Mighty Ducks Creator Makes Anaheim Stop on Amazing Sports Journey

Last Sunday was a rare day in the world of sports, a much ballyhooed "Super Sports Equinox" in which six Southern California teams from five different sports were all playing home games the same day. Kings-Rangers, Rams-Packers, Galaxy-Dynamo, Clippers-Wizards and Dodgers-Red Sox in Game 5 of the World Series were all being played in the LA area, with Ducks-Sharks facing off down the 5 freeway in Anaheim. It was the first time in history teams representing a geographic area in all four major North American sports played on the same day.

A handful of fans took on the herculean task of attending all five games in LA that day, but one foursome in particular went the extra mile (or miles of driving, in this case) to include Ducks vs. Sharks at Honda Center. That group of friends included a man who happened to have a special connection to the Ducks: Steve Brill, the creator and screenwriter of all three Mighty Ducksmovies.
Brill and longtime friends Chris Sacca (an early investor in Twitter and Uber and frequent guest on Shark Tank), Chris' brother Brian (an actor who stars in the TV series Wrecked) and the Saccas' dad, Gerald, made Honda Center the fourth stop on their journey, ending it all with Game 5 of the World Series at Dodger Stadium later that night.
Brill spoke about their implausible day and about the phenomenon he launched with his creation of the Mighty Ducksmore than two-and-a-half decades ago.
So how did this whole quest come about?
Chris Sacca and I have been friends for a long time, and we're both very into sports. He emailed me with an
article from fivethirtyeight.com talking about the Super Sports Equinox
and in the email he wrote, This seems like a dare. And I wrote back, And we're just the idiots to do it. It was two days away, and then it sort of had its own energy, and I was like, "Are we really gonna do this and couldwe do this?" Between his engineering brain and my creative brain, we said, "Let's do it."
Tweet from @sacca: One day. Five sports. Six games. They say it can���t be done. That���s why I���m going for it with ���@thekooze���, ���@briansacca,��� and ���@stevebrill���. Up first, the ���@LAKings���! https://t.co/xDtMTR8Z8e
Some people did the five games in LA, but you guys made sure to include a sixth with Ducks-Sharks down in Anaheim. Was that because of your connection to the team?
No, I think we would have done the six even without my connection, only because we suspected no one would have the guts to do the six except us.
Was it exhausting going back and forth to all those games?
What I found that was interesting was it was incredibly energizing. You know that feeling you get when you first walk into a sports arena and there is the whole crowd there? That is a real energy that carries through, and it doesn't matter how many times a day you do it. It's still a great energy, and it's really fun and exciting. And they happened to all be great games, which really helped.
How long did you spend planning out the journey?
It was open for discussion on a text chain where we all offered our input. The only thing we called an audible on was that we were going to go to the Dodgers game fifth and then end at the Clippers game. That would have worked, but just the idea of leaving a World Series game didn't feel right. So we did the first quarter of the Clippers game and walked into the Dodger game around the bottom of the sixth. We got to stay and end the adventure at Dodger Stadium, which was very appropriate.

How often have you been to Ducks games?
I haven't been in the last 15 years, but I used to have season tickets, and I used to go all the time. The inaugural year and the first five years, I had season seats right in section 223. I would go all the time, and Emilio [Estevez, star of the Mighty Ducks films] would go or I would give away tickets. I was very tied in, but maybe when they dropped the "Mighty" from it, I didn't go as often.
How did the Mighty Ducks screenplay come to life?
I grew up in upstate New York in a town called New Hartford, which is near Utica, and that is an old-time hockey area. In fact, the movie Slap Shotwas shot around where I grew up. I used to go to IHL games at the Utica Auditorium, and I grew up a huge fan watching teams like the Johnstown Jets and the Clinton Comets. And I played hockey as a Pee Wee from age 4 to 9 or so. I was never any good, my coaches weren't nice a lot of the times, I never got along with the structure of it, but I loved the game. Then we moved to Florida when I was 11, and I stopped playing hockey and started playing baseball.
When I came to LA as a screenwriter in 1984, I was living in Culver City with Peter Berg [who directed Friday Night Lights and other films], and we would both go to Kings games, just because we had nothing to do, and you could get $5 seats in those days. That was our hobby. We were both unemployed, unsuccessful writers/actors/directors who weren't getting work. So we would go to Kings games at night and skate at Culver Ice Rink during the day, because we had both skated as kids. I discovered my love for skating and hockey again.
I would see the little hockey kids come in the afternoon and play at the rink, and I had the idea to do a hockey movie based on my experiences as a kid and my love for the sport itself. I realized how exhilarating the game could be on so many levels, but also what a goal felt like, how exciting it was. I always thought it was so cinematic, and it really hadn't been shot the way Hoosiershad in basketball, for example. I always love the Bad News Bears as well, and I put it all together and decided to do a movie about a Pee Wee hockey team. It was a little darker than what we ultimately made, but it was a Disney movie, and I'm happy it turned out the way it did.
How was it dark, for example?
Well, I came up with that story of Emilio's character getting a drunk driving arrest and having to coach this team. Gordon Bombay was the name of Emilio's character, and that was because I was drinking gin at the time, and there were two bottles of gin next to me - one was Gordon's and one was Bombay. So that's a little bit of trivia for you. Who would think of Bombay as a character name? I probably thought I was going to change it at one point, but I never did.
Does it blow you away that the Ducks franchise is celebrating its 25th anniversary?
It really does because I do remember the inaugural game like it was yesterday. I also remember standing at The Pond - which I sort of indirectly named because of the script - when it was still under construction. And Michael Eisner had a big ceremony unveiling the name of the team. We didn't know it was going to be the Mighty Ducks, although I thought maybe it was going to be just the Ducks. I was standing next to Eisner before the ceremony and he said, "You're gonna like the name." And then they had it up there in big block letters like Wheel of Fortune, and it said MIGHTY DUCKS, and I was like, "Oh my God." That was unbelievable.

To write a script and have it make it to the big screen is a triumph in itself, but can you put into words what it was like to have an NHL team named after it?
A lot of people will use the word "surreal" when they mean amazing or interesting, but I think it's an appropriate word because it didn't seem like it could be real, and it felt fantastic and something that couldn't happen. I remember skating on the ice at The Pond when we shot Mighty Ducks 2, and we had the uniforms that we had designed for that movie that ultimately became the uniforms for the Ducks team. That came from the movie, which we shot before the team started playing. I remember skating at The Pond knowing this hockey team was coming and just going, "This can't be happening. It's a bit of a dream. It just can't be."
I also remember thinking,Should this be really happening? I mean as a sports fan, what would I think if there was a team called the Mighty Ducks? I don't know how I'd feel about that.But it turned out to be a really cool idea to take a popular piece of culture and turn it into a sports team. I think Pete was the one who said to me, "You've got to just enjoy this" and I said, "Yes, I'm going to."
Things have obviously changed with the look and name, but the team and the fans still celebrate the Mighty roots. Do you still get a kick out of that?
Oh yeah. Twenty-five years later, I'm thrilled and honored to keep having that name out there, even if it's not so "Mighty" anymore. The logos and all the things that came out of it are still around a lot. The funny thing is, a lot of fans got into hockey through the movies, not the other way around. Even to this day, people come up to me and say, "Your movies are why I like hockey and the NHL." And that's very gratifying.