INTERVIEW: Philadelphia Eagles fans are front and center in new documentary
Photo: Maybe Next Year follows Philadelphia Eagles fans during the historic 2017 season. Photo courtesy of official website.
The city of Philadelphia is one of the strongest sports markets in the country. The devotion to the metropolitan area’s professional teams is undying and passed down from generation to generation. A new documentary from filmmaker Kyle Thrash looks at this fandom, specifically Philadelphia Eagle devotees who soaked up all the drama of the 2017 championship season.
Maybe Next Year, which is now available on digital platforms, grew out of Thrash’s own interests in sports.
“I kind of grew up in Philly sports fandom,” the director said. “My mom, as she likes to tell it, had the Phillies game on in the delivery room when I was being born, and Lenny Dykstra hit a double when I was coming into this world. So I was always surrounded by Phillies sports fandom, and when I was looking to start a project, I wanted to explore all those maniacs that I have been around since I was a child going to the Vet [Veterans Stadium], seeing fights in the stands and seeing all these passionate people and try to understand where all that passion comes from. So it started out as a passion project, a character study, then it kind of grew into me capturing the most magical Philly sports year on record.”
Thrash admitted that he is biased, but he considers the Philly sports market to be at the top for extreme fandom. He said season ticket holders have real heart in the city for their respective teams, and the fanbase watches the games thoroughly, knowing the franchise’s history, knowing the coaching staff, and knowing the available backups.
“I feel like we don’t have a lot of other things necessarily to do in the area that other cities may have,” he said. “I think it breeds people’s passions because it’s something to do in the area. People can really invest their whole time and lives, to some extent, into caring about the team and the sport.”
Luckily for Thrash he started hitting record during a season when the Eagles marched all the way to the Super Bowl. He could not believe his documentary karma; what a set of games to profile. The fans he portrays are not only diehards, but diehards with a mission to raise that trophy in the winter.
“I still really can’t believe it,” the filmmaker said. “They had never won a Super Bowl before that, so for me to pick the one year where they finally get it done, in the year Carson Wentz, the quarterback, is having a MVP-type season, goes down, and the whole city feels like it’s not going to happen. So obviously I had my doubts all the way up until the clock finally hit quadruple zeroes … where I felt like I was still waiting for that other shoe to drop. They’re not going to do it, but luckily and thankfully they did.”
Thrash finds Eagles fans to be a community, and many people stake their livelihood on the business that home games bring in. The bars and restaurants in the area of the stadium pull in many dollars when the boys are on the gridiron, and that makes this COVID-19 year particularly difficult for the fans and small-business owners.
“You see our one character, Sonny, who goes down and sings and makes an extra buck that way,” he said. “I think people rely on the team for different needs, whether it’s their own passion, their own entertainment or a reason to escape or reason to believe in something. … It’s so woven into the culture of Philadelphia as a city that I think people get a lot from Philly sports in different ways.”
He added: “I think some of the film shows that passion can be taken too far. I think it’s up for debate where everyone’s line is for what people think is too far. I think what I was trying to get at was trying to understand what would make someone do something [negative]. … There’s a scene that didn’t make it into the film where we spoke to the judge from the Vet, the old Eagles stadium, the only stadium ever to have a jail in their basement and a court. And Seamus McCaffery was the judge. He kind of breaks it down. A lot of those incidents occur from over-intoxication, and when people get together, large gatherings, collective energy, that can breed an incident to happen. I don’t think it’s … just sports. I think at concerts and other large gatherings sometimes things can get out of control for a number of reasons.”
For Thrash, he hit record and documented everything. What comes through his lens is a community of dedicated fans who live and breathe for Sundays in the fall.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Maybe Next Year, directed by Kyle Thrash, is now available on digital platforms. Click here for more information.
