Every now and then something comes along that fundamentally changes you. It affects you, impacts you, causes you to reassess how you view your life or the world around you. I never met Mark Bingham, in fact until I saw ‘The Rugby Player” film I’d never heard of Mark Bingham. Yet in the space of just on an hour and a half, Mark Bingham changed my world forever.
‘The Rugby Player’ is a story that is elegant in its simplicity. Director Scott Grachef, along with Producer Holly Million and Director of Photography Chris Million has crafted a film which introduces Mark Bingham as simply that which he was: An ordinary man with a lust for life and boundless enthusiasm for all around him. A man who loved his family loved his friends and loved the game of rugby. A man who didn’t so much seize the day as he did throttle it. And ultimately a man who would be remembered not only for his skill on the field but also for his ultimate act of selfless bravery, when he and three other individuals stood together to break into the flight deck of United 93 on that fateful day in September 2001.
As well as telling this story, ‘The Rugby Player’ shows Mark as a man who would willingly step into battle for his friends, who would stand up for what he believed in, and who would challenge stereotypes. At over six feet tall, and like most rugby players built like the proverbial tank. Mark was also a happily out and proud gay man. The film addresses the aspects of Mark’s sexuality with a frankness that is at once honest and forthright, yet does not stray into being preachy, or disingenuous. In simple terms, the film tells Marks story in the only way it could have been told… Mark’s way.
I was truly fortunate recently to be able to speak to two of the key figures in this film; Director Scott Gracheff and one of the central people in the film’s narrative, Mark’s mother Alice Hoagland.
Scott’s enthusiasm for this movie is infectious, and the pride he has in this story is obvious. In order to get a better understanding of the history and backstory of the film, I asked Scott first off how he came to be involved with Mark’s story “Basically I, like everyone else in the days and weeks after 9/11, was glued to the screen watching the endless news coverage. I didn’t actually see any stories about Mark, I never heard his story. Then in early 2002, I was at a dinner party in San Francisco with some friends, and I met this guy Todd Sarter, who was one of Mark’s childhood friends. Basically he started telling me about his friend Mark, I think I may have shared with him that I worked at PBS at the time making documentaries, and he said ‘I’ve got a documentary idea for you’ and he started telling me about Mark.”
“I became very fascinated and intrigued about this individual, not just in the more dramatic fashion of what happened on 9/11, but he just seemed like a really great guy that I’d want to get to know. Then Todd revealed Mark was an amateur documentary film maker who had kind of documented his life from about age 16 until about a month before he died. Of course when you hear that you realise there’s a lot of great material there to make a film.”
“Shortly thereafter I got my film making colleagues Holly Million and Chris Million and we embarked on what was essentially a ten year journey to tell this story.”
Talking to Alice Hoagland, Mark’s mother, was a journey in itself. Alice has a light and spirit about her the defies the tragedy she has endured. She is a woman who likes to laugh, and laughs a lot during our conversation, as well as the film. She serves to tie the story together giving a link to all the facets of Mark’s life. Alice told me about how Todd brought her and Scott together “When Todd met Scott Gracheff [at the dinner party] he’d asked Scott what he did, and after finding out he was a videographer and producer of films he wrestled with the idea of ‘I’ve got to pitch this idea to him’ and finally he did, saying ‘I had a friend who died during 9/11 fighting the terrorists when the plane hit the ground in Pennsylvania. I really think you ought to consider this story of Mark Bingham for a documentary’ “
“Scott listened to Todd telling Mark’s story and by the end of the night he knew he had to tell this story.”
Scott talks of how Todd introduced the two saying “We [Scott, Holly and Chris] had kind of decided as a team that we were going to move forward making the film based on our connection to Todd, we hadn’t actually met Alice yet. Then we met her at a few functions and events that were Mark related. We started doing what you do when you start of making a documentary which is going with your gut, seeing who would be the good people to interview and trying to find the story if you will. We were kind of working on it for a few years before we realised that Alice was the key to telling our story, and that the most effective and engaging way to connect to audiences would be to tell this mother and son story, and tell Marks story through that.”
