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THE GALLON CHALLENGE
Synopsis
Just days before deadline, college film-major Travis Carter’s final project is destroyed. With his back against the wall, he is left with only one way out: shoot a documentary of a milk-drinking contest.
Against all odds, Travis must assemble an elite strike-force, made up of beer-chugging, party-star Steve Farley; pill-fueled, super-athlete Adam Roberts; inept-womanizer Fletch Peterson; absent-minded genius John Stratman and his pyschotic brother, Walker.
Together they must band together to stage the ultimate Gallon Challenge, survive the repeated attacks of the sinister Beta Fraternity and overcome Travis’s growing obsession with Shakespearean actress, Erin Williams.
For Travis and his friends, “The Gallon Challenge” represents a final shot at love, redemption and ultimate glory before they end their collegiate careers and face entry into the real world.
Production Highlights:
* Hairball comedy Directed by Blank Stage owner and operator Brent Brooks
* Shot by DP Tom Pritchard
* Shot on location in Athens GA
* Official Website: http://www.thegallonchallenge.com
In the independent spirit of ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ and ‘Clerks’ comes ‘The Gallon Challenge,’ a film that could best be described as a cross between ‘Animal House’ and ‘Better off Dead.’
The movie stars Travis Carter, a college film major who dreams of achieving greatness by producing “Cobra Blood,” a blood-drenched, animated action film that pays tribute to Sylvester Stallone and Steven Seagal. However, when “Cobra Blood” is destroyed with only three weeks left in the year, Travis has no choice but to make a documentary of a milk drinking contest.
Helping Travis in his quest to put together this ‘Gallon Challenge,’ are his motley crew of friends: Steve Farley, the hard-partying frat boy who destroys Travis’s animated movie by downloading hard-core, barely legal porn and Adam Roberts, a relentlessly driven athlete who is inspired to create the milk drinking contest after losing a chicken nugget eating competition to a lactose intolerant opponent.
Joining them are Fletch, the inept womanizer whose insatiable appetite for sex inevitably leads to humiliation and disaster, John, the intellectual physics major who can only be described as a thinking man’s Stephen Hawking and his brother Walker, a disturbed young man addicted to pro wrestling and violence.
Adding further complications are Travis’s obsession for the beautiful and talented Shakespearean actress, Erin Williams and the repeated attacks by the sinister Beta Fraternity, led by their brutal leader, ‘The Knausser.’
For Travis and the rest of his friends, ‘The Gallon Challenge’ represents a last shot at love, redemption and ultimate glory before they end their collegiate careers and face entry into the real world.
The Gallon Challenge: The First Gulp
The inspiration for “The Gallon Challenge” occurred in the year 2000, at the College of Wooster, a small liberal arts school in Northern Ohio.
A weekly series of eating competitions on the Swim Team between Christie Egnatuk, Eric Knauss and Wes Bennett were quickly becoming a cult phenomenon on campus. The contests had included two industrial sized “Belly Buster” breakfasts at The Kauffee House, 24 ice cream sandwiches for breakfast, 40 hard boiled Eggs and 60 chicken nuggets in an hour. After suffering a humiliating defeat in the nugget contest, Bennett decreed that the final competition would be a Gallon of milk in one hour, an event he felt he could win, primarily because Eric was lactose intolerant.
For whatever reason, the idea of a milk drinking contest captured the imagination of the students like nothing else, and worked them into a near frenzy. This “Gallon Challenge” quickly attracted a number of media outlets, many diverse and colorful competitors, dozens of volunteers and most importantly local Improv Comedy sensation and fledging filmmaker, Nick Hanson. It was Nick who saw the opportunity to make a documentary film and immortalize the grueling physical test of human courage.
The Gallon Challenge began at 8:00 PM sharp on November 5th, 2000, in a courtyard outside of the Kenarden Dormitory. In the cold autumn air, an estimated crowd of around 250 people watched with baited breath and pinched noses as 16 competitors attempted to collectively consume 2,048 fluid ounces of homogenized, grade A, vitamin A & D fortified 2% milk.
It was without a doubt one of the most intense and demanding hours of competition that anyone on Earth had ever witnessed. Vast amounts of blood, sweat, tears and vomit were spilled on the grounds of the Wooster courtyard that night. Although every competitor showed a near superhuman level of heart and grit, it was Writer/Producer Wes Bennett alone who was able to reach deep down inside himself and summon the intestinal fortitude necessary to overcome the suffocating vastness of a single Gallon of milk and ultimately emerged triumphant. Everyone in attendance knew they had witnessed something they were incapable of ever forgetting and the raw footage captured by Hanson was nothing short of remarkable.
Several months later, as end-of-year boredom settled in, preparations for the premiere of the Gallon Challenge documentary began. The campus was plastered with posters and flyers, the student theater was hijacked and nearly 400 ticket were sold.
Hanson finished editing the footage literally minutes before screening. The capacity crowd went completely berserk and the energy and response of the audience proved overwhelming to the filmmakers. Although no critics could attend the premiere, there is little doubt that despite their inevitable disgust at the amount of regurgitated milk, they would have been deeply impressed by the many powerful and deep emotions which flow through the film like a river of humanity. Based on the success of the screening, the documentary was put on VHS and sold over 250 copies in a very short time. It was obvious to Challenge Champion, Bennett, that there was enormous potential for a full length movie based on the event, as people vomiting milk seemed to captivate an audience like nothing else he had ever seen.
The legacy of the Gallon Challenge continues to this day through the Jackass film and television franchise, the rise of the International Federation of Competitive Eaters and numerous low quality videos available on youtube.com. Although there are hundreds of websites dedicated to people vomiting milk, “The Gallon Challenge” will be the first full-length feature film, based primarily on the subject.
