OUR TEAM & SOURCE MATERIAL
Michael Pollack - Producer
Michael is the Chairman and CEO of Pollack Films. He has been involved in the financing and production of theatre and screen features for more than 35 years and he has held directorship positions for more than a dozen financial institutions. Productions that Michael has been essential in producing and/or financing have grossed over $1 Billion at the box office. Michael's current projects include the feature films Major, The Black Cyclone, A Six Gun for the Devil, Neon Messiah, The Untitled Drugstore Cowboy Sequel, Ouija Papers and The Untitled Chic Harley Project.
Michael Dubrow - Producer
Michael is the founder and CEO of Major Motion Productions, LLC. He is also co-founder of large and enduring businesses in the institutional investment, direct response marketing and financial technology industries. He is a principal and Chief Communications Officer of Estalea, Inc., a private equity firm that created successful fintech companies such as Savings.com, Avenu Technologies, Inc., Moneytips.com and Leadpoint. Prior to Estalea, Michael co-founded landmark Internet startups Touch Commerce (now Nuance.com) and Bargain.com. He was also a founding partner of Vision Capital, a unit of the Sloan Financial Group — the world’s first billion dollar, African-American owned investment management firm. Michael is an avid cyclist, musician and instrument-rated private pilot.
David Wieger - Screenwriter
David has enjoyed creative collaborations with many leading actors, including Dustin Hoffman and Malcolm McDowell. As a screenwriter, he received a prestigious Sundance writing scholarship and wrote scripts for several studios, including: Hawaii Five-0 (co-written with W. Peter Iliff for Touchstone) Judy and John Carlo, Frequent Flyer, and Faeries (Sony); Headcase (Newline); and Blackbeard & Grace (Turner Films). David’s screenplay for Wild America was produced by Warner Brothers.
Source Material - Marshall Taylor Autobiography
In 1900, Marshall "Major" Taylor was the world's richest and most famous athlete. Millions of fans turned out to see him race — on three continents — over a record-breaking two decade career. But with the coming of the automobile and airplane in the early 20th century, bicycle racers were displaced as the world's fastest men, and cycling slowly faded as the world's — and America's — favorite sport.
Many of cycling's heroes, including Major Taylor, lost their fortunes, along with their fame, in the global financial crash of the late 1920's. And so it was, in 1928, while living in poverty at the YMCA in Chicago, Major Taylor self-published his autobigraphy: The Fastest Bicycle Racer in the World - The Story of a Colored Boy's Indomitable Courage and Success against Great Odds.
He carried a battered briefcase filled with these volumes to bike racing events throughout the midwest, and eked out a living selling them to a
declining number of cycling fans until his death in 1932. He was buried in
a pauper's grave.
The original screenplay for Major, by David Michael Wieger, is based on this remarkable autobiography of a man — and an era — long forgotten, but very much worth remembering.
