Article published Oct 14, 2005
Message in the madness
Lafayette native brings ‘The Outdoorsmen”home

Herman Fuselier
hfuselier@theadvertiser.com
Posters advertise The Outdoorsmen as “10 Men, 15 events, 32 cases of beer.” A wife of one of the competitors in the documentary describes the event as “Testosterone, alcohol, competition and outdoors. It can make a wife nervous.”

The movie is filled with men in the woods guzzling beer, barfing, battling and barfing some more. But Lafayette native Scott Allen Perry, the movie’s director, has a secret message behind the madness.

“I want to show people you can make good movies and this is a funny documentary,” said Perry, a 1989 graduate of St. Thomas More High School. “You don’t see many of those.

“You see documentary and think it’s going to be depressing. There are some touching moments in this movie.

“There’s no reason not to be able to make Hollywood-caliber movies, meaning production values, but better-than-Hollywood quality because the movies coming out of Hollywood are so bad now. Theater attendance has declined every year.”

Perry hopes for good attendance for his hometown debut of The Outdoorsmen: Blood, Sweat & Beers, which opens today at the Celebrity Theater in Broussard. The movie runs through Thursday.

A 90-minute comedy/documentary, The Outdoorsmen created a buzz when it premiered in April at the prestigious 2005 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. The movie follows 10 high school friends from Everett, Washington who, for the past 14 years, spend one weekend in the woods engaged in a series of grueling physical events. They also drink the state of Washington dry in the process.

The events include the Hatchet Toss, Death Race 3000, Beer to River Run, Log Carry and Obstacle Course. The final competition, The Ironman, features two men, one six pack and one stopwatch. The man who slams down his beer in the fastest time wins.

“I thought when I first heard about it that it was just guys being stupid in the woods and drinking a lot of beer,” said Perry, a top 10 finalist in the 2003 Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival. “When you see how intense the competition is and how really serious they are about it, you realize that beer is the great equalizer.

“It’s like running a 100-yard dash and then chugging a beer. That’s one of the worst pains in the world. I tried a lot of these things just to see how they were. I don’t know how they stay up, how any of them stay up.”

Perry said the hometown camaraderie of the combatants will be felt by local audiences.

“Everyone that has watched the movie has said they know guys like that. Plus Everett really reminds me a lot of Lafayette. I know everybody who sees this is going to want to break out and do their own.

“It’s especially cool to bring it back to my hometown because I know people here are going to get it, more than people who don’t do anything like this at all.”

“It’s so funny because you really see these guys go back to that high school athlete state of mind. You watch NFL football now, nobody’s trying. In high school and college sports, they’re really giving it their all. That’s what we see here.”

The Outdoorsmen will show Oct. 20 and 25 at the Austin Film Festival. An edited version of the movie will air next year on Spike TV. A DVD package with extras is also in the works.

Perry has won numerous awards in his career, including the Grand Jury Prize at the 2002 Deadcenter Film Festival and Best Director at the 2003 LA 24 Hour Film Competition. He hopes his accolades and the accomplishments of other natives help establish a film industry in Acadiana.

“I really want to show people there’s talent pool in Louisiana. (Director) Mike Miley went to the same high school that I did. I acted in a short film for him a few years ago and he’s a very talented guy.

“Marcus Brown at (South Louisiana) Community College is a great actor. He’s also a really savvy businessman the way he set up the whole film department there. There’s no reason we can’t be making movies here all the time.”