Filmmaker Allen Farst on the NFL’s First Game

Allen Farst became a filmmaker, he says, because he wasn’t really good at anything else. He started making movies as a child in Dayton and later moved into a career shooting music videos, commercials for national brands and marketing videos.

In 2020, he directed “Chuck Leavell: The Tree Man,” a documentary about the keyboardist and musical director for the Rolling Stones, also a committed environmentalist and sustainable forester. That movie got Farst into the Directors Guild of America, and he decided to take on a project closer to home for his next documentary.

RELATED: The NFL’s First Game Was Played in Dayton

“Triangle Park” is about the first game in the history of what is now the NFL, which took place on Oct. 3, 1920, when the Columbus Panhandles played the Dayton Triangles at Triangle Park, a three-sided slip of land at the confluence of the Great Miami and Stillwater rivers in Dayton. The game was the first for the American Professional Football Association, which was formed less than two months prior. The movie got a limited theatrical release in fall 2023 and will be available on Amazon Prime Video starting Sept. 5.

With this game being played in 1920, there is no video footage and few still photos. How do you as a filmmaker tell a story with those constraints?
I had to do some digging. I interviewed some of the families of the players, and they had things in their basement that they’d never shared. One descendant had a Dayton Triangles necklace, and as far as I know, that’s one of only two that exists. We have a lot of re-enactments in the film. We wanted to make this as fun as possible to watch.

There are a lot of big names involved in the movie. Michele Tafoya narrates, and a lot of former players and coaches, like Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Dungy and Cris Collinsworth are in it. How did you get them?
I was fortunate enough that I knew about 35% of them. My publicist mentioned he knew Michele Tafoya, and about a day later, I was on the phone with her telling her my vision, and she said, “I totally want to be the narrator.” And then she asked me, “Who do you want for the movie?”

So what’s next?
I’m currently working on a faith-based film called “Osgood.” It’s a true story about a lady named Karen Homan, and I was riveted when I heard it. I also optioned Tom Crouch’s book “The Bishop’s Boys,” about the Wright brothers, for a movie called “Flying Machine.” I’m doing a screenplay, and the Wright family is working with me. Nobody’s ever done a feature film on the Wright brothers, and that seems crazy to me. I’m an Ohio-centric guy with these films I’m doing.

For more information, visit allenfarst.com.

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