Appalachian News Express Story

Last weekend the Appalachian News Express ran a big story in their Weekend Edition (July 13-14) on The Rivalry: Red V. Blue.

The RVB story occupied the top half of the sports page, taking up the entire above-the-fold area! A big thank you goes to the Sports Editor, Randy White. Read all about it below.

Red V. Blue: Documentary explores the rivalry

by Randy White

The battle lines are clearly drawn when it comes to Kentucky vs. Louisville basketball. If you’re a Kentuckian, you either bleed Red or your bleed Blue.

How did it start? Where do loyalties lie within communities and homes during the game in the Bluegrass?

An upcoming documentary titled The Rivalry: Red V. Blue will look at every aspect of the Commonwealth feud.

Film director Rory Delaney is from Louisville and his friendship with Paintsville native and Kentucky fan Wade Smith kind of helped fuel the idea of the documentary.

“I’m from Louisville and am a Cardinal fan and Wade (Smith) is from Paintsville and a Wildcat fan,” Delaney siad. “We kind of started texting and interacting and smack talking each other. He sent some hilarious texts after Cal picked up his fourth straight win over Louisville. That’s kind of how the idea got started. Then we started asking around and did some research and we found that there hadn’t been anything on the rivalry.”

The rivalry is at its peak right now with both Kentucky and Louisville winning a national championship in back-to-back seasons.

“It’s kind of the perfect time to do this film about this great rivalry,” Delaney said. “With the success that Kentucky has had under Cal and winning a national championship in 2012 and Louisville winning it this year, the rivalry may be at its all-time high.”

“It got really interesting when the Cats and Cards met in the Final Four in 2012. Of course, UK won and went onto win the national championship. But with Louisville following that up with a national championship this year it’s kind of unprecedented that one state could win back-to-back championships and be on such different sides and point of views of each other.”

The documentary has footage from both Final Fours in New Orleans and Atlanta.

“We filmed both title runs in New Orleans for the Cats and in Atlanta for the Cards this year,” Delaney said. “New Orleans was special because the two of them met in the Final Four. It was one of those great games and seeing the fans celebrate in Bourbon Street at two in the morning was awesome. And then this year we were excited to get to shoot in Atlanta and it didn’t disappoint either!”

The film isn’t just about the past two seasons; it goes back into the history of the rivalry about the schools located just 75 miles apart.

“We interviewed a lot of different people from both sides of the rivalry,” Delaney said. “We got to interview Oscar Combs about being in the original Dream Game. We got to interview Tom Leach in Memorial Coliseum. Joe B. Hall talked about playing with the Globetrotters and it was an interesting interview. We also talked to Denny Crum too about building Louisville into a premier program coming from the tutelage of UCLA and Coach John Wooden.”

Everybody knows the dynamic. Everybody knows that UK refers to Louisville as “Little Brother,” but the film looks at the origins of the term and the bad feelings it exposes within Cardinal fans.

“We definitely look at the relationship between the two schools and their views on one another,” Delaney said. “Everybody knows that Kentucky refers to Louisville as ‘Little Brother,’ but not everybody knows that Eddie Sutton came up with the term before they played the Cardinals one year. It’s one of those terms that Louisville fans can’t stand and it’s used as an insult from Kentucky fans to Cardinal fans because Kentucky has the tradition and Louisville basically came into the national spotlight in the ’80s.”

The rivalry goes beyond the court as well. Friendships pause for the day. Bragging rights are at stake for a year and lives can change on the outcome of the game.

“We visited this barbershop in Louisville and one of the barbers was a UK fan and in 2012 after the Cats won, he was getting so much business and getting such a hard time form his co-workers at the barbershop that he decided to open his own barbershop eight blocks away,” Delaney said. “You also get to hear the story of a small business owner in Paintsville who does frame work and won’t frame anything associated with Louisville fans. And then you get to see husbands who root for Louisville and wives who root for Kentucky and how they root against each other. The rivalry has so many dynamics in people’s lives.”

The rivalry has only been viewed by both sides from one person. Coach Rick Pitino. Pitino caoched UK in the ’90s and brought the program back from the dead and won a national title in ’96. Pitino also coached the Cardinals to the national title this season; he’s the only coach in NCAA history to accomplish that feat, especially 75 miles apart.

