East Toronto director Hubert Davis talks about the re-imaging of cult classic hockey film Youngblood
By ALAN SHACKLETON
East Toronto director Hubert Davis’ new look at the cult classic hockey movie Youngblood is a film for the times we are now living in.
“It’s a for-now movie. it’s these times,” Davis told Beach Metro Community News in an interview prior to the movie’s theatre release last weekend. “It’s very much a re-imagining, not a remake.”
The original Youngblood, starring Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze and marking the movie debut of a young Keanu Reeves, was released in 1986. It told the story of an American farm boy from New York state who comes to Ontario to play junior hockey with a fictional team called the Hamilton Mustangs.
The new Youngblood, which was released in theatres on March 6, also tells the story of a young American coming to Ontario to play junior hockey with the Hamilton Mustangs. But there are many differences from the 1986 story, and the people it is about, and the story being told in this new version of the film.
For instance, the main character Dean Youngblood is Black. In the new version he is played by Canadian actor Ashton James. In 1986, the starring role went to Rob Lowe.
Also, the new Youngblood is from Detroit and he is a player with different experiences and knowledge of hockey about him than the farm boy from New York state portrayed by Lowe.
At heart, though both movies are very much about being an outsider in a new and often very uncomfortable situation. And that’s a universal theme, said Davis.
“It was interesting that the original was about him being an outsider and being an American who played a ‘soft’ game,” said Davis. “We really go into the idea of him being an outsider even though he grew up playing the game… It’s about new situations and figuring out how do I belong here.”
It’s also about trust, learning to trust and overcoming perceptions and biases.
“Youngblood has a chip on his shoulder and as a Black player he has a sense that he is not sure who he can and can’t trust due to previous experiences,” said Davis.
Lowe’s Youngblood had to learn to overcome his aversion to playing a tougher brand of hockey that included fighting. Lowe’s character is at first given the nickname ‘Pretty Boy’ due to his unwillingness to play tough, and that was an accurate assessment for the times the movie was made in.
James’ Youngblood is actually a skilled player but he spends too much of his time fighting and playing an overly aggressive tough guy on the ice who never backs down and has a short fuse. His character had earlier been suspended from hockey for a year for his violent play.
What Youngblood needs to learn is that he can play a skilled style of hockey successfully, and his teammates will support him for it.
“He figures out what kind of player he wants to be,” said Davis. “He becomes the player that he is. He learns he can be that and the team has his back and that he can be trusting. That’s something it teaches.”
In the movie, Youngblood’s father is “an old-school hockey guy” with his own demons about the game and a strong belief in the tougher (perhaps 1980s) brand of hockey where fighting was commonplace and a rite of passage in the junior game for anyone who had hopes of playing professionally.
Youngblood’s father also loves a good sports cliché, and that’s something Davis said he can certainly identify with.
“There’s a speech where his dad talks about how hockey and everything that happens in the game is a metaphor for life. For me that really struck home because my dad was like that, and in my house everything was a sports analogy,” he said.
Davis grew up in Vancouver and his father was Harlem Globetrotters basketball player Mel Davis. In 2005, Davis made the short documentary film Hardwood about his relationship with his father. The film was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Short Subject category.
Though he did not play hockey growing up, Davis (who has lived in Toronto since 2000) is very familiar with the game and made the documentary film Black Ice in 2022 about Black hockey players and the racism and other challenges they faced and still face in the game.
It was while making Black Ice that he met Charles Officer, who played pro hockey and then began a career as a writer and director of movies. Officer grew up in Toronto and played OHL hockey with the Sudbury Wolves and then professionally in Britain and also with the Calgary Flames farm team in Salt Lake City, Utah, before an injury ended his playing career.
Youngblood was a project very close to Officer’s heart. Unfortunately, Officer died in 2023 at the age of 48. He had been working towards a remake of Youngblood with a Black hockey player as the main character at the time of his death.
“I was friends with Charles Officer and he was working on it up until the end, and it was something he wanted to get done. Finishing it was important to do,” said Davis.
While attending McGill University, one of Davis’s roommates was a big fan of the 1986 Youngblood movie.
“I remember it and it’s a cult classic,” said Davis of the original film. “I had a roommate at university who was a big hockey guy and he was always using quotes from it. That’s something I see with hockey movies, and Slap Shot’s an example as well, where people love to quote it and use situations from it.”
The original Youngblood also has a strong link to the East Toronto area with many scenes being filmed at Ted Reeve Community Arena. The exterior shots for the rink that was home for the Hamilton Mustangs in the 1986 movie were of the old Scarborough Arena at Birchmount and Kingston roads.
Filming for the new Youngblood was mostly in Hamilton and Barrie, said Davis. A lot of the on-ice scenes (and rink exteriors) were shot in the Sadlon Arena, home of the Junior A Barrie Colts of the Ontario Hockey League.
“There was a bar in Hamilton we used for some scenes which was where the old Hamilton players used to hang out, and we used that as we wanted to keep it as authentic as possible,” said Davis.
Youngblood was first screened at the Toronto International Film Festival last year and is now playing at a number of theatres including Cineplexes in Scarborough and downtown.
