In the winter of 1937, America was in the seventh year of the most catastrophic decade in its history. The economy had come crashing down, and millions upon millions of people had been torn loose from their jobs, their savings, their homes. A nation that drew its audacity from the quintessentially American belief that success is open to anyone willing to work for it was disillusioned by seemingly intractable poverty. The most brash of peoples was seized by despair, fatalism, and fear.

The sweeping devastation was giving rise to powerful new social forces. The first was a burgeoning industry of escapism. America was desperate to lose itself in anything that offered affirmation. The nation's corner theaters hosted 85 million people a week for 25-cent viewings of an endless array of cheery musicals and screwball comedies. On the radio, the idealized world of One Man's Family and the just and reassuring tales of The Lone Ranger were runaway hits. Downtrodden Americans gravitated strongly toward the Horatio Alger protagonist, the lowly bred Everyman who rises from anonymity and hopelessness. They looked for him in spectator sports, which were enjoying explosive growth.  With the relegalization of wagering, no sport was growing faster than Thoroughbred racing.

Necessity spurred technological innovations that offered the public unprecedented access to its heroes. People accustomed to reading comparatively dry rehashes of events were now enthralled by vivid scenes rolling across the new Movietone newsreels. A public that had grown up with news illustrations and hazy photo layouts was now treated to breathtaking action shots facilitated by vastly improved photographic equipment. These images were now rapidly available thanks to wirephoto services, which had debuted in Life in the month that Pollard, Howard, and Smith formed their partnership.

But it was the radio that had the greatest impact. In the 1920s the cost of a radio had been prohibitive--$120 or more--and all that bought was a box of unassembled parts. In unelectrified rural areas, radios ran on pricy, short-lived batteries. But with the 1930's came the advent of factory-built console, tabletop, and automobile radio sets, available for as little as $5. Thanks to President Roosevelt's Rural Electrification Administration, begun in 1936, electricity came to the quarter of the population that lived on farmlands. Rural families typically made the radio their second electric purchase, after the clothes iron. By 1935, when Seabiscuit began racing, two-thirds of the nation's homes had a radio. At the pinnacle of his career, that figure had jumped to 90 percent, plus eight million sets in cars. Enabling virtually all citizens to experience noteworthy events simultaneously and in entertaining form, radio created a vast common culture in America, arguably the first true mass culture the world had ever seen.  Racing, a sport whose sustained dramatic action was ideally suited to narration, became a staple of the airwave. The Santa Anita Handicap, with its giant purse and world-class athletes, competing in what was rapidly becoming the nation's most heavily attended sport, became one to the premier radio events of the year.

In February 1937, all of these new social and technological forces were converging. The modern age of celebrity was dawning. The new machine of fame stood waiting. All it needed was the subject himself.

At that singular hour, Seabiscuit, the Cinderella horse, flew over the line in the Santa Anita Handicap.  Something clicked: Here he was.

Laura Hillenbrand - Seabiscuit, An American Legend

In 1996, while working on an article on an unrelated subject, writer Laura Hillenbrand came across some material about the owner and the trainer of a Depression-era racehorse named Seabiscuit.  Hillenbrand, who got on her first horse at the age of five, had brought together her love of horses and history by writing for Equus and a variety of other publications.  She first read about Seabiscuit as a child and encountered him again and again in her work as a fan and chronicler of horseracing.  While she knew the story of the knobby-kneed horse and his strange and inspiring career, she knew little about the people around him--the owner, the trainer and the jockey.  She had little idea that her discovery that day would lead to a publishing phenomenon.

Four years later, Hillenbrand submitted the book for publication.  From the beginning, her expectations were modest.  "I was thinking," remembers Hillenbrand, "'If I can sell 5000 copies out of the trunk of my car, I'll be happy.'  I just wanted to tell the story." 
So the author wasn't prepared for the call she received from her editor informing her that after only five days on sale, the book had already made it onto the best-seller list, debuting at No. 8.  The following week it rose to No. 2 and, the week after that, Seabiscuit, An American Legend topped the list at No. 1. 

