Locations
Where each version was shot: Odessa and Ratliff Stadium for the film, Houston for the second unit, Austin and Pflugerville for the fictional Dillon of the series.
Photo: Ratliff stadium · Wikimedia Commons
8 Oct 2004Theatrical release, Universal Pictures
$61mDomestic gross (Box Office Mojo)
2Production centres: Odessa and Houston
- Peter Berg Took the Camera Back to Ratliff StadiumHow Berg, Bissinger's cousin, chose to shoot in Odessa and at the real Ratliff Stadium rather than on a stand-in location, and what that decision cost and returned in production terms.
- Tobias Schliessler Shot West Texas Like It Was Already a MemorySchliessler's approach to the film's visual grammar — the handheld passages, the flat West Texas light, the relationship between stadium interiors and the Odessa streetscape.
- How Dillon Was Shot: Handheld, Improvised, AustinThe production method Jason Katims and his directors used — handheld cameras, partially improvised dialogue, Austin and Pflugerville as the stand-in for the fictional Dillon — and how it created a visual grammar distinct from the Berg film that preceded it.
- 19,302 Seats for $5.6 MillionRatliff Stadium's construction in 1982 — the cost, the capacity, the moment in Odessa's oil economy when the money was voted, and what the stadium looked like by the time Bissinger arrived in 1988 and Berg's crew arrived in 2003.