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Lost In The Fog: Horses, Hope and Heartbreak

By Samantha Abernethy in Arts & Entertainment on May 15, 2009 6:45PM

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Race horse "Lost in the Fog."

If we say Lost In The Fog is a film about horse racing, surely Seabiscuit comes to mind. But Tobey Maguire isn't nearly as adorable as the horse's cantankerous octogenarian owner Harry Aleo. And unlike most documentaries made after a story ends, filmmaker John Corey just happened to fall into the development of the story of a three-year-old horse named, Lost in the Fog. He followed him from the small-time races in San Francisco, through a 10-race winning streak, until the horse's capture of the coveted Eclipse Award, as the nation's top sprinter.

Corey met Harry Aleo in 2005 when Lost in the Fog had won his first four races in a row. He wanted to do a story about the promising horse that could head to the Kentucky Derby, as well as its lovable oddball owner.

Aleo was infamous in his liberal Noe Valley neighborhood, known as an eccentric conservative, who placed handwritten signs in his front window to taunt his neighbors. His dusty old real estate office stuck out like a sore thumb with signs boasting, "Welcome to an island of traditional values in a sea of liberal loonies." Corey was fascinated.

"As I looked closer, I noticed that each of his signs had some little disclaimer," Corey told us. "It was usually like a little smiley face or a smiley face with horns. Something to kind of take the edge off."

Corey found an unlikely kindred spirit in his neighbor, and Aleo introduced him to the island of old-fashioned horse racing, hidden in the sea of high-tech San Francisco. Knowing nothing about horses, except for their beauty, Corey dived in.

"They put down a fair amount of money on a horse that they couldn't predict would run well," Corey said. "And in essence, I did the same thing. I made a big bet on a story."

In the racing community, Aleo's cowboy hats still didn't fit in. Neither did his endearing use of swear words or the horse's unimpressive pedigree. The horse blew everyone away, but it didn't go to the derby. While he breezed through each competition, Aleo was bombarded with offers to buy the horse, at once valued around $12 million, but he refused them all. He and the horse's trainer Greg Gilchrist cherished the horse's potential and wanted to enjoy its success emotionally, not financially. In the film a reporter asks why he wouldn't sell him. "Why wouldn't I sell?" Aleo cries. "If I sold him I wouldn't have the horse, now would I?"

Corey planned to follow the horse until it lost, which it eventually did. After a lowly ninth place finish, they decided to retire Lost in the Fog. Corey had nearly finished his film--or so he thought--and revisited Aleo for a final interview. While filming, Aleo received an unplanned phone call from Gilchrist, and Corey serendipitously captured an extraordinarily tender moment as the plot takes an unexpected turn.

The horse, Aleo and Gilchrist, are an easy team to root for. The horse that should have been an underdog is just the opposite, and you can't help but to hope for its winning streak to continue. If the story weren't real, you wouldn't believe it. Sadly, in another real-life unexpected plot twist, Harry Aleo died in 2008, just after the film had won the CineVegas Audience Award for Best Documentary.

Lost in the Fog will be showing at the Gene Siskel Film Center on Sunday, May 17, at 3:00 p.m., and on Tuesday, May 19, at 8:00 p.m. The filmmaker will be in attendance