![]() His documentary film, "Through the Fire," earned multiple Best Documentary awards at major film festivals during 2005. ![]() But its hero is a man who is at peace with it all.īorn in New York in 1964, Jonathan Hock is an eight-time Emmy Award winning director, writer and editor. "The Best That Never Was" is a story infused with sadness and loss. For this experience, Marcus feels blessed beyond any measure of wealth or fame that might have come his way had things played out differently. It is here that the best of sport still resides - in its ability to tear down the isolation and separateness that permeate everyday life in America and to give people something bigger than themselves to share, a way to transcend the distinctions that otherwise keep them apart. It would be naive to believe that Marcus singlehandedly gave rise to a "New South." But it would be cynical to disbelieve that he did help change the lives of the people of a small town with a horrible past. ![]() When Marcus was establishing himself as the best high school running back in the nation, Philadelphians - white and black - took pride in him, and in the fully integrated team that he led. Marcus was born a month before the killings, and eventually would join the first class to go through integrated public schools in the state. Philadelphia, Miss., was the site of one of the most notorious acts of terrorism during the Civil Rights Era in the 1960s: the murders of three young men helping to register black voters who had come to Philadelphia in 1964 to investigate the burning of a church that supported civil-rights activities. Today, Marcus is a 46-year-old part-time truck driver, struggling to get by, remembered by those who watched him as "the best that never was." The lure of fast money the brutality of his sport and above all, a young man's lack of understanding of what the big-time college football world demanded of him and how fast it could turn on him all these led to Marcus's downfall as an athlete. It's the story of Marcus Dupree, who was one of the most famously recruited high school football players of his generation. This is a story I've been wanting to put on film for years, a story that embodies both what's right and what's wrong about sports in America, and since it plays out over the course of the last thirty years, I thought it would be perfect for this project. When ESPN invited me to be one of the select directors for its ambitious 30-for-30 project, I accepted without hesitation.
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