Semi-Tough

Semi-Tough (1977)

They Lead The League In Scoring... After The Game!

A three-way friendship between two free-spirited professional football players and the owner's daughter becomes compromised when two of them become romantically involved.

Date of release
1977-11-18
TMDB
5.4 / 10 (61)
Runtime
1h 48m
Genres
Comedy, Drama, Romance
Director
Michael Ritchie

Casting

Interesting facts

Semi-Tough is a 1977 American sports comedy film directed by Michael Ritchie, and starring Burt Reynolds, Kris Kristofferson, Jill Clayburgh, Robert Preston, Lotte Lenya, and Bert Convy. Set in the world of American professional football, Semi-Tough follows buddies Billy Clyde Puckett and Marvin 'Shake' Tiller, who have a third roommate, Barbara Jane Bookman. A romance develops between Shake and Barbara Jane when he becomes self-confident after completing a self awareness course called "B.E.A.T.", at which point Billy Clyde slyly makes a play to win her for himself.

Production

Semi-Tough is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Dan Jenkins, and the screenplay was written by Walter Bernstein. Bernstein and director Michael Ritchie used parts of Jenkins's novel and added parodies of self-help groups, new religions, and the Human Potential Movement. Ritchie was partially influenced by Adam Smith's book, Powers of Mind.

Burt Reynolds began training with Kris Kristofferson to get in shape before film production. Before work began on the film, actor Bert Convy attended one of Werner Erhard's est training sessions to prepare for his role as B.E.A.T. seminar leader Friedrich Bismark. Pro football stars were hired to give realism to the film, including John Matuszak, Paul Hornung, Joe Kapp, and Ed "Too Tall" Jones. The football scenes were shot at the Cotton Bowl.

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