King of what Mountain

Before I start, I would like to make it clear that I am not attempting to personally attack any persons mentioned below that may be held with a negative connotation. This is a critique; therefore, I am going to critique what I feel necessary.

Quickly, before I go on, I would like to make the viewer aware, in case he or she is not already, that this film was shot in 2003 and released in December of 2007. If I remember correctly, the original projected release date was summer of 2004. Summer 2004 came along, no King of the Mountain. Summer of '04 was coming to a close and Jenks had a preseason football banquet in which I was in attendance and a KOTM representative came on stage, took a microphone, and in front of a crowd of 250+ somewhat disgruntled Jenks players and team family members announced that he was sorry things have taken so long, but King of the Mountain should be in local theaters by the upcoming winter, if not then, spring of 2005 at the latest. Needless to say, the documentary wasn't released, and we the people kept hearing the same excuse that film was still being edited, showing at film festivals, yadda yadda…

Well December of 2007 came along and while I was at Borders I saw a copy of the King of the Mountain DVD sitting on an end cap and I could not help but laugh out loud and think, "Oh yea, this thing." Of course, I had to purchase it—it had been [over]hyped for over four years now!

So I'm going to be honest with you right off the bat, I wish I would have spent six dollars at the Riverwalk Movies in Jenks to watch this film rather than spend the twenty dollars I did at the bookstore, but hey, hindsight is 20/20!

King of the Mountain is a documentary filmed in 2003 about the nation's largest high school football rivalry, Jenks (Okla.) and Union (Okla.). These two schools, which are located in the Tulsa metropolitan area, sit less than ten miles from each other and their district boundaries are divided by two main Tulsa roads—91st street and Yale avenue.

The attempted focus of this documentary seems to be on three things: First, the two high schools and their fight to be class 6A state champions. Second, how each high school has a dominate Pop Warner football program that resembles the likes of the National Football League with its combine and open draft. And third, how despite the bitter hate on the gridiron, each team respects the other and players befriend their rivals Saturday through Thursday.

Reread the opening sentence of the previous paragraph and note that I said "the attempted focus." To me, this film was hardly worth the time or money invested; I felt like I was watching an infomercial on the city of Tulsa and the Tulsa Talons.

Yes, the attempted focus of the documentary failed overall, but it did not fail in becoming "The Curt Quillman Story." Quillman, who was a non-factor Union running back during the 2003 season due to injury, grew up in the Union school district, transferred to Jenks for the better part of the summer between his junior and senior years due to personal issues and back to Union before the 2003-04 school year started. Quillman has a great story when it comes to dealing with adversity, but it is obvious to the audience that his transfer was set in the directors mind to be a focal point of the film from the get-go, unfortunately with his season-ending injury early on, that plan turned out to be a poor one with no B-side. If King of the Mountain had much knowledge of either school at the time, they could have easily turned their focus from Quillman to Jenks stud sophomore running back Renard Johnson, who also transferred from Union to Jenks during the summer prior to the 2003 season.

Another unfortunate, surely unanticipated, focus was Executive Producer Paul Ross's fairly successful attempt to plug the Arena Football League 2 team in which he is Co-Owner of, the Tulsa Talons, by having several interviewees wearing red Talons t-shirts. Ross also did a good job of starring himself and almost his entire immediate family in the gig as interview subjects.

Now, playing devils advocate with myself, I understand that Ross is the executive producer and it's mostly his money flowing into the operation and, overall, he most likely has more of the final say than the director. Sure, if I had the money and power I might just as well plug my AFL2 team, I might star my family in it, I might put the company's logo which I am CEO of on the credits and DVD box; Get your publicity where you can, right? But when it comes to the point where it becomes so obvious, enough is enough.

What I will applaud Mr. Ross on, and perhaps one of the only things I liked in the entire film, was the story of the youth Jenks football team he coaches—as well as the respective Union team—and their battle through the city playoffs and on to the national stage. That got me interested! Watching these twelve year old boys work so hard and overcome heartbreaking losses made me sit on the edge of my seat. Watching two national high school football powerhouses go at it in hopes to become state champions did not; and the thing is, I don't think that should be the case.

I love high school football. Youth football hasn't been a main interest of mine since I stopped playing it in 7th grade. I like to go to high school football games on Friday nights rather than party, I don't generally enjoy getting up on Saturday mornings to watch youth football unless a sibling has a game and that was one of the biggest disappointments of King of the Mountain. If the entire film was done as well as the coverage of the third dedicated to the Jenks and Union youth programs it would have been great, but it wasn't.

If you like jump-cuts, go see King of the Mountain. If you like interesting intro graphics, go see King of the Mountain. If you enjoy being let down, make sure you see this documentary. If you enjoy high school football or quality documentaries save your time and money and maybe hope that one afternoon when nothing good is on television that you're flipping channels and it's on either Sundance of the Independent Film Channel. But what I feel is the best recommendation is to spend a few minutes on YouTube and watch the trailer—I can guarantee you'll enjoy that twice as much as King of the Mountain.