The family film “Different Drummers” will be shown on July 14 at 6:30 p.m. at Stadium 14 Theatres in Kalispell as a fundraiser for the Evergreen Wrestling Club.

Tickets are $10 and are available at www.tugg.com/events/9250 The theater has limited seating; purchase tickets early. One hundred percent of the proceeds will go to the wrestling club.  

Club head coach Dave Caron has a special family connection to the film, which won awards for Best Family Film and Best Young Actor at the 2013 Houston WorldFest International Film Festival. His brother Don Caron of Spokane is the co-writer and co-director. 

“It’s a pretty compelling story about two boys growing up together, one with MD (muscular dystrophy) and one with ADD (attention deficit disorder),” Dave Caron said. “They bond and become friends and the movie shows the challenges it takes.

“It’s  a pretty inspirational ending, there will be a lot of wet eyes in the theater but in a good kind of way.”

“Different Drummers” is a family film based on a true story about the unusual spiritual journey and unlikely friendship of two boys growing up in Spokane in the mid 1960s. Eleven-year-old David, wheelchair-bound by muscular dystrophy, is growing progressively weaker, while his friend Lyle struggles with with an increasingly high, and seemingly uncontrollable energy level. Miss O’Donnell, the school principal, deals with his antics by requiring frequent runs around the playground and recesses in the boiler room under the supervision of the janitor, Mr. Merrick.

Lyle is unable to find a partner for  the school science fair due to his reputation for recklessness, and befriends David as a last resort. In one of their first conversations, David informs Lyle that their teacher is about to die and states that the source of this sad revelation is God. When their teacher does die, a doubtful and confused Lyle feels he must find out for certain if God exists. When he doesn't get the answers he's searching for from Mr. Merrick or his parents, he decides to take matters into his own hands.

 Inspired by his TV idol Jack Lalanne and his message of “working a miracle through intestinal fortitude and willpower,” Lyle convinces David that he can teach him to run, secretly harboring this as a way to test the existence of God. By way of exchange, Lyle extracts a promise from David to help him create the world's craziest-coolest bug collection ever for the Parent Night science fair. 

A pact is made, and when Lyle begins to twist the rules in a desperate attempt to give David some of his own excess energy, they come face to face with life's most transcendent and painful truths — and Lyle's question is ultimately answered, in a way he never could have imagined.

Lyle Hatcher, co-writer and director, based the character of Lyle on his own life story. Dave Caron said that one of the interesting things about bringing the film to the Flathead Valley as a fundraiser for a wrestling club was that Hatcher used a high school wrestling career in Spokane as a way to channel his excess energy into something productive. 

For over 40 years Don Caron has been active in the entertainment industry as a composer, choreographer, pianist, sound engineer/designer, screenwriter and author. He has composed extensivlely for orchestra, choir and chamber groups and his music has been heard world-wide. Commissions include the symphonic work "Paradigm Shifts" composed for the 50th anniversary of the Spokane Symphony through a grant from the Olga Ferrai Foundation of New York.  

 www.evergreenwrestlingclub.com