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| Tuesday, August 02, 2005 |
Meet the rogue Jewish filmmakers behind Murderball
 With very little filmmaking experience under their belts, Dana Adam Shapiro and Henry Alex Rubin had a single dream: To start their own film production company. When they approached a potential investor with the idea, he shot back to the duo, "Why a whole company? Just make a film."
Well, they did exactly that. Murderball, their film about quadriplegic rugby players which hits theaters this month, was the winner of the Documentary Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Not bad for their first foray into filmmaking.
Whether by car wreck, fist fight, gun shot, or rogue bacteria, the larger than life men featured in Murderball were forced to live life sitting down. In their own version of the full-contact sport, they smash the hell out of each other in custom-made gladiator-like wheelchairs. And no, they don't wear helmets.
From the gyms of middle America to the Olympic arena in Athens, Greece, Murderball tells the story of a group of world-class athletes unlike any ever shown on screen. In addition to smashing chairs, it will smash every stereotype you've ever had about "gimps" and "cripples." It is a film about family, revenge, honor, sex (yes, they can) and the triumph of love over loss. But most of all, it is a film about standing up, even after your spirit -- and your spine -- has been crushed.
"Once we started shooting, people in wheelchairs started to look different," says Shapiro. "And then everybody started to look different. You noticed things: finger function, trunk muscles, handicap parking signs. We wanted to make a movie that changed people's minds."
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