Sometime in the next couple of weeks, people in New Orleans
will be settled in their homes again, their lives will be back to close to normal again and they will have a chance to see the postponed premiere of the movie "Walking on Dead Fish," which will mean that much more to them.
The documentary is about a high school football team pulling lives and communities together in the aftermath of Katrina. It was supposed to open at the Prytania Theater in New Orleans this past Wednesday, but of course, the premiere was knocked out by Gustav.
"I tell you, I was reading the paper, watching the weather and I was saying, 'Oh, man,' " said Bernard Tomlin, basketball coach at Old Westbury and close friend of former Hofstra teammate Franklin Martin, who wrote, produced and directed "Walking on Dead Fish."
No problem. It will get out. Tomlin said the film is terrific, the kind that makes you want to watch sports movies, the kind that makes you realize why we watch sports.
"What happens is that sports just transcend all of our daily barriers," Tomlin said. "The first time I saw the movie, it reminded me that with sports, we get that special opportunity to get inside a human being."
That has always been the feeling of Martin, who grew up in Tennessee, enrolled at Hofstra because he wanted to expand his universe and became interested in drama and filmmaking ("I needed to lose that accent," he said). "Walking on Dead Fish" isn't about Martin at all, but it is about everything he has lived for.
When Katrina struck three years ago, he just couldn't resist going down there with a camera and a clean page in his head, ready for a story. He had hoped to do a story about Tulane's displaced football team, but happened onto a better story: East St. John High School in LaPlace, La., which accepted hundreds of students from 20 high schools in devastated neighboring towns. Twenty of those students happened to be football players, who didn't seem all that likely to get along.
"Imagine if guys from Florida, Miami and Florida State had to play at the same school," Martin said on the phone from Los Angeles recently. "When they started off, it wasn't all rosy, but the way they came together in the end made me proud as a person."
There was the account, for instance of the star running back, who was black, losing his position to a white player. Instead of lashing out, the former starter channeled his anger into music. He wound up writing and performing songs for a congregation at church, lifting spirits.
"Under these circumstances, these 16-year-olds had every reason to fight the guys who were taking their positions, taking their girlfriends, taking their egos," Martin said.
"It is touching," Terry Bradshaw said of the film, recently on The Tonight Show. Bradshaw, a Louisiana native, became emotional the first time he heard about the film, and he is the narrator and one of the executive producers (along with Saints running back Reggie Bush).
Martin determined for himself a long time ago that "team" isn't some corny, naïve little fairy tale. As far as he is concerned, the guys he played with at Hofstra are his teammates for life. Tomlin is part of Martin's world. So is Rob Weingard, who was the point guard for part of Martin's tenure for coach Dick Berg, 1983-87.
"I love Long Island and I love Hofstra," said Martin (who was known as Frank, not Franklin, back then). "Hofstra helped me become a man. I learned to become friends with people from all kinds of different areas, different walks of life."
So it means something to him when he looks at the credits for "Walking on Dead Fish," and sees the name of his production company, Dutchmen Films. When he was a player, Hofstra's teams were known as the Flying Dutchmen.
Since he graduated, he has been an assistant coach to Tomlin at Adelphi, an assistant coach to Bob Hill at Fordham, a player agent and lately a would-be player in the film industry and part-time trainer/coach.
He has big dreams for his career, especially this film. He doesn't walk on eggshells when he talks about "Walking on Dead Fish" (the title refers to what it was like to navigate town on foot in the days after Katrina). Martin hopes to get a major distribution deal for his documentary. Universal Pictures has acquired the rights to make it into a full-fledged drama.
There is no one hero in the film. It is told from all points of view - starting players, bit players and everybody in between. "It's a perfect project," Martin's old friend Tomlin said, "for a guy like him."
