Remember that guy who went to all the high school football games? Tim Vanderberg does. His mockumentary 4th and Long is an ode to the local football faithful, the gridiron groupies. It’s also an entertaining and oddly touching comedy. Here discussing his inspiration, his cast and his local appeal is Timothy Vandenberg in a special Indie Interview.

TheFilmChair.com: What was the inspiration for the film? Did you know guys who hung out at the high school football games?

Timothy Vandenberg: It all started with a short 8-minute film we did for a “Make a movie in 24 hrs” local competition. We wanted to do the short with a real Friday night game to punctuate the reality of the time constraints of the contest. The idea to focus on the fans came out of a discussion about this local guy who seems to be at every sporting event. He walks or takes the bus everywhere in town, he doesn’t have a car but somehow manages to show up to EVERYTHING. And he is by far the most enthusiastic fan you’ll ever meet.

When we showed the short at the competition, we got a really great reaction and thought, “Hey, can we take this further.” From that point, there was a momentum that naturally led us to expand upon the idea, so we just kept going with it and things kept falling into place.

FC: How important was it to make these guys sympathetic?

TV: It was definitely important. These guys are essentially losers in their own respect, and if they didn’t have some sort of sympathetic humanity, the audience would not embrace them. You have to see something you can relate to in these characters or at least feel drawn to the fact that they love something so dearly. Or for most,it’s as simple as, “I knew that weird dude in high school. Oh my God, he is just like…,” and it makes them laugh. Especially in the case of The Chuck, a good portion of him is pretty dark, and if the humor of his situation isn’t perceived, he could be a real downer to watch.

FC: The performers were great. I love the scene where Larry, Coach Dansby and The Chuck are being interviewed. Did you let them improvise?

TV: We did. There is a large portion of the film that is scripted, but the majority is improvised with an outline structure of the scene. We would discuss the scene and the points we wanted to hit or some specific lines and then dive in with an interview. Much of the non-interview scenes are scripted. You’ll notice that two of the main actors are also the writers. This was a tremendous collaborative effort in the purest sense of it. We really built the scenes from the character out. The chief reason the film works is because these actors are so dead on; you never question their validity. This movie is very much a character-based film, and without their tremendous acting talents, the audience would have nobody to invest in.

FC: The film has great slapstick moments, which are even funnier considering the documentary look. It’s not something you usually see in mockumentaries. What made you decide to throw slapstick comedy and the documentary style together?

TV: Many of the decisions we made started with the characters themselves. Each one of the three actors brought a distinct type of comedy, and we played to each of their strengths. That’s what I was really excited about. There wasn’t redundancy, and the audience really gets a good ol’ Denny’s sampler of comedy. Chris Blanchard, who plays Coach D has a very rare gift of being blessed with both intellectual and physical comedy chops. His intensity really jumps out at you, and he’s fun to watch. His scenes with physical comedy just naturally fleshed themselves out, and his timing is where his skills shine. I’ve known each of these guys for years, so I know what they do best and how to play to those strengths.

FC: The high school football team was a real Wilmington-area team. The newscasters were real newscasters. How much community support did you get for the project?

TV: New Hanover High School and Principal Chris Furr couldn’t have been more supportive. They were great, they let us have a lot of freedom filming and even gave us full access to their spirit club which provided tons of props like the mascot uniforms.

I can’t say enough good things about Wilmington and its film community. It’s an interesting place, you have big TV shows like “One Tree Hill” that film here and big budget movies that film at Screen Gems’s studios and then independents shooting side by side with them. And it really seems every time I do a project, people from all those different worlds are always willing to help out each other. I find it’s much more of a supportive community than a competitive film community. I used to work as a cameraman at the local NBC affiliate, so those guys were great about pitching in.

FC: What’s next? Film festivals? New projects?

TV: We are currently submitting to festivals to raise the visibility of the film. We have had distributors who love the film but we don’t have any name actors to sell around, so we have to really build some buzz to make it more marketable to these guys so they’ll pick us up. We plan to see this project through distribution and promotion over the next year and I am currently writing a script that I hope to begin shooting in 2008.