“Undefeated” is as magnificent as its subjects – the football coach and his underprivileged student/athletes at Manassas High School in poverty-stricken North Memphis, Tennessee. Sure to draw comparisons to “The Blind Side,” this documentary is the real deal, and the stresses, difficulties and problems, both criminal and familial, of daily life are in full view. This is about a ghetto school, kids on the cusp of a hard-knocks life, the realities of passing kids along through a system that has lost much of its ability to teach, and the proverbial one man (although there are actually several) who can make a difference. There will be few films this year (or any other for that matter) that will chart the successes and failures of its subjects as well as “Undefeated” has.
Bill Courtney, a successful Memphis business man, was raised in the home of his single mother, having been abandoned by his father very early in life. No matter what he did or how high he climbed in life, he continued to be haunted by this abandonment, thinking for far too many years that his father had left because of him. Although the pain never left, he eventually realized that he had never been to blame even if he had had to live through the consequences. Courtney, a former high school football coach, felt he needed to share these life lessons with young men who might benefit – the football players at Manassas, the all-black school noted for its lack of academic achievement and its woe-begotten football team, a team that had never, since its founding in 1899, won a football play-off game.
This was a team so bad and underfunded that they had to support themselves by selling their souls to the richer schools who, for a substantial fee, would annihilate them on the playing field in order to start the season with an easy win. The Manassas Tigers would earn the money, take a physical and mental beating, and be ruined for the rest of the season, many times going 0-10.
For Courtney, white, winning that playoff game would be part of his overall goal. He would take the players on his team, instill confidence, build character, increase their physical strength and emotional well being, teach them about leadership and take them to the playoffs. Lofty goals, indeed, but goals shared by his other assistant coaches and, most particularly, by Coach Mike Ray, who would come to play a vital role in the academic education of O.C., the team’s top player.
Starting at Manassas in 2004, it took quite a long time to make any headway, but with the addition of several potentially talented freshmen in 2005, Courtney began to build his program and make the students understand that football wasn’t their way out of North Memphis, it was the character and emotional strength that they would learn by playing this team sport that would lead them out. Not an easy lesson and keeping their eyes on what might not be a prize was especially difficult.
Courtney provides most of the narrative exposition, and he is a no-nonsense father figure constantly hammering at the need for each player to think first of the team and not of himself – a too discrete and almost incomprehensible concept to most. But hammer he does and they get better, winning game after game against teams that used to wipe the field with them. But this is not an unfettered rise to the top, as major setbacks with his players are a constant threat to the team’s hoped-for success. But Courtney had two aces and a joker to work with. His aces were O.C., an offensive lineman whose ability on the field had attracted the attention of college coaches throughout the country; and Montrail, nicknamed Money, an undersized lineman and honor student hoping to gain an academic scholarship. Courtney’s joker was a talented player named Chavis whose anger management difficulties had already landed him one stint in Tennessee’s youth penitentiary and might land him another.
Inspired by an article in the Memphis Commercial Appeal entitled “Raising OC: Three Families Have Their Arms around a Top Prospect,” producer Rich Middlemas instantly saw the possibilities, bringing the article to the attention of Dan Lindsay and T. J. Martin, who teamed up to write, direct and edit what would become this documentary. Invisible at all times, shot in cinema verité style, the production team effectively uses their cameras to make the viewer part of the action, living the setbacks and triumphs in real time with the players and coaches. Knowing only Coach Courtney’s goals for the team and that the 2009 team was the best in recent years, they set out to document that season, the final one for Money and O.C., neither of whom was assured of a way out of North Memphis, as Money needed a full ride to college, almost impossible in this era, and O.C. would need to achieve the impossible task of obtaining a passing ACT score.
Don’t miss this film. You will feel as A-List producer/director Seth Gordon did when he saw the footage and signed on to produce and get this documentary out there. Life’s not fair but you don’t have to take it lying down.
Opening Feb. 17 at the Landmark and ArcLight Hollywood.
Neely also writes a blog about writers in television and film at http://www.nomeanerplace.com ER
