Last summer the Ole Miss Sports Production team took home a regional Emmy for its work on the documentary “Sam’s Story,” and on March 22, Ole Miss athletic director Ross Bjork presented the documentary’s subject with his own Emmy.
Sam Farris
Sam Farris was diagnosed with stage four neuroblastoma, a rare form of childhood cancer, in 2007. Over the next five years, Farris and his family struggled to cope as he fought the illness and underwent treatment.
Farris’ best friend, junior Seth Dickinson, said he was blindsided by the diagnosis as a child.
“I didn’t really understand life and death and your life being threatened,” Dickinson said. “I remember the day I found out, right before we entered fifth grade, my mother told me Sam had cancer. In my mind I didn’t comprehend it.”
That summer, the Make-A-Wish Foundation granted Farris’ wish to have a baseball field built in his backyard, with help from the Ole Miss grounds crew. His parents said this was a turning point in his fight, giving him and the rest of the family the motivation to keep pushing on.
By 2011, Farris was in remission.
The documentary, though, wouldn’t begin until spring 2015.
Farris reached out to Athletics Director Ross Bjork with his Make-A-Wish story for the first time. He sent an email to Bjork with pictures of the baseball field.
Ferris waited for a reply.
Weeks passed and Farris had almost given up on the story when he finally heard back from the sports production team. The team wanted to make a short video about his battle with cancer.
“When they first came to me about it, it was one of those ‘awe moments,’ one of those speechless moments where you don’t know what to think or say but you’re excited to be doing it,” Farris said.
Things moved quickly from there.
“At the time, I didn’t understand what that meant,” Farris said. “I thought it was going to be a hype video used on one of the sites or something. When the production team explained it more in detail and told me the extent of what they wanted to do, it was humbling.”
The production team, made up of Chris Sabo, Micah Ginn, John Lassiter and Stewart Pirani, worked tirelessly over the next several months, compiling interviews and capturing footage of Farris and his family.
Farris’ initial interview took about two hours.
The team travelled to Farris’ hometown, Mantachie, to interview his parents and brother.
After final interviews were done with Make-A-Wish employees and the former Ole Miss athletics director, filming was complete.
The video was released in October 2015. Farris said the final product was better than he could have ever expected.
“It was mind-blowing,” Farris said. “It looked like something that was made in a professional studio in California. It was 16 minutes of hard-core, moving, heavy stuff. It was absolutely awesome to see they had put that sort of effort into my life. I was very appreciative of the work they put in and very impressed with the final product.”
Farris was in Memphis, Tennessee, participating in a St. Jude golf tournament when he first heard the documentary won a regional Emmy award for Best One-Time Sports Feature.
“It didn’t sink in at first when he said we won the Emmy,” Farris said. “Then he sent me a picture of it while he was on the phone with me. I hung up afterwards and sat on the bed in my hotel room and thought, you know, this is unbelievable. It was powerful to take all that in.”
Director John Lassiter said Farris’ story was exciting to work with because of its power and tie-in with Ole Miss athletics.
“As a documentary producer, these are the kinds of stories you die for,” Lassiter said. “When you see something like this come across your desk, you just think, ‘This is it. This is the story I want to tell.'”
Lassiter said he felt mixed emotions the night he and his team won the Emmy.
“For me, more than anything, I felt like Sam’s story deserved the award more than our production of it,” Lassiter said. “His battle was incredible, and to see how well he’s doing now is amazing. As happy as I was for me and our team, I was just as happy for Sam. I was so excited to share that news with him.”
Farris said sharing his story with the community was an honor, and he and his family are not afraid of using his story to inspire and make differences in other people’s lives.
“There’s an opportunity for me to share my story and my experiences in a way that might help someone else,” Farris said. “You never know who your story might touch.”
