GREENVILLE—Sitting in his basement apartment in New York City’s East Village, Zack Purdo would tell stories.
He would talk about his life in Florida. About his life at the University of South Carolina. And about his life in a frat.
He talked about the tucked in polo shirts, the friendship, the boar-hunting trip, the shaved head, the wall sits. The good, the bad and the ugly.
And the hazing.
His roommate, Ethan Berger, would listen. Somewhere in the haze of those stories told deep into the night, the aspiring filmmaker found a movie.
A movie about a frat.
More than a decade later, that movie came to life.
“The Line,” released in 2023, explores the ritualistic and toxic world of fraternity life at a big Southern school. It interrogates how seemingly benign hazing practices can turn dangerous — quickly.
“Just because something’s a tradition doesn’t mean we shouldn’t examine it,” Berger said. “I feel like we just take tradition at face value when we need to figure out whether it serves us or not.”
Viewers follow the bid process through the eyes of its main character Tom Backster (played by Alex Wolff), a working class kid climbing to the top of a wealthy and all-White fraternity. As Backster wrestles with his place at the university and in the frat, he finds himself at a crossroads after a hazing retreat goes wrong.
Berger’s first feature film features a star-studded cast, including Wolff, Halle Bailey, John Malkovich, South Carolina native Bo Mitchell and “Euphoria” actor Angus Cloud, who died in 2023.
The New York Times labeled the movie a “Greek tragedy.” Rogerebert.com compared it to the hit film, “Social Network,” describing it as “amped up and disturbing, but … hardly the stuff of fantasy.” Slant Magazine called it a “Lord of the Flies” type tale.
Though it’s set at a fictional university, the movie has multiple connections to South Carolina.
Purdo attended USC. Mitchell is from Aiken. Three actors were cast straight out of USC’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. The team even spent a weekend immersing themselves in the fraternity world at USC.
But it’s not a story about South Carolina.
It’s a story, they said, that can happen anywhere.
“Hazing, whether it’s physical or mental or verbal,” Purdo said, “is something that everyone has dealt with in one way or another.”
How time at a USC frat inspired ‘The Line’
Shortly after Berger and Purdo moved in together, they sat down with Alex Russek for an eight-hour interview. Purdo rehashed his whole life story on a camcorder.
In 2012, Russek and Berger wrote a draft, editing it back and forth for years to come.
Berger, a Los Angeles native, had watched “Animal House” and “Old School.” But he didn’t feel like those happy-go-lucky partying films represented what he heard from Purdo, or what he saw as a student at Wesleyan University.
There, he lived next to a fraternity, where they would play “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” by Eiffel 65 on repeat during pledge week.
Purdo said he didn’t want to create a film that exonerated frats, but he didn’t want one that bashed them either.
Fraternity brothers, led by Alex Wolff (center), meet in 2023-released movie “The Line.”
His aim was to acknowledge the complexities of fraternity life, the loneliness it can cure in teenagers away from home for the first time, the brotherhood it created and the dangerous hazing it permitted.
“I wanted to show a movie that really was in the gray,” Purdo said, “where there’s bad things, there’s good things and it really was up to the audience to make their mind.”
As they pitched the film and raised funds, real-life events confirmed Berger was on the right path.
Most notably, in 2014, Clemson University student and Sigma Phi Epsilon member Tucker Hipps died in Lake Hartwell after a pledge run. A decade later, his death is still clouded in mystery.
When Berger learned of Hipps’ tragic death, he realized how much their movie resembled his story. And how “The Line” underscores a larger issue across South Carolina and the United States.
A recent Post and Courier investigation found, in the 10 years since Hipps’ death, there have been 105 hazing incidents at South Carolina fraternities. After dipping during the pandemic, reports of hazing have risen again.
Pledges across the state have been gagged, blindfolded, required to drink alcohol and forced into dangerous quizzes on fraternity history — with little accountability from schools or state officials.
“It’s happened 100 times since (Hipps’ death) because we don’t ever look in the mirror,” Berger said. “We don’t take the time to be like, how can we be better? It’s about this feeling of not having agency when you do.”
And the film has more South Carolina connections
Shortly before they filmed the movie, Purdo messaged the frat he joined while at USC, SAE. He asked if they would let some of the movie’s creators and actors hang out with them. They agreed. And in 2021, cast members flew to USC to become pseudo-fraternity brothers.
Over a course of a week, they ate at Halls Chophouse, attended a football game at Williams-Brice Stadium, snacked on pimento cheese sandwiches, listened to the USC gameday anthem “Sandstorm” and went out in Five Points. Austin Abrams, who plays Gettys O’Brien, even attended SAE’s semi-formal.
While visiting USC, Berger recruited three fraternity brothers, including Nicholas Basile. The finance major did not intend to become an actor, but jumped into his role as Frank Vitti. He called the movie “a documentary” about the fraternity experience.
Cast members would call him with clarifying questions.
Bo Mitchell, who plays Mitch Miller, speaks to a group of pledges in “The Line.”
“Austin Abrams asked, ‘would he use the term pledging in a sentence?'” Basile remembered. “It was just stuff like that. To me, it didn’t seem that important, but to them, they’re so attentive to that kind of stuff.”
The movie also featured Aiken native Bo Mitchell, best known for his role in “Cobra Kai.”
Mitchell, who plays Mitch Miller, wasn’t in a fraternity, but the story mirrored others he heard growing up in South Carolina. To prepare for the film, he spoke with one friend who joined a fraternity. The friend served as the “driving force” behind his character.
“I was like, ‘this is going to be more of a real take (of fraternities) and an opportunity to tell a story about where I’m from,'” Mitchell told The Post and Courier. “I really want to protect that as well. I want to protect how, in a way, Southern states, and particularly South Carolina, is dictated in film.”
Berger interviewed countless fraternity brothers across the country. They discussed hazing practices like drinking hot sauce or running a marathon after consuming alcohol. He spoke with the family of Timothy Piazza, a Penn State University student who died during a hazing ritual. His parents gave Berger permission to use their sons’ image at the end of the film.
Even some of the props and scenes came from real life.
Basile gifted the costume designers two duffel bags of his clothes. They were packed with polos, t-shirts and khaki pants. The creators took inspiration from the hardhats pledges wear at SAE. The movie’s shaved heads and boar hunting trip came from an experience Purdo had in college.
That’s part of what made the movie work, according to The New York Times, which called the details “believable, and therefore more disturbing.”
“It’s supposed to be like a mirror,” Berger said. “I think it’s about America. I think it’s about the way in which we value tradition at all costs. I think it’s about masculinity and how we measure our masculinity by how much trauma we endure. I think it’s about a society that values silence.”
After filming in Oklahoma in 2022, the movie was premiered in 2023 at Tribeca Film Festival. It’s showing in some theaters across the country, including Columbia.
Berger hopes it puts fraternities under a microscope, starts a conversation and encourages people to ask questions.
“I wanted the audience to think about fraternities’ influence here in the U.S.,” the director said, “and watch the movie and consider whether they think that fraternities feel antiquated, or if they feel like it’s tradition worth preserving.”
“The Line” can be streamed on Apple TV and Amazon Prime.
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