'Friday Night Lights' Is Revived In New Alamo Drafthouse PSA

‘Friday Night Lights’ Is Revived In New Alamo Drafthouse PSA

Kyle Chandler dons his blue polo and delivers an inspirational locker room speech — but this time it’s to remind you how to behave in a movie theater.

August 3, 2015 0

As “career defining roles” go, Kyle Chandler landed the best one ever when he signed on to play Coach Eric Taylor for five seasons of Friday Night Lights. If your on-screen persona is defined as “serious-minded fatherly figure of great personal integrity,” then not only will the subsection of America that actually watched Friday Night Lights look up to you as a dad for the rest of your career, but it’ll also give you the chance to bring that to smaller roles in films like Argo, Super 8, and Zero Dark Thirty. But Chandler, knowing which side his bread is buttered on, isn’t averse to channeling Coach Taylor directly when the situation calls for it.

The situation definitely called for it when the time came to respond to the scourge of people talking and texting in movie theaters. In the latest of the Alamo Drafthouse’s “Don’t Talk” PSA’s, Chandler dons the blue polo shirt he made famous as the Dillon Panther’s coach to deliver an inspirational speech on the matter.

The spot features the song “Your Hand In Mine” from the Austin-by-way-of-West-Texas band Explosions In The Sky, who composed the soundtrack to the film version of Friday Night Lights, but were never actually involved in the TV show, a fact which results in the band fielding requests to play a title theme they never composed. (Longtime TV composer W.G. “Snuffy” Walden was tasked with recreating the band’s signature anthem-esque sound for the series, an objective that the 11-time Emmy nominee considered one of the toughest orders of his career.) So let’s give the Alamo Drafthouse props for finally bringing Explosions In The Sky and the Kyle Chandler/Coach Taylor version of Friday Night Lights together.

Of course, this also isn’t the first time that the Friday Night Lights mythos has been invoked after the show’s demise. While rumors of the series’ revival as a feature film have popped up and been squashed like so many defensive backs trying to bring down Smash Williams, Jesse Plemons, who played nice-kid tight end/kicker Landry Clarke in 59 episodes, appeared in crossover webisodes of NBC’s Parenthood (which shares a producer with FNL).

Winning state might be the goal, but it’s the process of getting there — over and over again — that’s truly magical. Or, at least, it would be if you people would put down your &#$@ing cell phones.