KOA special: Escape to Victory!

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0:57Hello friends, Stuart Watson here. Now and again we'd like to bring you something a little bit different on the Kings of Anglia podcast and this is one of those occasions. In this half an hour long episode I interviewed John Smith, the author of new book Escape, a love letter to a cult classic. That cult classic of course is Escape to Victory, the 1980s football film that is still adored by many to this day. Set in World War II, a team of allied prisoners of war take on German officers in an exhibition match, win in dramatic fashion and, spoiler alert, escape to victory. The cast includes Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone and Michael Caine, football icons Pele and Bobby Moore, plus seven, yes, seven Ipswich town players who would go on to win the for Cup just a few months after filming took place in Hungary.

1:50How did that come about? Which Blues great beat Rocky in an arm wrestle? How many takes were there really for Pele's acrobatic winning goal? For all that and more, listen on. Enjoy. Hello everybody, Stuart Watson here from the Kings of Anglia podcast to bring you a new one-off special for you. We like to bring you the odd interview with things in and around Ipswich Town along the way and today I'm joined by special guest John Smith who is the author of a new book which will be very much of interest to you Ipswich Town fans. It's called Escape, a love letter to a cult football classic. Those of you watching will see me holding it up there.

2:32It's Escape to Victory, John. Tell me a little bit about yourself, your background and how you came around to do this book please if you may uh well thanks for having me first nice to nice to be on um so my background is my day job is in television um i'm a an archive producer i should stress that these awards are not necessarily mine um but um yes so i work as an archive producer in television for the day job often sporting documentaries uh sometimes comedy stuff um but a lot of sport a lot of football so football is is kind of my background and um prior to escape i've written three other books um booked second yellow and final third and the principle of those was um reading we read 300 football or biographies so that you don't have to and it was kind of then uh digest we sort um because i wrote the first two with dan trelfer and i wrote the third one on my own and um they were kind of the best stories that you would come across in football or autobiographies and we pieced them together so we'd have a chapter on Christmas parties a chapter on the board a chapter on internationals and goalkeepers and so on and so forth um and then having written the third one um I was just kicking around different ideas of what to do next and um and the one I kept coming back to was was Escape to Victory because it just occurred to me that it's a much loved film or certainly a film that I love very much and it didn't look like there'd been a book devoted to it certainly not in English anyway I think I think there's a Spanish one but certainly there hadn't been an English one on it so I sort of explored that started seeking out seeing if I could find people to interview about it started doing a bit of digging and I thought yeah I thought I thought this was on hopefully that's turned into a book that people will enjoy before i get on to sort of the process of writing it and who you've spoken to your love for escape to victory where does it come from how old were you when when it came out what your memories of it growing up so um it would be early 80s video shop so i can remember right in the first chapter i remember like our first vhs player arriving and the the video shop be in this wonderland you know this real treasure trove that opened up for us imagine being able to pick what you can put on your telly instead of just instead of just flicking it on and putting up with whatever was there so there were there were lots of different films that we picked um in those early days i particularly remember a rocky double bill that we did because my parents must have been very cool right on a sunday afternoon we watched rocky had a break for a cup of tea watched Rocky 2 all pretty much back to back um I remember like Raiders of the Lost Ark being an early one we got out but I can vividly remember being round now and seeing Escape to Victory on the shelf and you look at the poster and it's got that familiar poster where um Stallone Michael Caine and Pele are coming out of you know they've all got the red on and they've all got an arm an arm up and it was that image on the front and I thought well I I know that guy because he's rocky and I know the other guy because I've seen him in a few films at home and then that's Pele in the middle why is Pele in this film and just immediately intrigued so I would be I would have been about eight probably seven or eight by the time when I watched it for the first time we took it home just instantly fell in love with this film there's Bobby Moore's in it, obviously.

6:19And I'm a West Ham fan. I'm from a family of West Ham fans. So Bobby Moore's royalty. And there's an early mention of West Ham in the film as well. Michael Caine's character is supposed to have played for West Ham as well. So if you were precision tooling a film that I would like at that age and, well, and forevermore since, then it was that. You know, it's the great escape with football. and yeah, it was the great escape with Pele in it, what's not to like. Yeah, you mentioned West Ham there. Obviously, I'm assuming Ipswich fans listening will know why we're doing this because there's such a heavy Ipswich influence with it.

