That Championship Season (1982 film)

That Championship Season
DVD cover for That Championship Season (1982)
Directed by	Jason Miller
Produced by	Menahem Golan Yoram Globus
Written by	Jason Miller
Starring	Robert Mitchum Martin Sheen Bruce Dern Paul Sorvino Stacy Keach
Music by	Bill Conti
Cinematography	John Bailey
Edited by	Richard Halsey
Distributed by	The Cannon Group, Inc.
Release date	1982
Running time	110 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

That Championship Season is Jason Miller's 1982 film version of his 1973 Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway play of the same name. It stars Robert Mitchum, Martin Sheen, Bruce Dern, Stacy Keach and Paul Sorvino and was filmed on location in Scranton, Pennsylvania where it is set.

In 1999, Sorvino directed an adaptation of the play for Showtime in which he played Mitchum's role as the coach. This version co-starred Vincent D'Onofrio, Gary Sinise, Tony Shalhoub and Terry Kinney.

It has been 25 years since the 1957 Fillmore High School (fictional) basketball team won the Pennsylvania state championship. The coach and four of the victors regularly gather to relive the glory of their shining moment.

As teenage teammates they could read each other's moves on the court without fail. As middle-aged men, each is facing his own different mid-life crisis. With a former coach that still addresses problems as if his boys are having a bad game, the friends' longtime loyalty to one another begins to unravel.

George Sitkowski (Bruce Dern) is mayor of Scranton and engaged in a fierce campaign for re-election. James Daley (Stacy Keach) is an overwrought and underpaid school principal while his brother, Tom (Martin Sheen), has become a drifter with a serious drinking problem. Phil Romano (Paul Sorvino) is the wealthiest among them. He often bends the law and even betrays a friend to indulge his own needs, but George badly needs his support.