Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 30, 1991 TAG: 9103300396
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL E. HILL/ THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
First, he said, the reaction to your name is, " `Mario who?' Then, after you've made it, it's `Mario, baby!' Then it's, `Get me a young Mario.' And finally it's `Mario who?' again."
For Van Peebles, it's definitely Mario-baby time. But in "Triumph of the Heart: The Ricky Bell Story," CBS's Tuesday night movie (at 9 p.m. on WDBJ-Channel 7 in the Roanoke viewing area), he takes football star Ricky Bell from stage 1 to stage 4, all in two hours.
Bell's life went through similar stages, Van Peebles said, and in the end the call was, "Give me a healthy Ricky."
The movie brings Van Peebles back to television at a time when his acting and directing career are sprinting along the fast track. He directed and stars in "New Jack City," a theatrical film that's getting good reviews, pulling down handsome grosses and winning added notoriety because of disorders surrounding its debut.
While waiting for his TV movie to air on CBS, he was directing an episode of ABC's "Gabriel's Fire." Van Peebles, last seen on a regular basis on network television in NBC's "Sonny Spoon," this week plays Bell, the star running back from the University of Southern California who was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1979.
Bell's story is a timely one in itself, arriving just as Bo Jackson's pro football and major league baseball career has been put in jeopardy by a hip injury.
The stories of gifted athletes who see their prowess fade - and, in Bell's case, lose life itself - have been the stuff of drama before, most notably in the 1970 TV movie "Brian's Song."
That movie, teaming Billy Dee Williams and James Caan as Chicago Bears running backs Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo, tells the story of their friendship and the impact on Sayers and the team when Piccolo developed cancer.
"The Ricky Bell Story" has similar ground to cover. It too establishes a relationship between an ill-fated athlete and a friend, in this case young Ryan Blankenship, played by Lane Davis.
"It's a love story between two guys," Van Peebles said. "One's physically healthy and on top of the world, and he goes to help this kid who has a speech impediment and a motive problem. Maybe Ricky does it for publicity, maybe for other reasons. But their relationship starts to switch. As Ricky begins to deteriorate, Ryan becomes the pillar in his life."
The movie follows their relationship from 1980 to 1984. Bell figured to be a major National Football League player in the '80s but instead saw his physical skills diminish mysteriously. Ultimately he was diagnosed as having a rare muscle disease, polymyositis, and a skin disorder, dermatomyositis.
Meanwhile, Bell had struck up a relationship with Ryan, whose parents questioned Bell's motives for befriending the disabled youth.
"At one point," Van Peebles said, "Ricky's telling Ryan things he himself needs to hear later on. And Ryan is the only one who can relate to Ricky's physical problems, because he's gone through them, too."
by CNB