ABC MOVIE 9 miners brace to watch film of underground ordeal

The story is highly accurate, and many of the lines are the miners' own words.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Randy Fogle, one of the survivors who served as a consultant on "The Pennsylvania Miners' Movie," had a hard time watching the filming of the flooded mine scenes on a Los Angeles sound stage -- it looked a little too real.
Once he and the other eight miners -- whose ordeal being trapped for 77 hours four months ago riveted the nation -- get around to seeing the final cut, which airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on ABC, he said, "I think that's gonna be hard on all of us."
Executive producer Larry Sanitsky said filmmakers based the script on nearly two weeks' worth of interviews with the miners and their families, retained Fogle and another miner as consultants and used many of the sites where the real events unfolded.
The government lent them the yellow capsule that shuttled the men to safety. Filming took place at the Sipesville Volunteer Fire Hall and in some of the miners' own homes in southwestern Pennsylvania. Even rescuers and volunteers played extras.
Striving for accuracy
"It's much more accurate than most television dramas," Sanitsky said.
Many of the movie's lines were taken straight from the miners' mouths, Sanitsky said, including at least one vow not to return to the mine.
"I'll be a greeter at Wal-Mart if I have to," John Phillippi's character says in the movie, just as Phillippi did underground.
The movie successfully delivers a riveting tale about how nine ordinary men rallied together to survive an underground flood, and it doesn't forget to include an intimate look at how their families coped with the situation.
Because of time constraints, a scene where the men find and share Dennis Hall's lunch got cut, as did Gov. Mark Schweiker's phone conversation with the miners, Sanitsky said.
Tempers flare
Although much of the news coverage had focused on the rescue effort at the dairy farm, the movie shares how tempers flared as family members waited three grueling days inside a fire hall without knowing the conditions of the miners.
Sanitsky said filmmakers, in keeping true to the story, wanted to share the highs and lows of the rescue.
Fogle said he expects the scenes above ground to be most difficult to watch. He said he and the other miners felt better about their survival once the water began to recede.
"It was harder on our families because we knew we're alive, but they didn't," Fogle said.
The filmmakers of course took a few liberties for dramatic effect, such as changing which miner brought up a bucket containing their letters to their families. The movie shows Mark Popernack carrying the bucket as the last man out, whereas Phillippi had brought up the bucket, Sanitsky said.