The race is on, and starting Friday, October 8, audiences will be able to race the theater to see Disney’s latest inspirational motion picture film about a race horse and its owner. One is a massive, chestnut-colored horse, known to his friends and family as Big Red. Everyone else will call him Secretariat. The other, a self-described Denver housewife, is less recognized, but she is as gallant and charismatic as her steed. Her name is Penny Chenery Tweedy, and her faith in this horse will galvanize the nation, revolutionize horse racing and, ultimately, change her life’s course entirely.
Based on a true story, Secretariat brings the story of the 1973 Triple crown winning horse to life. The story draws fans of past horse films such as Seabiscuit, following the star horse and its owner as they strive to prove themselves to the world. Housewife and mother Penny Chenery Tweedy (Diane Lane) agrees to take over her ailing father’s Virginia-based Meadow Stables, despite her lack of horse-racing experience. Against all odds, with the help of veteran trainer Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich), she manages to navigate the male-dominated business, ultimately fostering the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years and what may be the greatest racehorse of all time.
“The story is about heart — Secretariat’s and the heart of the woman who owned him. Both were greater than anyone imagined,” said director Randall Wallace, who is the Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated screenwriter of the global hit Braveheart. “I believe that when Secretariat was running the last of his races, he was no longer running against other horses; he was running for the joy in becoming who he was meant to be.”
Wallace compared the film to an impressionistic painting, one adhering to the basic facts but not to the point of turning into a documentary.
“ESPN compiled a list of the 100 top athletes of the 20th century and Secretariat was 35th — and the only non-human on that list,” said producer Mark Ciardi. “That’s how unbelievable his presence was. What makes it really interesting is going underneath that story . We knew we had the ending, but not many people know about Penny’s story, and that was incredibly compelling to us.”
The actual Penny Chenery approved the film when producers approached her with the story idea. Chenery makes a cameo appearance in the film when Secretariat wins the Kentucky Derby.
The horse, itself, also adds its own momentum to the story.
“Horses speak to our primal nature,” said the director. “When all is said and done, this is a story about a tremendous horse. But, beyond that, I wanted to understand and experience the way this unique animal had affected people who themselves were special. All my life, I have been intrigued by the mechanism and the moment of transformation: What happens when what we call a miracle occurs? What happens when someone, in this case a horse, does something that no one else has ever done or that they themselves have never done? What happens when someone stops doubting and starts believing? And this story is full of those moments.”
Most of all, however, Secratariat is about the remarkable transformation that comes about when people, or animals, believe in each other.
“What’s at stake in the story of Secretariat is something that is fundamental to everybody. Destiny comes knocking on the door of Penny Tweedy. She had given up her dreams of a career. She had become a mother of four, a wife, a prominent member of her community. But when her father becomes ill and her mother dies, destiny knocks on her door and says, ‘Penny, here is an opportunity to do something .’ And it was something that nobody else believed that she could do. That was something else that inspired me about this tale — that time and again, she is told that she can’t do this, that this isn’t her identity, that she’s a housewife . And she keeps reinventing herself, tackling issues in a manner that allows her to make her way in what was a man’s world at the time. She’s a mastermind financially, but most of all, she’s a leader,” Wallace said
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