ESPN's 30 for 30: A Midterm Review

I'm not in college anymore, but as everyone I work with can attest, I wish I still was and from time to time I try to act like I am.  This would explain why I routinely come into work hungover on Thursdays.


Sidebar: Ruby Tequila's claims that "Wednesday night is the new Friday night!"  Here's why that's bullshit: Thursday morning is not the new Saturday morning.  You can act like it's Friday all you want on Wednesday, but when that alarm goes off, and you wake up bleary-eyed from too many beerritas (beer and a margerita go together better than you might think) and with a gut full of Mexican queso dip and enchiladas, it's not a good thing.  Then you go to work smelling like you just crossed the border and celebrated by going on a two-day bender.  Then you try to look the City Mayor straight in the face with your bloodshot eyes and ask him about plans for the redevelopment of downtown Lubbock.  Really and truly, you realize Thursday morning is in no way Saturday morning, because if it was you'd still be lying in bed getting a little hair-of-the-dog treatment and wasting the day watching shitty Big 10 football when you wake up at 11 AM.


I miss college.


So any excuse I have to act like I'm in college, I will use readily.  Enter ESPN's documentary project 30 for 30.  The idea is 30 films from 30 great film makers about incredible events that happened over the passed 30 years (since ESPN hit the air in 1979).  The topics they'll cover range from the USFL, to The U (The University of Miami, one I personally can't wait for), to Reggie Miller.


The series began October 6th with "King's Ransome," a wonderful opening salvo about Wayne Gretzky's trade from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings.  The most recent installment was "The Legend of Jimmy the Greek," about an ex-NFL handicapper whose career went down in flames after some questionable comments made on air.


In all, 30 for 30 has debuted six hour-long documentaries.  I have watched all of them, so I thought I'd hand out grades for each doc and tell you what I liked and did not like about each.  Call it a mid-term review, because that way I can pretend that I'm still in college and that this is a legitimate way to spend my time.

JNG: During my senior year of college....Sorry, got a little choked up there for a second. Anyways, as I was saying, during my senior year of college I was lucky enough to take a creative writing class. The class was taught by Professor Bret Lott, who appropriately enough has made quite a living off of his own writing. He has written twelve novels, with his book Jewel earning him a guest appearance on Oprah Winfrey's show (a selection to her book club) and a spot on the the New York Times Best Sellers list. He also took a hiatus from teaching to be the editor for LSU's Southern Review, a highly respected literary journal.

The class, and Lott himself, fit about every fictitious fantasy I ever held about an author teaching a class. We had all our classes outside, sitting on the bare lawn under the Spanish moss while Lott sat in his chair chomping on a cigar and filling the air with the woodsy scented smoke. There were no grades, only writing, and of plenty of Lott's making fun of us and waxing poetic about life. It was a free flowing conversation that touched on what it meant to live and how that translated into writing. Cigar smelling clothes be damned,  it was easily the most interesting class I took in my four years in Charleston, and Lott was easily my most interesting professor.

Now, I fancy myself to be a good writer. I mean, obviously, I take the time out to write things like this.So for my first short story assignment, which the whole class would read and dissect, I tirelessly made an effort to come up with something great. Something people would enjoy and appreciate and be surprised by. Something that would show my potential as a writer.  And most importantly to impress Lott, who probably looked at me as some shaggy haired frat boy looking for an easy grade.

The story I came up with involved an elaborate dream sequence with soaring vocabulary and implicit thematic devices. It delved from there into a story about a boy going to New York for a job interview against his will and meeting an old man in a deli and the conversation between the two. I worked on it for over a week (which for a fly-by-the-seat writer like myself, who rarely edits after a first draft, is a long, long time) and when I turned it in, I felt instant pride in my work. Most everyone in the class enjoyed it, but I'll always remember something Lott told me, both for  that assignment and for life.

He said, with the cigar still clenched in his teeth, "Show, don't tell. Believe that you can get a point across better by illustrating it than by talking about it."