The response to the book from critics and the public was overwhelming.  Named one of the best books of the year by more than twenty publications--including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, People, USA Today, and The Economist--Seabiscuit was also honored as the BookSense Nonfiction Book of the Year and the William Hill Sports Book of the Year.  The hardcover edition remained on The New York Times Best-Seller List for 30 weeks; the paperback edition debuted on the list the week of April 14, 2002, and hasn't left since (remaining there for more than 60 weeks).

McCarron counters, "They are racehorses and they are very competitive.  It's difficult to keep them at a certain speed, they want to go faster."

And because each race was choreographed, the jockeys needed to adhere to the race plan without making it look staged.  "When we ride in a typical race, we receive instruction from the trainer and basically just have to worry about ourselves," explains Chris.  "But for filming, we had to position the horses exactly where Gary Ross wanted them to be and keep everybody on their marks, whatever the proximity was--whether it was two lanes, three lanes, half a lane, or just a length between the two.  That's been a real challenge and the riders have done very well."

This choreographic balancing was facilitated by the use of wireless receivers.  Each jockey was fitted with an earpiece, through which they would hear McCarron's instructions. 
"My job has been to understand exactly what Gary wanted and to translate that vision into jockey jargon," McCarron explains.  "I might say to them, 'Make believe that you are going to work this horse 5/8 of a mile, and you're going to start off nice and easy.  Then, you're going to let another horse hook in with you and you're going to stay in company…then, all of a sudden, you're going to be chasing this pack that is up there eight, ten lengths in front of you and you're just going to explode through the pack.'  And that's what they have to do."

While conceptualising his screenplay, screenwriter and director Ross found a dramatic organisation in Hillenbrand's account of Seabiscuit's races. 

He recalls, "Each race had a three-act structure.  The premise was established in the clubhouse turn, the complications in the back stretch and the conclusion of the third act happened coming out of the far turn and into the home stretch." 
The discovery allowed Ross to find the unique character of each race.  It also meant that he would have to find a way to bring that character--different in every race--to the screen. 
Hillenbrand's detailed descriptions of the races allowed Ross to see racing in a way he never had before.  While no stranger to the track, Ross hadn't fully appreciated how visceral horseracing could be. 

"I wasn't really aware of how concussive, how violent, how fast, how exciting a horse race really is," says Ross, "until I read her book and it was brought alive for me."  And so Ross was determined to capture Hillenbrand's vivid descriptions of racing on film. 
"The challenge," he continues, "is to show these horse races in a way that is faithful to Laura's descriptions.  Because in the book, she made people understand--this isn't the race you're used to seeing from up in the grandstand, with all the little horses running around the track.  You're in it."

"It's an extraordinary thing to see this creature moving at forty miles an hour with the grace that it does," says Hillenbrand.  "Gary's shown that in a big way.  That excites me because this is why I go to the horse races.  I'd like to see more people going and I'd like them to see it with my eyes.  And I think Gary's done that."

In order to successfully bring the story of each race to life and show the audience the drama and fierce power of Thoroughbred horseracing, Ross would need to shoot from inside the race.  "I have to have the jockey's point-of-view.  I have to be able to frame those moments when jockeys talk to each other while they're racing.  I need to track all the subtleties that occur during the race."

The director would need close-ups and medium shots, like any film, to give the scenes dimension and depth…except these scenes were happening on the backs of 1,200-pound, highly sensitive animals thundering down an uneven surface at 40 miles-per-hour with real people balanced precariously on their backs.   

"During our race meetings over the summer," Schwartzman recalls, "we immediately began brainstorming ways of getting the camera close to the action.  Part of it was meeting with the horse trainers and asking, 'If we put a crane on a camera that will allow us to extend an arm out 30 feet, can we run alongside the racehorses at 40 miles-per-hour?  Will they freak or will they just run?'  That was sort of step one."

Even before the film went into pre-production, while adapting Hillenbrand's book, Ross wrote out a shooting plan for every scene.  "I would say things like, 'We'll start with a crane move here, and we'll pop in these characters here, and we barely see them because they're silhouetted." 

