Sports psychologist turned film producer David Cook thinks Hollywood is starting to grasp the faith-friendly film market thanks to hits like “Soul Surfer” and “The Blind Side.”

Yet Cook says when industry executives circled around the film adaptation of his spiritually-driven book, “Seven Days In Utopia,” they weren’t sure it could draw a crowd.

It’s one reason Cook took control of the film adaptation. He started his own film studio (Utopia Films) to produce the movie and served as both executive producer and co-screenwriter.

“I’m a sports psychologist. What do I know about making a movie?” he asks. “But I do know about telling stories, and that’s what filmmaking is. I just made sure the story didn’t get botched up.”

Cook wouldn’t let Hollywood warp his beloved story about a young golfer who finds his stroke again after spending a week in a tiny Texas hamlet. That meant the film’s spiritual component stayed intact, but just as importantly the main character would be played by an actor who knew his way around the golf course.

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Tales of the whimmydiddle’s mysteries aside, one of the most stupefying stories I can recall from my childhood in the North Carolina – Tennessee mountains was about a Volunteer State man who held a 1938 funeral for himself before he died so he could hear what people had to say about him.  More than 8,000 attended, including a man who lived next door to my grandmother. He said he went because he and the others there got to participate in a lottery for the man’s land when he did pass on, which was 5 years later.  That man was “Uncle” Felix “Bush” Breazeale — shown [below the fold] sitting in front of his own coffin — and it’s that episode of his real life story that Get Low (as in get buried) is about.

The rest of Get Low tracks elements of the real story and uses some of the real names, but it introduces fictionalized backgrounds and situations to flesh out compelling characters.  In the film, Felix Bush (Robert Duvall) has lived alone in a cabin in the woods for 40 years.

During those years, the townfolk’s imaginations have concocted all sorts of stories about him. He killed two men in a fist fight one says he heard. Another says Felix knows the devil and has unholy powers — a claim I heard several times myself about people who lived far back in the Appalachian woods  where they practiced granny magic with mountain herbs and Witch Hazel. The Smokey Mountain mists do excite imaginations. But when Felix learns a friend from long ago has died, he goes to see sardonic funeral director Frank Quinn (Bill Murray — who delivers his lines so well it’s hard to hear over the audience laughter) and his associate Buddy (Lucas Black) with a wad of cash to buy himself a funeral party. (more…)

With 400,000 Americans showing up every year at the Indy 500 and 200,000 more buying tickets to see NASCAR’s premiere event The Daytona 500, you would think that the most creative minds in Hollywood would be looking for a way to cash in with more movies about car racing and car culture. NASCAR has an estimated 75 million fans, and it is second only to the National Football League in terms of television ratings, so where are all the good racing movies?

Jordana Brewster is reunited with Vin, Paul and Michelle in FAST & FURIOUS

Universal seems to have answered that question by getting its successful street racing franchise back into the fast lane this weekend with Fast & Furious. The movie, which reunites Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez for the first time since 2001’s original surprise blockbuster, has exploded to a high octane $30.11M or so on Friday and that could mean a $70M opening weekend. That would make it the all-time #1 opening for a car racing movie.

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“The Fast and the Furious” came out of nowhere in 2001 to make a ton of money, spawn a franchise and I’d say for about two years afterwards I practically wore out the DVD. That little street-racing melodrama aimed for a target and squarely hit the bull’s-eye. It is everything it wanted to be; a perfect genre grinder.  Predictably abysmal sequels soon followed: “2 Fast 2 Furious” (2003), weighed down with director John Singleton’s smug approach to racial issues and over- the-top CGI, couldn’t even deliver the racing thrills, and 2006’s “Tokyo Drift” (2006) took the muscle out of “muscle car” with a miscast Lucas Black, an otherwise solid actor, in the lead.

Hoping to reboot, the new “Fast & Furious” reunites the four main players from the original and is so stripped down and back to basics the title refuses to make room for even a “the” or an “and.” Within thirty minutes the story credibly and effortlessly reunites the cast (hat tip to the screenwriters for that) and a simple revenge plot is set up to allow for at least five major racing sequences, a couple of which are alone worth the price of admission. (more…)

Universal’s Fast & Furious will be “burning rubber” this weekend at America’s multiplexes as the original street-racing cast reunites after some sub-par chapters of the franchise.

The original The Fast & The Furious hit theatres in 2001 under the direction of Rob Cohen who had shown a knack for action with Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story ($35M US cume) and Sly Stallone’s Daylight ($33M US cume) and a savvy feel for bigger-than-life characters in his Golden Globe winning biopic The Rat Pack (which, if you’ve never seen you should put in your Netflix cue and prepare to be amazed by Don Cheadle’s turn as Sammy Davis, Jr.). In tow, he had a 34-year-old Vin Diesel in only his second starring role following the surprise low budget hit Pitch Black ($39M cume) and 28-year-old Paul Walker, who had just starred in Cohen’s forgettable The Skulls. Also in the cast was Jordana Brewster (As the World Turns) and a pre-Lost Michelle Rodriguez, whose most notable credit was a gritty little indie called Girlfight.

Vin Diesel returns for FAST & FURIOUS

The result was box office jet fuel. Seemingly out of nowhere, The Fast & The Furious scored a scalding $40M opening weekend and reached $144.5M domestic and over $200M worldwide. But Diesel, whose signature line in the original movie is “I live my life one quarter of a mile at a time,” didn’t like the script for the sequel (or they wouldn’t pay his asking price depending on who you ask). That led to the 2003 sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious directed by Academy Award nominee John Singleton (Boyz n the Hood) starring Walker along with rapper Tyrese Gibson and Eva Mendes. Despite Diesel’s conspicuous absence, 2 Fast still delivered $127M in the US. (more…)