ABFF 2012 Spotlight – director Matthew A. Cherry talks The Last Fall

ABFF 2012 Spotlight – director Matthew A. Cherry talks The Last Fall
By Wilson Morales

June 23, 2012

Currently playing at the 16th Annual American Black Film Festival (ABFF) is ‘The Last Fall,’ which is directed by Matthew A. Cherry and starring Lance Gross, Nicole Beharie, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Harry Lennix Jr., Keith David, and Michael Moss.

After several years in the playing professional football, 25 year-old Kyle Bishop (played by Gross) is released from his fourth team in three years and returns to his home town, broke and at a complete loss about what he will do for a living. After an initially cold reception, Kyle reconnects with Faith Davis (played by Beharie), his old high school sweetheart. Ready to leave football far in the past, Kyle gets a job at a local gym and starts planning a new life with Faith and her young son, Von. However, when Kyle unexpectedly gets a lucrative offer from another professional team, and the father of Faith’s son, Rell, tries to win his way back in her life, he is torn about what path to take.

Cherry is a former NFL wide receiver (Jaguars, Bengals, Ravens) turned filmmaker. He has directed music videos for artists such as Terry Dexter, Kindred The Family Soul, Jazmine Sullivan, Common, N’Dambi and Snoop Dogg to name a few. His most recent short film “This Time” that starred actresses Reagan Gomez-Preston and Terri J.Vaughn was accepted to over 15 film festivals throughout the world.

Most recently, Image Entertainment picked up the film’s non-theatrical domestic rights such as VOD, digital, Blu-ray and broadcast.

While at the festival, Blackfilm.com caught up with Cherry as he spoke about the film and his inspiration to doing it.

What inspired you to make The Last Fall?

Matthew A. Cherry: The main reason we got the movie done was more so to show a humanity to professional athletes. I was in the process of doing a short documentary about the NFL lockout and we were interviewing different fans across the country about who’s to blame, the owners or the players, in this scenario. I was finding more often than not and surprisingly that people were blaming the players. They were saying that they were greedy. “What do I care if he makes $9 million dollars as opposed to $8 million? That’s more money that I will ever see in a lifetime.” A lot of people were complaining that the players were greedy and not realizing the long term consequences about the decisions players have to mull over. They are trying to get more money because if they get cut (from a team), at a moment’s notice, the contract is not guarantee and they (the owners) don’t owe you anything. I just thought it would be a good opportunity to educate and show a different side of the game. Only four percent of players have a career that lasts more than four seasons. That’s 96% of male athletes that are in the NFL that are retired by their mid 20s. I wanted to show that side because that’s the side I can relate to.

Because this is a sports film, were you able to get funding from some NFL players?

MC: It was one of those things that crept up in my mind. I’m doing a football movie and you would think that most players have money or some disposable income. It’s funny because it reinforces the stereotype of the reason I’m trying to make the movie in the first place. I felt that if we did an Indiegogo or Kickstarter campaign initially to announce that we were doing this project to raise money, that maybe somebody would see it and would want to get involved. That’s exactly what happened. It’s a tricky thing when you’re trying to do an independent movie, you don’t want to put on Twitter something like, “Doing a movie and looking for investors.” Going through Indiegogo or Kickstarter provides you an opportunity for you to put it out there yourself. If someone else helps out, cool, but regardless, we’re still are going to put this thing out. Within two days of having an Indiegogo campaign, a wife of an NFL player saw the campaign and got involved. They ended up being one of the executive producers.

Can you talk about casting Lance Gross and Nicole Beharie?

MC: I can’t lie. I feel that we had the best young black talent that we could get for these particular roles. Lance had the look. He’s familiar, known, and you’ve never seen him in a lead role, or in a position to carry a film. Nicole is just a beast. Everything she does, she kills it. She’s Julliard trained. I thought it would be amazing to have this couple represent a black couple. It wasn’t like this ambiguously, ethnicity woman with this love interest. It was important for me to show a real African American couple with this love story and make it dynamic in the film.

Now that you’ve completed this, what’s next for you?

MC: I just to want to continue to humanize the athletic experience. It’s the only life that I knew outside of this industry. I want to continue to tell stories, maybe some documentaries or college football stuff., but I want to stay in the sports lane.