7:04The timeframe around it, I think it's filmed in the sort of summer of 1980. That's right, yeah. And then Ipswich obviously go on to win the UEFA Cup that season. I think they lift the trophy in May, and then the film's released in September off the back of that. Tell me a bit more about the process of the Ipswich players that were involved and how that came about. Then becoming involved. So I think it stemmed from... So Pele was obviously their first recruit, and then because he'd played in America for a few years at that point, I think it suddenly dawned on Hollywood that they might be able to sell a film based around football with Pelé as the star of it.

7:46But then the producer of it, Freddie Fields, and the other people involved, their football knowledge wasn't great, was a little bit limited. But what they did know is that they wanted footballers from several different countries so that it would play to an audience in those countries. they hired a guy called Peter Mason um excuse me as the football director kind of football expert consultant and he uh was friends with Bobby Robson so um one of his first ports of call was Bobby and um it's it's lovely all the guys that I spoke to they they just remember they a lot of them didn't even remember his name they just remember Bobby bringing this guy in introducing him after a training session and saying he's got something to say to you Peter Mason stands in front of him and says who fancies coming to Hungary spending a couple of months in Hungary playing football with Pelé and being an extra in this film and pretty much whoever put their hand up went anybody who volunteered went and a lot of the guys were young, single no particular plans for that summer and off they went and had a lovely time so those ipswich players were john walk russell osman lori civil um who else am i missing kevin o 'callaghan i think paul cooper went and was uh sort of on a body double for sliced alone wasn't he is that right he was michael kane's body double yeah yeah so who have you spoken to then john for the book so russell osman was the first one i spoke to and he was very very helpful i i I came up to Suffolk and sat and had a chat with him for a couple of hours.

9:36And he was great and he was very enthusiastic about it. And I think that might have opened doors a little with the others because when I was trying to approach the others, they were able to speak to Russell and, you know, obviously he could vouch for me. I think he at least could tell that I was coming from a good place in what I was trying to do about the film. So, yeah, so after Russell and the club were really helpful, actually. Simon Milton and Matt Holland were really helpful in getting contacts for the other guys as well. So I spoke to Russell Osmond, John Walk, Kevin O 'Callaghan, Paul Cooper and Laurie Civil, all from Ipswich.

10:16And then on top of that, I spoke to Ozzy Ardiles, Halvar Todderson, Soren Linstead and briefly Paul Van Hempst as well. So, yeah. I couldn't track Robin Turner. robin turner was the one i couldn't track down okay yeah another one from ipswich yeah absolutely yeah some some untold stories then around the film um that you managed to uncover yeah it was great everybody spoke really really well about it everybody overwhelmingly everybody seemed to have a really nice time on it and um one of the things that that i really enjoyed was the the mix between the actors and the footballers. What kept coming up is that the footballers all wanted to be actors and the actors all wanted to be footballers, or at least were kind of, you know, enthralled to them or intrigued by them.

11:10And you get these, these things cropping up like Ozzy Ardiles and Tim Pickett Smith became really, really good friends and would play chess in between, in between takes and, and things like that. and I really like those relationships that seem to form on there. And there's lots of, as you might expect, there was a little bit of booze involved as well. The evenings out sound like fun as well, you know, out in restaurants and bars in the evening. Yeah, so they had fun. It sounds like a good way to spend the summer. And one of those evenings or social sessions, I understand involved an arm wrestle with Sylvester Stallone.

11:53Can you tell us a bit more about that? I think that was on the set, actually, rather than the evening. I think that was in a break between filming. Yeah, Sylvester Stallone and Kevin Beatty had an arm wrestle. And Kevin Beatty beats him. Beats Rocky. I think it was one arm each. And Kevin Beatty won the first one. And then Sylvester Stallone won the second one, each with their good arm. and then they tossed the coin and Kevin Beatty won the right to choose, picked his good arm and beat him. And yeah, according to Tulsi's, Sylvester Stallone didn't take that. Didn't take that very well. Yeah, it doesn't surprise me.

