The Last Fall Teaser Trailer #1 from Matthew A. Cherry on Vimeo.
I saw another one of my first choices of films at this year’s SXSW Festival. I’m a sucker for sports films – especially my favorite sport of football – and doubly-special for the National Football League variety. In fact, I’ve kind of kept it a secret that I’ve been sitting on a business plan/idea for 15+ years on starting another magazine – a football magazine that focuses on the NFL. Anyway, The Last Fall is a narrative drama (i.e. actors playing out a role) about the life of a “journeyman” professional football player. These are the forgotten ones. I always think of favorite players like Emmitt Smith, who played more than a decade at the running back position. The truth is, players like him are the exception, not the rule.
The movie starts off with an amazing statistic – that 78% of NFL players are either divorced, bankrupt or unemployed two years after leaving the game. Enter Kyle Bishop. His story opens up with him clearing out his locker for the last time, under the awkward gaze of a team security guy that escorts him out. Returning home to his mother’s house in Los Angeles and his old bedroom is completely non-glamorous. This is the complete and underlying theme of the movie – the life of an NFL player is many times very non-glamorous.
There’s the love interest of an old high school flame that he left a few years ago for his college-to-pro career. There’s the relationship with his agent, who tells him that he’s exhausted his “door knocking” with all 32 teams. There’s his estranged relationship with his family, who all got put on the back-burner as he pursued his dream. It’s a very humbling and crashing down to earth kind of feeling that gets conveyed pretty well. The only football action is some little league flag games that his old flame’s son experiences in a park.
The movie delivers on a lot of levels – emotionally, semi-romantically and the human family relationship priority – but it blends that with the sobering reality that practically every male child’s dream in this country is harsh and a longshot. In that regard, it’s not too unlike the old statistics and probability of “trying to make it” in the music business. According to my personal research (which I’ve used at music seminars in the past), the odds are 1.5 million to 1 that you’ll make it in the music business (going from garage band to signed recording artists), which are parallel to the odds of going from high school football player to the NFL.
It’s nice to see someone portray this reality – even if the feel-good parts of the film are balanced with the not-so-feel-good details. Kudos to director Matthew A. Cherry for a job well done. Turns out this guy is a former NFL player turned writer/director. He got his start in 2007 after retiring from the NFL as a production assistant on the CW show “Girlfriends”. He is also a music video director for the likes of Jazmine Sullivan, Kindred The Family Soul, Snoop Dogg and Bilal.
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