“If you loot at it, Pitino knows this rivalry better than anybody,” Delaney said. “He’s coached on both sidelines and has won a national title for each school. That’s Shakesperian having that much success for two different teams, especially rival schools. And when Coach Cal took over, it kind of put the protege against the mentor.”

“There are so many story lines and plot twists in the rivalry. With 11 national championships between the two schools and their winning back-to-back seasons it makes this rivalry the best and most heated rivalry in the country. DUke and North Carolina are in the same conference and meet two or three times a year. Kentucky and Louisville are in different conferences and only meet once a year unless they meet again in the national tournament.”

The film isn’t quite ready for a release date just yet. Delaney is pushing for a late November release right before the upcoming season which holds so many story lines going forward and will be one of the most hyped games of the season because of the Wildcats’ stellar recruiting class and the Cardinals hailing as the reigning national champions.

Fore more information on the project or to donate money visit the website at redvbluefilm.com. There is also a kickstarter campaign for this project to help with costs of paying for licensing and trying to get the film released by November.

To read about Red V. Blue in the Lexington Herald, click here. To read about RVB in the Louisville Courier-Journal, click here.

Governor John Y. Brown Jr. to be Interviewed

Former Kentucky Governor John Y. Brown Jr. has agreed to be interviewed for The Rivalry: Red V. Blue.

Given his pivotal role in creating the annual UK-Louisville game, Governor Brown’s insights will be invaluable to the documentary. Most of all, we can’t wait to ask the Governor about his legendary half-red, half-blue blazer that he wore to the 1983 Dream Game in Knoxville, TN!

Red V. Blue is the first movie to document college basketball’s hottest rivalry: Louisville vs. Kentucky. To help make Kentucky film history, preorder our DVD on Kickstarter today!

Elvis V. Beatles: Jerry Tipton UK Basketball Notes Mention

Today Red V. Blue was featured in the Jerry Tipton UK basketball notes column in the Lexington Herald.

Jerry is a Hall of Fame basketball journalist who has covered Kentucky Wildcats basketball since 1981, so it is an honor to be included in his weekly round-up. Producer Wade Smith stole the show with his hilarious “Elvis V. Beatles” metaphor. Read all about it below.

Image via New York Times

Elvis v. Beatles

Wade Smith, the producer for a planned documentary film on the Kentucky-Louisville basketball rivalry, used the heaviest of pop music heavyweights to describe how the competition compels fans to line up on one side or the other.

“It’s either Elvis Presley or the Beatles,” Smith said in putting in context the documentary titled, The Rivalry: Red v. Blue.

Smith, a native of Paintsville, would cast UK as the beloved Elvis and U of L as the Beatles, who he said can claim “an elite group of diehard (fans).”

Since the fall of 2011, Smith and director Rory Delaney have worked on what they intend to be a 90-minute documentary on the UK-U of L basketball rivalry. They hope to have the film in theaters shortly before next season’s UK-U of L game. Each spoke about the good fortune of timing: UK won the 2012 national championship, U of L the 2013 national championship.

“We got totally lucky,” Delaney said.

In what might be a stretch, Smith lumped UK Coach John Calipari’s threat to end the series as another attention-getter. Of course, Calipari asked UK fans to choose which traditional series they could accept ending: UK-U of L, UK-Indiana, UK-North Carolina.

“Even if they didn’t play each other, I think the rivalry would still be there,” Smith said. “It’s so strong.”

Delaney, a native of Louisville now living in southern California, linked Calipari’s threat to end the UK-U of L series to his “soap opera” relationship with Cards Coach Rick Pitino.

“It’s strange,” he said of the idea of ending the UK-U of L series.

Of course, Kentucky did end its series with Indiana. “I still think it’s crazy,” Delaney said. “It’s such an important rivalry as well.”

But that’s perhaps another documentary for another day.

Other rivalries (Duke-North Carolina? Kansas-Missouri?) might seem as compelling as UK-U of L. Key word: Might.

