Down and Derby is a wonderful feel-good-again movie that is racing to a theater near you. Look for it beginning April 15.
If you’ve ever been a Boy Scout, don’t miss this movie. If you’ve ever been a mom of a scouting son, don’t miss this movie. If you’ve ever been a dad to a Scout, don’t miss this movie. If you’ve ever had a brother in uniform and merit badge banderol, don’t miss this movie. If you are among the 70% of moviegoers who lament that Hollywood is out of touch with your values, don’t miss this movie. If you believe the public opinion poll that said 86% of people who go to movies want to laugh, don’t miss this movie.
If you’ve ever been to a Pinewood Derby. If you’ve ever been a contender. If you’ve ever held your breath while your car is put on the line – be you mom or dad or sibling – this movie may actually qualify as part of your family history.
Writer-producer-director Eric Hendershot is the father of five boys. His wife, Dickilyn, made sure that they all earned their Eagle Scout award. (Anyone experienced in Scouting understands why the mothers are also honored at an Eagle Scout ceremony.) By the time the last of their Eagle Scout boys left for his mission, Eric and Dickilyn had been to 22 Pinewood Derby races.
Greg Germann and Lauren Holly with newcomer Adam Hicks in a scene from the new comedy from Eric Hendershot, Down and Derby.
Down and Derby is a delightful romp through the marvelous mania associated with this mother of all races. The raw materials for the Pinewood Derby racecars come in kits. A block of pinewood. Some wheels. An axle and instructions. Specifications are given. Maximum width = 2.25 inches. Maximum length = 7 inches. Maximum weight = 5 ounces. The cars must pass inspection. On the big day they race them down a wooden ramp with cheers and jeers and judges. What a wonderful opportunity for boys to build something! What a lovely stress-free place for young men to learn to compete!
The Pinewood derby isn’t rocket science. It’s brain surgery.
It seems to be a perfect event for kids. But the official rules written for the boys begin with this suggestion: “Discuss your ideas with your parent or adult partner and determine a plan for the construction of your derby entry.” It is in this ambiguous realm of “parent or adult partner” where the legends of engineer dads grinding axles on NASA lathes or testing the aerodynamic efficiency of the little wood car in a wind tunnel at Damien / Chrysler or coating their entry with baked-on auto acrylic at Earl Scheib are spawned. And that of course is where the fun of Down and Derby begins.
In writing the screenplay, Eric tapped into a remarkable reservoir of memories. His films are distinguished by his inordinate attention to the warm and funny realities so often overlooked. When I asked Eric where the idea for Down and Derby came from, he remembered his first Pinewood Derby as a proud Scout papa.
“My oldest son, Steele and I put this car together and showed up at the church,” he said. “I was embarrassed. Many of the cars looked like they had been factory made. I could see my reflection in the paint. The designs were out of this world. The wheels were ground and smoothed, and the axles heat-treated. Then I noticed something strange. When it came time to race the cars, the boys ran off and played basketball at the other end of the cultural hall. The dads, with jaws of stone, white knuckles and plastic smiles crowded in close to the track.
Dads desperate to win the derby “borrow” the greatest Pinewood Derby car in in the history of the world — from none other than their biggest competitor.
“I looked at all of this madness and thought to myself, There’s a movie here!” he added. “So I went home and sketched out a story about dads trying to win the derby. With coaching, wrestling, and other projects I shelved the idea. By the way, Steele won the Safest Driver Award. That’s a nice way of saying he took last.”
My interview with Eric Hendershot continued:
KM: How did what was going on in so-called “Mormon Cinema” influence your decision to resurrect your old idea and make a movie about Pinewood Derby?
EH: Observing what has been going on in LDS cinema, I have wanted to throw my hat into the ring. I didn’t want to make an LDS film because there would be no foreign market or domestic TV/DVD. I had to make a film that wasn’t LDS-focused but yet make a film that the LDS community considered theirs. My son Steele, who produced the past three films for us, felt that the Pinewood Derby film was a perfect “cross-over” movie. We began with the belief that not only Mormons but also Scouting families everywhere would love it.”
