Some movies are so outlandish that it takes a group of imaginative people to make them. And some other people are crazy because the genuine tale that motivates them is crazy. Jeff Tomsic’s 2018 film, Tag, presents the amazing tale of five adult friends who continue to play the “Tag” game as adults. Additionally, it draws inspiration from the true account of the “Tag brothers,” which the Wall Street Journal covered in 2013. Let’s learn more about it, identify the genuine Jerry, and determine whether or not he truly was “the untouchable.”
You can watch the official trailer for Tag here on Youtube.
Tag movie, the true story: who’s the real Jerry?
In the movie Tag, released in 2018, five friends are playing the game “Tag” still as adults: their names are Hogan “Hoagie” Malloy, Bob Callahan, Randy “Chilli” Cilliano, Kevin Sable, and Jerry Pierce. Tag is inspired by the true story of the real “Tag Brothers,” which was told by the Wall Street Journal in 2013.
Bill Akers, Patrick Schultheis, Sean Raftis, Mike Konesky, Brian Dennehy, Joey Tombari, Rick Bruya, Chris Ammann, Mark Mengert, and Joey “Beef” Caferro are the ten actual Tag Brothers. At the high school, Tag games were first played in the early 1980s. The game came to an end after high school was over, and Joe Tombari was the final person to be tagged (or, in the lingo of the movies, “to be it”). When the group reconvened eight years later, Joe suggested that they start the game over. Since then, the ten friends have continued to play the game every February by flying the country from coast to coast to tag their opponent.
Jerry plays “The Untouchable,” the player who has not been tagged in thirty years, in the film. However, there is no real Jerry in the true story of Tag because everyone has been tagged at least once despite the fact that the difficulty of the game has increased over time. The movie’s characters were based on a real group of friends, blending their traits with those of the real people. Jerry runs a gym in the movie, although none of the Tag brothers actually operate gyms; there is a Catholic priest, a math teacher, two executives, and an engineer, but no gym owners.
However, the real Tag brothers’ true story is even crazier than what was depicted in the film. The lawyer in the group stipulated a formal agreement outlining the terms of their game in real life. The gamers were compelled to conceal, dress up, and set traps because it was extremely difficult to tag someone. And yes, at two in the morning, one of them did in fact break into the home of another player, Brian Dennehy. The craziest incident is a player named Patrick Schultheis who was tagged while attending his father’s burial. He was seated in the front row, close to his father’s coffin, and his friends were there to support him. “Beef,” one of them, gave him a hug and told him, “You are it.”
Real life can in fact triumph over fiction. Although no real Jerry “The Untouchable” ever existed, the crazy things the real Tag brothers did in their true story were not too dissimilar from the crazy things depicted in the movie Tag.