Why we couldn't resist the Wings story

I met Tim O'Bryhim on the best night of my life.

It was last year's world premiere of "Out Here In Kansas," a documentary short I had just poured several months of my life into. Many Wichita celebrities were there, including the mayor. We sold out the venue at Roxy's Downtown - had to turn people away at the door, actually - and the film was incredibly well received. We even received a standing ovation. Because of the challenges we overcame to make the movie, it was a completely gratifying moment.

Tim's brother Brendan was largely responsible for this. I first met Brendan about 10 years ago at a social event, and through the next decade we would invariably run into each other in different places (usually either at the gym or in a bar). Brendan started following what we were doing with "Out Here In Kansas," he asked if I wanted to speak at one of his social groups, and that evolved into the photo you're looking at right now.

Brendan's brother was there that night. I was already aware of Tim O'Bryhim and Michael Romalis, who had made some headlines after co-authoring the book Make This Town Big: The Story of Roy Turner and the Wichita Wings. I was glad to learn they wrote it. Sometimes history has a way of forgetting just how big of deal certain things were.

And make no mistake about it - the Wings were a big deal. They transcended sports, really, and engrained themselves into Wichita's pop culture. How many Wichitans were soccer fans before the Wings came along? Not many, I'll bet. I'm a perfect example.

Understand, the 1980s were my adolescent and teenage years. I was a country kid at a rural high school. Soccer was not on my radar. Then along came the Wings. Suddenly my friends and I were pooling our resources so we could make two or three trips a year to the Kansas Coliseum, just to be part of the excitement. Soon, after playing in high school football games on Friday nights, we were turning around Saturday mornings to play in a soccer league - a league that didn't exist before the Wings had swallowed Wichita whole.

So ... back to our movie premiere on Oct. 11. After meeting Tim, the first words out of his mouth were his desire to collaborate on a documentary about the Wings.

It sounded cool. I knew Roy Turner a little bit, socially and professionally, and he was certainly fun to be around. He's a personable character, as were many of his players. My team had been bothering me to start on a new film since the minute we wrapped up the old one. Why not the Wings?

But where would we get the money? Filmmaking, even on the independent level, is not cheap. I had already gone broke making "Out Here In Kansas," even with our fundraising campaign. True, most of the key players in the Wings franchise were still alive, but they were scattered all over the country and the rest of the world. The logistics were troublesome.

But what it came down to was, I really wanted to do it. And I knew we could do it well. Roy (pictured on the left) was going to help however he could. Michael (second from the right) and Tim (far right) had already written a 500-page book that could serve as our blueprint. I already had a great working relationship with Kenneth Linn, the DP and editor of our last documentary, and producer Jon Pic. The opportunity is right in front of our faces, and everyone involved in the project is excited about it.

So here we go. I hope you look forward to following our filmmaking process on this blog ... and
I promise you, the rest of my posts will not be a long as this one.