On the football field of the new World War II movie “The Mosquito Bowl,” Ray Nicholson carries the ball with a wild-eyed energy, busting tackles and taking brutal hits, and runs into the end zone wearing a huge smile on his face.
That’s not just movie magic. It’s Nicholson tapping back into the joys of his youth. “I definitely was reliving my glory days doing this,” says the son of Jack Nicholson and a running back at California’s Brentwood School as a teenager.
The real-life guy that Ray Nicholson, 34, plays in “Mosquito Bowl” (in theaters Oct. 30, streaming on Netflix Nov. 25) knew a thing or two about finding the end zone himself. Purdue All-American fullback Tony Butkovich was one of the best college players in America when he broke the Big
Ten scoring record, joined the Marines and shipped off to the Pacific Theater.
In the movie, “Touchdown Tony” engages Japanese forces in battle alongside fellow gridiron standouts like Brown quarterback John McLaughry (Nicholas Galitzine) and Wisconsin defense stars Dave Schreiner (Tom Francis) and Bob Bauman (Bill Skarsgård). They and other soldiers face off with the pigskin for a morale-boosting game at Guadalcanal in 1944, one final life-affirming moment for many of them before the deadly Battle of Okinawa.
That was where Butkovich, the son of Croatian immigrants from an Illinois coal-mining town and a first-round draft pick of the Cleveland Rams, died at age 24. Nicholson’s own football background drew him to the role, as did that “feeling of the immortality of youth,” he says. “The world is at your fingertips, and something can happen that's so much bigger than you, and you discover that the world is so much larger than you could ever grasp.”
Purdue sent Nicholson restored footage of Butkovich’s playing days for research, and it happened to be on the anniversary of his death, which gave the actor a “ghostly” feeling, he says. “I really felt that I was talking to him. Whether or not I was, whatever, I’m a weird actor. But I really felt this close connection.”
Still, Nicholson felt there was something missing in his portrayal of Butkovich during filming. He remembered that the football player was “a mama’s boy” who wrote his mom regularly during the war, as well as an 8-year-old super-fan back home. Nicholson figured his own father would have been about 6 at the time, so he penned letters to his famous dad as if Jack were a child, “letting him know how everything's going. Like, ‘You'll never believe what Bill did today,’ ” Nicholson recalls.
“I have heroes, but to be able to embody that in a real way and feel the responsibility to a child, something so central to Tony's character, that cracked it open for me.”
Nicholson’s dad is “Mosquito Bowl” director Peter Berg’s favorite actor, and “it's impossible to not see his father in (Ray’s) face and his smile and his eyes,” the filmmaker says. “That's a lot to live up to, right? He can't get away from that. And what's awesome is he's sort of created this unique cocktail that has some of Jack Nicholson's fire and spirit but then there's something entirely original."
When Ray Nicholson was younger, though, he was way more interested in sports than acting. “The Mosquito Bowl” brought “closure” to his own football-playing days, Nicholson says. “I still have nightmares about having the wrong football pants, and my coach yelling at me to find my pants and the clock’s going down.
“As a young man, having that area of safe and sanctioned violence was really important. It was my first way of expression. Football saved my life.”
He recalls one of his prouder sports moments occurring after he sustained a concussion during a game. “I could only see colors and ringing noises, and I ran for, like, a 70-yard touchdown,” Nicholson says. “I went to my offensive lineman, Mikey Stone, and I was like, ‘Stone, I can't see anything.’ He's like, ‘All right, well, it's coming back to you.’ And I just ran like hell and I scored a touchdown.
“It was our homecoming. There was a Ferris wheel, and I remember I couldn't see it. And by the time I got to the end zone, I was like, ‘OK, we’re back.’ Football has its joys and I love the game, and acting is the second thing that saved my life.”
Nicholson acknowledges that sometimes he’s too hard on himself, and doing “The Mosquito Bowl,” “I learned how to have grace with myself,” he says. Wanting to "keep proving that I'm legitimate" as a dramatic lead actor, “this is a really amazing beginning for me."
As far as a next project, "I've been waiting for the right thing. Nothing has come through, but I'm really excited. There's a lot of really amazing opportunities coming up and I hope that this movie coming out will shift the perspective for me and just make it a little easier to convince somebody to give me a job.”
“Pick me,” he adds with a laugh. “I’m a good pick on your team.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ray Nicholson reveals how football ‘saved my life’ before acting
