Product Description

Welcome to Massillon, Ohio, where high school football is nothing short of religion. For the 33,000 people who live there, football is life--a veritable "cradle to the grave" experience that begins in the maternity ward where coaches make visits to scout

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12710 in DVD
• Brand: Team Marketing
• Released on: 2002-09-24
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Formats: Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 103 minutes

Features

• Officially Licensed
• Highest Quality Recording

Amazon.com
High school football rules in Massillon, Ohio. In this blue-collar community, dubbed "Touchdown Town" in a 1951 newsreel, the Washington High Tigers are a cradle-to-grave passion. Team boosters visit maternity wards and bestow footballs to newborn "little Tigers." A mortician offers customers Tiger theme caskets. This winning documentary, ranked by ESPN.com as among the six best sports documentaries of all time, chronicles the Tigers' pivotal 1999 season--its 106th!--in which the team's success or failure on the field could impact an upcoming tax levy to save the town's beleaguered schools. Filmmaker and Massillon native Kenneth Carlson is no mere cheerleader. He tackles the touchy issue of priorities (some parents hold promising eighth graders back so they will be bigger and stronger) and the town's Stepfordian devotion to the team that put it on the map ("Conform or be destroyed," states one disaffected youth). More inspiring are the profiles of the team's three captains, in whom one can see the positive role football plays in their lives. --Donald Liebenson

From The New Yorker
You know you have arrived in a place where high-school football is taken seriously when the dedication of the team exceeds that of the marching band. Massillon, Ohio, is one such town, a mostly blue-collar community of thirty-three thousand, where boys are held back in the eighth grade so they will have more time to become bigger and stronger. The filmmaker Ken Carlson documents the season of the local team, the Tigers, and follows the fates of three players: the black defensive end who sees football as his ticket out, and the white quarterback and linebacker who sense that senior year is their reward, not their staging ground. Carlson gets at the way the adults and the teens feed off each other, making the game into a test of the town's character. He also catches the fever himself: the second half of the movie plays like a highlight reel. -Michael Agger
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

From the Back Cover
Welcome to Massillon, Ohio, where high school football is nothing short of religion. For the 33,000 people who live there, football is life--a veritable "cradle to the grave" experience that begins in the maternity ward where coaches make visits to scout future linebackers, and ends in a customized football casket emblazoned with the Tigers mascot.

A surprise hit in theaters across the country, Go Tigers! chronicles the 1999 high school football season of the Massillon Tigers. On the heels of a losing year, the Tigers risk losing football in Massillon altogether, as an upcoming vote on a new tax levy is the only thing that will prevent massive budget cuts and the elimination of the football program. With the vote clearly riding on the team's success, it is up to the three co-captains--quarterback Dave Irwin, linebacker Danny Studer, and defensive end Ellery Moore--to ensure that an entire town's hopes and dreams come true. Just three days before the crucial vote is to take place, the Tigers face the biggest game of their lives against archrival McKinley.

In the spirit of such hit films as Remember the Titans and Hoop Dreams, accomplished filmmaker and Massillon native Ken Carlson brings us the real story behind America's hysterical obsession with sports, and for the first time lets us experience that same rush of adrenaline along with a real-life team. With an SRO crowd of screaming fans and a town's future at stake, Go Tigers! is an energetic and absorbing thrill ride not to be missed.

Customer Reviews

Excellent Documentary
This is a very, very well put together documentary about the seriousness of football in small town Ohio. The movie follows the senior season for three star football players from Massollin (Washington) High School, located one hour from Cleveland. The lives of the players off the field are also presented quite realistically, with discussions of teenage drinking, high school partying, college aspirations, failed ACT's, etc.

Having grown up in small town Kentucky, where basketball is king, I could relate to many of the issues illuminated during the movie. The intensity of the coaches, fans, principal and school superintendent was expected. The language, locker room shouting, recruiting allegations, and other pregame activity is not surprising. What was a bit disturbing is that the football players are placed under a great deal of pressure to "save the community" due to the financial woes of the school system. (Considering the money that is poured into this program, it is a small wonder that the school system is in financial jeopardy!)

If you enjoyed "Hoop Dreams," you will love this movie. It is rated "R," for good reason, but both men and women will find it engaging.

Grrrrrrrrr 8
Go Tigers! is a wonderful, and wonderfully deceptive, movie. When viewed casually it flies by like an NFL highlights reel, slick, glossy, beautifully photographed, and expertly edited. These are universally familiar images, the great touchdown pass, the banks of lights, players banging into each other in testosterone-fueled euphoric celebration. Then you stop to remember. This is a documentary about high school football, and even more importantly, precisely what high school football means in Massillon, Ohio. (Turns out it determines the future of the school system!)

Go Tigers! is the brainchild of Ken Carlson, he wrote, directed, and produced - and, as luck would have it, he's from Massillon. This makes his achievement even more remarkable because the one attribute that dominates this movie is how even-handed and fair it is.

Movies in this genre fall into two groups, either they are love-struck anthems honoring the virtues of sportsmanship and its inspiring way of embodying all that is noble about life - or - they are supercilious indictments of the anti-intellectual hod-carriers and Neanderthals that brutalize each other instead of pursuing worthwhile activities - translating Proust into Sanskrit for example.

Massillon, Ohio is football crazy by any standard, but Carlson never takes cheap shots, he doesn't laugh at his subject, nor does he idealize it, he simply presents it. This is the very hard work of a documentary, and Carlson succeeds.

Where Friday Night Lights gave us a grotesque portrait of the psychological, and physical, damage done by football mania in Texas, Go Tigers! calmly introduces us to a funeral director presenting the "Obie Special," a deluxe coffin souped up to warm the cold dead heart of even the most rabid Tigers fan. The film counts on you to do the math for yourself.

Kenneth Carlson's, Go Tigers.
"Go Tigers." A film that follows the lives of three high school football players through an eventful season. Although there is an exciting football story line, the main focus is on the people in the town of Massillon.

Director Kenneth Carlson does an excellent job of showing us the true meaning of "small town" America. Massillon is a town that is consumed by football, and it is made obvious to the film-goer with the shots of the town covered in "Tiger" signs and banners. There are many memorable scenes including the Tiger Lady and the soon-to-be-classic Bulldog Scene.

The cinematography in "Go Tigers" was great. The soundtrack of "Go Tigers" included a subtle underscore and the gripping music of Moby. During the final credits, the song "Friday Nights" by Katrina Carlson was a fitting end to a great documentation of Friday night football.

"Go Tigers" is a perfect blend of hard hitting sports documentation and gripping human interest. Whether you've heard of the Massillon Tigers or not, you'll enjoy this film. The players will grow on you and you will root for them to succeed. I highly recommend this film and the people in the town of Massillon should be proud of this film.

After seeing Go Tigers, I am looking forward to Director Kenneth Carlson's next film. DG