I tell you this because I feel like what Mitch and I are looking for in these documentaries is vastly different. The best of what 30 for 30 has had to offer thus far follows what Lott told me almost a year ago. It has been more about showing you something indirectly, through images and interviews and old clips, and letting you make your own conclusions about the material without the director ever explicitly laying it out or telling  you. I feel like that is what Mitch wants; he wants the story to have structure, and he wants it in a straight forward, traditional way. That's fine, everyone has their own criteria of which to judge something they view (even though Mitch to this day says The Punisher is a good movie while I am positive 99.9% of the population would say it was horrible).

I just see it in a different light. I understand that each documentary is telling a story personal to the director. A story with which the director empathizes and feels strongly enough to take the time out and show to us. Most of these directors came ESPN when they heard of the idea for the series. Most of them already had stories they wanted to tell. This is the most intimate thing ESPN has ever done. I appreciate that.



1) "King's Ransom"
Director: Peter Berg
Premiere: October 6
Synopsis: In 1988, the Edmonton Oilers traded the NHL's best player, Wayne Gretzky, to one of the NHL's worst teams, the Los Angeles Kings.  Gretzky was a hero and a national icon in Canada.  The documentary deals with the effect the trade had on Edmonton, Canada, the NHL, and Gretzky himself.


MLC:
Grade: B+
Viewer's Eye: "King's Ransom" was an excellent premiere for the 30 for 30 series as a whole.  I was one-year-old going on two in August 1988 when this happened, so I clearly don't remember it.  To be able to experience this event and learn new things about what happened was amazing.  I had no idea that Wayne Gretzky's wife Janet was a soap opera actress and that her life in LA may have contributed to Wayne's decision to OK the trade.  In fact, I had no idea that any part of the trade was even up to Gretzky.


The Edmonton Oilers traded the best player of all time after he won four straight Stanley Cups to a new team in LA while he was in the prime of his career.  The trade made expansion actually viable for the NHL and indirectly resulted in franchises popping up in Tampa, Miami, Phoenix, and Dallas.  LA even got a second team (Anaheim). 


Imagine the Bulls trading Jordan after his first 3-peat to the Clippers for a few players and a mountain of cash.  The doc had tears, it had betrayal, it had burning in effigy.


It gets a B+ because I hated the way director Peter Berg shot his interview with Gretzky on a golf course.  it made Gretzky look like a douche bag.  He's talking about one of the most Earth-shattering moments in hockey history, something that ruined an incredible dynasty and changed the league forever, and his venue is an LA country club with Gretzky chilly-dipping his 9-iron.  Here's  a novel idea: be ultra authentic with it.  Take him back to Edmonton.  Interview him on the Oiler's bench.  Not on a golf course.  What kind of shit is that?






JNG: "Kings Ransom" was the first documentary in the series and was directed by Peter Berg, who also happened to direct one of my favorite sports movies of all time in Friday Night Lights. The film looks at the trade of NHL superstar Wayne Gretzky from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings in 1988. 

Berg paints the picture around the actual event of the trade with fast edits that cut between old footage and interviews with various parties involved and Berg and a middle-aged Gretzky looking back on the fallout while playing golf  together. The documentary shows the personal impact of the trade; how it devastated small-market and passionate Edmonton, how it brought about expansion in the NHL, and how it personally affected everyone involved.

The impact is what touched me the most. Seeing the full press conference announcing Gretzky's trade and the facial expressions of everyone there, specifically Gretzky breaking down as the realization of the moment got to him. Tell me this, would you ever see an athlete do this today? Absolutely not. Refreshing to see players care about who they are playing for and having an attachment to a city and a fans that goes beyond money. Gretzky understood the business side of the trade, and from his interview you can tell part of him also enjoyed the exposure that playing in LA would provide him, but he also felt a deep and heartfelt  bond to Edmonton.

Before the trade, Gretzky had won eight consecutive Hart Trophies (NHL MVP) and five Stanley Cups in seven years. After the trade he would only win one more Hart Trophy and never again would he hoist the Cup.

What could have been?

