There's a picture of the real Coach Gary Gaines in the book and he's sitting in the locker room after a game, and he just looks so much like Billy Bob, that we went to him.
Then they started pulling me in and I was very resistant. All the other actors would be saying write more, more dialogue for me, and I'd always be saying 'No, less, less'.
Truth is, we offered it to Tom Hanks, which pretty much every movie in America does, but Tom passed. Billy Bob said that Hanks recently called and said he's voting for all of us for Oscars, he loved the film.
When I look back at it, I'm mostly amazed at how poorly it was shot. David Kelley is a great writer, and I thought the scripts were great, but it just looks so cheap.
You might make a lot of money, but it's very hard to get out from under that rug. The more you can reinvent yourself, the better - and unfortunately TV is designed not to let you redesign yourself.
