We’ll get to know a lot more about Dennis Rodman, one of the most eccentric personalities of the late-90s Chicago Bulls, when “The Last Dance” returns on Sunday.
Rodman was known as much for his rebounding prowess as he was for his constantly changing hair colors and WWE stunts. “Dennis Rodman, you’ll see next week, didn’t even pick up a basketball until his late teens. His background is staggeringly difficult,” Jason Hehir, the docuseries’ director, told TheWrap.
“You’ll see the kind of personalities that Michael had to manage on and off the court in that locker room.”
Sunday will also feature some of Jordan’s biggest playoff failures (yes, he did have some before he became His Airness), most notably his battles with the “Bad Boy” Detroit Pistons, who won back-to-back titles in the late 1980s. The Pistons were famous for instituting the “Jordan Rules,” which was the codename for their defensive strategy that essentially featured them roughing him up as much as they could (these Pistons were famous for throwing their elbows around).
“You’re going to see the seeds of that championship run were sowed in the Bulls’ inability to overcome the Pistons,” Hehir said. Producer Mike Tollin added that “you’ll see Michael hitting ‘the shot’ against the Cavaliers,”which secured his first playoff series victory.
In the run-up to “The Last Dance” premiere, some speculated that the series is a response to the LeBron James vs Michael Jordan debate. Jordan finally agreed in 2016 to release the footage that camera crews caught during the 1997-98 season (the Bulls allowed a crew to be embedded with them all season on the stipulation that Jordan would have final say on when and how it would be released). That was around the same time that James led the Cleveland Cavaliers to its first championship in franchise history, coming back from a 3-1 series deficit against the 73-win Golden State Warriors, who had just broken the 1995-96 Bulls’ record of 72 wins.
“It’s not a referendum on who is the greatest of all time,” Hehir argues. “I don’t want this thing to be used in a method people use to rank who is better than who.” For the record, he doesn’t believe Jordan finally relented on the footage as a response to LeBron. “Michael might be the least insecure person I’ve ever met,” he said. “It probably has more to do with the fact that he’s got young daughters.”
The docuseries was moved up from its June start time to April with ESPN and sports fans around the country starving for new sports content. Tollin said that they “had the conversation immediately” following the coronavirus-induced sports shutdown about moving the premiere date. “It was unanimous that we should do whatever we can. The acceleration was only governed by the possibilities production-wise.”
Hehir said they only finished the final edit on the last episode this week. “We knew that episodes 9 and 10 would not be completely done and ready for air until mid-May,” he said. Once they figured out the earliest possible time they could those on the air, they backdated to April for a possible premiere date. “There’s a ton of things that go into the final phase of post-production.”
“The Last Dance” became the most-watched ESPN-branded documentary every, drawing more than 6 million viewers on ESPN and ESPN2 Sunday night, including more than 5 million on ESPN alone.
“The best part is that I’ll get messages from strangers on social media saying that this brought my family together, this allowed me to introduce my kids to Michael Jordan, ” Hehir said. “Someone told me that this was the first time since this shutdown began that his family didn’t speak or think about COVID-19.”
10 Best Documentaries of the 2010s, From 'OJ: Made in America' to 'The Invisible War' (Photos)
Facts are so often stranger than fiction: The truth can be so terrible that we struggle to believe it, or so joyous and full of life that we’re inspired or moved. The past decade has seen a boom in the documentary space as streaming platforms have invested in their production and proliferated their distribution opportunities. So many docs that could have made this list, from those that have inspired public policy changes to others that captured gorgeous slices of life often overlooked, and even a few that pushed the visual boundaries of what’s possible in non-fiction storytelling. Here are a handful of the best documentaries from the previous decade:
10. "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry" Alison Klayman’s documentary may have been many Americans’ introduction to Ai Weiwei, the outspoken artist (whose work has found a devoted following on social media) and whose voice that the Chinese government has threatened to silence more than once. Not only does Klayman’s extensive film retrace many of the highlights in the artist’s career; she also uses his story as a case study of the pressures artists in China face when standing up to the country’s authoritarian government.
9. "The Invisible War" Years ahead of the #MeToo movement, director Kirby Dick and co-writer Amy Ziering burst open the topic of sexual assault in the military with their painfully honest and eye-opening documentary. In “The Invisible War," multiple members of the armed forces detail how they were assaulted or raped by fellow soldiers or commanders and how they felt victimized a second time by the army’s failure to take action. In addition to picking up an Oscar nomination, the documentary was so effective in its mission to raise awareness of the issue that the Pentagon responded by overhauling how it investigates and oversees cases of sexual assault.