It is one of the most compelling story lines in sports. "Kings Ransom" does a beautiful job touching on the Trade that changed Gretzky's career, the course of the Oilers franchise, and the NHL forever, all the while leaving us to wonder "what if".



2) "The Band That Wouldn't Die"
Director: Barry Levinson
Premiere: October 13
Synopsis: In 1984, Baltimore Colts owner Robert Irsay had his team moved out of Baltimore in the middle of the night.  The team packed up and headed for Indianapolis.  But the Baltimore Colts Band refused to go away.  They continued playing their instruments and lobbying for another NFL team.  They eventually got one when the Ravens arrived in 1996.

MLC
Grade: A
Viewer's Eye: Maybe it's my midAtlantic bias, but I loved this documentary.  It also has something to do with what little I knew about it.  The dedication of these people was incredible to see.  25 years later, these people have a new team that has already won a Super Bowl, new band uniforms, and ostensibly a new allegiance.  Yet they still cry when they remember the Baltimore Colts.  They still talk about the Colts like that one ex-girlfriend that every man has that he never recovers from, no matter what he may go on to do with his life.  They played at halftime of other NFL games, they played in parades in Baltimore and other cities, they played on the steps of the State Capitol.  This was (is) an amazing group of people that truly never gave up hope and forced the mighty NFL to take note and bring football back to Baltimore.


I had forgotten a\bout the Baltimore Stallions, the Canadian Football League team that Baltimore had to deal with prior to the Ravens.  I had forgotten about the tell-tale Bal'mer accent.  Most of all, I'd forgotten about the Baltimore Colts, my Dad's favorite team.  I've never had an event that I did not live through brought back so vividly as to become in my mind a vivid memory that I had never before possessed.  I wasn't alive for it, but I lived through it through this documentary.  This includes the ultimate irony: Baltimore gets its team back, but at the expense of another hard-luck city who goes through the grieving process all over again (Cleveland).  Wow.


3) "Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?"
Director: Mike Tollin
Premiere: October 20
Synopsis: The USFL was a new pro football league that attempted to take on the mighty NFL in 1983.  They had some early success but could not sustain their own expansion.  Tollin hammers home the point that New Jersey Generals owner Donald Trump killed the league.


MLC
Grade: B
Viewer's Eye: Right from the beginning I knew I'd have a problem with this documentary.  That's when the director Tollin puts himself squarely in the middle of the documentary.  I was a young kid.  I had a starter production company.  I had all the exclusive rights to this footage.  I sat down with Donald Trump.  Tollin narrated.  Tollin provided background.  Tollin Tollin Tollin.  It just annoys the hell out of me when someone telling a story about one thing makes it half about themselves.  Like most of my writing (see the intro).


The saving grace of this film is that it does not focus so much on Mike Tollin as maybe Mike Tollin would have desired.  It is full of great footage, interviews, and bits of information that I had no idea existed. I knew nothing about the USFL (aside from the fact that it existed and failed), nor its demise until this documentary.  I don't care about Mike Tollin, but watching this documentary and learning more and more about Donald Trump was great.  Especially seeing that his hair has always been retarded, not just recently.

JNG: "Small Potatoes" does suffer for the fact that its director plays a little much of a central figure. But the footage is incredible. I was born in 1986 and have heard about the UFSL but t was a delight to actually see the games and players (even though the logos and jerseys were some of the most hideous I have ever seen). I also didn't know how prominent some of the players who played in the USFL went on toe become. The league signed three straight Heisman winners (Herschel Walker, some guy, and Doug Flutie) as well as having future Hall of Fame quarterbacks Jim Kelly and Steve Young. The games looked entertaining. The league was fun and with its spring season actually seemed to be a potentially viable league.

Then the Donald came along. In his power hunger and greed, Trump insisted that the season be moved to the fall to compete with the NFL as well as leading the orchestration of a lawsuit against the NFL. Both of which we are led to believe played a primarily role in the league eventually folding. Trump has gotten a free pass from the media since "The Apprentice" debuted, so it was nice to be reminded of how big a dick the guy is.

