Abram Booty leads movie project, ‘Work Horses’

Abram Booty has seen success come from improbable odds and small beginnings. But that was on the football field.

Now, the Sage Hill School football coach is tackling his biggest project yet. He wants to make a movie about the exploitation of college athletes. He says it isn’t just to raise awareness.

“This isn’t a movie, it’s a movement,” said Booty, who also coaches for the Newport-Mesa Junior All-American Football organization. “It’s different than anything that is out there. The purpose is for real change, for the public to realize what’s really going on.”

Booty wrote the script for “Work Horses,” not a documentary, but a feature film, because he believes it’s time for change within NCAA athletics. Players should receive some type of pay for play. He’s already received backing from former NFL players Ray Lewis, Desmond Howard, Trent Dilfer and Aaron Rodgers. Booty says Rodgers, the Green Bay Packers QB who starred at Cal, will have a speaking part in the film.

Booty said he began working on writing “Work Horses,” after he watched his younger brother, John David, play in the 2007 Rose Bowl. As the family was going out for a celebratory dinner after the game, Booty said he saw Dwayne Jarrett, the Rose Bowl MVP. Jarrett was walking to go eat at McDonald’s because he only had a few bucks in his pocket.

Booty said he became motivated to write “Work Horses,” after that encounter. Recently, the film has picked up steam with players backing it and has made Booty believe filming can begin in April.

Additionally, Booty said the movie has the support of producer George Folsey Jr., who produced “The Three Amigos,” “Grumpier Old Men,” and “Coming to America.”

This one does not figure to be a comedy, rather, “it’s a movie about a young man and the struggles that he goes through in college, the ups and downs,” said Booty, who played as a wide receiver at LSU. “There’s a love interest. It’s a movie with human elements. It’s going to change things. The average football fan doesn’t have a clue what is going on. We want to pull back the curtain. We want to show what they go through. We think that’s what’s going to create change.”

Booty is raising money for the film through Kickstarter, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1595289273/work-horses, which has generated close to $8,000. He remains confident the movie will be made.

He saw a tiny school that his father, Johnny, coached at become a national powerhouse program in the late 90s. Booty also played there, at Evangel Christian Academy in Louisiana. And, later after a stint with the Cleveland Browns, he helped his father start a new football program at Calvary Baptist Academy that won state titles in Louisiana.

Booty is applying the same type of work ethic to making “Work Horses.”

He’s doing his best to spread the word. He said he really wanted to do interviews with his two hometown newspapers, the Shreveport Times in Louisiana and the Daily Pilot.

In addition, he was featured on the Tim Fletcher radio show in Shreveport on Thursday morning.

He also made himself available for interviews with Huffington Post, Forbes, ESPN, CBS Sports, Fox Sports and Bleacher Report.

“This project may be as big as a thing we’ve ever taken on,” Booty said. “But I love the quote by Henry Ford, ‘the man who doesn’t believe he can, and the man who believes he can are both right. We believe we can do it.”