One of the most intriguing aspects of the story for me is the relationships within Mark’s family. In California Mark grew up surrounded by the love of Alice’s brothers and sister, and thrived because of it. Alice says “Mark was the product of family effort”
I asked Scott how the family responded to being involved in this film making process “All I can say is I’ve worked on a number of documentary projects in the past, it’s always challenging to build up that trust with your subjects. I think the family was initially a little wary at first, not specifically of us but more of the film project in general because they’d had some mixed experience in the past dealing with the media. Not to suggest the media had written negative or bad stories about Mark, but sometimes various journalists would choose convenient or easy ways to tell the story which maybe didn’t express the whole truth of the situation.”
“I think the more we worked with them, the more they trusted that we were trying to do the right thing and tell Mark’s story truthfully.”
“I’ve got to say we are so thankful to Alice and the family and friends for having so much trust in us. Mark was a very present and live character with all the great archival footage that we had to work with, and the family just basically handed over these boxes of tapes and videos for us to go through, there’s so much trust there.”
I also asked Alice about her family, the relationships and the film making process “I know that my family welcomed the idea [of telling Mark’s story]. They’ve gone with me to see the film at a festival in San Francisco, and they loved it.”
“We’re a very close family, we really enjoy each others company.”
The level of trust the family has placed in Scott and his team is well repaid in a feeling of almost forming a relationship with Mark and his family while you watch the movie. One scene that resonated with me is Mark, as a teenager, finding himself on slightly the wrong side of the law (as teenagers do) and Alice relating Mark on the phone to her brother Vaughan saying “Uncle Vaughan, you’ve got a good lawyer, right?” which first made me laugh…then think I really hope my son has an Uncle Vaughan in years to come. I related this story to Alice as well who laughed, mentioning Vaughan was tickled at the fact Scott and his team had included these comments in the movie.
Mark was a product of this family, and the love, caring and respect within this tight knit group is palpable. You get a real sense of being a part of something special watching the family sitting on Alice’s deck reminiscing, it – like the whole movie – is simple, elegant, poignant and real.
The way the film addresses all of Mark’s many aspects is so enlightening “We didn’t want this to be a dark, depressing 9/11 story, we wanted this to be uplifting because it IS uplifting, and Mark’s legacy IS inspiring.” one of Mark’s friends saying “Mark drank from the cup of life with both hands.”
Returning to one of the key aspects though, the frank and honest way Mark’s sexuality is addressed is, to my mind, one of the greatest features of this film. This is the story of a guy who lived life large, played rugby, and was gay. Nothing defined him, he simply was Mark Bingham. A six-foot-five-inch rugby player with a video camera. “That was certainly a conscious effort on our part as film makers.” Scott says “We didn’t want to have any aspects of Mark’s life be more important or portrayed as more important than they should be. Mark was gay, he was a proud, out gay man, but he wasn’t defined by his sexuality. For him it was just one of the many facets of his character, of his person.”
When the film premiered in the Miami Gay and Lesbian film festival (the festival where the film won the first of its many awards) the executive director of the festival, Frank Castro, explained that one of the things that really resonated with him was that at its core, this was a film about an ordinary guy. Which is not, as Scott reiterates, to suggest Mark was ‘Just an ordinary guy’ he was much more than that. But he was as much defined by being the guy who played – as Alice describes it – that ‘English game where the guys try to kill each other’ than anything else. Scott continues though “Mark was not your stereotypical gay man as portrayed by the mainstream media. Mark was a big, beer-swilling, football watching, rugby playing guy who wasn’t fashionable and listened to heavy metal music. That goes against the so called stereotypes you see.”
Alice mentions how she responded to the addressing of Mark’s sexuality saying “I was very happy, the producers were very sensitive, they presented the issue in a remarkably sensitive and caring way. I admit when I first saw the movie I was wincing when I heard Mark talking so harshly about gay people. I asked Scott about it, and he explained to me that it was important to show that Mark was trying very hard to come out, he wrestled with his own fears by critiquing one of the band members of Queensryche saying ‘Oh that guy’s a fag’ I think he was doing it as a way of testing the waters. It took him a while before he became comfortable with his sexuality to be able to tell his family and friends.”
When Mark did come out though, it was on his terms, his way and in his time. Much the way he lived his life.
The fact that this film IS so strong at challenging and confronting these stereotypes is one of the many reasons why Scott describes this as “a movie that the LGBT community wants to see, and a movie that the straight community needs to see.”
Alice of course brings her own strength and personality to the film, which allows her to not only share the story of Mark,it also adds to and enhances Mark’s legacy. “It means a lot to me that people enjoy this movie as much as they have. I miss Mark every day, it’s so good that people can share in his story, it helps to keep him alive in some ways.”