“In other states, they like the football team just as much as the basketball team,” Smith said. “Especially in Eastern Kentucky, it’s all basketball. We didn’t even know we had a football team until this year.”

Delaney and Smith have launched an effort to raise funds to pay for the right to use the school’s logos ($8,000 to each school) and other final costs in making the documentary. Information is at http://redvbluefilm.com/louisville-basketball-rivalry.

Click here to read Jerry Tipton’s full column, entitled “Rupp renovation involves tricky negotiations.”

Click here to back The Rivalry: Red V. Blue on kickstarter.

Kentucky Pride

Last night we surged past $10,000 in kickstarter pledges thanks to Kentucky Pride and the generosity of “Red V. Blue” nation!

To say thank you, we released a new video “Kentucky Pride,” featuring one of our favorite UK fans, Doug Young.

Doug Young owns the Finishing Touch frame shop in Paintsville, KY. In this clip he explains what Kentucky basketball means to him and so many others in the state.

But Doug’s message of the importance of tradition is as applicable to Louisville fans as it is to Kentucky fans. Just as Doug is a lifelong Wildcats supporter because UK was his dad’s team, there are thousands of Louisville Cardinal fans with similar stories whose love for the Cards grew out of their love for a family member or good friend.

“Red V. Blue” isn’t just a basketball documentary. It’s a movie about the rich traditions of Kentucky and their meaning to generations of Kentuckians.

Today producer Adam Lefkoe was a guest on the Leach Report with the Voice of the Wildcats, Tom Leach.

This weekend we will be featured in the Lexington Herald and the Appalachian News-Express.

Additionally, director Rory Owen Delaney was interviewed by Surreelfilm. The interview will air Sunday at 1 pm EST on Crescent Hill Radio in Louisville and will be simulcast on crescenthillradio.com!

To back us on kickstarter, click here and hit the green “back this project” button!

Thank you for your support so far. We have come a long way and owe it all to you!

Kentucky Pride from Rory Owen Delaney on Vimeo.

Courier Journal Article

Saturday’s edition of the Courier Journal featured a great article in print and online about Red V. Blue. The story includes interviews with director Rory Owen Delaney and producer Wade Smith. Read all about it below!

Documentary captures universities of Kentucky and Louisville in title seasons
by Adam Himmelsbach

Rory Delaney is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker whose connection to his hometown of Louisville has endured despite the distance. He loves U of L basketball, detests UK, and feels at home when he meets someone with similar tastes.

So imagine his concern, then, when he was aboard a small prop plane in 2008, flying above swaths of contaminated wasteland for his documentary “Toxic Soup,” when he realized his pilot was a diehard Wildcats fan. He held on a little tighter and smiled a little harder, but ultimately he and Paintsville native Wade Smith forged a friendship that was hatched by the glaring polarity.

Smith, in addition to flying U of L fans over contamination zones, was also a film producer. The two stayed in touch, and each fall, as the annual U of L-UK basketball game approached, they’d fire off a flurry of text messages to each other, their jabs both playful and sharp.

In 2009, of course, first-year UK coach John Calipari started off a string of four consecutive wins against Cardinals coach Rick Pitino.

It was a crafty way to shift the focus from Louisville’s losses, but it was also a logical question. Delaney had tired of the incessant attention paid to the comparably sterile Duke-North Carolina rivalry, and he thought the nation deserved to know more about the Commonwealth’s simmering feud.

And so two years, two national championships, and too many barroom debates later, Delaney and Smith’s labor of love, “The Rivalry: Red V. Blue” is nearing completion.

To read the rest of the article, go here. To back our kickstarter campaign, click here.

Happy 4th of July Louisville and Kentucky Fans!

Happy 4th of July Louisville and Kentucky fans!!!

After a week, we have already raised over 16% of our kickstarter goal thanks to your generosity and support!

With your continued encouragement, this first-of-its-kind documentary about college basketball’s hottest rivalry will become a reality.

This Independence Day if everyone remembers to tell their family and friends about The Rivalry: Red V. Blue, we have a great chance at reaching our goal of $40,000 and getting this movie done before Christmas.

