HOLLYWOOD, CA—In a recent interview about his movie Loosing The Hopple, screenwriter Jason Chesley said that his story of a young harness racer's relationship with his horse and their struggles to shift from a pacing to a trotting gait before eventually winning the storied Hambletonian is actually a metaphor for life. "It's less a harness racing movie than a deeply human story of relationships and personal struggles that just happens to have harness racing in it," said Chesley, who compared his protagonist's struggles with hoppling his horse Whole Enchilada to the universal struggle of shedding the yoke of childhood and growing up. "Life isn't always a garden trip. You're being carried along in the sulky of fate with only your Standardbred and your wits, and when you're boxed in, third on the rail, well, those are the times you dig down, move into the pocket, and trot yourself right out of that death hole." Though Chelsey was coy concerning most plot points, he did confirm that his protagonist's encounter with Messenger, the horse from which all harness racing horses were bred from, was a metaphor for God.