Ex-Hawai'i sportscaster wins award for Croce film

By Wayne Harada
Advertiser Entertainment Writer

Pop music icon Jim Croce is the subject of a 52-minute, award-winning documentary produced by a sportscaster. Advertiser library photo

"After years of rejection letters from Hollywood producers, I decided to produce a film myself. Nobody but nobody would buy the idea," said Langpaap, now 45.

Hawai'i natives may remember Langpaap as a Hawai'i Pacific University sportscaster and marketing director, who lived here 20 years before buying a one-way ticket to the Mainland in 2000 to pursue his dream.

He had honed his screenplay — with input from Neil Everett, his former broadcast partner who now is with ESPN — in a Kahala apartment for about five years.

The resulting 52-minute film, "Jim Croce: Last Night in Natchitoches," a non-fiction documentary retracing the last day of Croce's life — the final day, his last concert, the fatal flight — earlier this year was named Best Music Documentary at the 2003 New York International Independent Film & Video Festival.

And the film, plus its maker, will be in Natchitoches this weekend to mark the 30th anniversary of Croce's death. Langpaap hopes this journey will help jump-start a bigger film about Croce. He envisions a major director — a Cameron Crowe, a Rob Reiner, a Ron Howard, somebody — expanding the Croce legacy into a mainstream Hollywood feature.

"I would be flattered — and honored," Langpaap said.

Doing an indie film with few dollars and no contacts was no picnic, he said. "I maxed out my credit card, spending $22,000 to do the film," said Langpaap, who's now the play-by-play announcer for the Tampa Devil Rays professional baseball organization in Princeton, W.V. "It was a labor of love."

The treatment for the film first surfaced in a writing class at UCLA. It stayed with Langpaap throughout his Island broadcasting career; while toiling on HPU broadcasts with Everett, for instance, he'd frequently tend to his screenplay instead of the stats.

"When I had 10 pages, I showed Neil, and he told me, 'You're onto something.' That was the genesis of the work."

Langpaap said he met filmmaker Quentin "Pulp Fiction" Tarantino at the Hawaii International Film Festival in Honolulu "and I asked him to do me a favor — touch my script and turn it to gold. He did and said, 'Turn to gold, baby.' And that kept me going."

Langpaap wrote, produced, directed and narrated the film. And did all the research. Surprisingly, no one had previously done a film on Croce, the pop music icon who left a cache of hit songs, including "I've Got a Name," "Operator," "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," "Time in a Bottle," "You Don't Mess Around With Jim," "Photographs and Memories" and "I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song."

"I think he was disrespected," said Langpaap. "But he was a master, a wordsmith who wrote beautiful songs. He didn't write singles, he made albums, which produced hits. He was a brilliantly educated man, a late bloomer, who didn't make it till he was 28, an age when many (pop stars) had already burned out. He was a teacher, a poet; but he never got the credit he deserved."

"I actually wanted to make an epic, a 'Titanic'-like, sprawling film," he said. Finding investors was impossible, so he downsized.

He acquired a motor home, checking out RV parks, shuttling to and fro to get his movie literally on the road. At Prather Coliseum, at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, he was able to corral 500 extras and a marching band to recreate a concert scene.

"I was blessed with folks eager to do the project," he said. Performers. Makeup people. Musicians.

Billy O'Con (a dead ringer) portrays Croce in the film; Gerald Mitchell plays Maury Muehleisen, who was Croce's lead guitarist and also perished in the plane crash. They managed to bring back the Croce sound.

Reach Wayne Harada at wharada@honoluluadvertiser.com, 525-8067 or fax 525-8055.