So don’t forget to check out our kickstarter campaign and please remember to back this project! TYSM Red V. Blue nation; we hope you have a Happy 4th of July!

4th of July Red V. Blue Nation Kickstarter Thank You! from Rory Owen Delaney on Vimeo.

11 o’clock WHAS 11 Nightly News Appearance

On Tuesday (July 2nd) Producer Wade Smith also made an appearance on the WHAS 11 eleven o’clock nightly news.

In this WHAS 11 segment, Wade Smith explains how The Rivalry: Red V. Blue kickstarter campaign works. Basically, unless the entire fundraising goal is met ($40,000) by the end of the 40 day crowdfunding campaign, every penny that was donated will be returned to our generous supporters.

Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing crowdfunding platform. If we do not meet or exceed our fundraising goal of $40,000 by the end of our campaign, we don’t keep a dollar. So far, we have raised $6,665, which is over 16% of our goal in  a week. That’s a great start; thank you so much for your generosity!

Now we need to maintain the momentum and power to 25% of our $40,000 kickstarter goal in order to get The Rivalry: Red V. Blue completed before Christmas. Don’t forget to share this one-of-a-kind documentary with your family and friends; and please remember to back this project!

Earlier that day, Wade made an appearance on WHAS 11’s morning show Great Day Live with the dueling barbers, promoting The Rivalry: Red V. Blue. Last week, Wade also appeared on Cn2, promoting the kickstarter campaign and the film. So far the response from the media and our supporters has been overwhelmingly positive.

Everyone is relieved that the story of college basketball’s most bitter rivalry is finally being told and thrilled that they can become a part of Kentucky film history!

Great Day Live TV Appearance

Early Tuesday morning (July 2nd) Red V. Blue producers Wade Smith and Adam Lefkoe appeared on Great Day Live in Louisville, Kentucky with the dueling barbers to promote The Rivalry: Red V. Blue.

Adam Lefkoe, the Wagners, Robert Boone and Wade Smith

This was the second television interview in less than a week for Wade Smith, who was previously a guest on Cn2 Sports last Wednesday.

To back The Rivalry: Red V. Blue on kickstarter, click here and then select the green “Back This Project” button to the right of our kickstarter video.

Thanks to Great Day Live for having us on their show; thanks to the barbers for their time; and thank you for supporting us along the way!

Producer Wade Smith on Cn2 TV

Producer Wade Smith went on Cn2 TV in Louisville with our rival barbers Robert Boone and Robert Wagner to promote Red V. Blue.

Boone looked dapper in his shirt and tie; Wagner looked regal in his new Cardinals swag; and Wade looked devil-may-care in his button-up. Yeah, baby!

In case you missed it, you can check out the video below!

To back our kickstarter campaign, please click on the green “Back This Project” button (seen below) to the right of our video.

The next page will ask you to “enter your pledge amount” and ask you to “select a reward.”

Every donor is entitled to a reward. And there are a ton of great ones to choose from, including stickers, dvds, blu-rays, t-shirts, hoodies, fleece jackets, tickets to the premiere, and one-of-a-kind life experiences like playing H-O-R-S-E with a former UofL or UK basketball standout.

Remember that unless we hit or exceed our goal of $40,000, we will not collect a penny. If we raise $39,999, it all gets refunded to our kickstarter donors.

Shout-out to Cn2 for bringing us on their show to promote our documentary and kickstarter campaign. And kudos to everyone who has already joined the Red V. Blue kickstarter family. Together, we are going to get this movie done before Christmas!

One Dead Person: Oscar Combs on Calipari V. Pitino

Although John Calipari and Rick Pitino are officially on good terms, it is no secret that unofficially the two coaches despise each other. Red V. Blue explores the impact this coaching feud has had on the rivalry between the University of Kentucky and University of Louisville. In this clip, Oscar Combs, founder of the Cats’ Pause, speaks on the seriousness of the bad blood between John Calipari / Rick Pitino. “Red V. Blue” is the first movie to document the history of the Kentucky-Louisville college basketball rivalry. Please visit our Kickstarter page to help get this movie made!

[vimeo 67444142 w=500 h=281]

One Dead Person from Rory Owen Delaney on Vimeo.