According to… John Darling Haynes

The Baton Rouge native, graphic artist and veteran documentary filmmaker spent the better part of the last half-decade exhaustively researching, cataloging and documenting the history, traditions and icons that have made LSU football such an indelible thread in our cultural fabric.

Last fall, Haynes, along with his wife and producing partner Joanna, debuted their three-hour Ole War Skule documentary. A companion film, subtitled 1950s Era (Extended Edition) and focusing on the Tiger teams of that decade—including the 1958 national champions—is available in stores this month.

Here Haynes tells 225 in his own words what he learned while making the films.

The guys who paint the field walk miles back and forth doing it. It’s not about efficiency. There are easier ways to paint a football field. It’s about attention to detail and getting it right. There’s a life lesson in that.

No one thinks about how many bathrooms have to be prepped for Tiger Stadium. As one of the field managers told me, it’s like having 100,000 of your closest friends over.

You get only so many sunrises and sunsets in your life, and I want to see more. Watching that color painted across the sky above the stadium, I’m just in total awe of that creation.

My dad always used to say, ‘Son, when you get knocked down, you have to get back up and keep rolling.’ He ripped his Achilles tendon playing football at LSU, wasn’t supposed to walk again, but he came back after the injury and actually played.

My mom was a photographer, so as a kid I learned from her how to tell a story with one frame.

It was at hunting camps as a kid, deer and duck hunting, that I really experienced the richness of relationships and storytelling. It isn’t all about the kill, but about the camaraderie of being at the camp with family.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy eating some good venison.

Working with my wife, it’s a challenge at times for us to cut the work off and just be, just enjoy each other’s company without discussing planning or this meeting and that one. We’re finding those boundaries. It’s so important.

Joanna and I began “going together” in seventh grade at Episcopal. I asked her, and I remember the song that was playing: “Hunting High and Low” by A-Ha.

I found the work ethic in Ireland to be incredible. When we went there, it was the biggest snowstorm in years, and those people walked miles in the ice and cold to get to the Waterford Crystal factory to create the [BCS championship trophy] crystal balls for us for the movie.

I had not slept for days before the Ole War Skule premiere. The film was done, but we had difficulty exporting it because of the file size—20 terabytes of information. We called [the software company] Avid, and they told me they’d never seen a project this big.

I had seven plan Bs to get the film out of the system, and No. 7 is the one that worked—the day of the premiere. It was one of my toughest moments.

My dad was never the emotional type, but get him watching an emotional movie, and he’ll cry like a baby. Ruffin Rodrigue came up after the premiere and told me he’d cried, too.

Gus Kinchen said, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘It’s not about where you end up, but what you become in the process.’ That’s what it’s about.

Of course, I remember seeing Star Wars for the first time as a kid, but for me, it was less about the specific movie and more about the tradition of going to the theater each week with my parents, paying the ticket lady who’d been there for years, getting my pop corn and being transported and inspired.

I own the projector I saw my first movie on. I bought it when the old Broadmoor Theatre closed down.

I’m a sentimentalist when it comes to things like that. There’s so much to learn from the way things were crafted generations ago. If you look in my office, there’s very little in there made after 1970.

There’s a moment when your child runs up to you and gives you a big hug, and you realize, ‘This ?is my greatest gift,’ and your priorities get straight real quick.

In life we’re always looking for the high points, looking ahead to big events, vacations or milestones. What about the days when there’s nothing on the schedule, when you’re wrestling on the couch and eating leftovers? That’s the magic.