BORN TO RUN - CABALLO BLANCO - THE MOVIE

Some of you will remember my original post about the book Born to Run and Micah True, the Caballo Blanco.  It is the fourth-most viewed post on this blog!  

 

I recently read that the book is likely going to be made into a movie, with Matt McConaughey playing the role of Micah.  Here is the blurb from deadline.com

Matthew McConaughey has become attached to star in a Matthew Michael Carnahan-scripted adaptation of Christopher McDougall’s best-selling book, Born To Run: A Hidden Tribe, Super Athletes, And The Greatest Race The World Has Never Seen.

The book told the story of how an award-winning journalist and often-injured runner headed for Mexico’s isolated, deadly Copper Canyons to find out how the blissful Tarahumara Indians honed the ability to run hundreds of miles without rest or injury. He tags along to discover their secrets and takes readers from Harvard science labs to sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America, where ever-growing numbers of ultra-runners are pushing their bodies to the limit. This led to a climactic race in the Copper Canyons that pitted America’s best ultra-runners against the tribe.
The book spent 178 weeks on the NYT Bestseller list and is still selling 10,000 copies a month. It ignited the ‘barefoot running movement,” one of the most influential exercise innovations of the past decade and the catalyst for a new $2 billion industry in “barefoot-style” shoes. The book’s a bestseller in 12 countries and sold 2 million copies in the U.S. and half that around the world.

And this is a short portion from an article in Trail Runner Magazine:

Last week, Deadline that actor Matthew McConaughey would be starring in an upcoming movie based on Christopher McDougall’s 2009 bestseller, Born to Run. The book documents a 2006 race in Mexico’s Copper Canyon between top U.S. ultrarunners and the local Tarahumara people, famous for running days on end in homemade sandals.

Born to Run has been credited with fueling the barefoot-running craze and inspiring more Americans to take up trail running. Micah True, also known as Caballo Blanco, an ultrarunner who organized the Copper Canyon race and featured heavily in the book, became something of a cult hero following its publication. (True passed away in 2012.) With McConaughey’s star power and a big-screen audience, it’s entirely possible that the movie will have a similar—if not amplified—effect.

In reading about this, I learned that there already is a movie about Micah, and the trailer is below.  Any of you who are familiar with Boulder will recognize the west end of Pearl Street, where I believe it's Micah sitting outside a coffee shop reading from the book.

 

Run Free Movie Trailer from Noren Films on Vimeo.

"Run Free - the True Story of Caballo Blanco" produced and directed by Sterling Noren.

“Perhaps the first trail running bum, True was an unusual suspect to inspire the recent barefoot-running movement. But when True invited Christopher McDougall to Mexico’s Copper Canyon Ultra Marathon, he became a central figure in McDougall’s book, “Born To Run,” illuminating the minimal running techniques of the Tarahumara people. True passed away on a run in New Mexico’s Gila Desert in 2012, and now the Copper Canyon race has been renamed in True’s memory as Ultramarathon Caballo Blanco.”