Our friends at Premium Hollywood shared news that filmmaker Spike Lee is working on a “30 for 30” feature for ESPN, which includes 30 one-hour films by 30 filmmakers on a subject from the past 30 years. According to PH, Lee has also done a full-length documentary with Lakers’ star Kobe Bryant for ESPN Films, which supposedly “takes a look at the regular game day experience for the NBA great with unprecedented access.”
Will Harris provided the details.
The two really became friends, however, when Lee was in Rome, shooting – of all things – a commercial for a telephone company. “I was shooting at the Coliseum one early Saturday morning,” he said, “and we’re getting ready to do a shot, and somebody taps me on the back. I turn around…and it was Kobe. That’s really where the friendship started.”
The most obvious question would seem to be, “Why Kobe?” He is, after all, a guy who’s already had plenty of media exposure already. (If *I* know Kobe, you have to figure that pretty much everybody knows Kobe.) It apparently all stretches back to a documentary Lee saw at Cannes: “Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait,” about French soccer player Zinedine Zidane.
“This film had amazed me,” said Lee, “because they had 20 cameras on Zidane. They never left him. I said, ‘Oh, shit. This would even work for basketball.’ So I went to Kobe. He’s a great soccer fan, too. So I handed him the DVD, the design piece, and he said, ‘Let’s go.’ Then we went to Genie Buss. Phil Jackson signed on-board the NBA. The commissioner, Adam Silver, ESPN, they got a lot of people involved because what we wanted to be different in the design piece…it was only on the field. But we wanted to go…we needed to go in the locker room. So Phil Jackson allowed us access to the locker room before the game, at half-time, and after. He’s never done that. You know, we were with Kobe the whole day, so we wanted to show…it’s about not just him but the preparation. These guys, I mean, you just don’t show up to a game and put on a uniform and play. I never heard about getting iced before the game, the tape. I mean, it was crazy. And then we had him miked. So I think it would give a unique look of the game…and there’s a great game of basketball. We had 30 cameras…and that’s not including ABC’s camera, because it’s a nationally televised game…so we have a tremendous amount of great footage.”
Spike Lee and Kobe? Now there’s a match.
Harris also had an interesting note about the upcoming film about Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson and who will play Branch Rickey.
Before we sign off from ESPN, let’s make a quick mention of their upcoming film about Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson. It’ll be a theatrical release, and Rickey will be played by…wait for it…Robert Redford. Nice, huh? Rickey’s grandson, Branch Rickey III, was in attendance, so it was inevitable that someone would ask, “So, did your granddad really look like Robert Redford?”
“I have to tell you, when that was first broached, I thought of my grandfather in the pre-Robinson years — he’s in his 60’s and probably a man who always looked like he was ten years older than he was — and I couldn’t possibly envision this ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,’ legendarily good-looking actor pulling off this older gentleman,” said Rickey. “But I’ve had occasion to meet with Mr. Redford and I have to tell you that what is most important to me, the ability my grandfather had to capture someone’s attention and some of the times he did that with what he didn’t say, but with a pause and an anticipated gesture he would make and I am so surprised to see the similarity. Robert Redford has an ability to freeze you, to stop you, to almost cause you to stop breathing as he’s right on the verge of making a point. The similarities to me in that chemistry were remarkable and I think the Rickey family probably today thinks how wonderful to have our grandfather captured by somebody such as Mr. Redford.”
That should be a great film.
