Engraved on a Nation- The Kid From La Puente

Gridiron America Radio

During his 19-year CFL career, Anthony Calvillo never talked a lot about his past. It was known the Canadian Football League’s all-time passing leader grew up in a tough neighborhood in Los Angeles and that he chose football over a life of street gang crime, but over the years he gave few details of just how difficult it was. Director Shelley Saywell’s documentary “The Kid From La Puente” shows both the horrifying and uplifting aspects of the star quarterback’s upbringing that he had kept mostly to himself. It features a boy growing up in La Puente, a crime-ridden, mostly Hispanic community east of Los Angeles, with a violent, alcoholic father and an older brother David who was drawn into a street gang and later jailed for attempted murder.