KM: I understand that your whole family was involved in making the movie.
EH: “This was definitely a family film made for families by a family. I couldn’t have done it without my family. Besides our five Eagle Scout boys we raised three girls. The production value on the screen is worth twice what it actually cost because of the diverse talents of my family so willingly given to the project.
My wife, Dickilyn, of course is indispensable. She reads and edits everything I write. She does all of the casting with me. We work together in choosing locations and hiring crew. She has a great sense about these things. In many ways she functions like a hybrid line producer/super crew, always working to make the film all it can be. She designed the set, oversaw its construction, and even hauled furniture from our house to decorate it. My oldest son, Steele, ran the business end of the production. He received his business management degree from BYU. He was the cool head who handled the money, ran the office, kept everyone paid, almost everyone happy and brought us in on budget.
Our oldest daughter, Hayley, was the costume designer. Having done this on several of our films, she has become a seasoned pro. Hayley’s husband, Torrey (a local dentist), acted as a technical advisor and let us use his dental office. Taylor, our number 2 son, was the art director and prop master. He got zero sleep during the making of the movie. He was up all night making cars, decorating sets, and rigging the toilet for one of the very funny gag sequences.
(KM: “Never again,” Taylor told me in a telephone interview. But he talked so enthusiastically about the fresh scenes and funny gags he contributed to the movie I have a suspicion he’ll be back.)
EH: Our youngest son Kade, an all-state guard on the high school basketball team, was focused on getting ready for his mission but pitched into the family project as the on-set decorator and assistant prop man. Our twins, Beau and Brock, were both in school during production but ditched a class or two when necessary to take up the slack for our too-lean production team. We even got my brother Chris and his son Drew to build the set. They build houses and I think the set is perfect. Our younger daughters, Chrissy and Khalee, were a big help in the scripting process. During the shoot Khalee was sidelined with the birth of Cale, our 5th grandchild.”
KM: Knowing how much you like to make the magic moments of real life a part of your films I am surprised that you didn’t write the baby into the script.
EH: (laughs) We thought about it.
KM: I love Down and Derby because I am a great supporter of independent filmmakers who produce the kind of family-friendly movies that Hollywood seems to ignore. But I also appreciate how difficult it is to finance independent films. How did you finance Down and Derby?
EH: Of course, finding the money to make our movies is always the challenge. Dickilyn and I drove to Sacramento and read the script to Greg Porter and John Stone. They are two very bright and talented entrepreneurs who have had enormous success in recent years. They liked the script and were interested. Greg invested. John Stone agreed to raise the necessary funding and became executive producer.
KM: I understand it was John’s first venture into film.
EH: It was, but John is brilliant when it comes to business and at the end of the day making movies is a business. John is a BYU graduate and received his MBA from Harvard. He has been with us throughout filming, editing, and has made some great contributions to the film creatively. John created a new company, Stonehaven Media, to market and distribute the film.
Writer, Director Eric Hendershot (left) with
Executive Producer John Stone on location for Down and Derby.
KM: So when you are asked by young filmmakers how to get their movies made you say, “It’s easy – just find someone brilliant, successful, wealthy, motivated, connected, and who loves your script like John Stone?”
EH: Exactly. That’s all it takes.
KM: A familiar criticism of “Mormon Cinema” is the absence of recognizable talent. You decided to go to the Hollywood mainstream for your actors?
EH: Yes, for most of them. We felt that we needed some familiar faces so we decided to go SAG. We hired a well-known casting director named Mike Fenton. Mike’s credits include Hollywood blockbusters like, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and all of the Back to the Future movies. Mike’s first suggestion to play the mom was Lauren Holly (Dumb and Dumber). We thought we’d be lucky to get her to even read the script. She read it, loved it and decided to come to St. George with her children and nanny for four weeks.
KM: Who else was in your cast?
