This is the first blog entry about the journey of making a film.
Blood Equity is the documentary feature produced by Roman Pfifer and myself.
It all started one day over lunch. We'd just gotten through a workout and were talking about a meeting Roman had gone to. It was an NFLPA meeting. He was disturbed to find out that many of the leagues pioneers were not receiving the care they needed or deserved. Upon investigation we came to find out the Gene Upshaw believed that his duty was to current players ONLY and that during his term he and Robert Goodell had denied countless legitimate diability claims.
Roman has spent most of his life on the football field and I have trained players or the last 10. We LOVE football! What we saw here was an injustice not just to the individual players and their families but to the core values of the game. Football, the team sport, the game where players put their lives on the line for a common goal. Although neither one of us had any experience in film production, we decided that a documentary would be the best way for us to get involved.
I'v had the great fortune of working out at Gold's gym in Venice for the last 20 years. It was there that we met our co-producer Joe Reggiero (my client). Armed with a small budget and camera crew, we set out for two weeks to find players around the country. We got major help along the way from the Grid Iron Greats organization. A portion of the proceeds from the film will be donated to their cause. Things miraculously fell into place with interviews from football icons, Mike Ditka, Harry Carson, John Mackey, Willie Wood, Tony Dorsett and more.
Back in LA we brought footage to our editors Pyan, Josh and Collin. One we had a rough cut our creative advisor William MacDonald (also my client), introduced us to our post production house Tunnel Post and made sure we met with people from HBO, his buddies from his Emmy award winning show ROME. Last week we shot a segment for inside the NFL.
We're not sure how the film will be distributed yet. We are in the process of working all that out. All we know is that we are honored to bring the untold stories of men who were once warriors.
More to come,
Rico