Scott is quite right, Alice is the touchstone of this film that ties everything together. She brings the film and, through her relating of stories, Mark himself to life.
The film addresses Mark’s love of rugby, and his playing of the game, extensively throughout. It delves into his high school and college rugby, and shows how rugby more than anything really served to define who Mark was. Scott commented that he didn’t really understand how someone could voluntarily throw themselves into a game that on the surface looks brutal and violent. “We noticed however that rugby has this real string family feel to it. It’s more than a game, it’s a family to these guys.”
This family aspect is further expanded when the film introduces the San Francisco Fog. The Fog became a big part of Mark’s life for a number of years as the first gay rugby club he associated with. One of Mark’s fiends comments in the film about Mark finding the Fog and saying “It was great, both of Mark’s worlds came together is such a fantastic way.” The film addresses how this club served to further Marks love for the game, while at the same time embracing his sexuality and still providing that sense of family.
Alice continues to be associated with the club, serving as both an advocate and supporter. Through this Mark’s rugby legacy continues as well with the biannual Bingham Cup, referred to as ‘The Gay Rugby World Cup” which has developed into a major global event and will be contested this year in Sydney, Australia, hosted by the Sydney Convicts Rugby Club.
Alice has also become a staunch advocate for gay rights, campaigning to support gay marriage and other issues.
The film also addresses the loss of Mark in again a very real and genuine manner. Scott commented during out conversation that in making this film, and watching the film, by about half way through you have such a connection with Mark, you don’t want him to die. I totally agree with this sentiment, it really hit me that at some point in this film we had to address the tragic death of a guy you couldn’t help but fall in love with.
In the film the camera follows Alice through the memorial at Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Given how emotional this moment must have been I asked Alice what it was like having to relive these memories on camera. “Like Mark, I’m a bit of a show off, so if someone wants me to talk about my son I’m going to” Alice replies, laughing.
I asked Scott what the huge response to the film means to him. His response was in much the same tone of the film, simple and brutally honest “This is a real team effort, it does take a few hits in a room to get this story right, but what it means when we get these awards and accolades is we did our job. And we didn’t f___ it up.”
Finally I related what was for me one of the most powerful moments in the film to both Scott and Alice. Late in the film there is a scene at a Bingham Cup game. Alice is walking off the grounds when one of the player gently takes her arm. He looks at her and simply asks “Do you know how important it is for all of us that you are here? Do you know what this means to us?” Alice embraces the young man, and they talk for a short time…and the simple beauty of this candid moment just floored me. I’m not ashamed to admit it moved me to tears, it affected me so deeply that I actually started tearing up again while talking to Alice about this scene. “I remember that scene, I remember that kid, I think he was with a team called the Gotham Knights but I can’t be sure. I didn’t realise that they were filming that conversation, it was really heart rending for me to be able to talk to him and hug him and tell him how important it was for me that he was so moved by Mark’s story and who Mark was.”
That to me made the whole movie. It summed up the whole reason why people need to see this movie. It is a film that makes a statement about being true to yourself, about being who you are and loving who you are no matter what that may be. It is a story that needs to be told, and needs to be seen.
This year The Rugby Player world tour 2014 is being launched in Sydney’s Mardi Grad Film Festival Monday 17th February. Scott also mentions they are in touch with other film festivals around the world, and will be looking to get the film into mainstream as well as gay festivals. The story has already been told many times in many places around North America, to know that this movie is going global is, to my mind, hugely positive.
I never met Mark Bingham. After seeing The Rugby Player Film…damn, I wish I had.
I want to thank Scott Gracheff for sharing the story of the film with me, and I want to deeply thank Alice for allowing this story to be told. The courage of Mark shines brightly throughout this movie. His warmth, love and spirit touches every single moment. I think it is best summed up by paraphrasing a quote attributed to Howard Hughes: while alive, Mark Bingham lived.
And if more people lived like Mark, the world would be a better place. In a new world of sport where gay athletes are becoming more open about their sexuality, a movie such as this which portrays such a positive message of life, love and hope can only serve to give young people, and especially young gay people, the positive role models they need to be who they are and be proud of it.
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All Images Supplied by Scott Grachef / The Rugby Player film and used with permission
