FAYETTEVILLE — Former Arkansas basketball coach Nolan Richardson will narrate a documentary on former Arkansas and Southern Cal quarterback Mitch Mustain, which is set to debut next month.
The Identity Theft of Mitch Mustain will premiere at the Little Rock Film Festival from May 15-19. The documentary chronicles the life of Mustain, a former standout quarterback at Springdale High School who played one season for the Razorbacks before transferring to USC.
"It was a pipe dream, to be honest," said Matt Wolfe, the film's producer, of having Richardson narrate. "If there is any authority in the state of Arkansas, he's certainly one of them. If he was in agreement, I wanted him to do it. He saw some value in the story."
It is the second documentary association for Richardson, who was fired as the Razorbacks' head basketball coach in 2002. He was the subject of the ESPN film 40 Minutes of Hell last year, which documented his time at Arkansas.
"I think he was exposed to a lot of the Xs and Os of filmmaking throughout that process," Wolfe said. "He didn't seem like it was his first time behind the microphone. He fell into his comfort zone, ultimately."
Mustain currently plays for the San Jose SaberCats of the Arena Football League. Last year he signed a minor league baseball contract with the Chicago White Sox organization.
The Mustain film runs around 90 minutes and features interviews with Mustain and several media members who covered him from his time as the national player of the year in high school until the end of his college football career in 2010.
"As a Razorbacks fan, you always wondered why," Wolfe said. "It's a hard scenario to justify, so it's a movie that I would have wanted to see myself, but I didn't want to be made by anyone else. It's not that I want to rehash anything, but I had some questions that other folks do, too."