The documentary was interesting. The footage was fascinating. I enjoyed seeing players, league officials, owners and Burt Reynolds talking about the league. But I think it tried to tell too many parts of the story, rather than focusing on one small part of a larger story (the trade with Gretzky's career, the marching band with the Colts move).

4) "Muhammad and Larry"
Director: Albert Maysles and Bradley Kaplan
Premiere: October 27
Synopsis: Muhammad Ali was once the brash king of heavyweight boxing.  But in 1980, he was far past his prime.  Yet he accepted $8 million to fight one last fight against Larry Holmes.  Holmes beat him to a pulp.


MLC
Grade: D
Viewer's Eye: I get it: Muhammad Ali was old.  Too old for this fight.  He was no match for Larry Holmes.  So why spend an entire hour beating this into my head?


First Ali's trrainer says he's old.  Then the boxing writers say he's old.  Then Holmes says he's old.  It's just a lot of training footage of Larry being Larry and Muhammad being Muhammad and us not really learning anything aside from the fact that Muhammad Ali was too old for this fight.


Sound repetitive?  Then don't watch this documentary.

JNG: Mitch is missing the whole point on "Muhammad and Larry", which to me has been the documentary that has touched me the most out of the series thus far.

These first four "30 for 30" films all were tragedies in some way, and "Muhammad and Larry" was the grandest tragedy of them all. The time frame of the series (which has to cover events from ESPN's lifespan) means we can't get a film about Ali when he was The Greatest of All Time. We can't see the days when he was faster and funnier than any other fighter on the planet. Nor can we see the Ali of the 70s when he had slowed down but gained in toughness what he lost in speed. And who survived legendary slug fests with George Foreman and Joe Frazier. There are traces of that man in "Muhammad and Larry," particularly in the snippets of him bantering with the visitors to his training camp (and in magic trick sequence, which becomes incredibly poignant when you realize the Parkinson's has robbed him of the ability to even do something as silly as sleight-of-hand), but this is an older, slower Ali. 

And those classic Ali fights have been well-covered by the dozens of Ali documentaries and books out there , whereas Albert Maysles' footage of the build-up to Ali-Holmes sat on a shelf for decades, because no one wanted to revisit the horror of that one-sided demolition of the beloved Ali.

Then "30 for 30" came along, and Maysles' archival footage was combined with contemporary interviews  and so we get to see the car wreck of a fight unfold in slow motion. We barely see any of the fight itself, but there's such a sense of dread over the build-up footage, and such regret in the voices of most of the 21st century interviewees, that we only need a few glimpses to recognize how awful this was, and how sad that nobody could talk the champ out of it.

At the same time, the film manages to tell the ultimately happy story of Larry Holmes. Holmes never got much respect as champ, in part because everyone felt bad about the whupping he laid on Ali, in part because he was a fairly bland, unassuming guy compared to Ali, Frazier, Foreman and the other men who had dominated the heavyweight ranks for the previous two decades. But it feels oddly refreshing to see a relatively well-adjusted champ, one who gets so much obvious, simple pleasure out of listening to songs written about him, and who's perfectly happy to still be living in his hometown of Easton.

As Lott told me, 'Show. Don't tell." The footage in this documentary speak for themselves. I felt for Ali, I felt for Holmes (who respected Ali immensely and knew he was a shell of himself), and I was enraptured the entire time. I loved this film.

5) "Without Bias"
Director: Kirk Fraser
Premiere: November 3
Synopsis: Picture a mix of Blake Griffin's outstanding talent and athleticism and Ray Allen's jumper; that was Len Bias.  Bias was an incredible player and a budding pro prospect.  The Boston Celtics selecte dhim second overall in the 1986 NBA draft and looked to have the pieces of a long-runnign dynasty.  Tragically, Bias died of a cocaine overdose before he ever played for the Celtics.


