A rebellious suburban Chicago teenager, who dreams of a normal life, combats his possessive baseball-obsessed father, while dealing with an unforgiving sibling rivalry in his self-centered brother, but after hitting rock bottom he forms an unlikely inner-city friendship that helps him find his path.
Director Biography - Joe Shanks
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Born in Waynesboro, Mississippi, Joe was always active in sports, but he also liked to write stories. After high school Joe enrolled at Jackson State University where he majored in Mass Communications. In the spring of his junior year, the curriculum at the time only offered one class that had any connection to scripted television or film. But that one Script writing class gave him his first insight as to how scripts were written. And In that same semester, he went to the Theater Department and enrolled in his first theater classes. In that same semester he began acting in the department productions and traveling with the department theater group that would later became MADDRAMA Performance Troupe. It was there where he developed his coordinating skills as he worked, watched, and learned how productions were put together from scratch. Joe would eventually graduate from Jackson State with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mass Communications with a minor in Theater. A year later Joe moved to Chicago and enrolled at Columbia College Chicago where he studied Film and Video. During his time there he would work on student class films, any local independent film sets that he could get on, and some big budgeted films that were shot in Chicago like Ali starring Will Smith and Jamie Foxx. Joe graduate from Columbia with a degree in Film and Video that concentrated on Directing. A few years after graduation, after he scraped up all the money that he could, Joe wrote, directed, and produced Take Me Out in Chicago. He auditioned and casted local talent as actors. And he hired fellow classmates and other Columbia film students to work as crew. It was his first feature length film.
Director Statement
This is a little detailed information about my first feature length film called Take Me Out. I want it to be something that the entire family could relate to. I want people that when they see this film to say to themselves that they can identify with each character on some level.
Take Me Out is a story about a freshman is high school, Nicholas Dupree that is frustrated with his life, because his father Farris Dupree, who wanted to be a major league ball player, pushes him the wrong way to make him follow in his older brother Ricky Dupree's footsteps. Ricky is a senior high school All American. Nicholas wants to be taken out of his situation to live a regular life.
I wanted to make a film about the unwanted pressures that parents place on their children. There are many teen aged athletes that are simply playing sports because of their parents. And I think that this subject matter should be explored.
I named the film to Take Me Out because baseball is America’s past time and because baseball was my first love. And being that baseball was my first love, I think that my first film should have baseball in it. Sports are the common ground that everyone can identify with.
Once people read the film synopsis and see the trailer, you will think that baseball is going to be played throughout the film, like in the film Brewster’s Million with Richard Pryor. And that was not the case. The film was just centered around baseball and the sport was used as a back drop. Take Me Out will have about four baseball scene, but no more than five. That's it. It will definitely have one in the beginning and in the end, and two or three somewhere in the middle. But baseball will only be a backdrop to the overall story as I stated earlier.
I named the film Take Me Out because when people hear Take Me Out to the Ballgame…, the audience will feel that the movie is about baseball and not expect all the things about the Dupree family and the lives that are being lived behind closed doors. Nicholas wants to be taken out of his situation. And when the audience sees this movie, they will feel everything that these people in his family go through. That is why this is a must see film.