These shooting plans evolved into detailed accounts of how each scene would look and feel, how it would be lit and how it would be shot.  Out of this came another innovation that was crucial to the production's success:  a race book.  Like an NFL playbook, it was a computer-drawn, two-dimensional representation of where the cameras, horses and jockeys were for each shot during every race.  The multi-color race books were distributed to every crewmember involved in shooting the races, including camera operators, stunt men, jockeys and assistant directors. 

The extensive planning was helped (as was much more that would come later on) by the fact that Ross had spent months writing the material he was now directing.  Observes Kathleen Kennedy, "I love working with a screenwriter/director because every single scene you are discussing, whether it's in pre-production or during principal photography, is informed by the person who wrote the material.  We were faced with a very, very complicated movie, with a lot of technical challenges and Gary was so clear about what his intent was in each of those scenes that it made the job of delivering what he needed much, much easier." 

Extensive planning was a necessity, as Ross points out "everything had to be choreographed and scheduled within an inch of its life." 

Including the daily race meetings, which carried into production.  At Santa Anita where the crew shot for nearly six weeks, Ross created a makeshift track on the linoleum floor inside the betting hall in the grandstands.  Using electrical tape on the floor with plastic horses and toy trucks standing in for the full-sized versions, he would review the day's work with the crew, always bearing their race books in hand.

Ross and the filmmakers were acutely aware of period authenticity--which usually translated into finding appropriate locations rather than coming to rely heavily on construction.  In their trek to find locations that could stand in for some of the historic Meccas of the horseracing world during the Depression, Ross, Kennedy, Marshall and executive producer Robin Bissell toured the country's racetracks searching for suitable places in which they could recreate Seabiscuit's story. 

First Assistant Director Adam Somner relates, "There were three elements that were crucial while we were scouting:  first, we wanted, as much as possible, to use the real places from the story; second, we looked for racetracks that hadn't been too modernized; and third, we needed to be able to have access to the tracks."

The group ended up crisscrossing the country, beginning with a 100 year-old stock farm in Hemet, California (used for the bug boy racing sequence).  The company also utilized the track, grandstands and back area at the Pomona Fairplex in California (after some modification), which doubled for Tijuana's Agua Caliente racetrack. 

Following filming of scenes in Hemet and Pomona, California, location shooting moved to Saratoga to shoot scenes taking place in the New York City Jockey Club.  From Saratoga, they went on to horse country, Lexington, Kentucky, home of Keeneland racetrack, to shoot the match race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral; for 14 days they worked to recreate the historic race, filling the grandstands and the infield with more than 3,500 extras. 

The filmmakers were lucky to have one of racing's greatest gems right in their back yard.  Santa Anita Racetrack, which opened Christmas Day of 1934, nestled at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, 14 miles northeast of Los Angeles, is a beautifully maintained track.  The Art Deco creation of architect George Kaufmann, the picturesquely situated track still beautifully evokes the heyday of early 20th Century Thoroughbred racing.  The scene of several milestones in Seabiscuit's career still stands as one of the world's most renowned sporting landmarks.

The production had a set number of days they could shoot at the historic Santa Anita track.  The company had to be out several days before the track opened for the season--there would be no exceptions.  This meant that Ross had to find a way to double up the work, shooting the racing and the dramatic scenes at the same time.

"I would be off shooting a dramatic scene," recalls Ross.  "The horse unit was on the track and I would be directing that via a wireless communication device, seeing the images transmitted to me on a separate set of monitors.  It was a bit of a touring circus in that respect, a lot going on at once. Frank Marshall and I would talk throughout the day.  Fortunately, I could see the images and since I had rehearsed all the work in the morning with everyone, it made it a manageable touring circus…but a touring circus nonetheless."

"John worked very closely with Gary to literally outline every single shot of the horseracing prior to shooting," says producer and former camera operator Kathleen Kennedy.  "They chose equipment through a long series of tests to determine what would be the best suited for use with the horses, what would be the best way to achieve the feeling of being inside these races." 

Says Schwartzman, "If there's a piece of equipment that can move a camera, we have used it on this movie.  From sticks where we are locked off to the Strato crane, with it's hundred-foot arm, and everything in-between.  The only thing we haven't done is put the  camera underwater."