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Jordan Ludwig

Making Rally Caps (2024): A Conversation with Director Lee Cipolla


Director Lee Cipolla (right) and actor Ben Morang behind the scenes of Rally Caps. / Courtesy of @rallycapsthemovie on Instagram


Rally Caps is an independent film that follows a young protagonist, Jordy, who is deterred from the ballfield after an injury. As he recovers from the physical wound as well as trauma from the accident, Jordy struggles to rekindle his love for baseball. To get Jordy back on his feet, he’s sent to camp where he meets a new team of ballplayers who help him retake the mound.


Last week, I delved into what we know about the film as well as what to expect in terms of content. Though Rally Caps doesn’t hit streaming services until September 10, the trailer gives viewers the impression that this isn’t your run-of-the-mill baseball movie. 


World Magazine calls the film “a slice of real life,” and that’s due to the creative vision of writer and director Lee Cipolla. Rally Caps is adapted from a book written by father-daughter duo Stephen J. Cutler and Jodi Mitchell Cutler which is inspired by a true story. In translating this story to the screen, Cipolla invokes a realistic image of what baseball looks like today. 


But—how did Cipolla do it? Here with the Girls Club is Cipolla himself to answer that question:


LUDWIG:  We are so thrilled to have you here today. Thank you so much. 


CIPOLLA: No thank you for reaching out. And I saw a little bit of your content in your page, so it was really cool. Definitely up our alley. So yeah, thanks for reaching out.


LUDWIG:  So I'm gonna start super simple. So could you describe rally caps for us in three words? 


CIPOLLA: Three words, huh? 


LUDWIG: Yeah, very specific.


CIPOLLA: Anything is possible. That's kind of the theme of our movie.


LUDWIG: Yeah, I like it. So the film centers around the young baseball team at camp. Did you play baseball growing up? Or are you a fan yourself? 


CIPOLLA: I'm a huge fan of the sport. It was my favorite sport growing up. I played Little League. We actually shot the film on the little Little League baseball field that I played Little League on. 


LUDWIG: Wow. 


CIPOLLA: So yeah, it came full circle in upstate New York, in a little town called Pine Plains. But yes, I love baseball. What's funny is it's a timed sport now, because of the pitch clock, but growing up, it was—and still is—a timeless sport. But what I love about it is that it's, you know, it's very human in the way that [the game] it's flawed. It's gone through twists and turns, but it, you know, it keeps evolving, and it's a microcosm of life. 


LUDWIG: Absolutely so. Did your experience playing Little League as a kid affect how you shaped the film? I know it's adapted from a previous novel, but did your own perspective on baseball kind of shape how you took in that material?


CIPOLLA: Great question. Absolutely. The main character is Jordy, and he is dealing with anxiety that's stemming from a baseball accident. What I personalized in it is anxiety about playing and performance. For many children, it's their first time doing something in front of a large group of people. So it creates anxiety. But also relating to anxiety in their personal lives, and how playing a sport and building camaraderie with teammates can help you deal with anxiety on and off of the field.


LUDWIG: Yeah, absolutely. How did you go about capturing anxiety on film? 


CIPOLLA: Another really great question—because anxiety is not something that's visual. It's something that's felt; it's internal. So it’s tough to, you know, create a visual language for it. For Jordy, he's dealing with the injury. First and foremost, he's also dealing with the trauma of his father's passing away. But to visualize anxiety, I kind of just told the story through flashbacks of him continuing to see the injury. There's allegorical images in the film; there's a camp monster that acts as an allegorical symbol for Jordy's anxiety that he has to overcome. The word is not really "overcome," it's “learning to live with.” And so that was all done visually. And also, his reaction to seeing these images when everyone around him is not. They just see a boy that's really nervous and afraid, but they don't know what's going on inside. And so the visuals bounce in and out of his mind.


LUDWIG: That's really well said—I can't wait to see it on film. Taking a look at your history as a director, this isn't your first take on a sports film. So you directed Harder They Fall about kickboxing, and that was about 15 years ago. So what drew you back to another sports-centered project?


CIPOLLA:  That was my first feature film. Like I said earlier, I think that sports are very much a microcosm of life, and I think that that's really important for all people. And I know not everyone is keen on sports or playing it. But I think being part of youth sports is really important in shaping people's character. And I think there's a lot of parallels that you can draw from the challenges of sports going into real life.