MLC
Grade: C+
Viewer's Eye: I have conferred with my colleague and believe me, we differ in our opinions on this documentary.  I preemptively agree with you Newman: the footage of Len Bias playing in his heyday is jarring.  It's insane how good this guy was and how good he could have been.  It's also insane how crazy good the Celtics could have been and how the death of Len Bias dropped that franchise into a tailspin from which it did not recover until 2008.  


Here's my problem: I didn't learn anything new. I'm familiar with Bias. Any sports fan has to know this story, especially anyone who follows the NBA.  The other thing that bothered me the most was the lack of emotion from anyone in the interviews.  I got the feeling this was the 90 millionth time they had all talked about it, then Kirk Fraser comes around and everybody rolls their eyes and says, "Are we really doing this again?"  Why do you think there were so many cutaways to crying family, friends, teammates, and the like throughout the documentary?  It's because there was ZERO emotion in the interviews.  It's tough to feel the impact and the sadness when the impact of the sadness is not even exemplified by those who should feel it the most.


This documentary was lifeless, and that's why I gave it a C+.

JNG: Au contraire Mitch, au contraire. You suffer from the fallacy of thought that viewing these documentaries are supposed to teach you something new, give you some new facts or spin. And while I agree that it is always refreshing to watch something new, I don't understand why this has become any sort of criteria for you in judging these films.

"Without Bias" made me care, because it's obvious how much Fraser, the director, and all the people who get a chance to talk in the film, cared about Len Bias. He was so important to so many people. I understand that his death was every bit the major, unsettling event that everyone describes in the film. I understand why it made people like Bill Simmons feel like this.

Bias was touted by every reasonable basketball person to be just as good as Michael Jordan. He was taller than Jordan, had the same killer instinct, same explosiveness, and a picture perfect jump shot. He seemed just as marketable, with an easy smile and polite demeanor, and was destined for perhaps even more greatness than #23 achieved.  Drafted by a Celtics team that won the 1986 championship and is considered to be one of the best, if not the best, teams of all time, Bias surely would have swung the 1987 title and prolonged and reinvigorated the careers of Bird and McHale. Who knows what was possible. As I said earlier, what if?

The documentary tells so many compelling stories. Many of the sound bytes and images from the movie have stayed with me in the week since I watched it: the composure of Mrs. Bias, the regret of his college teammate ("Why did we have to be stupid enough to do drugs?"), the eloquence of Michael Wilbon (which is easy to forget if you just watch him on "PTI" every day, as I do) and, especially, the TV interview about Jay Bias's murder, where the dad talks about "the eulogy that he would give for Len Bias," then stops himself when he realizes what he's just said, and what a horrible double-burden has been visited on his family, and tries to fight back tears before walking away.

Len Bias worked his entire life towards achieving a dream. He practiced tirelessly, worked out constantly, conditioned himself, and demonstrated at Maryland what a talent he was. When the Celtics drafted him his dream was fulfilled. He would be an NBA player, playing for the most storied franchise in the sport. To work so long and so hard and to see your dreams come to pass is something few people get to ever experience. The best days of his life lay in front of him. Two days later he was dead.

What if  indeed.


6) "The Legend of Jimmy the Greek"
Director: Fritz Mitchell
Premiere: November 10
Synopsis: Jimmy the Greek was the man that made sports betting main stream.  For years he handicapped NFL games on CBS's football pregame show every Sunday.  After some negative comments about the origins of the athelticism of African-American athletes, the Greek went down in flames and died a sad, lonely death.


MLC
Grade: C-
Viewer's Eye: Note to Fritz Mitchell: If you're going to make a documentary and use, as one of your techniques, a first person narration by that documentary's deceased subject, that narrator's voice should sound like the real guy's voice.  What do I mean?  Let's say they make a movie about my life and cast Brad Pitt, but throughout the movie they have pictures of me, and you're asking, "Who is the guy in those pictures?" because I look nothing like Brad Pitt.  That's kind of how this documentary went.  Mitchell wanted to tell the story of Jimmy the Greek in part through his own words, so he used a narrator to let "Jimmy" tell his own story.  But Jimmy has sound bites throughout the documentary, and the voice over guy sounds nothing like Jimmy the Greek.  I kept going, "Who is that talking?"  It was supposed to be the Greek, but it was terrible.


