Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with Maybe Next Year’s Kyle Thrash

Kyle Thrash is one of the most exciting storytellers of his generation. He started his career off as a child actor working on independent films and blockbusters like A Beautiful Mind. He eventually stepped behind the camera and continued his journey as a filmmaker. His award-winning work has gone on to be screened at festivals around the world.

His latest project, Maybe Next Year, finds Kyle documenting the story of the Philadelphia Eagles and their improbable and incredible 2017 Super Bowl-winning run told through the lens of four die-hard fans. The film is an intimate dive into what it means to be a fan.

Pop Culturalist caught up with Kyle to chat about Maybe Next Year.

PC: How did you discover your passion for film and storytelling?
Kyle: That’s a good question. I was a child actor when I was around ten. I got to be on sets like A Beautiful Mind and a few smaller independent films. I was driving up from Pennsylvania to New York to be on sets at an early age, and I really liked it. I liked watching films. I liked being a part of films. I liked seeing how they were made. I went to school at Drexel University, and that’s when I got into the history of film and the history of documentary and discovered a lot of great filmmakers and learned to film in different ways. I’ve been making work ever since.

PC: Who or what has had the biggest influence on your career?
Kyle: My parents. My mom was the one who drove me to set in New York. They have always been supportive of me going to concerts and movies. My parents divorced when I was in middle school. Every Sunday, my dad would come and take us to the movies. There were years when I would see about forty-seven movies in a year.

PC: You’ve got a new film out. Tell us about Maybe Next Year and the inspiration behind it.
Kyle: The movie is about four Philadelphia Eagles fans during the 2017 Super Bowl-winning season. It follows their lives through the season and shows an intimate glimpse into what fans go through and what it feels like to be a fan. You get to discover where all that passion comes from and look at fan culture and what it means to be a sports fan.

PC: This project initially started as a short and then evolved into a full-length film. At what point in the process did you make that pivot?
Kyle: [laughs] I guess when they started doing well. I didn’t expect the team to do as well as they did. So by the time the Super Bowl came around, we had eight cameras around Philadelphia and even one in Minnesota where the Super Bowl was. It just kept growing. By the time the Super Bowl came around, I felt, win or lose, we may have something larger here, and my editor really pushed me to make it longer, considering each week we were just exploring fandom and making character pieces. As they kept winning, we kept building it. We got something that we never expected.

PC: As a storyteller, was that a challenge to adapt to the unpredictable nature of working on a documentary?
Kyle: It’s nerve-wracking. Each game you’re thinking, “This could be the last thing you do,” and then you have to prepare for a different ending. I’m a sports fan myself, so I like the gamble. I like betting on my team. I didn’t have any expectations because the team had never won a Super Bowl before. I felt like the other shoe was going to drop eventually. So I just kept preparing, and if it ends we’ll figure it out. But we got lucky.

PC: Each of the subjects in the film represents different sides to fandom. How did you initially get connected with each of them?
Kyle: Many different ways. We did a lot of research. We were going down to tailgates. We were going to bars. Some had some local fame like Shirley. She’s always on the radio and has this amazing personality where she’s very quiet and doesn’t get too loud, but when the game’s on and when she’s on the radio, she turns into this other person. She’s this mouthpiece for sports fandom in Philadelphia.

Bryant makes these high-grade videos on YouTube that we hadn’t known about. Speaking to him more, I found out about his softer side and he showed a lot of vulnerability that I felt like I hadn’t seen, and maybe a lot of people wouldn’t expect from someone so passionate in the way that they express themselves.

Then with Barry, I had heard about this place in Reading, which is a little bit closer to where I grew up in Lehigh Valley. I read some articles. I think Vice put out an article, sponsored by Budweiser, that named him the number-one man cave in America. I wanted to see what this place was like. When I met him, he was this over-the-top character, but also very sweet, and was building this community. It was amazing to see someone that’s constantly pushing the limit, whether it’s buying the next thing or going the extra mile to entertain people. He’s always pushing it to the limit.

Jesse, we met in a bar. His family has a bar down on Two Street in Philadelphia. The bartender, his sister, was like, “My brother Jesse is the biggest Eagles fan.” We saw him during a game and he was acting like a maniac! But same thing: finding out more about his story—about his son who has autism and his father who had cancer—I felt like he represented Philadelphia. A lot of Philadelphians that I know wake up early, work hard days, and keep out of trouble. When they’re not dealt the best hand, they do the best they can and tune into games on Sunday as a way to escape and use the team to believe in something bigger in life.

PC: With the film out now, what do you hope audiences take away?
Kyle: Hopefully, a couple of things. For people who may not like sports or Eagles fans, maybe they’ll see a different side to them and understand where that passion comes from. They’re known to have a bad reputation, so hopefully, this will help people understand them and shine them in a different light.

For sports fans, this is a proper representation of what it feels like with the highs and lows of a season and what that final moment can do for a city, and how it can help. Sports can have a deeper meaning and help people in different ways. Even people that don’t like sports, hopefully, they can better understand why people go to the lengths they go to like painting their faces early in the morning to cheer on their team or spending all their money to build a huge man cave. Hopefully, it’ll give them a better understanding of why people go to such great lengths to support their teams.

PC: This is your debut full-length feature documentary. What was the biggest takeaway for you? What did you learn about yourself as a filmmaker and storyteller?
Kyle: It’s an exciting process. You get to dive deeper into the content. That excited me in a way that short-form hasn’t. I’m someone that likes to continue to explore the different sides of things and turn things over and see if we can get at a deeper truth and try to show things in a different way. The full-length allowed me to continue to capture more and show different sides of fandom. People can dismiss fandom, especially sports fandom, as something that’s childish or there’s not much beneath the surface—that’s just something people do to pass the time or to use it in different ways.

Hopefully, the full-length allows me to show how complex it is and how people use sports in different ways for several different reasons. What we were also trying to show is that there’s an ecosystem around sports. There are these characters in the movies, we call them vultures. The guys that hang out after games and pick up the extra lawn chairs, food, and beers. It’s these two dudes that like to drink and gather things. I like showing the underbelly of the culture, and I felt like that the feature allowed me to show other things that may have been left on the editing room floor with a short. But we were able to include some of those characters. To me, that makes the experience when you go to a game really special.

PC: What’s next for you?
Kyle: I’m working on a short documentary with the nonprofit Last Prisoner Project. We’re focusing on Michael Thompson’s story. He’s a sixty-nine-year-old man from Flint, Michigan, who sold three pounds of weed in 1994 and was sentenced to forty-two to sixty years in prison under the habitual offender law. Now that weed is legal recreation in Michigan, we’ve been fighting for his clemency. I’m filming it now and it’s about the war on cannabis and the changing times as weed is legalized.

In the most recent election, we saw that five states voted for it to become legal in different ways. We need to remember that there are four thousand nonviolent prisoners incarcerated for possession or sale of marijuana. We’ve got to remember to look at them and expunge their records. We need to continue to grant clemency as we push forward with progress and legalizing marijuana. We have to make sure people aren’t left behind.

To keep up with Kyle, follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Watch Maybe Next Year today.