Phil
Tuckett,
(
click
for biography)
Jeff
Hillegass, and Steve Sabol of NFL Films
won
an EMMY
for
their original film about the Pottstown Firebirds.
30 years
after producing this documentary film about
a
semi-pro football
team. NFL FILMS
returns to Pottstown, Pennsylvania in search of the
“The
King”.....
,
hosted
by Steve Sabol.
This
two-hour special
of
the critically acclaimed series for
ESPN
Classic
premiered
nationally
Friday,
October 27 at 9 PM (ET).
and
was exhibited on November 12, 2000
at
the
Fort
Lauderdale
International
Film Festival
two
showings:
1:30
pm and 7:30 PM
at
the Gateway Theater on Sunrise Boulevard.
The
first part of
the special is devoted to Pro Football: Pottstown, PA, an NFL
FILMS documentary that was produced in the
early ‘70s by Lost Treasures of NFL FILMS
senior
producer Phil Tuckett and filmed by Sabol. The film profiled the
1970 Pottstown Firebirds, a minor-league football team made up of
former
NFL players and men who could not let go of the game, even if the game
had let go of them.
In
the second
part of the special, Tuckett and Sabol return to Pottstown ? and stops
in between ? to track down several of the players profiled in the
original
film, including the elusive "King" Corcoran.
The
Lost Treasures
of NFL FILMS series was created entirely
from
400 hours of retrieved 16mm film footage that has never been previously
aired. In 1962, before they became the premier filmmakers in
sports,
before they were even called NFL FILMS,
Thegroup was just a few men who loved making movies and loved
professional
football.
Back
in those
days, when no one ever heard of “sports- programming,”
NFL FILMS’ only priority was to convince
some
Kiwanis clubs around the country that a few minutes of NFL
FILMS highlights would show pro football
in
a radically new and exciting way.
Almost
forty years
later, NFL FILMS
has produced a million times over those original few-minute
highlights.
However, Tuckett asked, “What happened to all sound and film that never
made it into those “first few minutes”?
In
sifting through
the NFL FILMS
film archive ? the world’s largest sports film library ? not only did
Tuckett
discover the history of the NFL in the 1960s and some of the era’s lost
players, but he also discovered the early beginnings of NFL
FILMS.
