Kentucky Pride

Thursday night The Rivalry: Red V. Blue surged past $10,000 in kickstarter pledges thanks to Kentucky Pride and the generosity of "Red V. Blue" nation!

To say thank you, we released a new video "Kentucky Pride," featuring one of our favorite UK fans, Doug Young.

Doug Young owns the Finishing Touch frame shop in Paintsville, KY. In this clip he explains what Kentucky basketball means to him and so many others in the state.

But Doug's message of the importance of tradition is as applicable to Louisville fans as it is to Kentucky fans. Just as Doug is a lifelong Wildcats supporter because UK was his dad's team, there are thousands of Louisville Cardinal fans with similar stories whose love for the Cards grew out of their love for a family member or good friend.

"Red V. Blue" isn't just a basketball documentary. It's a movie about the rich traditions of Kentucky and their meaning to generations of Kentuckians.

Today producer Adam Lefkoe was a guest on the Leach Report with the Voice of the Wildcats, Tom Leach.

This weekend we will be featured in the Lexington Herald and the Appalachian News-Express. Additionally, director Rory Owen Delaney was interviewed by Surreelfilm. The interview will air Sunday at 1 pm EST on Crescent Hill Radio in Louisville and will be simulcast on crescenthillradio.com!

To back us on kickstarter, click here and hit the green "back this project" button!

Thank you for your support so far. We have come a long way and owe it all to you!

Courier Journal Interview

Saturday's edition of the Courier Journal featured a great article in print and online about Red V. Blue. The story includes interviews with director Rory Owen Delaney and producer Wade Smith. Read all about it below!

Documentary captures universities of Kentucky and Louisville in title seasons by Adam Himmelsbach

Rory Delaney is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker whose connection to his hometown of Louisville has endured despite the distance. He loves U of L basketball, detests UK, and feels at home when he meets someone with similar tastes.

So imagine his concern, then, when he was aboard a small prop plane in 2008, flying above swaths of contaminated wasteland for his documentary “Toxic Soup,” when he realized his pilot was a diehard Wildcats fan. He held on a little tighter and smiled a little harder, but ultimately he and Paintsville native Wade Smith forged a friendship that was hatched by the glaring polarity.

Smith, in addition to flying U of L fans over contamination zones, was also a film producer. The two stayed in touch, and each fall, as the annual U of L-UK basketball game approached, they’d fire off a flurry of text messages to each other, their jabs both playful and sharp.

In 2009, of course, first-year UK coach John Calipari started off a string of four consecutive wins against Cardinals coach Rick Pitino.

It was a crafty way to shift the focus from Louisville’s losses, but it was also a logical question. Delaney had tired of the incessant attention paid to the comparably sterile Duke-North Carolina rivalry, and he thought the nation deserved to know more about the Commonwealth’s simmering feud.

And so two years, two national championships, and too many barroom debates later, Delaney and Smith’s labor of love, “The Rivalry: Red V. Blue” is nearing completion.

To read the rest of the article, go here. To back our kickstarter campaign, click here.