12:37Bless him, the beat was a proper powerhouse, wasn't he? Before my time, but Ipswich, you know, he's regularly voted. Ipswich is greatest ever, has his statue outside the ground and, yeah, a physical powerhouse. And I can imagine that was quite something to watch. Absolutely. Great player as well, yeah. Yeah. Does Sylvester Stallone come up quite a lot in these conversations? I know there's been sort of previous interviews where it's suggested that he had certain demands with his role in the script. Yes. Yeah, he does. He does come up a lot. I think I'm more sympathetic to him than most in that, you know, He's coming into it at a slightly difficult time for his career.

13:20So he had the success of Rocky, and then he had a couple of flops since then. So he's coming into it, and you can see the logic of it. Somebody's thought, well, we'll put Sylvester Stallone into a sports film. So he's the star of this film. He's front and centre. He doesn't know anything about football. He's suddenly on a set with all these footballers. He's come across Pele. But other than that, he doesn't know any of the others. And you can kind of see how the players would gravitate more towards Michael Cain in that situation. Michael Cain is instantly more relatable to all these players. And everybody loves Michael Cain.

13:55And one or two of the guys do talk about Stallone being a bit aloof and a bit distant, certainly compared to Michael Cain. But it also came up that a lot of what he was doing was writing Rocky III. So he's in his trailer writing Rocky III. So, I mean, slightly biased in that regard, but I sort of think, well, let's let him write Rocky III then, shall we? I can see why, rather than joining in with a game of football and being routinely humiliated playing piggy in the middle with some of the best players who have ever kicked the ball, I can see why he might have removed himself from it a little bit.

14:31But some of the players, Paul Cooper got on really well with him. Paul Cooper was there as his body double. So he's in some of the longer shots in the match. And he was coaching him as well. And they got on really well. Paul says they got on really, really well. And he's still got a signed photograph to him from Stallone in his toilet at home. John Walk didn't rub along with him quite so well. John Walk's not quite such a fan. But, yeah, some are more charitable than others. Yeah, I think I've seen an interview prior with John where he talks about Sylvester Stallone wanting to score the winning goal.

15:14And it had to be pointed out to him that that doesn't really work for goalkeepers. Yeah, well, I mean, that was in the script. That was from like the early stages of the script, well, even up to the late stages of the script because it's still on the table when they arrive, when they're there to film it in Hungary. And the book of the film, like the novelisation of the film that you would get alongside it, that still has it in it. that finishes with Hatch, Stallone's character, dribbling upfield and scoring the winning goal. So he doesn't even come up for a corner. He takes it all the way up the pitch.

15:53He dribbles it. I believe he shoots, hits the bar. It rebounds. Michael Caine's Colby sticks out of foot. It runs to him and he scores the winning goal. And then the same pandemonium that we know from the end of the film ensues at that point with the fans running on the pitch. But, and it certainly is true that the footballers all immediately saw this and said, well, that's not going to fly. That's a bit implausible. But again, and again, maybe I'm an apologist for it. I mean, he takes that and he rolls with it. You know, he's been promised that coming into this film, and then all of a sudden that's taken away from him, and he's having to explain to him, well, no, you'll get this penalty shot.

16:40You'll get this penalty save instead. and they go with that. So he still gets his hero moment. But yeah, the footballers were able to exert a bit of an influence and stop it being quite so ridiculous as it originally was on a page. Yeah, talking of hero moments, the Pele overhead kick, I think there's been lots said over the years. I don't know how much of it has kind of sort of grown Chinese whispers. Has everyone got sort of different versions of how many takes that took, things like that? But absolutely, that's what was fascinating to me. Everybody's got a different version. You know, I interviewed all those people.

17:20I must have interviewed eight or nine eyewitnesses to what happened that day. And you get some people, Mike Summerbee and some others are insistent, first time. First time, cross came over, up he went, overhead kick, straight in, no problem. you also hear I think Russell Osmond says that it was second time because Laurie Civil saved it the first time, Laurie Civil was obviously playing the German goalkeeper in the film and that he saved the first one other people say it took three or four other people say it took more than that we did try crossing it in but then we had to toss it up we had to throw it up in the air um some soren linstead the danish player is insistent that it took half a day to get it right so i mean the truth is it depends whether you're a romantic or not i mean there are people who were there who say first time ball came in overhead kick and and that's the goal you see but the i also interviewed a cameraman harvey harrison um who had filmed a lot of football and all the crew had worked on all the FIFA films, the FIFA World Cup films at that point.

