Former high school football star turned farmer and family man, Scott Murphy (Brian Presley) finds himself with a unique opportunity to revisit his glory days during the state championship game where he permanently injured his knee in a game-winning play. Given a second shot at his destiny, Scott seeks counsel from Coach Hand (Kurt Russell), Scott’s longtime mentor on and off the field, to help him decide whether to let his fate unfold, or follow a path that will change his future.

Written and Directed by Don Handfield, ‘Touchback’ also stars Melanie Lynskey (‘Win Win’, CBS’ “Two and a Half Men”), Mark Blucas (‘Knight and Day’) and Christine Lahti (‘Obsessed’, NBC’s “Law and Order: SVU”). Handfield gives his statement about the inspirational movie, released in April of this year.

“‘Touchback’ is a film about what it takes to choose your life exactly how it is, instead of regretting it because it’s not what you’d hoped it would be. The first draft of this script was written over a decade ago. It went through many revisions, but the spirit and themes and characters have, for the most part, remained intact.

“‘Touchback’ had many false starts and almost got made many times over the years, with several different studios with different directors at the helm, but for whatever reason it just kept coming back to me. It was always my dream to direct it, so I think a part of me was always a little relieved every time it fell apart and came back to me. Ultimately, it paid off when the current incarnation of ‘Touchback’ came together.”

“I was always moved by Capra’s classic film ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’. But while that film served as a broad source of cinematic inspiration, most of the emotional themes and events more specific to Touchback were influenced by personal events.

“The initial spark for the setting and events of behind Touchback came from several real life experiences that mirrored the experience of Scott Murphy in some ways – except the time travel. These include blowing out my knee as a high school wrestler, working on my Uncle’s dairy farm, and the collapse of my first marriage in my early twenties.

“In high school I was captain of my wrestling team, but during my senior year, my undefeated season came to an early end when I blew out my knee in practice. From the sidelines, I watched a wrestler from another school I had beaten during the season go on to win the district, the region and place 2nd in the state tournament. I always wondered ‘what if’ I hadn’t been hurt, and having another player’s success as an odd benchmark certainly made the feeling of regret and wonder more poignant. This served as the kernel of inspiration for the character of Murphy, and Hall as the benchmark of his ‘what could have been’ success.

“Another big factor in the development of this story was the summers I spent working on my Uncle’s dairy farm in a very small community in Connecticut as a boy. I experienced the world of ‘Touchback’ firsthand – the hard-working farm life, the tight-knit communities where everybody knows everybody (and their business) and the all-volunteer fire departments. The pace, the sense of community, the self-sufficiency, and underneath it all the nobility of the people who lived there spoke to me and it was my hope to both pay homage to the people and places like it.

“When I wrote the first draft of ‘Touchback’ many years ago, I was going through a divorce. My parents were divorced when I was small so I saw this as a colossal failure on my part and it made me question what it took to make it work despite the slings and arrows life threw your way. I believe we write about what we don’t fully understand – or the things we don’t have and we long for in our life. For me it was both a solid relationship and marriage, and a sense of family and community support from those around me.

“‘Touchback’ is a film about what it takes to choose your life exactly how it is, instead of regretting it for how you’d hoped it would be.

“In short, it’s about choice. The choice we make every day on how we view our life. Change your view – or your attitude – and you quite literally change your life.

“Modern films are often structured using Kubler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grieving – Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and finally, Acceptance – with the latter being the final emotion of the film – embodied by the main character’s acceptance of whatever he was in denial of in the first act.

“The problem with this emotional structure is that it was created as a model for dying, not for living. Acceptance has a bit of ‘settling’ or resignation to it, which is very different from choosing something, exactly how it is, warts and all; in other words, not choosing a situation despite its flaws, but because of them. That’s transformational. That’s magical. That’s the “Philosopher’s Stone” and that’s the power I believe we all have inside us as human beings.

“I always use the pound puppy analogy to try to explain choice versus acceptance. If you were picking a dog and went to the pound, you don’t accept the dog with half an ear and a stubby tail, you choose him because you like him the best. Because those flaws gave him the heart and soul and character that make him who he is.

“In a way, we need to choose our partners because of their flaws, not in spite of them. The flaws, the little imperfections, are what make people special. The same goes with relationships. And people. And towns. And our own pasts.

“I’ve often found in my own life that something I thought was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me often turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me because of the transformation it caused in my heart. That is certainly the case with Scott Murphy, and something I hope people take out of the theater on the way home.”

