John MacKinnon
Edmonton Journal
EDMONTON – When you listen to filmmaker Barry Greenwald talk passionately about the making of Western Swagger, his documentary film about the Edmonton Eskimos’ 1981 Grey Cup victory, the story of Laurence Stallings comes to mind.
Stalling was the novelist who, assigned to cover a 1925 football game between the University of Pennsylvania and Illinois, whose star was the legendary Red Grange, became overwhelmed by the narrative possibilities.
After the game, as famously recounted by the late, great Red Smith, Stallings paced agitatedly in the press box, “clutched at his haircut,” and cried: “It’s too big. I can’t write it.”
Greenwald has embraced the challenge not only of telling the story of that ’81 Cup victory, but of framing it in the multi-layered socio-political context of the time. No clutching at haircuts for the accomplished Toronto-based documentarian.
“I see this as like a Shakespearean story because so much happened in 1981,” Greenwald said. “Because we’re looking at the Edmonton Eskimos going into — they don’t know at the beginning of the year — potentially a fourth (straight) Grey Cup (victory).
“Not only is it the story of an extraordinary team going into the 1981 season, it’s the same year where two months earlier the National Energy Program has come down.
“It was also the year in which the provincial premiers, yet again are trying to find a way to come to a deal on the repatriation of the constitution. … The same month that Grey Cup is played, they come to a deal.
Greenwald is working with Don Metz and his Edmonton-based Aquila Productions on Western Swagger, one of eight one-hour docs commissioned by the CFL to celebrate the 100th Grey Cup Nov. 25. They will be televised on CTV and TSN starting in September.
Telling complex tales is not new to Greenwald, whose award-winning docs include Who Gets In?, a film about Canada’s immigration policy, and The Experimental Eskimos, the story of the government-directed assimilation of three Inuit boys who grew up to change Canada, but at considerable personal cost.
Greenwald reckons the commissioning editors made a match between himself, an Eastern Canadian, and Metz, not merely a veteran producer of sports films, but a passionate, lifelong Edmontonian and an Eskimo fan, head to toe. Oh, and added bonus, Metz, then 26, worked that ’81 Grey Cup, filming it for CBC.
To capture the spirit of that ’80s era, Metz and Greenwald are seeking memorabilia, especially home movies, from the time from ordinary citizens, to add even more authenticity to the project. Greenwald recognizes that the community of Edmonton is a character in the movie.
In those years, the Eskimos, winning year after year, selling out Commonwealth Stadium game after game, were the community’s rallying point, not the young Oilers, who had yet to hit their stride.
Given the hours and hours of videotaped interviews with Eskimo Hall of Famers like Dave Fennell, Dan Kepley and Tom Wilkinson, along with various political figures, and archival news footage Greenwald and Metz are in the process of distilling into a one-hour film, the documentary will be factually dense, to say the least.
The game itself, like the film, is split into halves. Quarterback J.C. Watts led the underdog Rough Riders to a 20-1 lead at halftime, during which Ottawa team officials’ thoughts were on sizing the players’ for their Grey Cup rings.
Then-Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed, a former Eskimo player, attended that Grey Cup, famously seated beside his NEP nemesis and constitutional partner, Pierre Trudeau, of course.
“So, it goes, that at the end of the first half, Trudeau turns to Lougheed and said, ‘What is this, a repeat of the constitutional game?’ ” Greenwald said, an anecdote that may be apocryphal.
The championship game, like the constitutional negotiations three weeks earlier, turned around completely, producing a dramatic and historical outcome, the fourth of the Eskimos’ glorious run of five straight Grey Cup victories.
“People who don’t follow football have no idea of the ironies here,” Greenwald, who has described the making of Western Swagger as a process of discovery. “I’ve asked the kinds of questions focused on, ‘What made the Edmonton Eskimos so special. what was the magic? What made them more special than the other teams? What really was happening in Alberta behind the headlines and urban legends?”
In the end, he believes that even Albertans that think they know what happened that year will glean some “deeper insights than they imagined” from the film.
“I think this film is going to help people understand the Canada of today,” Greenwald said. “It’s going to help people understand where we’re at today, in terms of the economy and where we’re going to go in the future.”
It will also help people remember a mighty dominant Eskimo team that, on Nov. 22, 1981, had its hands full against a 5-11 outfit from Ottawa in the Grey Cup in Montreal, but found a way to win.
In those days, the Eskimos almost always did.
mackinnon@edmontonjournal.com
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