Filmmaker Rusty Baker was attending Radio-Television-Film School at the University of North Texas in Denton when he met Kevin Von Erich. The two quickly became friends and Kevin invited Baker to meet his father, Fritz (Jack Adkisson). After talking about movie making, Fritz gave Baker a box containing every 8mm home movie reel that he had filmed of the Von Erich boys growing up, including Jack Jr., his first son who died as a child. Fritz wanted the films transferred to video so his grandchildren (Kristen, Jillian, Ross, and Marshall) could watch them. While transferring the movies, Baker was amazed by the footage and its glimpse into private lives of the Von Erich wrestling family. Not only did the films show Kevin, David, Kerry, Mike and Chris growing up in a traditional sense, they also showed the fame that Fritz still held in the 1960s and 1970s. At one point, Frtiz takes his son, Kevin, to Japan and the two are swarmed by adoring fans. Later, the films capture both Kevin and David Von Erich's first wrestling matches. Rusty Baker pitched an idea to Fritz and Kevin to give interviews that tied to the home movies for a documentary workshop class he was taking at UNT in the Summer of 1997. The two agreed. Frtiz was notorious for turning down countless of interviews and movie offers over the years, so Baker was bewildered when Fritz agreed to do an interview at the last minute. His only two conditions were to know what the questions where prior to answering and to tape the interview on his backyard porch swing (hence the car and airplane background noise). Baker and his friend, (self-proclaimed wrestling fanatic) Clint Davis, scrambled overnight to come up with nostalgic questions that focused on the Von Erich family's triumpths, rather than the tragedies that most interviews had focused on in the past. With the Internet still in its infancy, there wasn't much information to use as a resource, other than the opinionated fan forums that ruled the day. Fritz honored his part of the deal and gave incredible insight to the questions (even though a few were a little off base). This was Baker's first interview of his career, and he didn't yet exactly know which direction the documentary would go. Leaning on the home movies as an untouched stories, Baker also focused on a Japan fan segement that he has yet to air (coming soon). No one would have known that this would be Fritz Von Erich's last interview before passing away later that September. Fritz and Kevin's interviews led to the making of "Faded Glory, The Von Erich Story," which was a tribute documentary to Fritz, released in 1999. Similar to a thesis project, the documentary was Baker's college "special problem" project in his senior year in film school. The problem being, what do you do with an unfinished documentary when one of the main contributors pass away. Faded Glory became an instant success in the film and video festivals in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. The documetnary was picked up by local PBS affiliate KERA and earned the highest ratings for the channel, even eclipsing the Dallas TV market's entire line up of channels whenever it aired. Even up-and-coming techie Mark Cuban digitized the video and released it on his Broadcast.com, making Faded Glory the first full-length documentary on the Internet. Faded Glory was never released for profit. This full-length interview of Fritz Von Erich is being released now to honor his many, many fans that live all over the world. Thank you for watching!
4 окт 2024
