One Great Coach Makes For One Great Documentary
By Matthew Nadu
"Starting 'Will' Linebacker shot, no longer in school. Two players fighting right in front of the coach when he is trying to make things work out. Starting center arrested for shooting someone in the face with a BB-gun. Most coaches, that would be pretty much a career's worth of crap to do deal with. I think that sums up the last two weeks for me."
This isn't Miami University's Head Coach Al Golden talking, and it isn't a past quote from scandal-happy Jim Tressel or Pete Carroll either.
It's straight from the mouth of Bill Courtney, former Head Coach at Manassas High School in inner-city Memphis, and no, he's not getting compensated with the big bucks.
He's a volunteer coach, and he's pissed.
Not because of the money—he's an entrepreneur. Coach Courtney is upset with all the under-achieving talent on his football team.
Documentary filmmakers Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, two suburban guys, dedicated a year of their life down South to capture the hilarious and inspiring story of Courtney, who tackles one of the most poverty-stricken and dangerous neighborhoods in the nation.
What they filmed couldn't have been written better in Hollywood.
"You think football builds character," asks Courtney, "It does not. It reveals it."
Headlining the 20th Annual Philadelphia Film Festival's sports features, the inspirational true film Undefeated follows Courtney five years after he took over the Manassas Tigers, a hopeless and under-manned football program, in 2004. His hopes were of winning the team's first playoff game in the school's 110-year history…and erasing the hard truth that most of the players were more likely to end up incarcerated than in college.
With 500 hours of footage that's been condensed to less than two hours, the film has an incredible blend of hard-hitting football action and realism, plus the triumph of the human spirit—something everyone can appreciate.
Lindsay and Martin have captured the story of a forgotten African-American neighborhood that rallied as a community, and they have used it to create a documentary masterpiece about the will to endure.
"It wasn't about race, it wasn't about class, it was always about these kids' stories," says Martin.
The film creates a magic, movie-like feeling that the audience cannot help but get emotionally sucked into, whether it is concerning the games themselves, the struggles of the players, or the frustration of Courtney.
"Several times we had to emotionally collect ourselves," admits Lindsay, who says that, "we didn't want to make a sports film, we wanted to focus on education, but obviously the story was football."
And the story is perfect.
Undefeated will wrap up an action-packed Tuesday evening at the Prince Music Theater at 10 p.m., following UFA Champion Anderson Silva's Like Water and the Hollywood version of Undefeated, Friday Night Lights, which includes a Q&A session with director Peter Berg.
Tickets for all three films are available for only $15, but if you balk on this life inspiring opportunity, Undefeated hits theaters February 10, 2012.
But for your sake don't balk—you'll regret it.
Follow Matthew Nadu on Twitter @matthewnadu
