The Tiger Woods Story (1998) (TV)

Director:

LeVar Burton

Writers (WGA):

John Strege (book)
Takashi Bufford (teleplay)

Release Date:

12 April 1998 (USA)

Genre:

Biography | Drama | Sport

Plot Keywords:

Retrospective | Biracial | Racial Discrimination | Father Son Relationship | Cigarette Smoking

Awards:

3 nominations

Cast

Keith David	...	Earl Woods
Khalil Kain	...	Tiger Woods (age 21)
Freda Foh Shen	...	Tida Woods
Gary LeRoi Gray	...	Tiger (age 9-13)
T.J. Hall	...	Tiger (age 3-5)
John Cho	...	Jerry Chang
David Grant Wright	...	Reporter 1
Kathryne Dora Brown	...	Holly
Albert Hall	...	Hank Aaron
Roger Twibell	...	Announcer #1
John H. Schroeder	...	Announcer #2
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Nicole Andrews	...	Fan
Mark Carlton	...	Art Garrett
John Colton	...	Head of the PGA
Christopher Coyne	...	Steve Scott
Chris Devlin	...	Fan
Dar Dixon	...	Steve Scott's Coach (as Dar Bijarchi)
Jerry Giles	...	Butch Harmon
Glenn Hermans	...	Golf Club Administrator
Joe Ivy
Radmar Agana Jao	...	Tiger Phong
Richard Keats
Andy Lowe	...	Thai Student
Michael Potter	...	General Copeland
David L. Prentiss	...	Davis Love III
Nate Reese	...	Lee Elder
Gerard Sanders	...	Nick Faldo
Carey Scott	...	Photographer
Greg Woodhill	...	Friend in back seat of van; has one line

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for some crude language.

Runtime:

90 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

Iceland:L | USA:PG-13

Filming Locations:

Balboa Park, San Diego, California, USA

Company:

MTV Productions

Movie Connections:

References "The Oprah Winfrey Show" (1986)

Enjoyable For All The Wrong Reasons

I heard that Tiger Woods got his name after his father`s life was saved by a comrade in `Nam . This led to visions of the heroic cliche of someone running onto the battlefield slinging a wounded buddy over their shoulder and dashing hundreds of metres dodging machine gun fire and exploding shells. According to this biopic Col Earl Woods were sitting in a living room disguised as the jungles of South East Asia where a snake popped into view . It wasn`t just any type of snake , no siree , it was one of those ones you use as a draught excluder . Thankfully someone saves Earl`s life by shooting the head off the draft excluder thereby meaning we have a story to tell . In the next scene we`re shown a general taking Earl into his office gives him a cigar and we`re treated to some top class dialogue

" Hey Colonel you`ve done a couple of tours in country . It`s about time we got you behind a desk "

" No thanks sir , I`m an infantryman at heart "

Not even John Wayne could have come out with such modesty and considering Earl spent the opening sequence dressed in a green beret uniform you have to consider why he considers himself a mere infantryman ? In fact you have to consider if the screenwriters knowledge of Vietnam extends beyond watching THE GREEN BERETS over and over again

As you may have noticed no one who has commentated on this movie actually thinks much of it as a bio-pic and some people don`t think much of it as entertainment either but I disagree with the second point , it is entertaining but not the way the producers envisaged . I mean we`re not shown any scenes of Tiger throwing tantrums where specatators cough at the wrong moment or a photo journalist gets into Tigers line of view . We`re not shown any of Tiger`s obvious prima donna attitude or the fact when he looses another tournament it`s always someone elses fault . Watching this bio-pic on the Tiger is like watching the " Springtime For Hitler " sequences from THE PRODUCERS thinking it`s a documentary on the second world war