Version of this story: “Untold” first appeared in the Documentaries issue of magazine.
There are many excellent documentaries being made today, and some of the best films come from the sports category. The current standout in the space may be Netflix’s “Untold,”Five sports documentaries by brothers Chapman Way (and Maclain Way), who had previously directed the very sportsy “Battered Bastards of Baseball”And the non-sportsy “Wild Wild Country” together.
“Untold,”This show was renewed by Netflix for a second series (or) “Volume 2”), positions itself as bringing “fresh eyes to epic tales from the wide world of sports.”Maclain Way believes that these perspectives are crucial to make this the golden age in sports documentaries. “In this last four or five years, you’ve seen really good documentary filmmakers not be afraid to go into a world (where) they don’t know the most out of everyone around them,”He said. “But they take their own skill set and their own tool set and they make something compelling.”
For the Way brothers, 2014’s “Battered Bastards,”Sundance sold the film and it was praised. Their grandfather, Bing Russell owned the Portland Mavericks minor-league team. Kurt Russell, their uncle, played for the now-defunct club. However, the film is generally well received. “the Venn diagram of independent filmmaking and sports is not super overlaying,”Maclain Way.
That began to change with ESPN’s series “30 for 30,” which invited traditional filmmakers with an interest in a sporting event or persona — and not always a known commodity — into the space. With streaming services becoming more popular, the floodgates opened up for library content. What makes Netflix the king in this space? “Netflix doesn’t have a deal with sports leagues,”Chapman Way said. Also, it is clear that there is no conflict in interest that could affect storylines.
While more independent filmmakers have been lacing up their cleats and rising from the bench lately, Maclain said it still takes coaxing — or coaching, in sports parlance. “In talking to filmmakers, I usually have to at some point give the pitch where it’s like: ‘Don’t worry that you don’t know anything about this sport,’”He spoke about his regular pep talk for directors. (For “Untold”Volume 1: Maclain and Chapman directed documentaryaries about the Danbury Trashers minor-league hockey team and Mardy Fish, a former tennis pro; Floyd Russo, Laura Brownson and Crystal Moselle directed the three other installments.
Maclain stated that producers can fill those knowledge gaps. This is the lesson: Artsy filmmakers don’t have to be restricted by a ball and hoops; the topic is secondary to the arc. “Our conversations in the edit bay are so much more structured around three-act narrative and inciting incidences and music cues and pivoting the perspective,”Maclain added. “It’s way more grounded in a filmic way than it is in a sports language.”
Chapman Way also stated that no one is better equipped than an athlete to tell their story unfiltered. “There’s something interesting about athletes in that they’ve been raised to go after this very singular focus, which is to become a professional athlete. It usually starts when they’re 5, 6, 7 years old,”He said. “Most of these athletes, they really don’t care how you feel about them: if they’re a good person, if they’re a bad person. It’s kind of irrelevant to what they’ve been training to do, which is to be the best at one single thing in their life. So what I’ve found is when you have people in the interview chair that don’t care what you think about them, odds are that will always make for really insightful interviews.
“They’re not trying to see down the road of how every single thing is going to be interpreted, they just kind of speak from their heart. And if you don’t like it, that’s tough s— for you.”
Read more from the Documentaries issue of magazine.