The article Don Handfield Talks ‘Touchback’ appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

On Saturday night, the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) and Broadway Impact presented the West Coast premiere reading of the play ”8″ before a sold-out crowd in Los Angeles and a worldwide audience watching on YouTube. ”8″ is an unprecedented account of the Federal District Court trial in Perry v. Schwarzenegger (now Perry v. Brown), the case filed by AFER to overturn Proposition 8, which stripped gay and lesbian Californians of the fundamental freedom to marry.

Saturday night’s West Coast premiere reading of ”8″ was written by Academy Award-winning screenwriter and AFER Founding Board Member Dustin Lance Black and directed by AFER Founding Board Member Rob Reiner . Bryan Singer, acclaimed director of The Usual Suspects and X-Men, was Saturday night’s presenting sponsor. The benefit event raised more than $2 million for the fight to secure full federal marriage equality.

An audience from around the world tuned in to watch a live stream of the West Coast premiere reading of”8″ on YouTube. Video of Saturday night’s performance can be viewed at www.youtube.com/AmericanEqualRights.

“This play will continue to show Americans—one by one—that truth and justice can prevail over prejudice and fear,” said AFER Board President Chad Griffin. ”Try as they might, the anti-marriage proponents of Proposition 8 cannot hide their discriminatory arguments from the American people. The fight to secure marriage equality is at the heart of our generation’s search for greater freedom—this play shows why.”

Black, who penned the Academy Award-winning feature film Milk and the film J. Edgar, based ”8″ on the actual words of the trial transcripts, first-hand observations of the courtroom drama and interviews with the plaintiffs and their families.

The West Coast premiere reading of ”8″  featured an all-star cast led by Golden Globe Award-winner and Academy and Emmy Award-nominee Brad Pitt as United States District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who found Proposition 8 unconstitutional after presiding over the historic twelve-day public trial; and Academy and Golden Globe Award-winner and Emmy Award-nominee George Clooney and Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winner Martin Sheen as Plaintiffs’ lead co-counsel David Boies and Theodore B. Olson, the renowned attorneys who notably faced-off in Bush v. Gore.

Academy, Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winner Christine Lahti and Golden Globe Award-winnerJamie Lee Curtis starred as plaintiffs Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, a lesbian couple together for eleven years and the parents of four boys. Emmy, Golden Globe and Tony Award-nominee Matthew Morrisonand acclaimed White Collar television star Matt Bomer played plaintiffs Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo, a gay couple together over ten years.

Golden Globe Award-winner and Emmy Award-nominee Kevin Bacon played Charles J. Cooper, the lead attorney for the anti-marriage proponents of Proposition 8. Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winner Jane Lynch starred as prominent opponent of marriage equality Maggie Gallagher, co-founder and former chairman of the National Organization for Marriage. Academy, Golden Globe and Grammy Award-nomineeJohn C. Reilly played David Blankenhorn, founder and president of the Institute for American Values.

Additional roles were played by Emmy Award-winning journalist Campbell Brown; Golden Globe Award-winner, SAG and Emmy Award-nominee Chris Colfer ; Emmy Award-nominee Jesse Tyler Ferguson ; prominent gay rights activist Cleve Jones ; Tony Award-nominee Rory O’Malley; acclaimed Star Trektelevision and film star George Takei ; Emmy Award-winner Yeardley Smith ; and Vanessa Garcia ,Jansen Panettiere, James Pickens, Jr. and Bridger Zadina .

The star-studded event was attended by actress Julie Bowen ; actor Ty Burrell ; actor Charlie Carver ; film producer and AFER Founding Board Member Bruce Cohen ; actress Toni Collette ; actress Sally Field ; actor, comedian and director Christopher Guest ; Ambassador James C. Hormel ; actress and model Stacy Keibler ; former Republican National Committee Chairman and AFER Board Member Ken Mehlman ; television producer Jonathan Murray ; television producer Max Mutchnik ;

California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom ; Star Trek television and film star Leonard Nimoy ; actress and singer Hayden Panettiere ; California State Assembly Speaker John A. Perez ; actress Kyra Sedgwick ; actor Eric Stonestreet ; celebrated actress, singer, producer and director Barbra Streisand; actress Sofia Vergara ; actress Olivia Wilde ; actress Shailene Woodley ; comedian and singer ”Weird Al” Yankovic; and others.

The Los Angeles reading of ”8″ came just weeks after a landmark decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upholding the historic August 2010 ruling of the Federal District Court that found Proposition 8 unconstitutional. The Ninth Circuit concluded:

“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples. The Constitution simply does not allow for laws of this sort.”

The story for ”8″ is framed by the trial’s historic closing arguments in June 2010, and features the best arguments and testimony from both sides. Scenes include flashbacks to some of the more jaw-dropping moments from trial, such as the admission by the Proposition 8 supporters’ star witness, David Blankenhorn, that “we would be more American on the day we permitted same-sex marriage than we were on the day before.”

