The new drama The Mosquito Bowl—which features Pat McAfee's acting debut—is more than a football movie. It tells the story of players who enlisted in the Marine Corps after the attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II.
Despite the title referencing the Mosquito Bowl, a famous football game between two Marine regiments at Guadalcanal, it's not the movie's focal point. Instead, The Mosquito Bowl is a story of brotherhood and camaraderie. Former rivals on the gridiron become brothers in arms.
The ensemble features the likes of Nicholas Galitzine, who recently played He-Man in Masters of the Universe, Jack Nicholson's son Ray Nicholson as Tony Butkovich, and Tom Francis as Dave Schreiner.
Nicholson, a former football player, wanted to go all out for the movie. Football was his first love before acting, saying, “Football came into my life at the absolute time that I needed it.”
The Mosquito Bowl is historically accurate, meaning the players wore leather helmets and barely any pads (the actors practiced in contemporary uniforms before using historically accurate ones). Peter Berg, who previously directed Friday Night Lights, has experience filming football movies, but this was a different beast. He claimed that Nicholson “wanted to just hit everything that moved.”
How Ray Nicholson inspired Tom Francis
However, since they didn't have a lot of padding back then, Berg had to carefully use him on set. Sometimes, Nicholson snuck onto the field when it was supposed to be his stunt double.
“He has more experience than Nick, so he looked like he could do it, and there were times when I would let him do it or not realize he was doing it, thinking it was his stunt double, and have to run and pull him off because if he got hurt, we [would] have a real problem,” Berg explained.
While Nicholson might've been more experienced than his co-stars, that didn't stop Francis from leveling up to match him. Berg said that he would see Nicholson and want to do what he was doing.
He's not a former football player, but Francis is “probably stronger” than Nicholson, at least according to Berg. In turn, Berg was worried Francis would “hurt” his co-stars without knowing what he was doing.
‘Mistakes' shaped The Mosquito Bowl's football scenes
Still, choreographing a scene with 22 players that looks authentic is hard, and he knows it. He explained, “Everybody has to be in the right position, and as we were doing it, I found that the mistakes were what made it look good.”
Nicholson applied the skills he used during his playing days, such as using his eyes to manipulate the defense, or shaded plays the other way. It still took a lot, given the logistics of the field they were playing on.
“It was immensely difficult because of the depth of field. You know, if two people take the play off, you don't have a shot,” Nicholson explained. “So, the amount of choreography that it took… we also shot a bunch of oners, so there was a lot of original things — we had these choreographed plays. It's really delicate, but in order to make it look good, you have to find the little mistakes that make it look real. That was the key to making the football look good.”
Tom Francis had a ball filming the football game
Francis said that filming the Mosquito Bowl was “one of the most fun parts of the entire process.” He applauded those behind the camera, saying they were “always 10 steps ahead,” as the crew used drones to capture the scope of the “colossal sets.”
One day, Berg instructed the actors to “just play.” Camera operator Richard Coy Aune, who played college football at Texas, received a special shoutout from Francis.
“He understands football incredibly well when it comes to shooting it as well as playing it,” Francis raved. “When we were playing freeform, I remember there was one scene where I was running with the ball and sort of handed [it off to] someone. Coy goes down with the player as they're falling and then comes up to see me score a touchdown.”
Bill Skarsgård's special gift to his co-stars
After filming the war of the field, the actors received special gifts from Bill Skarsgård. Skarsgård went above and beyond for his preparation, visiting Okinawa with the troops that are stationed there. He presented his co-stars with charcoal etchings, causing Nicholson to get emotional.
“On the last day that Bill was in town, he presented us with these charcoal etchings, and we kind of just had this moment where we really all got teared up, just thinking, beyond what these three men did, like, I wonder if they could see that they brought us three together and how beautiful that was and how grateful we are to them that we could portray them,” Nicholson reflected. “And we hope that we did them proud ultimately.”
Nicholson felt that this moment was “exemplary of that we put our entire heart and soul into this thing.” Francis will always remember this day of the shoot. He recalled the actors writing notes to their characters and each other.
How The Mosquito Bowl compared to Friday Night Lights
Berg is no stranger when it comes to football movies. However, given its time period, The Mosquito Bowl was a unique challenge. Friday Night Lights was a contemporary movie, while The Mosquito Bowl is going back decades. Still, he was up for the challenge.
Article Continues Below“It's its own unique animal, and the football that I've filmed has been more contemporary,” Berg admitted. “This was 1940s football, and it was a completely different game. [There was a] different style of hitting, different offensive schemes; it felt like a totally different experience.”
There were a lot of differences, but Berg found the similarities in the “passion” that went into it. Even though The Mosquito Bowl features actors who get to go home after a day of work, they “wanted to play against each other” and, more importantly, win.
‘Brotherhood' is a recurring theme in Peter Berg's movies
Berg has also made war films, including Lone Survivor (one of his many collaborations with Mark Wahlberg). Still, The Mosquito Bowl was different because movies like Lone Survivor featured “elite tier one operators.”
The Mosquito Bowl is about college football stars who enlist in the Marines. They had little to no experience, and they just wanted to “survive.” This meant that the battles were different, but the “brotherhood” remained from Berg's past football and war movies.
“There was a brotherhood that existed and a sense of love and vulnerability,” Berg said before explaining, “When Matt Axelson was shot in Afghanistan on Operation Red Wings, it was no different than when Tony Butkovich or Dave Schreiner was shot on Okinawa. They were human beings who bled and died in these horrific military conflicts.
Ultimately, for as different as The Mosquito Bowl might seem from Berg's past work, he found familiarity in things that “transcended the difference in the style of football or the equipment they were wearing. They were all human beings. I just held onto that.”
The Mosquito Bowl is playing in theaters and will stream on Netflix on Nov. 25.