ESPN's '30 for 30': The world's most unlikely indy film festival [Updated]

I go to film festivals to see the kind of idiosyncratic, personal movies big Hollywood studios rarely make anymore. But for the last 15 months, I've been watching a wonderfully engaging film festival with passionate and provocative movies on TV, courtesy of the most unlikely of cinematic patrons: ESPN.

Yes, the sports network is annoyingly obsessed with LeBron James. But it has quietly pulled off a stirring creative coup, bankrolling “30 for 30,” a series of 30 documentaries about people who aren't necessarily household names or “SportsCentury” icons but who were central figures in modern-day athletic stories with wide cultural reach and social impact.

If you missed the films on ESPN, they're available on iTunes, video on demand and DVD. The series features docs from such prominent Hollywood filmmakers as Peter Berg, Barry Levinson, Ron Shelton and Ice Cube as well as from such documentary notables as Albert Maysles, Steve James and Dan Klores.

Many of these films have packed a wallop, offering stories full of emotion, wry humor and personal reflection. Brothers Michael and Jeff Zimbalist delivered “The Two Escobars,” a fascinating look at the interconnected lives and deaths of Colombian soccer star Andres Escobar and drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. Levinson's “The Band That Wouldn't Die” recounted the story of his hometown Baltimore Colts marching band, which stayed together even after their team left for Indianapolis under the cover of night.

Having grown up as a die-hard Raiders football fan when the team played in Los Angeles, Ice Cube used “Straight Outta L.A.” to show how much the team's bad-boy image influenced the burgeoning hip-hop culture. Steve James, who grew up in the same Virginia town as basketball star Allen Iverson, directed “No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson,” an unsparingly personal portrait of the gulf between blacks and whites in Hampton, Va., after Iverson allegedly hit a woman over the head with a chair in a 1993 bowling alley brawl and was convicted of a felony (later overturned).

What makes the series worth celebrating is not just its pedigree, but also the creative autonomy ESPN gave its filmmakers. In franchise-focused Hollywood, even our best filmmakers are largely at work on sequels and remakes: Brad Bird is making “Mission: Impossible 4,” Darren Aronofsky is doing “Wolverine 2” and Marc Webb, who did the indie delight “(500) Days of Summer,” is directing “Spider-Man 4.” Even the free-spirited Johnny Depp keeps making “Pirates of the Caribbean” sequels.

“30 for 30,” which was launched in fall 2009, has gone in the opposite direction. When ESPN columnist/blogger Bill Simmons pitched ESPN executive producer Connor Schell on the idea of commemorating the network's 30th anniversary with a series of documentaries, one key idea was embedded in the DNA of the project. “ESPN always had a vision that this would be filmmaker-driven,” said Mike Tollin, a supervising producer on the series who also directed “Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?” which is included in a box set of the first 15 documentaries that goes on sale Tuesday. “They really looked to the filmmakers to generate the ideas for the stories.”

Sometimes the films feel like dramatic features. Levinson's “The Band That Wouldn't Die” has the air of a Frank Capra film, full of the kind of quirky, blue-collar characters missing from studio teen comedies or superhero thrillers. They sit around swapping stories straight out of a Preston Sturges film, as with the account of how when the team's equipment was shipped to Indianapolis in moving vans, the band's uniforms were accidentally left behind and held for safe keeping by the musicians in a local mausoleum.

Though Levinson is known for Oscar-winning films such as “Rain Man” and “Bugsy,” perhaps his best-regarded Hollywood work involved a string of personal comedies dating back to “Diner” and “Tin Men.” When I asked him if he could make those kinds of films today, he offered a one-word answer: No. He wouldn't dream of pitching the idea of a marching band without a team to a modern-day studio chief.

Why not?

“You could never tell this kind of story in Hollywood anymore,” he said. “The studio folks are scared to do anything that's original. An original story requires a leap of faith and if you're an executive today, facing all of the pressure to make money for your corporation, you don't like to take many leaps of faith.”

Nearly every “30 for 30” filmmaker has a strong personal identification with the movie they made. Jonathan Hock, a documentary film veteran, had been fascinated for years with Marcus Dupree, an early 1980s high school football phenom from Philadelphia, Miss., who was recruited by virtually every college in the country. For Hock, the Dupree story had an almost mythological significance, since Dupree was an African-American folk hero from the same town that, in 1964, had been the scene of the murder of three young civil-rights activists by the Ku Klux Klan. (One of Dupree's teammates and friends was the son of Cecil Price, the local deputy sheriff who handed the activists over to the Klan.)

