‘Carter High’ Explores Other Side Of ‘Friday Night Lights’

‘Carter High’ film *During the 1980s Carter High School in Dallas, Texas was a football powerhouse, and coming to DVD on August 2nd is the film telling the story of the four student athletes whose off the field activities cost them their future.

Ten years after the NBC premier of popular series “Friday Night Lights,” based on a 2004 film featuring Derek Luke and a 1990 book, both by the same name, “Carter High” stars Charles S. Dutton, Vivica A. Fox, and rapper/activist David Banner in a story about the rise and fall of a champion high school football team during a time the sport was more popular in Dallas than the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. The executive producer of the movie is former all-pro Dallas Cowboys defensive lineman Greg Ellis.

“This Carter High thing is the other side of Friday Night Lights,” Ellis said at the time of the film’s initial limited theatrical release last fall. “The team got 37 minutes of airtime during that movie which is unthinkable considering the story was about Odessa Permian’s season”.

RollingOut notes that “Carter High” will highlight players Derric Evans and Gary Edwards – who were convicted for their roles in a series of video store and restaurant armed robberies following the championship season. They were among 15 students, including six football players, who participated in what came to be known as “the Carter robberies”.

“While you never shot or killed anyone, the defendants before this Court cumulatively committed in six months’ time more armed robberies than Bonnie and Clyde did in their lifetime,” said former state District Judge Joe Kendall in his sentencing of Carter High players.

Edwards sued the movie’s writer and executive producer for more than $1 million in damages, claiming that he originally tried to turn his story into a movie and did not give the creators of “Carter High,” consent to use his name and likeness. He also objects to how he is portrayed in “Carter High,” saying in the suit that the depiction is “not accurate” and “degrading.”

“Carter High” is available on DVD now.