Faded Glory, The Von Erich Story is a documentary that was created, produced, and directed by Rusty Baker while attending Radio/Television/Film school at the University of North Texas in 1999. The documentary contains original video from Von Erich, The Legend Lives On, which produced during a documentary workshop case at UNT in 1997. Once Fritz Von Erich died, Rusty Baker and Kevin Von Erich agreed to make Faded Glory as a tribute to Fritz and his legacy. The video also contains many of the Von Erich family's personal home movies and wrestling footage, which was all used with permission of Kevin Von Erich. Original wrestling commentator Bill Mercer, who also taught at UNT's RTVF Department, agreed to serve as the video's narrator.
The documentary was shown at the 1999 Dallas Video Festival, USA Film Festival, and Fort Worth Film Festival. Kevin and Rusty would appear at each festival and answer questions from the audience. Faded Glory aired multiple times on Dallas/Fort Worth's PBS station KERA, garnering some of the station's best ratings in decades. It was also the first feature-length documentary to be featured on Mark Cuban's Broadcast.com.
Nearly 15 years after this documentary was made, Kevin Von Erich would sell the entire World Class Championship Wrestling video library, including all Von Erich family wrestling footage, to World Wresting Entertainment, Inc. With WWE controlling all Von Erich footage, the copyright-protected documentary was somehow still banned from being shown. This ban is also enforced on RU-vid, although numerous people had already posted the documentary without the consent of the filmmaker, Rusty Baker. He is currently disputing the ban and is attempting to repost the now 24-year-old student project to RU-vid.
UPDATE: All original footage of the interviews are available for an updated version. Please show your support for any and all edits by commenting below.
16 окт 2024
