Most with a story to tell regale audience and bystander around the dinner table or the campfire or at the bar. More disciplined souls sit at the typewriter to memorialize it in print.But what possesses someone to then take that memoir and distill it into a screenplay, fundraise a small retirement account for a movie of that screenplay that you'll direct yourself before premiering the finished product in a packed Los Angeles movie theater for a collection of SoCal racing glitterati?“The summer of my first year in college [in Pasadena], I worked for the carnival. The last place we were at was Great Falls, Montana. I was going to go home after that. I had some money from working the summer.“But instead of just getting a plane ticket or a bus ticket, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to buy a horse and I'm going to bring the horse back,” laughs Tom Knust, the 78-year-old horse racing multi-hyphenate (and current jock's agent to Antonio Fresu), as he pinpoints a character trait driving his 30-year odyssey to film his war-torn experiences with Vietnam.The morning's late at Santa Anita's otherwise empty Clockers' Corner, and the rowdy din of the tractors provide a fitting backing track.“I paid like $600 for the horse. But when I came to pick it up, I found it was too expensive to send back,” Knust remembers. “So, I bought an old horse trailer for like a hundred bucks. I had to reboard and fix it up. And then I bought a car for like $400.”The old jalopy was thirstier than a desert cactus–Knust had to stop every 50 miles to quench the steaming radiator from dozens of water bags strapped to the outside. There were other bumps along the way. A late stop at Salt Lake City saw the horse get loose and pull a Houdini. Knust found her the next morning grazing in a football field.A young Tom Knust | courtesy Tom KnustThe whole trip took more than three days. By the time he got back to his sister's house in Arcadia, it was two in the morning.“Well, I'm not going to wake her up. So, I just put the horse in the backyard, closed the gate and went to sleep in my car. The next morning, my niece goes to my sister, 'There's a horse in the backyard.' My sister says, 'There's not a horse. You're dreaming.' She looks out the window. There's a horse grazing on their lawn,” recalls Knust.“Stupid stuff like that, that I don't have to do, but I just get my mindset on something and then I just have to do it,” he says. “You know, it's the way I've been all my life.”The latest demonstration of this innate stubborn streak is the movie Shadow War, which Knust recently played to a packed theater in Pasadena, attended by a healthy cross-section of race-trackers–jockeys and trainers and TV presenters and bloodstock agents, some of them actors in the film. A standing ovation ensued.The movie cuts back and forth between the formative years of Knust's life, from his childhood growing up under the shadow of his alcoholic grandfather to the dreams and ideologies that led to his deployment to Vietnam, and then his convalescence after a head shot during combat left him temporarily paralyzed.“My grandfather was an alcoholic, but he would tell me all these stories about all these adventures. And when I was a kid, that's what I wanted to do, go to all these places and have more adventures than him,” said Knust.“My grandfather had instilled in me so much that I was invincible. And I did think I was invincible. So, when I got shot, that's the thing that shocked me the most. That I could get hurt,” says Knust.“The guy they put next to me [in hospital] was in one of those rotating beds. He had screws in his head and his feet, and they'd have to rotate him and stuff. He would moan all day long and sleep at night. I hated it because I could never sleep.“Finally, I got used to it, and then I got friendly with the guy. Before, I couldn't hear what he was saying. But this time I could hear him saying he didn't want to die.“I told him about my spiritual experience and that I felt there was something else besides what we have here. Then, when I woke up the next morning, he had died,” Knust recalls. “I thought to myself, 'Maybe what I said to him helped,' because he was really at peace and he wasn't so much afraid anymore.”An earlier draft of Knust's screenplay, that he'd adapted from his memoir, apparently knocked for a short while around the executive desks of movie studio MGM.