‘Unbillievable!” is certainly, well, a believable word for fans of the Buffalo Bills wondering how they will react if the National Football League team ever wins the Super Bowl.
It is also the title of a movie shot in Buffalo in the spring depicting the Bills getting another shot at winning the Super Bowl. It is being edited now and is planned for a fall release. The producers are looking for a streaming partner.
Fichtner plans to watch the film with his wife and some friends from Maryvale High School.
Screenwriter Scott Rubin and members of the cast and crew of “Unbillievable” will be hosting a party for the film from 7 to 11 p.m. July 13 at Hofbrauhaus (190 Scott St.). Tickets for the event start at $17, a reference to quarterback Josh Allen’s jersey number. The organizers say funds raised from the party will go toward enhancing the music, CGI, sound design and overall quality of “Unbillievable!”
According to an “Unbillievable!” release, “Bills Elvis” (John Lang) will sing his heart out, Terry Licata will sing and dance to her iconic tune “Talking Proud” and comedian Jon Cesar will pay tribute to Buffalo music legend Lance Diamond at the event.
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Greg D. Tranter, author of “Buffalo Sports Curse: 120 Years of Pain, Disappointment, Heartbreak, and Eternal Optimism,” will discuss his book. Co-director J. Garrett Vorreuter and producer Greg Lamberson also will be there.
"The Burned Over District," written and directed by Rochester filmmakers Vince and James Coleman, will be shown at 9:30 p.m. April 29 in the North Park Theatre.
Rubin played it coy when asked whether the Bills win the Super Bowl in his film.
In an email, he wrote: “Do they ever!?… Just like ‘The Sixth Sense,’ I’m not giving away the ending!”
Of course, it would make no sense to have a fictional film like “Unbillievable,” written by a Buffalo native, that doesn’t end with fandemonium after a Bills Super Bowl title.
A Hollywood comedy writer-manager, Rubin is a 1977 graduate of Williamsville North High School.
He was editor-in-chief of National Lampoon for a decade and has been a creator of video games and a stand-up comedian. He was a comedy consultant for the Tom Hanks-Sally Field movie about stand-up comics, “Punchline,” and wrote for numerous stand-up comedians, including the late Garry Shandling.
Consider these films the gift that keeps on giving. All can be seen on streaming services and networks (in fact, many can be seen all year).
“Unbillievable!” isn’t the first fictional take on the Bills winning a Super Bowl with a local person involved. In 2002, TNT aired an original movie, “Second String,” about the Bills winning the Super Bowl. Filmed in Toronto in the summer of 2000, it was directed by Buffalo native Rob Lieberman.
The film starred several recognizable TV actors, including Gil Bellows (“Ally McBeal”), Richard T. Jones (“Judging Amy”), Teri Polo (“Northern Exposure”), Garcelle Beauvais (“NYPD Blue”) and George Eads (“CSI”). Jon Voight also hammed it up as Bills coach Chuck Dichter, an old-school leader who wears a fedora and has a lifelong distaste for the backup quarterback from Notre Dame, Dan Heller (Bellows), who eventually will lead him to the Super Bowl. Bills quarterback Doug Flutie had a cameo.
The film used Van Miller, the voice of the Bills, Flutie, Mike Ditka and ESPN’s Chris Berman as comic relief. The script had Miller poke fun at the Bills’ past Super Bowl woes, and even has him say the word “fandemonium.”
The “30 for 30” documentary, “Four Falls of Buffalo,” ended with Scott Norwood’s 47-yard missed field goal going through the goal posts at game’s end and the Bills winning the Super Bowl over the New York Giants in 1991, instead of losing.
In a release, Rubin said he “decided to write the script because I’m a lifelong Bills fan and I’m losing my mind … How many times can your heart be broken as a sports fan? With the Bills, it seems endless. There has to be a way out of this, and if they can’t win a world championship in the real world, at least I can try to make them win in the movie world.”
A quartet of singing sisters from North Tonawanda got a taste of the bright lights, the big city and the Broadway life on Dec. 12, when they shared a bill with the Rockettes at the storied Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
The screenplay centers on “three generations of die-hard Buffalo football fans who gather under one roof on a chaotic Super Bowl Sunday.” Rubin plays Danny Rubinski, who has spent 10 years making a documentary about “The Curse of the Bills.”
“I realized that so much of the story is about us, the fans,” Rubin said in the release. “Players come and go, but we’re still here. I’ve been a fan since 1964! It turns out that we’re actually much more interesting, at this point, than the actual football team: How we survive as fans, year after year; our interesting quirks and coping mechanisms that make us come back the next season even more committed and insane.”
A 2007 interview with Rubin by Buffalo News reporter-editor Greg Connors included a story about one of the scriptwriter’s memorable experiences as a Bills fan.
Rubin was on a plane to Buffalo in 2006, watching the Bills lose to the Tennessee Titans 30-29 on a 30-yard field goal with 2:10 left in the game.
“I was watching the Red Zone Channel on Jet Blue, and they cut to the fourth-down play, and there I am, and we’re in this horrible turbulence and I feel like the plane is going down,” Rubin said. “Then I watch them not kick a 45-yard field goal, or even try, and I’m thinking, ‘Please God, don’t let me die with this being the last thing.’ Another horrible Bills loss, the plane can’t go down right now.
“I really thought I was going to hell, that this was a preview of hell, the perpetual Bills’ fourth-quarter loss. It’s just going on in an endless loop.”
Many Bills fans, undoubtedly, can relate.
