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VINCE PAPALE on 'INVINCIBLE'
Contributed by Michael J. Lee, Executive Editor
for Radio Free Entertainment
August 13, 2006
Set in 1976's Philadelphia, Invincible is the dramatized story of Vince Papale, a bartender who, at the age of 30, overcame enormous odds to make the roster of the Philadelphia Eagles. Answering the team's promotion of an open tryout willing to see all comers, he accomplished the improbable by breaking into the ranks of the NFL in spite of being considered too old and having no college football experience. This inspirational sports movie stars Mark Wahlberg as Vince Papale, Elizabeth Banks as his love interest Janet, and Greg Kinnear as Eagles coach Dick Vermeil.
In this interview, the real life Vince Papale, who was actively involved in the film's production as a consultant, talks about working on the project, and reflects on the portion of his career recounted in the movie.
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The Interview
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MEDIA: To your knowledge, has an amateur with no collegiate experience made the NFL since you pulled it off?
VINCE: I don't think it's happened since. You know, I think the only time it happened prior to that was George Allen had a camp a couple of years earlier. And if you were around back in the day when George Allen was a coach with the Rams, Dick Vermeil was his first special teams coach ever. So there was an affinity between George Allen and Dick Vermeil, and obviously a tremendous amount of respect, because George was sort of Dick Vermeil's mentor. So fast forward now to 1973 or 1974: George Allen's the head coach of the Washington Redskins. He decided to have an all-comers tryout, and he gets a guy out of it [who] became an outstanding special teams star for the Washington Redskins. And then Dick Vermeil figured, "If my mentor can get somebody out of this thing, I might just get one or two guys out of it." And I'm the guy.
What did you think of Mark Wahlberg playing you?
Mark Wahlberg...How much time do I have to talk about how much I think of Mark Wahlberg? Mark and I are very close now as a result of this. Our friendship has gone beyond just an actor/[consultant] kind of a thing. [When] my wife Janet and I first met Mark, I had sweaty palms. Like, "Wow, this is really cool." We're up in New York. It's April. When Mark came up, he says, "I played the role of a real person before, but that person was deceased." And that, of course, was in The Perfect Storm. And he says, "I really feel a tremendous responsibility to play you because you're still alive." [laughs] He didn't know I had cancer, and that was like a tongue-in-cheek kind of thing. And Mark says, "Listen, I'm just really proud of you. I know about your journey, I'm going to play the role with enthusiasm, passion, integrity, and I'm going to make you proud." And as it turns out, Mark is not only a great choice, he's the only choice, as far as I'm concerned. Because he knows me so well, because he went through some of those same things I went through as a youngster. So he didn't have to act to be Vince Papale. All he had to do was sort of understand me. And he got all of the idiosyncrasies and the speech and all that stuff just by hanging around. He actually came to my house on a couple of occasions and hung out with me in the neighborhood, and just talked to people.
Did the other players at camp really give you a hard time, as we see in the movie?
Oh, absolutely. I was a pariah in essence. You would've thought I had leprosy, for crying out loud, or some communicable disease. And I understood it after I became a sophomore on the team. They're too nice to rookies now. "Hey, man, welcome to camp!" First of all, there weren't any holdouts back then. And secondly, if you were a rookie, you weren't welcome. And it was just a rite of passage in the NFL back then. And of course right now, it's outlawed and banned, but hazing and shunning were basically part of the deal.
And you were essentially threatening someone's position on the team...
I was ready to take a job from somebody on the team, and I was threatening his job security. Here's a guy that had a football pedigree, probably grew up, his whole life was going to [play] football, and I was not only going to take away his job, I was going to take away, in essence, a big piece of life--this sport that he played. This game of football. And then of course, they always have their wingmen. And they were all taking runs at me. I said my head was like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. My head had to be on a swivel just sort of looking around.
Did you really play football with the guys from your neighborhood? Was it tackle?
It was rough touch, but everything went. They actually had a cop and an ambulance there at every game. That's really true. All that football stuff is right on the money. And all the football stuff that we did on the field, all those plays were choreographed between myself and Mark Ellis, who does all the football action.
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How tall are you?
I'm 6'2".
And how much did you weigh?
Back then, I went into camp at 195. If you went into camp plus or minus two pounds over or under your assigned weight, you got fined like $500. And my salary was only $21,000. [laughs] Just for the record, I came out of camp at about 180. It was so dehydrating.
Do you think NFL players getting paid millions affects the quality of today's game?
Well, the game's certainly a lot different than it was back then. Has the salary affected these guys? Certainly. But they're certainly entitled to it, because I know the risks. If you did an x-ray of my body, you'd see several concussions, broken nose, broken teeth, broken finger, fractured vertebrae, bone chips in both elbows...I had surgery on this shoulder, I dislocated that shoulder. So do I say these guys should get [that much money]? Yeah, you get whatever you can get out of it. Has it affected the game? I think so, yeah. In a certain respect, I think a lot of guys are more concerned about their paycheck. I don't see a lot of guys taking the same kind of risks that we were taking back then...But these guys today, they're so gifted. There's no question about it. They're faster, they're bigger, they're stronger. I'd say they're more athletic. But I don't think they're having as much fun as we had back then.
Have you seen Oliver Stone's football movie?
Any Given Sunday? Yeah, I loved it. That was fairly accurate in some respects. You know, once again, there's liberties taken, but some of the things that were going on there were accurate.
Even though we don't hear mention of it in the movie, you're a cancer survivor, yes?
I am a cancer survivor. The movie only goes up the second game of the 1976 season. And in 2001, I was diagnosed with colon cancer. My wife Janet, a great woman...It was upon her insistence that I get a colonoscopy. And I got the colonoscopy, and wouldn't you know it? They found a polyp. It was in my colon about the size of this ring. And luckily for me, it was encapsulated. And the roots of the capsule hadn't gotten through the colon wall. So I was very fortunate. So they sort of got it all. They said they got 99.99% of it. But you know what the odds were of me making the Eagles? It was a little bit higher than 99.99%, so I didn't accept those odds! [laughs] I said, "Wait, I want 120%." So they took out 18 inches of my colon. And now I'm completely clean. And now I'm a spokesperson for colorectal cancer awareness in Philadelphia. If you go on my website, www.vincepapale.com, you'll see a link there to Jefferson Hospital, then you'll see some of the TV and all of the stuff that I've done for colorectal cancer awareness. And it's very important because I know we've saved lives.
How did you handle the situation when you were first diagnosed?
I was a total mess. And my wife said, "You better get your head out of your butt." [She's a] typical gymnast--tougher than football players. She said, "You're supposed to be this inspirational guy, and look at you. You couldn't motivate yourself. Let's get yourself together here, pal." So I got myself together, and here we are. So I went from being invisible to invincible.
Was your wife really a Giants fan?
[jokes] What are you kidding me? You think I'd marry somebody who's a Giants fan?
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