Did ESPN solicit them, or had they already been made, and the series is just a forum to air them?
Commissioned for their 30th anniversary (one for each year? That couldn’t be coincidental, could it?). I am usually skeptical about “serious” treatments of sports (it’s a game, get over it), but I have been impressed/interested by the ones I’ve seen, will seek out others.
I’ve only seen “Muhammad and Larry,” which will air again later this month. Creepy and sad.
The only one I’ve seen was the one about Tim Richmond. I liked it, but they glossed over some stuff that was in the news about him.
Heard the director of the latest one about Marcus DuPree being intereviewed and he said that ESPN approached him and essentially said “we’re doing 30 documentaries with 30 filmmakers. What story would you like to tell…?”
Since these are documentaries about sports, I think this might get more attention in The Game Room. Moved from Cafe Society.
The only one of these that I’ve seen from beginning to end was “The Two Escobars,” which did a fascinating job of tracing the link between the downfall of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, and how it played into the murder of Colombian soccer player Andres Escobar, who was murdered shortly after scoring an own-goal in the 1994 World Cup. It’s not as simple as it sounds: the way I remember the thesis, it was that the money from drug trafficking was corrupting Colombian soccer (some of the World Cup players visited Pablo Escobar’s compound) at the same time Colombia had the best soccer team in its history. Pablo Escobar was murdered in late 1993, destabilizing the drug trafficking landscape. The Colombian soccer team was one of the favorites at the World Cup, but didn’t make it out of the first round. In one game, they were upset by the U.S. team, aided by a goal that went in off the leg of Andres Escobar. Andres Escobar went back to Colombia and even though people were furious with him, and drug lords had supposedly lost a lot of money when the team was defeated, he didn’t want to go into hiding. He went out to a club late one night with friends and was shot to death in a parking lot by a druglord’s bodyguard. According to at least one of his friends, it didn’t have anything to do with gambling debts - he was shot because he talked back when the drug dealers criticized him. The sports world was stunned by the murder and Colombian soccer has never been the same.