Lawrence.com

Topeka — Accents, different versions of football and kangaroos were some of the most obvious challenges Kansas University alumnus Mike Robe overcame in filming "The Junction Boys."

The film, which debuted on ESPN Saturday night, depicts the infamous preseason football camp that Paul "Bear" Bryant ran during his first year at Texas A&M.

Time - as in not having much of it - was the biggest obstacle Robe had to overcome in writing and directing the movie.

Although he has made several films, Robe, 57, is perhaps best known in his home state for "Murder Ordained," the 1987 miniseries he wrote and directed about the murderous affair between Emporia minister Thomas Bird and his secretary, Lorna Anderson.

Last summer ESPN contacted Robe about dramatizing Jim Dent's best-selling nonfiction book about the camp.

Of the 111 Aggie potential players who started the camp in desolate, drought-ridden Junction, Tex., in 1954, only 35 finished the 10 days of grueling practices in 114-degree temperatures with little food, water or sympathy.

"He took them there in two buses and brought them back in one," Robe said Friday from New York, where he was attending a screening of the film.

ESPN gave Robe only five weeks to write a script, four weeks to prepare for filming, four weeks to shoot the movie and another four weeks to do all of the postproduction work. The station wanted the film to debut after Saturday night's Heisman Trophy awards show.

To further complicate the project, "We decided to shoot the film in Sydney, Australia, naturally, since it was set in 1954 Texas," said Robe, who said it was cheaper to film in Australia.

Tom Berenger, who plays Bryant, is an American, but the rest of the cast members are from Australia.

"In fact, one of my greatest concerns was whether the Australian actors could handle the Texas accent," said Robe, who hired a native-born Texan as a dialect coach.

To overcome the differences in Australian and American football, "We recruited our football players from American-rules football clubs in Australia," said Robe. He then hired Mark Ellis ("Any Given Sunday," "The Rookie") as football coordinator to "rehearse the plays and create the formations from Bryant's teams of the 1950s."

That left the most unusual obstacle - kangaroos.

Although someone on the film crew scared off the bouncing critters before each shot, Robe feared that one might make it unnoticed into a critical sequence.

If that happened, Robe said, he was ready to claim it was just one of those Texas-sized jackrabbits.