Although the wry and offbeat film is titled Olympia (and there's much that's startlingly bold and original about the sight of this candy-coated Mexican soap star turned single-minded Amazonian spear thrower), the film is not Olympia's story alone. Coach's personal transformation is the story's real turning point. Even writer-director Robert Byington admits, "I understand less about Olympia than Ed and Coach." As clarification he offers that "the part was written for Carmen, and I had a lot of ideas about the part based on her. I've talked to a lot of people who, having seen the film, make a case for her being the center of the film, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that, but I do feel like both Ed and Olympia are written for Coach rather than the other way around.

"One nice way a co-writer, Bill Stott (a University of Texas professor), articulated it was by saying that 'the men in Olympia want from her in ways she does not want from them.' And that's one of the conflicts of this movie. I think that's where a lot of the strength in her character is perceived by viewers who see her as a 'feminist' figure."

As to the question of "why a javelin?", the director lucidly explains that "the whole javelin-thrower thing comes from a couple of ideas that specifically appealed to me while writing the script. One was not knowing how to do something that you're doing. And there's a parallel for making a film. Rather than making a film about making a film (which I don't want to see or make), I got interested in the idea of someone who was not self-aware setting off to do something that he did not know how to do."

Byington was fortunate when it came to casting Olympia. The role of Olympia was written with Nogales in mind, but then he also managed to snag his dream choices to play the male leads. For the role of Coach, the dedicated Andrews (who also stars in another SXSW Festival film, Central Standard Time) added 25 pounds to his frame to acquire just the right patina of the film's lazy loser. Byington knew he had found his Coach when he first saw a 10-minute clip of Andrews' star turn in Rhythm Thief at the IFFM in New York a few years back. "It was like love at first sight," the director comments. "Same thing with Damian," Byington continues. "I'd seen him in Simple Men and Amateur and thought he was as literally Ed as anyone I could have gotten. He was my first choice of anybody."