In the locker room right before his return to boxing, David gets in a heated argument with his coach, Joel, who booked him a potentially unwinnable fight. As tensions rise, David must come to terms with Joel’s true intentions and confront the reason he left boxing in the first place.

Director Biography

Richard Garriques III is a director-editor-writer who recently graduated from Towson University with a degree in Electronic Media and Film. He has written several short film scripts and treatments, directed roughly a dozen shorts, and served in various crew and cast roles on

several others. While his background is in theater and acting, he always had a passion for filmmaking and the medium as a whole. He continues to hone his craft and is actively writing his next films.

Director Statement

When writing Pep Talk, I was coming to the end of my college career, and about to hit a turning point in my life. I was continually frustrated by the willingness of my professors and mentors to throw my peers and I to the wolves; the nigh eagerness to have suffered trying to make it in the industry and say, “there is no other way.” Beyond that, I was reconciling the adult I wanted to be with the things I had done, or failed to do, throughout my life.

In the film, David’s situation is unwinnable from the start. David’s failure to stop the abuse his mother suffered weighs on him. And in returning to boxing, his coach and old friend, Joel, has set him up to fight someone he’s well outclassed by. In the ensuing argument, these points are manipulated and agitated by Joel, who has his own motives for David to fight. There’s a sense of unfocused anger and resentment that builds in our characters.

The film serves as my expression of anger, regret, and desperation that were inescapable in this changing time of my life. David’s frustration pours out throughout the film, trying to have some semblance of victory, but what he seeks to change has already happened, or has already been set. All that’s left is to accept it, and keep going.