They're obviously very visual. But there's sort of a built-in Hero's Journey to every sports story where the main character is overcoming something internally—whatever that is—but then, externally, a built-in challenge of needing to win, needing to prove something, needing to overcome something, needing to win a championship. Whatever you have, it's all built-in. It just makes for good drama and entertainment. 


LUDWIG: Right. And you said before, not everyone's keen on sports—and not everyone's keen on sports movies, too. Most of the time, those sports cliches kind of seep their way into a lot of classic sports films. Did you find it difficult to avoid—for lack of better word—Hollywood-izing the film, given what the genre looks like? 


CIPOLLA: I'm really enjoying your questions. And, yes, it was a challenge. I like to compare it to when you build a car. You're not going to put the engine in the trunk, right? You're not going to put the wheels on the top of the car because it wouldn't drive. So there are certain aspects to storytelling that you really can't get away from, and the sports movie genre is built on cliches. There's not really a lot of ways around it if you're trying to tell a conventional story for a bigger audience. Obviously, there're many great sports films that have an outside-the-box approach, and those are great for what they are. 

Rally Caps is a conventional underdog story. And so there's not many ways to reinvent that wheel from a structural standpoint. And if you see a lot of the reviews—knock on wood, we've gotten very good reviews so far—a lot of them are overlooking this basic structure that you can't get around because they're seeing these other elements at play. And when I read this book and when I started developing the project, it's like, “Okay, people love that story.” They love the Rocky story. And people want that, but they want a fresh perspective. 

What the fresher perspective was, was seeing Rally Caps through the lens of a child that is dealing with anxiety and trauma, living in this backdrop where he is at camp. It's really a character-driven story. I like to pitch it as The Sandlot with an indie film approach to it—because it is character-driven. Because a lot of these stories, even though they're featuring children, and the character,  the main character, might be a child, you're not really seeing it quite through their lens. Maybe it's about the parents that are dealing with the child or the coach, but to really see it through the eyes and experience of a child and how they process the world at that age where there's a lot of innocence. That was the driving force for me to tell this story, but also tap into a commercial demographic. 


LUDWIG:  I'm glad that you brought up The Sandlot, because I have another question, teeing off of that. From the trailer, what makes Rally Caps so special is how it tells a contemporary take on the baseball story—on that framework that you talked about. I mean, classics like The Sandlot can stand on their own throughout the years. They're timeless in a sense, but they're also about characters responding to completely different times. I mean, The Sandlot is in the 1960s. So how do you feel Rally Caps can really speak to kids today in the 2020s?


CIPOLLA:  This is about a camp that features both girls and boys playing, playing together. So that's one thing that you didn't see in past movies. And also incorporating mental health issues in a way that is pretty serious and not something that's handled lightly. Also, Jordy is a pitcher, and he befriends a deaf catcher who just got cochlear implant surgery and wears a hearing aid. And this is all pretty modern—that technology. So those are all the things that I feel help make it contemporary—and it's set in the now. So there's cell phones and all of that. But at camp, they're not focused on phones, but each other. And, you know, obviously, the camp environment helps that. But I think that's sort of the supplemental motion, like, “Hey, you can have technology and knowledge readily available, but it's still really important to be in the flesh and hanging out with each other.” That's, you know, what childhood should still be. “Go out and play!”—right? 


LUDWIG:  Totally. So did you and your creative team work closely with Little League teams or young ballplayers to capture that experience you described? 


CIPOLLA:  Yeah. So when we cast the film, not every character was written as a prolific, young athlete. Because this, you know, takes place at a camp. It's fun. It's not a team competing for the Little League World Series or anything like that.  But we worked with a couple of Little League teams here and there, the Thunder Baseball League who were extras in the movie. There was a Little League that we worked with in Los Angeles to also shoot part of that opening scene where Jordy gets hurt. 

But again, it's a movie about kids at camp who play baseball. That was what was interesting, too, was kids of all demographics and ages and sizes and types—all of them were playing together where, typically, you'll just have competition sorted by sex or age. So that was interesting, too. 


LUDWIG:  Yeah, I really like what you said about how this team isn't a group of Little League champions. A lot of baseball films emphasize the idea of prodigies—you know, characters like Benny the Jet Rodriguez and Dottie Hinson. They're natural leaders, and they're naturally good at baseball. But that also sets a tough standard for kids in the game to follow. What do you hope young players can learn from Jordy as a different kind of protagonist? 