“Marcus and I are the exact same age, and when I was in high school, I'd follow his exploits,” Hock said. “For years, I carried around a book by Willie Morris about how everyone was courting Marcus, thinking to myself, ‘I'll make it into a Hollywood movie. It'll have Jeff Bridges playing Morris and some great young kid playing Dupree.' But who's going to greenlight a film about a football player who's now forgotten? It's not ‘The Blind Side.' Marcus never made it to the NFL, there was no Sandra Bullock character in his life. He's the one who got left holding the bag.” [For the record: Dupree did play for the NFL, in 1990 and 1991 for the Los Angeles Rams.]

Luckily, Hock had ESPN. “Basically, all they said was, ‘Go make your movie.' The whole hook for ‘30 for 30' has been the director gets to tell their story. Look at it this way: I was supposed to deliver a 50-minute film, but I gave them a 100-minute rough cut and they said, ‘You know, we like it the way it is.' I mean, it doesn't work that way very often.”

Not every film in the series is a keeper. Cynics might argue ESPN is simply engaged in some low-cost brand beautification, since the whole series cost less than $20 million. But in an era when a film studio might make one Oscar movie a year (their version of brand polishing), 30 films in 18 months is pretty impressive.

As Schell put it, “ESPN saw this as a gift to sports fans. It wasn't about ratings. It was about telling great stories.” It sounds like such a simple formula, but it's a formula in short supply in Hollywood these days.

-- Patrick Goldstein

Photo: Barry Levinson, in a file photo from 2009. Credit: Abbot Genser/HBO  

Comments

[shodson]

AMEN! The 30 for 30 series has been great. I missed some of them and am glad they are available online and DVD. I really enjoyed the one about Reggie Miller vs. the New York Knicks too. I never knew about that rivalry.

[Brett]

It will definitely be a sad day when the 30 for 30 series ends. ESPN's reputation among serious sports fans has been (justifiably) eroding for years, but the network deserves praise for making these movies happen.

I agree with shodson that the Reggie Miller-Knicks one was very entertaining. I also really enjoyed the Marcus Dupree and Jimmy the Greek ones. Saturday's entry about SMU football looks promising.

[Tim]

I totally did the 30 for 30 series, everyone is first class!

Here is a suggetion for the 30 for 30 team... "MY RUN" it's an inspirational and award-winning documentary narrated by Billy Bob Thornton.

MY RUN: The Terry Hitchcock Story

About a real life Forrest Gump, a super hero named Terry Hitchcock. A 57 year old man who ran 75 consecutive marathons in 75 consecutive days after his wife died of breast cancer to bring awareness to the struggles faced by single parent families.

[Trey]

Check your facts... Dupree did make it to the NFL for two years and was then cut by the rams in training camp. It was in the documentary.

[mike w.]

Both of the new upcoming Spiderman and Wolverine films are not sequels but rather relaunches of creatively stagnant franchises in the vein of what Christopher Nolan did with The Batman Franchise and is doing with Superman.

This writer is supposed to be an expert on the film industry?

[Jason]

Awesome series, glad to see ESPN doing stuff like this and hopefully it will continue on a more regular basis.

[Alex]

While technically The 30 for 30 series is ending, Simmons said they will continue to put these kind of movies on ESPN going forward. I believe the next one after this is slated for March or May. Simmons talked about it ina recent Podcast.

[Randall Ricker]

The Los Angeles Times should require that the author of articles should either have had seen the piece that they are reviewing or at least allow them internet access.

If either one of those safeguards were in place than the paper could have avoided this monumental embarrassment of an article.

The single most memorable aspect of the Marcus Dupree story was that he DID make it to the NFL

the only thing he got right was that it is a highly enjoyable series.

At least Jayson Blair got his facts right.

[Bill Simmons]

I am glad that you all liked my hacky movies. With such stirring themes as the Baltimore Colts band and the USFL, I know you cannot wait for future topics on the Boston Celtics (featuring a picture of me as a six year old) and Four Days in October (featuring the greatest baseball team ever.) Keep watching these movies and listening to my awesome podcasts where I get paid to talk to my friends and you get the honor of listening. Boston Rules!

[erik]

30 for 30 is the best thing then the first sportcenter ... my favorite was 4 days in october ...