EH: “Greg Germann (Ally McBeal) loved the script and signed on to play the lead as Phil Davis. Hunter Tylo (The Bold and the Beautiful) plays the wife of one of the leads. Perry Anzilotti (Air Bud II) plays a wonderful character named “Big Jimmy,” a little man with a big dog, big wife, big lawnmower, big truck.
Ross Brockley is a comedian who got a lot of attention for playing the freeloading son in the Holiday Inn commercials. Ross plays Blaine, another Pinewood Derby dad on the cul-de-sac. Pat Morita of Karate Kid fame has a fun role in the film. The late Buddy Hackett’s son Sandy Hackett plays Phil’s frantic boss, Larry. Marc Raymond is a Utah actor but perfect for the role of the nemesis, Ace Montana. Well known character actor, Bobby Costanzo, (City Slickers, Total Recall) came to St. George and be a part of the film.
Adam Hicks was 11 years old when he was cast to play Brady Davis. He was terrific. For members of the Church it will be of interest that during the filming his family was invited to the St. George Visitors’ Center. They were most impressed and became interested in the doctrines of Mormonism. Since then Adam and his mother, Lucy, have become members of the Church. Adam also joined the Boy Scouts and has become a real life Pinewood Derby contender.
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Adam Hicks was cast in my film, The 12 Dogs of Christmas, but it was only after the fact that I discovered he had worked with Eric. And only after being on location a few days that we discovered we would all be attending church together during the production in a place called Mexico, Maine.
I have had the pleasure of knowing Eric Hendershot a long time. His first foray into motion pictures began with an idea he brought to me for a feature film about high school wrestling. Both Eric and I wrestled in high school. The script that evolved from our collaboration was a curious blend of Towanda, Pennsylvania and Davis High School in Kaysville, Utah with more autobiographical insights than either of us may be willing to confess. The movie was Take Down, starring Lorenzo Lamas (who went on to become a big TV star in a B Cable series called “Renegade”). Take Down was filmed at the old American Fork High School years before Mormons making movies in Utah became popular sport.
Eric was a teacher and wrestling coach at Alta High School when Take Down opened in theaters. Seeing his ideas on the screen and his “name in lights” fueled Eric’s passion to write. His ever-supportive wife bought him an old Adler typewriter and he taught himself to type. “The kids were young and went to bed early.” Eric recalls. “That’s when I did my writing and dreaming.”
Eric reminded me that in 1980 he pitched me on another movie idea called Rainy Daze – a romantic comedy that caught the attention of high powered Creative Artist Agency.
“It’s good. Write it,” I said. He claims now that I gave him the confidence to leave his coaching and become a screenwriter. Gratefully he didn’t blame me for that questionable influence during his years as a struggling writer. On the eve of the successful opening of his new and funny film I will happily take whatever credit he is willing to give.
One of Eric’s early scripts called The Imposter sold to ABC and became a World Premiere Movie of the Week. It starred Tony Geary, Billy Dee Williams and Lorna Patterson. The Hendershots sold their refurbished home in the avenues of Salt Lake and moved to Los Angeles. Eric’s next script, Dream Machine, was made into a movie staring Cory Haim.
Like the heroic characters in most success stories, Eric experienced his years of struggle. He moved to Northern California where he worked days and wrote nights. Dickilyn raised the children. All stayed active in the Church. It is that commitment Eric believes that opened the windows of opportunity – and as if it emerged from the pages of one of his own stories his desperate hopes and patient prayers were answered by a “magic phone call” that came at the very moment his dreams of being a screenwriter teetered on the precipice of extinction.
The call was from a producer who had a great idea but needed a great writer. Eric rose to the occasion and created a screenplay called On Our Own. It is an almost unknown footnote in Utah film history that this was the film that launched the company Feature Films for Families.
The project moved the family to St. George. Eric remembers, “We felt it would be a perfect place to raise our family. It seemed like a good location for what I was doing – half way between LA and SLC.”