“People need to witness what happened in the Proposition 8 trial, if for no other reason than to see inequality and discrimination unequivocally rejected in a court of law where truth and facts matter,” said Black. ”I’ve built my career around exposing and uncovering ‘the real story.’

The goal of ’8′ is to show the world that marriage equality is a basic constitutional right and that those who would deny this basic freedom from loving, committed couples have only vitriol and baseless hyperbole to fall back on. The facts are on our side and truth always finds the light. We are doing all we can to help speed that process along.”

“Because this case involves the constitutional rights of millions of people, it is especially important for the public to see what happened during the trial,” said AFER Executive Director Adam Umhoefer. “Both sides had an equal opportunity and ample resources to assemble their strongest teams and put forth their absolute best arguments in an impartial setting. Viewed side-by-side there is simply no question that there was only one decision the court could have reached.

The moment we knew the trial would not be publicly broadcast we immediately began planning to find a way to show the world what happened in this historic case. This play and our partnership with YouTube and Broadway Impact allow us to do exactly that.”

The anti-marriage proponents of Proposition 8 vigorously objected to a television and Internet broadcast of the proceedings of the historic twelve-day public trial held in January 2010. Nevertheless, the Federal District Court, without objection from any party, recorded the proceedings on video. That digital video recording is now under seal as part of the case record.

“8″ had its much-heralded Broadway world premiere reading on September 19, 2011, at the sold-out Eugene O’Neill Theatre in New York City. The production brought in over $1 million to support AFER’s efforts to achieve full federal marriage equality.

Throughout 2012, AFER and Broadway Impact are licensing ”8″  for free to colleges and community theatres nationwide in order to spur dialogue, understanding and action. Most productions will be followed by a talkback where cast and audience members can discuss the issues presented in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial.

“I was lucky enough to watch the closing arguments of Perry v. Schwarzenegger in San Francisco,” said Broadway Impact co-founder Rory O’Malley (Tony Award-nominee for The Book of Mormon). ”We knew then and there that audiences needed to see and hear this story live, as we had done. ’8′ builds on a successful tradition of documentary theatre—plays like The Laramie Project and The Vagina Monologues, which inspire us with their combination of art and activism. We are thrilled to partner with AFER to bring this story to a national audience.”

Visit the official “8″ website here: www.8theplay.com

Watch Saturday night’s performance here: www.youtube.com/AmericanEqualRights

Image Courtesy of   https://www.facebook.com/8theplay

The article West Coast Premiere Reading of the Play “8″ Presented on March 3 appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

The American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) and Broadway Impact are pleased to announce the addition of Golden Globe-winner and Academy and Emmy Award-nominee Brad Pitt to the cast of the West Coast premiere reading of the play ”8.”

The reading is an unprecedented account of the Federal District Court trial in Perry v. Schwarzenegger (now Perry v. Brown), the case filed by AFER to overturn Proposition 8, which stripped gay and lesbian Californians of the fundamental freedom to marry.

AFER and Broadway Impact are also pleased to announce that the performance will be streamed live on YouTube, beginning at 7:45 p.m. PST.  A pre-show will begin on YouTube at 7:30 p.m. PST. Rob Reiner, director of Saturday’s performance, recorded a video explaining the reading of the play and inviting people to watch the live stream.  The live stream of the West Coast premiere reading of ”8″ and Rob Reiner’s video can both be viewed at www.youtube.com/AmericanEqualRights.

“At long last each and every American will be able to see for themselves what happens when prejudice and fear are put on trial in a court of law,” said AFER Board President Chad Griffin. ”For over two years, the anti-marriage proponents of Proposition 8 have fought tooth and nail to hide their discriminatory arguments from the American people.

But on Saturday night, thanks to YouTube and our incredible cast, people across the nation, from Los Angeles to Little Rock to Baltimore, will get to watch as our Constitution’s promise of liberty and equality for all is protected.”

Written by Academy Award-winning screenwriter and AFER Founding Board Member Dustin Lance Black and directed by acclaimed actor and director and AFER Founding Board Member Rob Reiner , ”8″ will have its West Coast premiere reading on Saturday, March 3, 2012, at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles.  Bryan Singer , acclaimed director of The Usual Suspects and X-Men, is Saturday night’s presenting sponsor.  The benefit event will support the fight to secure full federal marriage equality.

Black, who penned the Academy Award-winning feature film Milk and the film J. Edgar, based ”8″ on the actual words of the trial transcripts, first-hand observations of the courtroom drama and interviews with the plaintiffs and their families.

Brad Pitt will star as United States District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who found Proposition 8 unconstitutional after presiding over the historic twelve-day public trial.

