NEW Long Green Line project

I'm out of a job right now, but if I get work before your end date I promise to pledge. If nothing else, I'd love to see more--a lot more--of the workouts.

Good luck. I hope you can get 'er done.

Don't care enough to contribute, but will give you a bump.

etyj wrote:

I'm out of a job right now, but if I get work before your end date I promise to pledge. If nothing else, I'd love to see more--a lot more--of the workouts.

Good luck. I hope you can get 'er done.

yes, i would hope that you could show more of the workouts. I think the final cut was good, it showed the makings of a cross country team and how it evolved over a season. Good to a casual viewer.

But i think most people on here would like to see the nitty gritty. The hard times. The workouts, the mileage, the taper workouts. The suffering

Buddy. I had real positive expectations for your movie, as friends of mind had discussed doing the exact same thing. Even though I'm a huge fan of cross country, and have a special spot in my heart reserved for it, especially at the high school level -- I found your movie the most God-awful, boring POS movie I've ever seen in my life. My word it was painful to watch. A sure cure for insomnia.

Please do everyone a favor and burn the remaining outtakes.

malmo wrote:

Buddy. I had real positive expectations for your movie, as friends of mind had discussed doing the exact same thing. Even though I'm a huge fan of cross country, and have a special spot in my heart reserved for it, especially at the high school level -- I found your movie the most God-awful, boring POS movie I've ever seen in my life. My word it was painful to watch. A sure cure for insomnia.

Please do everyone a favor and burn the remaining outtakes.

Trust me, not all of us feel the way Malmo did about it. Everyone has their own opinions. I am not sure why the remaining outtakes should be burned because certain people didn't like it. Even the highest rated movies have their critics. Most people I know didn't like Chariot's of Fire; I enjoyed it. Good luck.

malmo wrote:

Buddy. I had real positive expectations for your movie, as friends of mind had discussed doing the exact same thing. Even though I'm a huge fan of cross country, and have a special spot in my heart reserved for it, especially at the high school level -- I found your movie the most God-awful, boring POS movie I've ever seen in my life. My word it was painful to watch. A sure cure for insomnia.

Please do everyone a favor and burn the remaining outtakes.

I'm almost in shock. I've heard you say some mean things, malmo, but this I just can't even fathom. They put together a great movie to appeal to high school cross country runners and made it relevant to the kids, parents, and coaches who would be living that sort of experience. I enjoyed it much more than many movies I've seen and I would not be surprised if this is in the smallest 1 percentile of budgets for all the movies I've seen.

malmo wrote:

Buddy. I had real positive expectations for your movie, as friends of mind had discussed doing the exact same thing. Even though I'm a huge fan of cross country, and have a special spot in my heart reserved for it, especially at the high school level -- I found your movie the most God-awful, boring POS movie I've ever seen in my life. My word it was painful to watch. A sure cure for insomnia.

Please do everyone a favor and burn the remaining outtakes.

Come on man, I got some friends of mine to watch this when it came out and we all liked it. These were runners and non-runners that both like it. If you want to do a similar thing, why don't you go ahead and do it and show us how it ought to be done.

malmo wrote:

Buddy. I had real positive expectations for your movie, as friends of mind had discussed doing the exact same thing. Even though I'm a huge fan of cross country, and have a special spot in my heart reserved for it, especially at the high school level -- I found your movie the most God-awful, boring POS movie I've ever seen in my life. My word it was painful to watch. A sure cure for insomnia.

Please do everyone a favor and burn the remaining outtakes.

Did you even bother to re-read this? This isn't Michael Bay, who can go home and cry himself to sleep in his multi-million dollar mansion.

"Colleagues of mine will tell you that people despise art critics because they fear our power. But I know better. People despise critics because people despise weakness, and criticism is the weakest thing you can do in writing. It is the written equivalent of air guitar - flurries of silent, sympathetic gestures with nothing at their heart but the memory of the music. It produces no knowledge, states no facts, and never stands along. It neither saves the things we love nor ruins the things we hate."

the thing is that if you have the footage and think that there's a market for it... then just put something together, it's not that hard. Begging for money to do it makes you look bad.

Holy crap malmo, are you passing a stone?

I remember reading "The Long Green Line" in the summer of 1970 before I started my first season of cross country. It was an inspiring book. The documentary version of "The Long Green Line" was good, but was lacking. Maybe Malmo was a little harsh but using outtakes to do another version doesn't sound like a good idea. Take it from someone who has 30 plus years of working as a television producer with a pretty well received running documentary under his belt. Longer rarely means better. I remember wanting to make the Ryun doc 90 minutes but I forced myself to keep it under an hour and I was thankful because it kept the story from dragging. You leave stuff on the cutting room floor for a reason. I've got a closet full of video and interviews that will never see the light of day and I'm okay with that.

I really enjoyed the movie. Malmo's opinions from here on out carry zero weight with me - he clearly has lost his mind.

Mtn Dew wrote:

I really enjoyed the movie. Malmo's opinions from here on out carry zero weight with me - he clearly has lost his mind.

Things I liked about the movie: 1) Getting to know the personality of Coach Newton, who most of us have heard of, but never met. 2)The incredible number of runners on the team and how they handle such a large group, even having a separate captain all the way down to group six. 3) Seeing how the team handled adversity with the idiots getting kicked off the team for starting the fire and the mid season illness by the twins. 4) Seeing the impact that the team and Coach Newton had on kids like the runner finishing way in the back. 5) Seeing a few of the workouts. 6) Seeing the autistic boy give talks to the team and parents and realizing what an amazing impact the team and coach Newton had on him, and he on them. 7) Hearing the many quotes that Coach Newton had from various famous people.

All in all, a very good movie that I have watched at least five times, as has my high school son.

Same here. We just had our first middle school race last Saturday and I had watched the movie a couple weeks earlier - it was definitely a good motivator.

I'd like to see how their training is structured. They're certainly doing a lot of running.

Not sure I'd like to see another movie from the extra stuff though. I'd really like to see the training side of things but without knowing how everything was going to turn out.

One other thing I really liked is how they showed the recruiting that was involved by the current team. I think sometimes people think 200 kids just happen to go out for the cross country team at York, but there is clearly a great effort put forth by the team and coaches to get those 200 kids. I think most high school teams do not do that and they are hurting themselves. The more kids you have on the team, the better your team will be. How many kids are walking around on high school campuses that could be good runners, but they were never encouraged to try out.

Add my vote as someone who enjoyed the LGL and learning about Coach Newton and his program. I think the great majority of people with a interest in high school running, cross country, etc would enjoy it. If you are interested in getting ideas on how to build a good program and relate to kids that age it's also very educational.

Good luck with the new project.

flotrack is working on the film the real maine