St. George would become the inspiration and location for a long list of successful films written and directed by Eric Hendershot, including, Tyler – A Real Hero, the first in a video series of Real Hero stories. Tyler – A Real Hero was narrated by San Francisco 49ers Quarterback Steve Young. Other films in Hendershot’s Real Heroes series included, Thurl, Forward with New Power, with Utah Jazz great Thurl Bailey. Another was McKay – Million Dollar Missionary, with LDS athlete McKay Christensen (who passed up a million-dollar offer to play major league baseball to go on a mission to Japan). Kim – Vertically Challenged is about a young woman living with a genetic disease that limits growth and how she faces life with courage and faith.
Bolstered by the success of Tyler – A Real Hero, investors put up money for Eric to move to feature length films. Clubhouse Detectives was the first in a series of direct to video family friendly feature films. When I asked Eric where the idea came from he quipped, “I saw Michael Ballam in the temple film and was so impressed with him that I wrote a script around him as the main character.” (He plays another bad guy, by the way, for those who may have seen his other role.) Clubhouse Detectives was a kid’s thriller with the same premise as Hitchcock’s Rear Window. The film was picked up by Promark Entertainment Group. That led to an alliance and a series of projects for the Hendershots, who by now had begun to perfect their unique approach to “Family Films Made for Families by a Family.”
Angels in the Attic was the first of the films from the Promark/Hendershot collaboration. The film sold immediately to the Disney Channel and they gave it a world premiere – which in case you didn’t know is huge for a low budget straight to video movie.
Eric is, by any definition of the word, prolific. The writing and directing continued – A Kid Called Danger, Baby Bedlam, Message In a Cell Phone, and Horse Crazy. Promark then asked Eric to write and direct three films based on the original Clubhouse Detectives. They found new kids and shot all three films in St. George within a one-year period. I wouldn’t be surprised if Eric holds the world’s record for writing and directing the most feature length films in a 12-month period. Over a period of nine years Eric wrote and directed 10 films. Nine of them continue to play under contract with HBO and SHOWTIME.
During all of this Eric had been watching the rise of “Mormon Cinema” and made the decision to dust off his favorite and best idea – the happy madness of the Pinewood Derby.
Down and Derby was filmed during the 50th anniversary of the Pinewood Derby. The Derby was founded in Manhattan Beach CA in 1953 by a scoutmaster by the name of Don Murphy. Mr. Murphy – now in his late 80’s – was flown to St. George for the final scene. He was introduced to the 300-plus people gathered for the big finale. Only moments before, famed actors Lauren Holly and Greg Germann had been introduced to the crowd and received polite applause. When Don Murphy was recognized as the man who founded Pinewood Derby, there was a wild standing ovation.
The starting line — where it’s all over but the shouting.
It is estimated that since 1953, more than 100 million Pinewood cars have been built and raced. After you see Down and Derby, you will wonder how many of them were actually built by Boy Scouts. Whoops! I don’t want to give away the story but you can be sure it is great fun.
The film was shot in St. George, Utah. Eric said, “St. George was a wonderful place to make this film. The cooperation from the community was unparalleled. The weather was great and the people really got behind us. More than 300 people, many in scouting uniforms, came out to support us when we filmed the final big race scene at the St. George Musical Theatre.”
Credits on the film include several noted Utahns, including directors of photography, T.C. Christensen (Testaments, Work and The Glory, Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Restoration) and Gordon Lonsdale (Best Two Years, Northern Exposure (TV), Magnificent Seven (TV)). Editor, Tony Lombardo. (Fat Albert, Uncle Buck, Popeye, My Cousin Vinny). Music composer, Chuck E. Meyers – who, according to Hendershot, “pulled out all of the stops with original songs and big symphony melodies orchestrated with live instruments.”
It is an interesting postscript that his year is the 75th anniversary of the Cub Scouts of America, and the theme is “Race to Cub Scouting”. If you love Scouting, you’ll love this movie. If you love to laugh, you’ll love this movie. If you’ve been waiting for a feel-good-again movie, race to a theater near you.