8. "O.J.: Made in America" You can argue over whether Ezra Edelman’s multi-part episodic documentary qualifies as television show or a film (the Academy gave it a Best Documentary Oscar before creating new rules that would make it ineligible), but Ezra Edelman’s comprehensive look at the rise and astronomical fall of one of pop culture's most celebrated athletes was a riveting event for many viewers. In addition to rare archival footage and numerous interviews, Edelman's film also put O.J. Simpson’s life into historical context, connecting the dots as to why the sports star would often play down his blackness to appeal to white audiences in the 1970s and examining the various responses to the “trial of the century” in the 1990s.
7. "Hale County This Morning, This Evening" Skipping conventional storytelling approaches like using a narrator or including a series of talking-heads interviews, RaMell Ross chose a nonlinear route for his feature debut. Through evocative footage and observational shots, Ross creates a portrait of the black community of Hale County, Alabama, that’s like few other documentaries. His camera is more of a free-floating spirit through the area, quietly observing the nuances between different groups and individuals at the intersection of race and class. Even with its experimental nature, “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” earned an Oscar nomination.
6. "This is Not a Film" Forbidden by the Iranian government from making a movie, directors Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb record Panahi on an iPhone as he’s stuck at home under house arrest. At its core, the documentary is a protest film, a tool for discussing the limitations of persecuting artists in the country while defying the government’s orders by making a documentary. Politics aside, “This is Not a Film” also has a very day-in-the-life quality as it follows Panahi through stories about his previous works while as he prepares to stage future projects within the confines of his home.
5. "Dawson City: Frozen Time" In 1976, the small northern town of Dawson City unearthed an unlikely treasure trove of rare silent films in various states of decay. Decades later, Bill Morrison artfully composed fragments of these movies with other archival material and photos to tell the story of this town in a remote part of Alaska and the number of famous (or infamous) souls passed through it over its history. The found silent-movie footage from nitrate prints that survived the area’s harsh winters underground vary in their state of decomposition, but Morrison incorporates these so-called damaged works into the narrative.
4. "I Am Not Your Negro" Raoul Peck connects an unfinished James Baldwin novel about the murders of three of his friends who were leaders of the civil rights movement -- Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. -- to the present-day protests of Black Lives Matter in a visceral documentary narrated by Samuel L. Jackson. Incorporating interview footage and letters, Peck conjures up Baldwin’s insightful voice to echo the works of years ago, a haunting reminder of how far equality has yet to go in the struggle against racial discrimination.
3. "The Grand Bizarre" At no point is there a singular character to follow or voice-over narration to guide us. Instead, Jodie Mack’s dazzling stop-motion animated documentary just washes over its audiences with a fury of colors, patterns and textures of materials from around the world. This inventive documentary explores heady themes of globalization, mass production, cultural identity, travel, commerce and connectivity through the journey of several fabric swatches as they traipse around the world in immaculately arranged configurations, accompanied by Mack’s playfully evocative score. Borders and barriers fall away as the materials come to life.
2. "Cameraperson" Kirsten Johnson steps out from behind the camera to become the subject of her own moving documentary about her work and life outside the frame. Her memoir-doc includes home movies of her family alongside a number of movies she shot throughout her career, including “Derrida,” “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “Happy Valley,” “Citizenfour” and “Very Semi-Serious.” It’s a delicate balance between the Johnson audiences have come to know through her work and the person whose life exists outside the camera that’s taken her to all these corners of the world.
1. "The Act of Killing" Shocking. Stomach-churning. Joshua Oppenheimer and an anonymous co-director uncover the humanity and the monstrosity behind some of the men who led death squads during Indonesia’s war against Communists. Using the guise of creating an extravagant movie about the men’s life stories, “The Act of Killing” gets its subjects to reveal dark secrets and dredge memories so awful, it makes them physically ill. They may never face the consequences for their actions, but this wildly fascinating and disturbing documentary captures perhaps one of the strangest confessions ever on film.
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Decade in Review: “The Grand Bizarre” and “Cameraperson” rank among the highlights of the decade
Facts are so often stranger than fiction: The truth can be so terrible that we struggle to believe it, or so joyous and full of life that we’re inspired or moved. The past decade has seen a boom in the documentary space as streaming platforms have invested in their production and proliferated their distribution opportunities. So many docs that could have made this list, from those that have inspired public policy changes to others that captured gorgeous slices of life often overlooked, and even a few that pushed the visual boundaries of what’s possible in non-fiction storytelling. Here are a handful of the best documentaries from the previous decade:
