How Jeffrey Zucker (Questrom’10) turned his love of Terrier hockey into beer league comedy ‘The Late Game’
Unsurprisingly, the southern United States doesn’t have quite the same ice hockey culture as colder climate states. Growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, Jeffrey Zucker fell in love with competitive hockey as a child and knew he wanted to attend a major hockey school in college. He set his sights on Boston University, the alma mater of his favorite National Hockey League forward and former Boston Bruins player Chris Burke (who played one season with the Terriers before heading to the NHL).
Hockey was everything to Zucker during his time at BU. The Dog Pound became Zucker’s refuge when his father died when he was in the second grade.
“The first year after he passed away, watching the best team in the country…was the escape I needed,” Zucker (Questrom ’10) says. “And at this critical time in my life, it just came to me.” And then, in 2009, during his junior year, his ultimate dream as a Terrier hockey fan came true. The Terriers won their first NCAA championship since 1995.
Zucker graduated from Questrom with a degree in business administration and management with an emphasis in entrepreneurship. Since then, the self-proclaimed “serial entrepreneur” has dipped his toe into everything from the residential real estate market to the cannabis technology industry. He is currently co-founder, along with Mike Bologna (Questrom’10), of Green Lion Partners, a business strategy firm for the cannabis industry.
Ultimately, his financial adventures led him into the film industry, where, after a number of attempts at projects, he created his own feature film, “The Late Game,” about a friendship formed during a late-night men’s hockey game. Production has begun.
He developed the film with his longtime friend Jeff Tyner as writer, director, and producer. Zucker is an executive producer and one of the film’s lead actors. The idea was inspired by the two friends’ own participation in the Men’s Senior Hockey League and their love for the game.
“When it comes to hockey, if you want to keep playing as you get older, you end up in beer league,” Zucker says. “That’s where everyone ends up. You either don’t play or you’re in a beer league. And you’re not playing late at night because that’s when the rink can afford to give you ice time. It just has its own culture.”
The film follows Riley, played by newcomer Alec Reusch, over a night of beer hockey. Riley is a down-on-his-luck guy who recently moved across the country for work and at the same time went through a heartbreaking breakup. Just when Riley is at his lowest point, he is asked to play in a beer hockey game at 11 p.m. He makes friends along the way.
Check out the official trailer for The Late Game.
For Zucker, Late Game is essentially a movie about making friends, especially as an adult. “The key is to put yourself out there and how that’s really good for you, especially during tough times,” he says.
The film was shot over 16 days at an Olympic-sized rink in Charleston. Zucker’s former classmate and Green Lion business partner Joe Primavera (Questrom ’10) and Bologna were production assistants.
After filming, Zucker said, the team spent about a year and a half editing the film, which was released on Prime Video in the U.S. in February with the help of film distribution specialist Blue Harbor Entertainment. You can also stream it on Apple TV and Fandango at Home.
Zucker financed the film and says that regardless of how it turns out, it is his proudest professional accomplishment. “I’ve never had anything come together so symphonically all at once,” he says. The film has received generally positive reviews from critics, with a 4.5-star review rating on Amazon Prime.
Zucker says his time at BU’s business school gave him a strong foundation as an entrepreneur. Specifically, he says, people learn best by doing, or as he calls it, “throwing themselves into the fire.”
“I think part of that spirit came from my experience at Questrom,” he says, recalling his time working on cross-functional core projects, commonly referred to by students as “cores.” I say. Students spend a semester working in teams across various business disciplines to create products, services, and full-fledged business plans.
As Zucker continues to promote The Late Game, he hopes the light-hearted comedy will offer viewers an escape from reality.
“I wanted the viewer to not have to feel the world for those 86 minutes,” he says. “My father passed away when I was a sophomore in college. He wasn’t a big hockey fan, but he would have enjoyed our movies.”
Stream the late game here.
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