Tim Tebow And Casey Therriault -- Saved By Work And Grace

I caught up with producers Mark Ordesky and Jane Fleming of media company CourtFive — who share producing credit for the film with DeVon Franklin, formerly of Sony, and Bobby Smith of Ashmore Entertainment — at the Summit.

“It is a football movie,” said Fleming, “and there is football, no doubt, but it really is a story of this young man coming to grips with something he needs to come to grips with, and we’ve all been there, right? Where we’ve had to have those moments of digging deep and finding our way back.

“It’s perseverance and openness and willingness to accept acceptance. Sometimes we’re our worse enemies. This is a story about a community that opens its doors to somebody who’s not of the community, and that, in a way, transcends race. The story is about the team also finding a place and going on to win championships that they hadn’t won.

“What’s so amazing about the true-life story is how it changed Jackson. When football is doing well, the town is doing well. There is that sub-theme of watching an entire community being reborn, because the football team is winning.

“Football and faith are the cornerstones of this country, and we feel like it will do quite well because of that.”

The film is still in the early stages, so there is no casting yet, and Ordesky has yet to approach Jackson State.

“We have Casey’s life story,” he said. “That’s where we are, so we haven’t gotten any further than that for the moment. We figured, we don’t want to come to people and start asking questions and then say, ‘Well, yeah, thanks, we’ll call you again in a year.’ We want to wait until it’s actionable.”

Like many women today, Fleming, who grew up in a football-loving family (her brother is a college football coach) is a big fan of the sport.

“It is actually much more of a game of strategy than it is one of brute force,” she said. “I think not everybody knows that. … I love that moment of grace when all of these individuals start working as one machine. They’ve rehearsed and practiced, and then when it comes time to go, they do it with great grace, and often they win because of it.

“You’ve seen those moments, and I’ve seen struggling football teams that can’t quite get there, but when they learn how to win, it’s grace incarnate, really.

“Twenty-first-century football is really exciting, because you watch people do inhuman things. There’s the thrill of watching athleticism transcend our beliefs about what we can do. You scream with delight because – -this is getting very metaphysical — seeing somebody do something we’ve never seen done before reminds us we can do things that we’ve never done before. That’s a way to connect everything, and obviously I’m a sports person, but I love sports because it reminds us that it’s not over until the whistle.

“It’s not over until it’s over, and you never know when something’s going to click into place and change your whole life.”

And, if you’re interested, here’s Ordesky and Fleming’s panel from the Variety Summit, moderated by Matthew Faraci of Faith Driven Entertainment: