gentility and a real selfless quality. This guy played for the love of the game, he wasn't playing for a Nike endorsement or anything like that. He never became a pro. He just embodied those qualities that really do define someone. And I love Harry Vardon's speech where he says it's not about who your dad is or how much money you've got, but about what you are, what you can do, what you are. You'd think the message in the 21st Century would be accepted and known, but you find that these kinds of themes are timeless and they'll always resonant.
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I love that the movie celebrates what makes this country great, and that is our diversity. We're from everywhere. Francis Ouimet's father was French, his mother was Irish, and this was a time when America had more of a European vibe to it because most of the millions were immigrants. I mean you had people coming from Southeast Asia and Africa and places like that, but most of these millions of immigrants were coming from Europe all over Europe. And you'd walk down the street and you might hear fifteen different European languages being spoken. Boston was a cog because the ships were coming in there and I thought the movie celebrated a more innocent time in our country and it also invokes that we all are from somewhere else and we all have dreams and hopes and if you have desire and you have determination and perseverance in a free society you have a chance. At the same time you have to have the desire and determination and perseverance. I know I am like a Francis Ouimet, because I went out to Hollywood when I was eighteen. If I would have waited ten years I would never have left Ft. Worth Texas.

Did you have to deal with similar condescension to what he experienced?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I got it when I went back home. "Oh you're a big Hollywood guy now, and we're not good enough for you now here in Texas?" Oh yeah. I've always dealt with that kind of thing. I was fortunate enough to find something that I love to do, and my advice to young people is to do this: find something you like. I grew up in the sixties, Kennedy and the whole thing. There was a push toward vocationalism. It is about giving something back. You know, Kennedy was all about that. It's not what your country can do for you, it's what you can do for your country. We've gotten so far away from that. When I got into film making I don't know whether I was a fortune seeker or seeker of fame, I loved the idea of making movies and telling stories. I chose it as something I wanted to do and what sustains me is the work, not the money.

We got together on this universal human interest story about this courageous kid, a guy with great integrity. We were trying to aspire to something noble in our efforts. I think that this is what the movie shows. Like you said, it's kind of a guy's movie, but the girls go "Wow!" Some guys tell me they took a date and they're like, "Oh gosh, you should go with your buddies." And then they end up, "I love this movie, I love Eddie, I love Francis."

Thank you so much for this interview.

Absolutely. You know, I was raised Catholic! I was an altar boy as a kid. I think that is what kind of gave me my theatrical spark...

Photos Jonathan Wenk / Disney Enterprises, Inc.