18:37And he probably had it right. He said he couldn't quite remember the take that he did, but regardless, they would have done five or six takes anyway to get all the coverage and the camera angles that they needed. So the truth of it is, whether he did or he didn't, he didn't need to do it in the first take. So that's up to you, Stuart. You can believe what you want to believe. There are credible witnesses that will give you any version you choose to go with. Yeah, I think the romantic in me likes to think it was a one-take wonder from Pelé. I mean, he must have been in his 40s by that point, was he?

19:12Yes. Yeah, I think... At the end of Dover, around that sort of time? He finished about two years early. He finished in 78. He had his farewell game in 78 for New York Cosmos. So, yeah, he'd been out of the game for a couple of years. Yeah. And another thing that people talk about with the Escape to Victory is John Walk's role, or more importantly, his acting role. And it famously has two lines in it. And he has a bit of a shock, doesn't he, when he comes to watch the premiere? Absolutely. They dubbed him. They dubbed his voice. It's heartbreaking. He's still not quite over it. You talk to him, I mean, he's a good sport about it.

19:52He's a really good sport about it. but you can tell he's still not quite over it. Yeah, he's got one line when he gets picked for the team, when he's on the training pitch, and he says, it's not quite like playing for Manchester, but it will do. And then he says, I'll have the top one when they're picking who goes on which bunk. Happily did what he needed to do for the film. And then, as you'll know, the Ipswich players had their own premiere in Ipswich. so he sat there with the rest of the team I think he sat with Alan Brazil and Eric Gates and it comes on and it's not his voice and he says they've dubbed me and yeah and I think Alan and Eric really enjoyed it and I think he didn't quite live it down but I was able to, when I interviewed him I was able to tell him that exactly the same thing happened to Dave Prowse when he was playing Darth Vader in Star Wars, exactly the same thing so he's in good company, Dave Prowse making Star Wars, thinking all along that they were using his Bristolian accent or West Country accent for Darth Vader only to arrive at the premiere and find that they'd dubbed him.

21:02So, yeah, he's in good company now. You can't imagine, John, these days, I mean, the equivalent of half of Manchester City's squad being allowed to go off on their summer holidays and film a Hollywood blockbuster, could you? No, exactly. I mean, again, that's one of the reasons why I love it so much because I think it's this, I think it is this small window that that film gets made in, you know, Pelé's popularity makes it possible. But yeah, to get those footballers to be involved and do that, it's just impossible now. I mean, I imagine, I mean, apart from, I don't think the financial incentives weren't great.

21:42It was a little bit more than they were earning. And obviously it's extra money, but it wasn't, you know, they didn't throw money at them. So you've got the fact that there's almost no amount of money you could offer footballers now to make it worth their while. Excuse me. Then you've got the fact that clubs surely wouldn't let their squad go and kick a ball around on rock hard, sandy pitches wearing big army boots for the summer without monitoring that. And I just don't think you would ensure it. I don't think you'd be able to ensure it to get that level of player in it. So I think it does come up occasionally, the talk of potential remakes.

22:26And I think maybe you can imagine a version where, you know, you get a superstar, a Messi or a Cristiano Ronaldo in the Pele role maybe. But I think the beauty of the film is all those other guys that are in it, all those other top footballers that are in it. and I just don't think that you would be able to populate it with the equivalent. I mean, like Mike Summerbee had retired about four years earlier, I think probably more of the same. So, you know, you could populate it with retired players, but what those Ipswich players and Halvar and Soren, the Norwegian and Danish players, give it is a bit of youth and vitality and they look more like the real deal.

23:10I think where football films and sports films in general tend to fall down over the years is getting that authenticity of the action right. And having those kind of active footballers is probably what enabled it to be the film and the movie that it was, right? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, clearly a decision was made at some point whether they were going to populate this film with actors and teachers to play football or footballers and teach them to act or let them act. And obviously they went with the latter. And I know, I mean, obviously I love it. And I know some people are a little bit sneery about it sometimes.

