A former member of the U.S. Hockey Team, writer/director Peter Markle has studiously avoided sports films since graduating from documentaries and commercials to features. Markle's direction of the daffy comedy setpieces in Hot Dog...The Movie was as sure-handed as his staging of the tense Vietnam battle sequences in Bat 21 (1988). His made-for-TV movies, mostly actioners, have included Desperate (1987), Dead or Alive: the Race for Guy Falace (1991) and Jake Lassiter: Justice on the Range (1994). Surely, Peter Markle's most unenviable task was trying to make heads or tails of the existing footage in Wagons East (1994) after star John Candy died in mid-production.