There are more sports documentaries than ever before. But the question is how many of them are actually good?
At this point, it seems like almost everyone who has ever had a cup of coffee in the big leagues has had a documentary made about them. Years ago you could count the number of media companies seriously invested in sports documentaries on one hand. Now every linear network, streamer, and content platform has their hands in them.
While some have been able to break out of the pack (Drive to Survive, The Last Dance, Hard Knocks), the medium is facing a creative crossroads according to award winning documentary filmmaker Ezra Edelman.
Edelman, who won several awards including an Oscar and an Emmy for directing O.J.: Made in America, offered some fascinating commentary about the current state of sports documentaries with Pablo Torre on his Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast. And it starts with what really should be classified as a documentary.
“The types of documentaries that are more popular, more prevalent, are increasingly things that are shown by streamers that are sometimes about famous people, artists, singers, whomever, and that are sort of like bordering a little bit on branded content because they’re done in sort of connection with the subjects themselves who often are producers. And this idea of documentary filmmaking as journalism is being pushed by the wayside a little bit,” Edelman said.
The best documentaries, especially in sports, are ones that either bring new subject material to life or are skillfully made in a way that takes a well-known story and shows it in a new light. There’s a reason why Edelman’s doc about O.J. Simpson became one of the gold standards of the medium even though it’s one of the most covered and scrutinized stories in American history. A more recent example might be Bill Simmons’ Netflix documentary on disgraced former WWE CEO Vince McMahon. Although it wasn’t perfect, McMahon’s lack of creative control over the project ensured the film addressed his second resignation from the company in the wake of serious sexual assault allegations.
But as Edelman mentions, a huge chunk of the sports documentary market are often athlete-produced films, that while great for fans of said athlete, aren’t going to offer anything revelatory. Tom Brady and Steph Curry are two of many athletes who have already produced documentaries about themselves that failed to deliver anything memorable. Michael Jordan’s key role in The Last Dance may be the exception. While it did win an Emmy and delivered huge ratings during the early days of the pandemic when fans desperately needed something to watch, it also created controversy and angered pretty much everyone in the film not named Michael Jordan. And it drew criticism from the likes of Ken Burns for using Jordan’s production company.
Then there are the films that should be much better than they are because they are too deferential to the subject matter. Netflix’s Untold falls into this category, with documentaries on the likes of Johnny Manziel often feeling like spin rather than fulfilling any promise of good storytelling. That’s not so much art and filmmaking as it is a very expensive public relations exercise.
“Right now I feel like, to me culturally, there seems to be less of an emphasis on art, even like politically in terms of what we focus on, what we finance, what we appreciate, all these different things. That sort of has seeped into the art of filmmaking too in terms of what gets made, what we value, because it’s still a commercial exercise,” Edelman said.
“There is an ability to make money as a non-fiction filmmaker, but what I’ve seen is the stuff that is valued are the things I happen to devalue slightly in terms of the content,” he added.
Edelman admitted that his take might sound super-pretentious and that every documentary has some kind of value. But when it came to naming the elephant in the room, he was able to call out the main issue with so many sports documentaries that flood the zone today – subjects having creative control over the finished product.
“I do think there happens to be a glut of documentaries that are now being done in participation with the subject. If the subject has any creative control, I have a problem,” Edelman said.