CIPOLLA:  You make an excellent point. I think that even though audiences and child audiences can find inspiration in all of those examples that you just gave—Angels in the Outfield, A League of Their Own, The Rookie where the kid gets this incredible ability to throw at a Major League level. These are all things that are not attainable for most people watching the movie. And so how can they identify themselves in the story? 

It goes back to the idea that goes against a typical Hollywood pitch. It's got to be about the World Series or some really high-end thing. You know, an idea that incorporates super-athletes or some incredible story. 

What I love about Rally Caps is it's a story that could happen to anybody. So this camp championship they play has no major stakes from an outside point of view. But for these kids, it's everything at that moment. It's everything for Jordy. Looking back at your childhood experiences, these moments are so important in shaping your life.

We also that we talked about, mental health, dealing with adversity. Jordy’s friend, Lucas the catcher who has the cochlear implant, is able to be included in these moments and not subjected to his disability. And for Lucas, you know, the hearing aid is just a trait. It's just something that's part of him—so we don't draw a lot of attention to it being some sort of obstacle for him. It's not an obstacle; it's just a part of who he is. Wearing a hearing aid is like another child having red hair. It's just a trait. The intent is to have kids watch it and say, “That’s me and my friend.” I think identifying yourself in a story is so important. 


LUDWIG:  The Girls Club is a network run by an all-female team, so the character Lisa in the trailer really draws our eye—so do the girls on the film’s poster. So without spoiling anything, what can you tell us about their characters and the role they'll play? 


CIPOLLA:  Yes, I'm going to start with Nikki, Lucas's older sister. She's 15. She's one of the older children at camp, a teenager, and she's really important in terms of being a role model to her brother and to all the younger children. There's a really integral scene where she's helping Lucas become a leader because she's a leader of herself. 

And the way that the girls become a part of the team is because the “hero team” is at risk of not being able to play in the game because they don't have enough players. They go to the girl's side of camp—the camp’s split between the girls and boys. So they recruited the best players they knew, which happened to be Nikki and her two friends. One is nicknamed “Mouth,” and you'll see in the film why—she talks a lot. And then there's Lisa, who you mentioned, the third baseman that has a rocket arm. The girls are a really important part of just, you know, completing the team, but also leading the younger boys, you know, learning how to play, but also being mature.


LUDWIG:  I can't wait to learn more about them when the film comes out. So Rally Caps is streaming September 10. Could you send the Girls Club readers off with a word of advice before watching? 


CIPOLLA:  First of all, it will be available on Amazon and Apple to rent on September 10—and we're having a couple of public events before that. We're actually premiering at the Field of Dreams in Iowa on August 31. And for advice, it's something for everybody. There's a generational aspect to it, where there's Jordy’s grandfather and Jordy’s mom, both former players. I think the advice would be, come into it with an open mind and an open heart. This is not just a silly shenanigans movie with kids. There's a very deep, texturized message to it. It deals with real people going through real experiences. So prepare for some heavy moments, but also fun, invigorating moments—as well as a good time, hopefully. 


LUDWIG:  Thank you for saying that. And I have one more question for you—maybe the most difficult. What is your Letterboxd top four?


CIPOLLA:  My Letterboxd top four…okay, I have to admit that I'm not quite on Letterboxd. I was just introduced to it two years ago, and it was actually because Rally Caps got a Letterboxd account.

If I were to have a list…it's really tough, because it evolves as life goes on. But there's a general group of movies that stay with me and are kind of my staple for all things film and life— and continuously going back to them. So it's somewhat of a random list. But here are my four for you at this moment as we speak on August 20. So there's Field of Dreams, which is up there, of course. 


LUDWIG:  Classic.


CIPOLLA: There’s Shawshank Redemption. That one's good too. 


LUDWIG: That's gotta be on everyone's list.


CIPOLLA:  Yes. Sorry—did I say Stand By Me


LUDWIG:  No, you didn't. But I love that film. 


CIPOLLA:  Stand By Me, definitely. Which is, you know, is considered as this great coming of age film. But it's so much more than that. 


LUDWIG:  Right—it's so heavy. 


CIPOLLA:  And the curveball, one which always surprises people, is Contact, starring Jodie Foster back in the 90s. I think that that is my underrated favorite movie of all time. 


LUDWIG: Yeah, I haven't seen that one. I'll have to put it on my list. 


CIPOLLA: If you have some time, take a watch. There’s a lot of thematic stuff that’s really great.


LUDWIG: Absolutely. Well, that’s all I have prepared for you today. Thank you so much for your time.


Edited by Brooke Weinrich




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