I saw Running in the theaters when it first came out, and aside from a few TV rebroadcasts, and some non USA DVD releases, the film has been largely forgotten in America. It wasn’t much of a hit when it came out, granted, but you’d think Michael Douglas is at least recognizable enough for Universal Studios to throw a budget copy of it out there. This is the novelization of the film. Back in the days before home video was more prevalent, there were cheap paperback versions of about every major movie released. We didn’t see a lot of first run films growing up, so checking these out from the library was a cheap way for me to enjoy the movie without seeing it.

Running is a pretty simple story about an aging runner who has dreams of running the Olympic Marathon. He overcomes many obstacles to get there, and the ending is a nice twist on the underdog story. When I went with my friend Chester Murphy’s family to see this, we were late for the first 5 minutes of the film, and decided to stay until the next showing to see what we missed. I’m so glad we stayed to see that magic footage of him running.

Director Steven Hilliard Stern wrote and directed this film. He had a pretty big resume of TV dramas including episodes of Quincy, The Hardy Boys, and McCloud, and went on to direct films like The Devil and Max Devlin, the TV film Mazes and Monsters (featuring a young Tom Hanks), and has kept busy with TV films made as late as 2004.  If you have a region free DVD player, you can pick it up on Amazon, otherwise you’ll just have to wait. It’s not  a great film, but it’s well acted and inspiring.