Real-life stories also are getting their due with a rash of documentaries: Dust to Glory, about the Baja 1000 road race; The Year of the Yao, the story of Yao Ming, the towering NBA star from China; Murderball, a look at quadriplegic athletes competing in wheelchair rugby; and Down and Derby, a chronicle of Cub Scout and youth competitions featuring small cars carved out of pinewood.
The popular skateboard documentary Dogtown and Z-Boyz from 2001 has now spawned fictional film treatment with this summer's Lords of Dogtown, a portrait of teenagers who pioneered extreme skateboard styles in the early 1970s.
"Intrigue in these lesser-known sports and also the kind of the people who do them, that's what drove us toward bowling," said Wilhelmus Bryan, a producer on the upcoming A League of Ordinary Gentlemen, a documentary examining professional bowling and the hard times the sport has undergone since the late 1990s. "It's become sort of the Rodney Dangerfield of sports. It doesn't get any respect.''
The onslaught of sports movies shows no signs of letting up.
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