English may have been Glen Zipper’s favorite subject at Fort Lee High School, but it could be a football documentary that earns the 39-year-old retired attorney an Academy Award.
Zipper is one of several producers of “Undefeated,” a film about the 2009 football season at Manassas High School, located in an underprivileged area of Memphis, Tennessee. The players are mostly African American and come from broken homes and troubled backgrounds. The white coach who takes on the job of helping them win, comes from a similar single-parent lifestyle.
The full-length feature is one of five films in the Oscar race for best documentary, Zipper said in a phone interview from Hollywood on Monday.
“’Undefeated’ is a verite-style documentary focusing on three underprivileged student-athletes from inner-city Memphis and the volunteer coach trying to help them beat the odds on and off the field,” said Zipper, a 1990 graduate of Fort Lee High School.
“While some immediately characterize ‘Undefeated’ as a football movie, we’ve always said that football was never meant to be the focus of this film,” he said. The filmmakers, Dan Lindsay and TJ Martin, saw “Undefeated” as an opportunity to tell an intimate coming of age story through the prism of a football season, Zipper said.
Zipper worked as a Hudson County prosecutor from 2001 to 2004 and a law clerk in Bergen County from 2000 to 2001 under Superior Court Judge Donald Venezia. Zipper’s brother Ralph, 45, a surgeon in Florida who also graduated from Fort Lee High School, is also one of the film’s several producers.
Glen Zipper left New Jersey for California in November 2004 – driving across the country with his dog – and eventually landed a job with Spitfire Pictures, the documentary division of Exclusive Media in Hollywood. He never bothered to take the bar in California because he wanted to leave law behind and not be thought of as an entertainment attorney. Glen and Ralph formed Zipper Brothers film company.
If the film wins, it’s a dream of a lifetime. Both Zipper brothers always had an eye for movie-making. Growing up in Fort Lee, they’d go to the movies and spend hours analyzing films they’d seen.
“I was very aware of Fort Lee’s history relative to filmmaking,” Zipper said. “Before there was Hollywood there was Fort Lee. It may be a little bit hokey, it may be a little bit corny, but I genuinely felt that I was, in a very, very small way carrying on that legacy once I came out here.”