23:53But I think the footballers do plenty well enough with the acting that they need to do, especially Russell Osman and Mike Summerbee probably and Kevin O 'Callaghan actually with a heartbreaking arm break scene. but yeah what it does do is it makes the football so much better and there was a little bit of a clash on the set for that because um so freddie fields the producer had thought okay well it's a sports film i need a sports director he brought in a guy called robert reiger who was um abc's worldwide of sport um director but he hadn't ever done football he'd never done soccer um so he arrived with the very best intentions and he arrived with a thick folder of setups and bits that he wanted to capture on camera and we'll do this and you'll run there and then you'll pass it here and then you'll pass it there and again the footballers looked at that and um i think Pele and Bobby Moore and Werner Roth who plays the German captain and maybe Mike Summerbee they seem to have sort of led the charge on this sort of thing, but all the footballers present a united front and they're all saying this isn't going to work.

25:06What you need to do is obviously there are elements that are needed, the penalties are needed and the overhead kick is needed and there's certain set pieces that you do need. But what they talk them into is just let us play, just film it for five minutes, 10 minutes at a time. Let us play, give us a rough idea of what you want, as in the Germans are attacking down the right, Like we're attacking down the left kind of thing. And they just let them play. So then what you get is there are sections of the film that are just these really good footballers having a game of football. And I think that comes across.

25:42I think it's far and away the best depiction of football on film. And I know some people are sometimes still critical of what it looks like. But I think people that are doing that are comparing it to a real football match, not to other football films. I think if you compare it to a real football match, then obviously it's going to come off second best because, you know, you can't recreate that spontaneity. But I think compared to any other football film, it's streets ahead. And that comes back to it being about the players and the guys I had involved there. Yeah. Do you know how many times you've watched it, John?

26:23Well, I reckon it would have been in the 20s before I started researching for this. And then obviously I watched it in pieces and watched it many so, I don't know. I shudder to think probably up in the 60s by now. Yeah. Well, I'm sure certainly for Ipswich Town fans, this will rank very highly as one of the films. Certainly this time of year when Christmas comes around, it tends to pop up on the TV quite a bit. doesn't it um always on at christmas and it's one of those films i i find if you join it i mean obviously before i started writing the book even if you if you join it 10 minutes in or an hour in it's one of those films that you're just watching to the end it's just you you're sticking with it yeah absolutely it's uh i think it'll be a really good stocking filler for people a good christmas gift can you can uh can you tell people where they can get it from please john yeah i hope so so it's published through pitch publishing.

27:21Um, if you go to the, go to pitch publishing website, there's a link there, but you can get it on Amazon. If you don't want to use Amazon, then, uh, waterstones are stocking it. Most bookshops, um, if it's not in the shop, then you can, um, you can order it online. Certainly. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, I didn't want to give too many stories away. There's, there's plenty more in the book for people to uncover, but I'll, I'll give people another look one last time. It's escape a love letter to a cult football classic by John Smith. John, thank you so much for joining me today. I look forward to getting my teeth into it and finding a bit more about, as you say, the best football film of all time, right?

27:59Absolutely. Certainly the best Ipswich football film of all time, right? Yeah, brilliant. John, thank you very much. Brilliant. Thank you. Good luck for the season as well. Thank you very much. Cheers. Thank you. Cheers.

28:25Thank you.

28:56Thank you.

29:28Thank you.

29:48The World Cup Championship will be crowned this week, and you can trade the tourney through the finals on Kalshi, America's number one prediction market platform. Right now, Spain is trading at 58 % to beat Argentina, meaning 100 trade pays out 166 if they win. On Kalshi, you're trading against other people in a live market. No house, no odds makers. For a limited time, download the Kalshi app and use code DEFEND to get$10 when you trade$10. K-A-L-S-H-I. Calci. Trade the beautiful game. 18 plus only. Restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors.

30:27Calci products are not available in all jurisdictions. Prices, values, and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see calci.com forward slash regulatory.