The Jericho Mile

The Jericho Mile (1980)

Behind the wall of this prison is a man traning to challenge the Olympic record..

A runner, serving a life sentence at Folsom Prison, works at becoming the world's fastest miler and wins a chance to compete for a spot on the Olympic team.

Date of release
1980-10-31
TMDB
6.1 / 10 (56)
Runtime
1h 37m
Genres
Drama, TV Movie, Crime
Director
Michael Mann

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: California

The Jericho Mile is a 1979 American made for TV crime sports film directed by Michael Mann. The film won five awards, including three Emmy Awards. The story is set at Folsom State Prison, and the film was shot on location there amongst the prison population.

Production

Mann secured permission to shoot in the prison itself. He recalls:

We were told by the warden that there'd be individual stabbings, and that happens routinely. But if there was a gang war or a race war, they'd throw us out and we couldn’t finish shooting. And we had 28 convicts in major roles in the picture. So I wanted to organize it in a way so that this wouldn't happen. So through Eddie Bunker, I was able to talk to people who ran M.A., the Black Guerrilla Family and also the Hells Angels.

Among the cast was a former convict turned playwright called Miguel Pinero, who Mann says was popular with the inmates.

"Here was Peter Strauss, a big star from Rich Man, Poor Man — but Pinero was the guy everyone wanted to meet," says the director. "Prisoners would bring him glasses of water with a napkin wrapped around it, so his fingers didn’t get wet—these small gestures of respect were their form of courtesy."

I just adore him. He is one of the finest directors I have ever worked with. If he asked me to do something that was the pits for me, I'd do it. Let's see... what would be the pits... Three's Company, I would do that for him. The Jericho Mile is not a film about prison or prison reform. There are no rape scenes in the shower, no banging of cups on dining room tables.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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