You might call Christopher Hunt’s latest documentary project a dream come true.
Hunt, a filmmaker from Oklahoma City, came up with his latest idea for a film while he was asleep last April.
“I really wanted to do a sports story but didn’t really have any ideas,” Hunt said. “One night, at like 3 a.m., I woke up and thought, ‘I really want to do a story on Eddie Sutton.’”
Sutton is the basketball coach who made Arkansas a national power and later did the same for his alma mater, Oklahoma State. Hunt is an avid OSU fan.
Within three months of dreaming up his project, Hunt found himself in Sutton’s living room in Tulsa, pitching his idea. The caveat was that Hunt didn’t want to tell a watered down, G-rated version of Sutton’s life.
He wanted to tell it all - the alcoholism, the crawling to Lexington, then leaving Kentucky in shame after one of college basketball’s biggest recruiting scandals of the 20th Century. And, of course, he wanted to tell the story of one of college basketball’s worst tragedies, when 10 members of the Oklahoma State basketball program died in a plane crash on their way home from a game at Colorado in 2001.
The Suttons agreed.
“They’ve always been a private family outside of basketball, so for them to do this is a really big deal,” Hunt said.
The goal is to have the film completed sometime in 2018. Hunt’s company, 1577 Productions, has raised more than $50,000 through a public campaign for the film, in addition to undisclosed amounts from private investors. Hunt said he is about halfway toward the funds needed to pay for the film and associated costs like 4k cameras and cross-country travel.
Hunt said he has been in talks with some companies about distribution rights. It may make it to network TV, but at minimum the hope is to make the film available through a video-on-demand provider like Netflix or Amazon. It also will be submitted to film festivals like the one in Hot Springs each October.
The film comes at an interesting time in Sutton’s life. It has been well-documented that Sutton is not in good health, and the 81-year-old has been bound to a wheelchair.
It also comes at a time when Sutton is being passed over by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Sutton has been a finalist multiple times, but apparently is being left out for some variation of not winning a national championship, the NCAA scandal at Kentucky and the alcohol-related car crash that forced his resignation at Oklahoma State.
Some might argue that if someone with as much baggage as Rick Pitino is allowed to stay in the hall, then surely Sutton’s 806 wins, three Final Fours and 26 NCAA Tournament appearances at four programs warrant the same honor, regardless of his past transgressions. The thought is that Sutton’s induction is inevitable; the worry that it will come posthumously.
Hunt insists his film is not a pitch to fast-track Sutton into the hall, but admits he would be happy to see it happen.
“Eddie has been somewhat forgotten, so if this film succeeds in maybe re-examining his legacy and what he meant to college basketball, I’ll be very happy about that,” Hunt said. “This is not a propaganda film. I just want it to be as honest as possible. If it succeeds in getting him back on the radar a little bit, then that’s great.”
Kansas coach Bill Self, who said it was “a little embarrassing” to be inducted into the Naismith hall before his mentor, Sutton, is part of an A-list of people who have agreed to be interviewed for the film. Others include John Calipari and Bill Clinton, who formed a lifelong friendship with Sutton while Arkansas’ governor in the 1970s and ’80s.
The film will include plenty of backstory about Sutton’s 11 years in Arkansas, where he went 260-75 and led the Razorbacks to NCAA Tournaments in all of his final nine seasons, including 1978 when the Razorbacks made the Final Four for the first time in more than three decades. The film crew has spent several days in Fayetteville already and will be back in town the week after Thanksgiving.
In interviews for the film, Sutton opens up about his strained relationship with Frank Broyles, his infamous comments about leaving for Kentucky and how the Arkansas fans eventually forgave and embraced him over the years.
“I think this is a human story - an exploration into our humanity,” Hunt said. “The way Coach was able to inspire so many people and have personal tragedy, and be at the center of college basketball’s biggest scandal at the time…there are some layers to it.
“The theme we’re aiming toward is redemption. In a lot of ways, I think he was able to redeem himself, but he certainly fell. There’s no doubt about it.”