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Without Limits

directed by Robert Towne

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Jul 04, 2023
Category: Drama

I wrote about Prefontaine in the 1970s, when running was becoming a big thing. Years after his death, I stood on the track where he never lost and remembered his memorial service. It lasted 12 minutes 36 seconds, the time he hoped to achieve for three miles. With a minute to go on the clock, the speaker called for silence. The crowd rose to cheer a ghost runner racing around an empty track. The clock froze at 12:36. People screamed and cried. If there’s a memorial to an athlete more powerful than that, I’d like to hear about it.

There are artists who paint by the rules. We call their work “decorative” and forget their names fast.

Then there are artists who break the rules and make something new, forcing us to see the world fresh. They’re the immortals.

Steve Prefontaine said, “Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, ‘I’ve never seen anyone run like that before.’ It’s more than just a race, it’s a style. It’s doing something better than anyone else. It’s being creative.”

Steve Prefontaine. You draw a blank. Well, it was so long ago….watch the preview.

Prefontaine didn’t have a low opinion of himself. But he got it right; he was an artist. He took the formula of long-distance running — hang back, let the front-runner burn himself out, then kick at the end — and spat on it. Pacing yourself, he believed, was for wimps.  His style was to sprint. From start to finish. Go out fast, take the lead, keep the lead — at any cost.

No one had ever run this way. Prefontaine revolutionized long-distance running. Was he driven? Of course. He grew up in a hard place — the logging town of Coos Bay, Oregon — and there weren’t a lot of ways out. He started running as a kid, saw he was good at it, and amped up his effort. It’s a simple story: the guy who wins because he can’t afford to lose. “Somebody may beat me,” he said, “but they are going to have to bleed to do it.”

He wanted desperately to go to the University of Oregon at Eugene, but Bill Bowerman — the legendary coach and, later, co-founder of Nike — didn’t believe in recruiting. But he did send his assistant, Bill Dellinger, to watch Prefontaine at the Oregon State high school cross-country meet. “I had my binoculars and I was probably a good half-mile, 700 yards away, from the start,” Dellinger has recalled, “and I saw this guy as they were called to the line and got to the set position. I saw the look in his eyes, even from a half-mile distance, and the intensity in his face as the gun went off, and I thought that’s gotta be Pre.”

Prefontaine did go to Eugene. He bonded with Bowerman, and he won and won and won. You think: Oh, no, there will be long, boring, running scenes. If you fear that, that fear will dissolve when you watch this.

An athlete dying young is an instant legend. Pre was made for the part. He had long dirty-blond hair, a mustache, fierce eyes — he was the James Dean of running. Attitude? His mouth was always too candid by half. Charisma? His fans called themselves “Pre’s People,” and they came out every time he ran at Eugene’s Hayward Field, screaming “Pre! Pre! Pre!” He loved them right back: “How can you lose with 12,000 people behind you?”

“Without Limits” was co-written and directed by Robert Towne, whose writing credits include “Chinatown.” Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner were the producers. Conrad Hall, who won an Oscar for “Butch Cassidy,” was the cinematographer. Billy Crudup played Pre. Donald Sutherland was Bill Bowerman. [To rent the streaming video from Amazon Prime, click here.]

If you have a kid who needs to get his/her ass off the couch, here’s your Saturday night viewing. If you’re feeling sluggish, in need of a tonic, ditto. But be warned: “Without Limits” is as seductive as Prefontaine himself — and as motivating. It can make the lame throw off their crutches, the faint of heart leap for the sky. See it, and believe.