‘Touchback’: Herndon High Alum Moves Forward In Hollywood by Traveling Back in Time

After 18 years of dedicated manifesting in Hollywood, filmmaker and Herndon graduate Don Handfield reached a destiny most aspiring artists only dream about—writing and directing a multimillion-dollar movie.

His first feature film, “Touchback” is scheduled for theatrical distribution across the country this fall.

Many first-time filmmaker debuts focus on the starving artist getting his big break after just six months in Hollywood when dumb luck intervenes, sky rocketing him into super stardom.

Instead, Handfield wrote and helmed a picture about the struggle and sacrifice of a blue-collar, hometown American while cleverly weaving in allegory and technique used in such classic award winning films, as “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The longtime screenwriter originally penned the story more than 15 years ago while dealing with divorce.

“I was questioning a few things in my life and relationships while living in Los Angeles, which doesn’t have a lot of community,” Handfield said. “I spent a couple summers in my childhood at my uncle’s farm in Connecticut. There was a real small town sense of community I was really drawn to because I didn’t have that in my own life. Those two themes kind of collided in my life at a certain time and that was the genesis, emotionally and thematically for ‘Touchback.’”

The story centers on a middle-aged, Ohio farmer who missed his shot at fame and fortune after suffering a career ending football injury in high school. At age 40, he is at risk of losing his farm.

Feeling failure and resentment towards his family, he chooses to end his life. But he wakes to find himself back in 1991 just weeks before his injury and is given the chance to change his life forever.

“I think what people will find appealing is what it has in common with ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and ‘The Blind Side,’ which are movies you come out of thinking about your life in a different way than you would have before,” he said. “You might hug your wife tighter and appreciate your life a little more. [‘Touchback’] shares an emotional and spiritual DNA with some of those films, but it’s ultimately a completely different experience.”

The filmmaker was careful not to make a film that looks dated in five to ten years due to cliché period references commonly used in time travel movies.

“I tried to create something that wasn’t reliant on pop culture references,” he said. “The fact that I wrote the script 15 years ago and it’s just getting made, kind of says it can’t only be about the 90s or this decade.”

For realistic look and budgetary reasons he chose to shoot his film in small towns that resembled the setting in his story.

“We shot ‘Touchback’ in the Midwest with principal photography in Grand Rapids, Michigan.” Handfield said. “We shot in the late summer and we needed fall foliage and harvest. So, we actually shot in Ohio in the Fall of 2009 and went back again in the Fall of 2010.”

Handfield felt fortunate to have an experienced and talented cast including Hollywood icon Kurt Russell (Tombstone, Grindhouse), Brian Presley (Home of the Brave, Borderland), Academy Award nominee Christine Lahti (Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit, Ally McBeal) and Melanie Lynskey (The Informant, Up in the Air). 

“I was blessed I got a great cast and they all did a great job. As a writer, you always have an image in your head and you try to get actors that fit that image,” Handfield said. “An actor is always going to bring something different that you imagine and that is the beauty of collaboration.”

He said Presley, a former high school state champion quarterback and college player, was a double-threat as lead actor and stuntman.

“Having a lead actor play a quarterback, who was a quarterback, can do a five-step- drop, and throw a ball really helped with our football action,” the director said. “He did quite a bit of his own stunt work.”

The past five years have been blessed ones for Handfield. He got remarried, had his first child and directed his first major film. His wife Tressa, who is pregnant with their second child, and his daughter Robinson have matured him, opened him up and made him more patient, teaching him to take time to love life.

He thrives on his work ethic and spent the past two years grinding out 14-hour days, up to seven days a week. The one negative in his career is time spent away from his family. Fortunately, Handfield was able to fly them out for most of the shoot.

“The next thing I direct will be something I feel like I’m passionate about because you’re talking about time away form your family and missing certain aspects of your son and daughter growing up.”

Life imitated art for the screenwriter when a special event in his life occurred that paralleled one in his script. “My wife is amazing. I wrote about what I hoped to one day have from a relationship,” he said. “I feel like I have that in my life and she’s so loving. It’s like I wrote the perfect woman and she appeared in my life.”

‘Touchback’ deals with loss from financial collapse in our society and the author hopes his audience will take a look at their lives and value what is most important.

“The past 50 years we’ve been sold this Madison Avenue dream of what it is to be successful and happy. It usually revolves around a lot of money, nice cars and a big house,” he said. “We’ve been chasing this dream as a society for so long. I feel when the recession hit, people could no longer have those things and we as a nation didn’t know how to deal with it.”

“What I hope people take away from my movie is that those aren’t the things that make you happy. Your community, your family and the people around you make you wealthier than material items.”

As a child, Handfield’s parents divorced and he began going to movies with his brother and mother every weekend for family bonding. They also went to Errol’s Video (now Blockbuster) to rent hoards of movies on a regular basis. Young Handfield watched laserdiscs at his grade school friend Chris Rouland’s home and between VHS and laserdisc video adventures, the young film enthusiast found his passion.

Several years later during college at Ohio State, he discovered film production would be his career. “I was going to be an architect and took an acting class in college. I kind of fell in love with it.”

Handfield says he draws from life experience while working and used references from his days at Herndon High for “Touchback.”

“A lot of people in high school had good names and you’re always looking for names. Kurt Russell’s character is named ‘Coach Hand,’ after my wrestling coach in high school,” he said. “He was like a father figure to me. When I was writing the script I wanted to write about a coach like him, so I gave the character his name.”

The LA resident says he misses Hiddenbrook, community bonding and the diversity he grew up with in Herndon and never realized how great his childhood was until later in life.

“One of the things about Northern Virginia that’s so great is the school system. It’s really amazing and you don’t know what you have until you go elsewhere,” he said. “I miss it a lot. But I have a family and kids and love what I do and wouldn’t want to trade it. But if I lived on a cul-de-sac, the kids could go out and play in the yard.”

Through his achievements, setbacks and hard work the past two decades, the optimistic director has always looked back at the previous year as a means of measuring success.

“Success to me is being able to do what you love and get paid enough for it to take care of the people you love,” he said. “I always gauge myself by asking, ‘Did I get better this year?’ If I got better, then to me that’s success.”

Handfield has partnered with an Academy Award nominated actor and set up his next project at a major studio and is very excited. For a list of Handfield’s work, visit: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0359534/