“They had optioned the script and they said they were going to do something with it. But nothing happened. I don't think MGM was really that serious. And then they gave me the option back,” says Knust.For the next 25 years, the script went through several shapeshifts, some of it by pedigreed storytellers.This includes, said Knust, racehorse owner Jim Wilson, who produced Dances with Wolves during a long collaborative career with Kevin Costner. David Milch, the doyen of prestige TV (think Deadwood and Luck), and once a piece of the Santa Anita furniture, similarly pulled out his red pen.“One time he came in my office and he sat there for like 30 minutes and rewrote some stuff,” says Knust. “Then he said, 'I can't do it legally because I'm on contract. But if I did it for you, that would've cost you about $150,000.'”After pulling together around $100,000, it was time for Knust to start filming. Which is when he leant on familiar faces, like trainer Carla Gaines' roly-poly dog, Prince Bama, now immortalized among cinema's greatest canine matinee idols courtesy of a haunting character arc to rival Newman in Cool Hand Luke.To recreate combat in Vietnam, Knust decamped to Ventura County's Lake Piru, part of owner-breeder Tim Cohen's sprawling Rancho Temescal.Bloodstock agent Steve Rothblum (clearly channeling his inner Brando) played the dissolute grandfather.For the mother of his younger self, Knust turned to XBTV on-air talent Millie Ball, who provides the film's beating heart. Ball only got the call up the night before filming, the original actress having bailed last minute.“I asked, 'How many lines do I have?' He said, 'Oh, don't worry, it's only a few lines. A few scenes. Usual thing,'” Ball recalls of the casting call. “I got there the next day and it was basically a whole day of filming with about six, seven scenes and a whole lot of lines. But we got through it, and I actually really enjoyed doing it.”Ball is no acting neophyte, but she hasn't flexed that muscle for years. And when she did, it was as a stunt performer primarily.“I thought it had a good message,” says Ball, of why she signed on. “You go to war, bad shit happens, and you come back and you've got to make the best of it, but you've got to stand proud having fought for your country.”It took about a year-and-a-half to organize, film, and then edit the movie. Knust hopes to sell it, once he can secure the rights to some of the music woven through a playlist that includes the Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Doors.For the film's premier, Knust hired out the Ice House theater in Pasadena. Trainer Richard Mandella was there.“I thought it was just terrific,” says Mandella. “I think it's a film that anybody would enjoy. I just wish it would have gone further and talked about the career he ended up having.”Indeed, throughout Knust's artistic ventures–which includes other books and a script in development–he has shied away from his long involvement in the sport.Having returned from Vietnam and still recovering from his injuries, Knust walked hots for trainer Joe Dunn. He took his own license out for a short while.“The good thing is they don't keep records from when I trained, so, nobody knows what my record is,” he says, leaning heavy on the self-depreciation.He's been a clerk and a placing judge. An assistant handicapper and a racing secretary. But his longest stint has been as a jock's agent for the likes of Corey Nakatani, Kent Desormeaux, Richard Migliore, Kevin Krigger, David Cohen, Abel Cedillo, Victor Espinoza, and Jose Valdivia, Jr.He represented Patrick Valenzuela on four different occasions. One of those times, Valenzuela had one of his drug-fueled meltdowns.“I told him, 'The California Horse Racing Board's going to come and test you. If they test you, you're not going to ever be able to ride again.' So, I took him to a rehab in Pasadena and he was there for all of three months. He gave permission to the doctor to talk to me about his progress and everything.“I'd go to Del Mar–I'd picked up Nakatani by then. On Mondays and Tuesdays, I'd come back here. The doctor at the end of the three months told me 99.9% he'd do crystal meth again. He said, 'Absolutely will.' And sure enough, he did do it again,” says Knust.The 63-year-old jockey recently applied for his riding license. He was knocked back. But the hearing officer hinted Valenzuela could reapply in 2026.“Knowing him, he'll apply again,” says Knust. “If anybody can do it, he can do it.”Determined to finish what he started no matter what?Sounds an awful lot like his former agent.The post From Agent to the Arthouse, Knust’s Cinematic Dream Becomes Reality appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.