Few people over a certain age can hear “Yo, Adrian!” or “Sweep the leg!” without knowing from which movies those quotes come.

Yet finding someone who could name the director of those films – “Rocky” and “The Karate Kid” – could be a little more difficult. Documentary filmmaker Derek Wayne Johnson looks to change that.

His production company, AJ16 Entertainment, is working on a new film, “John G. Avildsen: King of the Underdogs,” which will examine the life and career of the director who brought many of America’s favorite films to the screen.

Avildsen specializes in directing films about the underdog, including such classics as “Rocky,” “Rocky V,” “Lean on Me” and all three “Karate Kid” movies. He has directed seven actors to Oscar nominations, including Jack Lemmon, who won Best Actor for his role in “Save the Tiger.”

Bringing Avildsen’s career to light has been the stuff of childhood dreams for Johnson.

“My entire life has been movies,” he said. “The first movie I remember seeing in the theater was ‘The Karate Kid, Part II,’ and it just stuck with me. Not just ‘The Karate Kid,’ but movies in general.”

His love of movies turned into a passion, which led him to film school for college. “It’s been a lifelong adventure. I went to film school at Stephen F.

Austin [State University] and realized that I may have won some first-place awards for short films in high school, but this is a whole other ball game. I got very serious and interested in understanding the business and making films,” Johnson said.

He moved to Shreveport after graduation and worked as a stand-in and extra. In 2007, he started AJ16 Entertainment, named for his brother who passed away the same year.

The idea for the documentary came out of an Internet search for his hero, Avildsen.

“I tracked him down because he’s a huge influence for me – like Hitchcock or Spielberg to me – but he’s rather forgotten about and unknown. I sent him this half-business, half-from-theheart email and his first response was, ‘Yo, Derek, what can I do for you?’ We started this friendship almost like a mentorship,” Johnson said.

After sending a few scripts to Avildsen that were rejected, Johnson was able to meet his hero face to face for lunch. “We met in person, which was amazing. It was like meeting Elvis for me, and he turned me down again. I never take ‘no’ for an answer, so after I got home, I called him and said, ‘What if I do a documentary about you?’ and he said, ‘Sold, done, let’s do it.’” Johnson completed a Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $30,000 for the project and has moved to Los Angeles to get started on interviews for the film. “We are going for all the big dogs – Stallone, Morgan Freeman, Susan Sarandon, Elisabeth Shue, Ralph Macchio. We are going to have a solid cast not just actors he directed but also current filmmakers who are inspired by his films. I also believe this will be the first documentary on this subject to have cast members from all three ‘Karate Kid’ movies, so it’s just going to be like this total fan explosion,” he said.

Production for the film will take approximately a year to complete. Johnson has hopes to have the film picked up by HBO or a similar television network.

Preparing for the film has been a labor of love for Johnson. “I bumped into Martin Kove, who played Sensei John Kreese [in ‘The Karate Kid’] at a film festival. We hit it off, and he said, ‘Call me in a week.’ Being the kind of guy I am, I called him in exactly a week, and he said, ‘Yeah, Derek, I’m actually at lunch with Billy Zabka, who played Johnny Lawrence, why don’t you talk to him about it!’ So in one conversation I spoke to Sensei Kreese and Johnny Lawrence from the Cobra Kai,” he said.

For Johnson, the stories Avildsen tells are those of his childhood. “I grew up as the underdog, and I think those themes just connected with me,” he said. “The underdog films have molded my life. I think what is going to connect with people is their silent hero is finally going to get remembered and rediscovered.”