THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20, 2014
PAGE 15B
FOOD
Faculty and staff to sample dining options
ANDY NELSON news@kansan.com
The University will hold its second annual Taste of KU Dinning event on Aug. 20. The event is free; however, it is only open to faculty and staff. Faculty and staff will be able to sample an array of food and beverage options like the famous crunchy chicken cheddar wrap and the various coffees available at retail and residential dining facilities on campus.
Nona Golledge, KU Dining Service Director, helped organize the event.
"We created an event for faculty to take and try options that are available to them with their faculty and staff meal plans," Golledge said.
Golledge said that because there was a clear lack in an opportunity for the University's workers to try their food options and in order to thank faculty for everything they do, the event was created solely for them to try the many different types of foods available to them.
Students will also have an opportunity to sample the many food options the University has to offer at events
like UnionFest and HawkFest, where major dining locations including Mrs. E's, the Market and the Underground are usually present. Golledge said the combined attendance at these events last year was around 5,000 students.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Caroline Glocker Downers, a freshman from Downers Grove, Ill., said she would attend an event like Taste of KU Dining for students.
"I would most likely go to an event that offered sample different food options," Glocker said.
Edited by Kate Miller
CONCERT
Oil pipeline opponents plan concert in cornfield
Neil Young, right, and Willie Nelson perform during the Farm Aid 2012 concert in Hershey, Pa., on Sept. 22, 2012.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NELIGH, Neb. — Willie Nelson and Neil Young will headline a concert next month in a Nebraska cornfield organized by opponents of a proposed pipeline that would carry oil from Canada south to the Gulf Coast.
Bold Nebraska said Monday the concert will be held Sept. 27 on a farm near Neligh in northeast Nebraska. Tickets go on sale Wednesday.
Pipeline critics hope the project will be rejected because they fear it could contaminate groundwater and contribute to pollution.
Earlier this year, protesters carved an anti-pipeline message into the cornfield, which is in the path of TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
TransCanada has said the
pipeline will have upgraded safety measures and should be allowed. The company has already built and is operating the southern leg of the pipeline between Oklahoma and Texas.
FOLLOW @THE_BIRDFEEDER FOR SPECIALS!
MOVIE
Story of De La Salle High School's team becomes film
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
Now and then, Hollywood magic results from something decidedly non-glamorous — like a guy reading a book on a pile of smelly football shoulder pads.
It helps, of course, if the guy is David Zelon, a producer and executive vice president at Mandalay Entertainment Group. Back in 2009, the devoted football dad was straightening up the equipment room at his son's high school in Santa Monica, CALIF., when he came across a copy of "When the Game Stands Tall," the famed story of Concord, Calif.'s De La Salle High School Spartans and their 151-game winning streak under the guidance of coach Bob Ladouceur.
MANDALAY PICTURES
It was the first Zelon had heard the tale, though the book — written by former Contra Costa Times columnist Neil Hayes — was originally published in 2003. But once Zelon cracked it open, he caught the whiff of a potential film.
"I settled right in on that pile of sweaty shoulder pads and started reading — I was hooked," he said in a recent phone interview. "The thing was, I'd never seen this kind of approach to a team anywhere. Ladouceur wasn't about winning. No yelling and slamming clipboards down. He was about developing these boys into great young men. So I thought, let's show everybody how they did it."
BUMP AND RUN
It goes back to Hayes' and Larson's days at the Contra Costa Times in the mid-90s covering De La Salle, a private Catholic school for boys known for its powerhouse football program, which draws talented athletes from around the East Bay. The team, coaches and players alike, had no interest in excessive publicity early on, and it took some serious coaxing — first from Larson, and later from Hayes — to get behind the scenes midway through the 151-gamer that ran from 1992 to 2004.
And just as the stars aligned in the making of De La Salle's record-breaking team, kismet also played a part in the story's path from real life to feature film an effort which at times felt futile.
We'll all be hearing a lot about "When the Game Stands Tall" as the movie adaptation opens nationwide Aug. 22. And while the production is Hollywood all the way — and filmed in New Orleans of all places, thanks to financial incentives — its roots run deep in California's East Bay. Not only with the team itself and the book's author, but also with former Contra Costa Times photographer Bob Larson, whose photos in the book were used as the inspiration for key scenes.
"Even though I'd gone on to cover other sports and NFL and stuff, I kept going back to De La Salle. My instincts were screaming. "This is a great story," said Hayes. "I finally pestered (Ladouceur) enough where he told me the only way I could find out what goes on if I showed up every day for a year. I took that as an opening, and I did it. I had unbelievable access."
In a matter of months, Hayes had written the manuscript, accompanied by Larson's striking photos, but then he hit a wall — getting it published. "The bigger publishing houses all said the same thing: too regional," Hayes said. He had nearly given up when North Atlantic Books in Berkeley, a tiny press better known for fitness guides and cook-books, took it on.
The book sold well enough for its niche, but soon there would be more to the story. This first edition followed the team only through the still-undefeated 2002 season.
"Then the 2004 season started, and all the tragedies happened — the coach's heart attack, (star linebacker and University of Oregon-bound) Terrance Kelly was shot and killed in Richmond," Hayes said. "And the streak finally ended that September. The Spartans finally lost."
He updated the story with an epilogue for a paperback version, with both editions selling in total about 60,000 copies. Hayes was approached by a few independent movie producers, but nothing panned out — until the day Zelon sat down to read.
Indeed, once Zelon — producer of "Soul Surfer" and "Never Back Down"
"He called me, and we met at the Rose Cafe in Venice," Hayes remembered. "He said he loved the book but didn't know what would drive the dramatic arc. I looked at him funny and said, 'Um, did you read the hard copy or the paperback?"
— learned of the epilogue, "trumpets started playing in the background and the sun came up," Zelon said, laughing.
ALL IN THE DETAILS
Hayes would go on to work closely on the first draft of the script with the studio's creative team, through dozens of revisions. And Larson, who is now a freelance photographer, began getting calls from the studio to send them photos so they could study the details.
"I'd get calls almost daily, 'Can you send us these pictures, we want to look at them for sets and helmets and background and costumes,'" Larson said. "They were very specific. 'The coach is wearing a gold lanyard in this photo. Was it always gold, or sometimes green?' It really tells you how detailed they got."
Several of Larson's images are used in the movie during the end credits, he said, notably a poignant shot of two players reassuring each other by holding hands during a crucial point in a game, with Terrance Kelly seen in the background. "It's the last image you'll see before the screen goes black," he said.
Hayes was on the set every day during the April-June 2013 filming in New Orleans — a location chosen strictly for budgetary reasons, he said. "I didn't have a clue what to expect," he said. "It was surreal. Kind of a blur to be honest with you, to see these big actors playing people I know."
Jim Caviezel stars as Ladouceur, Laura Dern plays his wife, Bev, and Michael Chikilis portrays assistant coach Terry Eidson.
JOIN US DURING FAMILY WEEKEND AT RIM ROCK FARM!
Register online at http://hses.soe.ku.edu/drbob
2014 Dr. Bob Run
Saturday, September 20, 2014
7:30 am Rim Rock Farm
Proceeds from this 5k event are donated a scholarship fund supporting Sport Management students at KU
Hosted by the Department of Health, Sport, & Excise Sceinces
Students
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