On top of that, this documentary is a cop-out.  The big deal about Jimmy the Greek was what he said about African-American athletes: they're physically superior to white athletes because in white slave holders bred them to be so for 300 years of slavery.  In Jimmy's words, "The slave owners would take their big female slave and breed her with the big male slave so they'd have big strong kids."


The Greek was derided, fired, and eventually killed by the lasting effect of these remarks.  I cannot agree more that the remarks were extremely insensitive at a time when race relations were doing their best to make a mends after the tumultuous '60s (uh, pretty sure race was a big issue after the 60s).  But every time I hear anything about the Greek, it's all about how what he said was so awful.  No one ever tries to check the validity of the statement because they're afraid to do so.  I'm not saying Jimmy the Greek was right or wrong.  I'm just asking why we're not allowed to ask why.  As a white former athlete, I can testify that the majority of my African-American friends were far superior in athletics and physical genetics in general to what meager ability I could produce.  I'd like to know why.  And slave breeding is a nasty fact of life that we're too afraid to tackle in 2009.  From 1619 until the Civil War, white plantation owners treated human beings as animals.  Is it impossible that this may have contributed to the athletic superiority of African-Americans in today's sports landscape?


I'm not saying what's right or what's wrong.  All I'm saying is that no one knows that.  I would like to hear an anthropologist, or a doctor, or a historian, or anyone credible break it down for me that this is absolutely false and that Jimmy the Greek is an idiot.  But that's not allowed.  That's taboo and it ends up with some ignorant white dude in a room with Jesse Jackson and about 50 TV cameras.  Maybe I'm that guy.  Maybe I'm ignorant.  All I'm saying is prove it.


This documentary does not do that.  It sweeps Jimmy's comments under the rug and ignores the true issue.  Plus the voice thing.  That's why this documentary gets a C-.

JNG: Mitch, you really are missing the whole point of this documentary. 

I didn't really get into football until the '90s, you know, because before I was an infant, and I was still too young to really care or notice when I heard of Jimmy the Greek and how his career came to an end after he gave that local TV interview about black athletes being better because of slavery.

So to a viewer like me, who only knows Jimmy from the scandal, "The Legend of Jimmy the Greek" did its job. It told me why Jimmy mattered before he ever opened his mouth to that DC camera crew, and why his life was colorful - and tragic - enough to merit the "30 for 30" treatment.

I didn't know that Jimmy set the line for Super Bowl III, that he was so influential in the public acceptance of gambling, or about all the tensions between Jimmy, Phyllis George and Brent Musberger in that classic "NFL Today" cast, or that CBS was more or less ready to dump Jimmy even before the scandal broke. Nor, of course, did I know any of Jimmy's personal life, including the murder of his mother and the deaths of three of his kids and how much all that tragedy weighed on him.

But even if very little of the documentary had offered new information to me, it still would have worked as a movie. With one exception (the ghost narration I agree), Fritz Mitchell told the story well and thoroughly. It was one of the more conventional of the "30 for 30" films so far, but he made good use of the archival footage, and I found it a nice touch that so many of the interviews were conducted in a bar, given the story that the film opened on.

And while Mitchell and the interviewees don't absolve Jimmy for what he said, I thought Brent did an admirable job of trying to at least place it into context - to suggest that there was some kernel of a point in there, but that Jimmy wasn't articulate enough, and too old-fashioned, to make it properly.

Senior Thesis: Call me harsh if you like, but 30 for 30 has not yet lived up to its billing.  I have enjoyed the documentaries immensely, but I'm a huge sports fan and sat through an entire Niagara-Drexel college basketball game because it was opening day of the '09-'10 season and I was excited.  My point is, I'll watch and be entertained by just about anything sports (well, male sports).  These documentaries have fallen short of my expectations, and I'm looking for more when they start up again in December.