Pitt joins an all-star cast led by Academy and Golden Globe Award-winner and Emmy Award-nomineeGeorge Clooney and Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winner Martin Sheen as Plaintiffs’ lead co-counsel David Boies and Theodore B. Olson, the renowned attorneys who notably faced-off in Bush v. Gore.

Academy, Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winner Christine Lahti and Golden Globe Award-winner Jamie Lee Curtis will star as plaintiffs Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, a lesbian couple together for eleven years and the parents of four boys.  Emmy, Golden Globe and Tony Award-nominee Matthew Morrison and acclaimed White Collar television star Matt Bomer will play plaintiffs Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo, a gay couple together over ten years.

Golden Globe Award-winner and Emmy Award-nominee Kevin Bacon will play Charles J. Cooper, the lead attorney for the anti-marriage proponents of Proposition 8.  Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winner Jane Lynch will star as prominent opponent of marriage equality Maggie Gallagher, co-founder and former chairman of the National Organization for Marriage.  Academy, Golden Globe and Grammy Award-nominee John C. Reilly will play David Blankenhorn, founder and president of the Institute for American Values.

Additional roles will be played by Emmy Award-winning journalist Campbell Brown; Golden Globe Award-winner, SAG and Emmy Award-nominee Chris Colfer ; Emmy Award-nominee Jesse Tyler Ferguson ; prominent gay rights activist Cleve Jones ; Tony Award-nominee Rory O’Malley; acclaimed Star Trek television and film star George Takei; Emmy Award-winner Yeardley Smith ; and Vanessa Garcia, Jansen Panatierre, James Pickens, Jr. and Bridger Zadina .

The Los Angeles reading of ”8″ comes just weeks after a landmark decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upholding the historic August 2010 ruling of the Federal District Court that found Proposition 8 unconstitutional.  The Ninth Circuit concluded:

“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.  The Constitution simply does not allow for laws of this sort.”

The story for ”8″ is framed by the trial’s historic closing arguments in June 2010, and features the best arguments and testimony from both sides.  Scenes include flashbacks to some of the more jaw-dropping moments from trial, such as the admission by the Proposition 8 supporters’ star witness, David Blankenhorn, that “we would be more American on the day we permitted same-sex marriage than we were on the day before.”

“People need to witness what happened in the Proposition 8 trial, if for no other reason than to see inequality and discrimination unequivocally rejected in a court of law where truth and facts matter,” said Black.  ”I’ve built my career around exposing and uncovering ‘the real story.’

The goal of ’8′ is to show the world that marriage equality is a basic constitutional right and that those who would deny this basic freedom from loving, committed couples have only vitriol and baseless hyperbole to fall back on.  The facts are on our side and truth always finds the light.  We are doing all we can to help speed that process along.”

“Because this case involves the constitutional rights of millions of people, it is especially important for the public to see what happened during the trial,” said AFER Executive Director Adam Umhoefer. “Both sides had an equal opportunity and ample resources to assemble their strongest teams and put forth their absolute best arguments in an impartial setting. Viewed side-by-side there is simply no question that there was only one decision the court could have reached.

The moment we knew the trial would not be publicly broadcast we immediately began planning to find a way to show the world what happened in this historic case. This play and our partnership with YouTube and Broadway Impact allow us to do exactly that.”

“8″ had its much-heralded Broadway world premiere reading on September 19, 2011, at the sold-out Eugene O’Neill Theatre in New York City.  The benefit brought in over $1 million to support AFER’s efforts to achieve full federal marriage equality.

Throughout 2012, AFER and Broadway Impact are licensing “8″ for free to colleges and community theatres nationwide in order to spur dialogue, understanding and action.  Most performances will be followed by a talkback where cast and audience members can discuss the issues presented in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial.

“I was lucky enough to watch the closing arguments of Perry v. Schwarzenegger in San Francisco,” said Broadway Impact co-founder Rory O’Malley (Tony Award-nominee for The Book of Mormon).  ”We knew then and there that audiences needed to see and hear this story live, as we had done.

’8′ builds on a successful tradition of documentary theatre—plays like The Laramie Project and The Vagina Monologues, which inspire us with their combination of art and activism. We are thrilled to partner with AFER to bring this story to a national audience.”

VISIT THE OFFICIAL “8″ WEBSITE HERE: www.8theplay.com

WATCH SATURDAY’S PERFORMANCE LIVE HERE AT 7:45 P.M. PST: www.youtube.com/AmericanEqualRights

Image Courtesy of   cinemafestival / Shutterstock.com

The article Brad Pitt Joins The Cast of West Coast Premiere Reading of the Play “8″ appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.