OJ: Made in America

Post by **brian** » Mon Jun 13, 2016 11:49 am

So after Part 1, my only thought is:

Best sports documentary in history or best documentary in history?

govmentchedda · Post by **govmentchedda** » Mon Jun 13, 2016 12:19 pm

Even after hearing how great the other series was, and how much praise this one is getting, I have very little desire to watch either show.

Post by **brian** » Mon Jun 13, 2016 12:22 pm

The 30 for 30 blows the FX show out of the water. At least so far.

govmentchedda · Post by **govmentchedda** » Mon Jun 13, 2016 12:46 pm

brian wrote:The 30 for 30 blows the FX show out of the water. At least so far.

Critics and friends whose opinion I value, loved the FX show, and the same goes for the 30 for 30. I'm sure they're both great in their own way. The only reason I commented at all is because both of these shows would seem to be right up my alley, but I'm not at all motivated to watch. It surprises me that I don't have much of a desire for it.

I'll probably end up watching both, and loving them.

howard · Post by **howard** » Mon Jun 13, 2016 7:06 pm

I went into the show ready to check my opinion, because I am so close to the topics covered in Part 1. I lived two blocks away from the USC football practice field until I was 10yo. I was a huge OJ fan. I lived through the 1965 riot, and then in high school/college studied the history and sociology of that riot and South Central. I was a young black man who forged my own identity within a white milieu in high school and college, and I caught a lot of shit from my black brothers and sisters for the way I chose to live my life (yeah, dating white girls). While John Carlos, Tommie Smith and Harry Edwards were also heroes to me, along with OJ. I am intimately familiar with the subject matter.

They did a very good to excellent job. My nits are most likely due to time constraints, and small honest differences of opinion. But they really nailed it.

There aren't a lot of great sports documentaries. I really like Hoop Dreams and Ken Burns' Baseball. Murderball is pretty amazing. I think When We Were Kings holds down my top spot, but it would've been more fair to rate it last week or next year. After seeing one-fifth of OJ: Made in America, I like its chances.

Post by **brian** » Mon Jun 13, 2016 9:36 pm

The buzz was so amazing and that almost always makes my radar/bullshit detector go up but three minutes in with the Nevada parole board interview I was all-in.

howard · Post by **howard** » Mon Jun 13, 2016 9:38 pm

Oh man, what an opening. Same here, that's when I relaxed and was sure this was gonna be good. I mean, the fucking look on his face.

Rex · Post by **Rex** » Mon Jun 13, 2016 9:45 pm

Where can I find reruns of this?

howard · Post by **howard** » Mon Jun 13, 2016 9:55 pm

Tomorrow at 7pm, on wwlis. Part 2 debuts at 9pm. They will be rerunning them plenty I am sure.

Johnny Carwash · Post by **Johnny Carwash** » Tue Jun 14, 2016 4:26 pm

From what I understand, if you're a cable subscriber, you can stream the entire five segments through WatchESPN starting today.

I've managed to stay cable-free for about a year but I may break for this if I keep hearing so many glowing recommendations.

govmentchedda · Post by **govmentchedda** » Tue Jun 14, 2016 8:17 pm

Alright, I'm in. Watched about 10 minutes at the beginning of the second episode. It's really good.

Rex · Post by **Rex** » Tue Jun 14, 2016 10:22 pm

Sure is a lot easier to kick a dude when he's killed two people.

sancarlos · Post by **sancarlos** » Tue Jun 14, 2016 11:46 pm

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Wed Jun 15, 2016 9:19 am

Watched the first episode last night. Was hooked immediately from the opening sequence just as you guys were. Having only known him as a some time actor and then murderer, I just didn't realize how big of a deal this dude was. To juxtapose him being 'accepted' with the Civil Rights Era was just so weird (and the entire point.)

Also, it appears you can watch all episodes online right now:

http://espn.go.com/30for30/ojsimpsonmadeinamerica/

howard · Post by **howard** » Wed Jun 15, 2016 11:06 am

This is really good.

One pleasant surprise for me is how well the recent FX dramatized series and this film complement one another. There is so much to 1) the trial, and 2) all the deep social and cultural context as well as OJ's personal history before and after the murders and trial, you could spend three times the cumulative 20 hours of screen time these two films comprise.

Despite obvious overlap, the different angle the FX series takes, primarily focusing on behind the scenes stuff (in jail, in the jury room, the personal lives of Marcia Clark and Johnnie C), fits very well with the ESPN doc. I assume this was a happy accident, but if I ever meet Ezra Edelman or any of the other folks who made this, one of my first questions will be if they saw the FX series before they finished editing their film (I'll bet they did not).

I hooked up the Watch ESPN app on my Roku rather than wait for the broadcasts the next three nights. I've got tons to say about this movie, I've seen four of the five parts so far. But I want to wait until more folks have a chance to watch it and join the conversation.

eta: ok, one more comment I cannot resist. All those haters who criticized John Travolta's performance as too cartoonish, too over the top, can have their memories refreshed as what Bob Shapiro was like in real life then. (or is, I guess he is still alive.) Travolta captured Shapiro marvelously, a great acting job, imho.

Keg · Post by **Keg** » Wed Jun 15, 2016 11:49 am

Pre-murder OJ reminds me of Kobe a lot.

Ryan · Post by **Ryan** » Wed Jun 15, 2016 11:58 am

Keg wrote:Pre-murder OJ reminds me of Kobe a lot.

Oh hell yes.

Rex · Post by **Rex** » Wed Jun 15, 2016 8:07 pm

What happened to Roy Firestone?

Johnny Carwash · Post by **Johnny Carwash** » Wed Jun 15, 2016 8:15 pm

Rex wrote:What happened to Roy Firestone?

I want to know this. I watched the shit out of his show in the early '90s, when he regularly had on top-tier sports stars, celebrities, even Richard Nixon, and the interviews were always candid and insightful, not by-the-numbers PR sessions. Then he seemingly fell off the face of the earth.

e: Apparently the clip in the doc makes Firestone look really bad. I may have rose-tinted lenses about his interviewing skills.

howard · Post by **howard** » Wed Jun 15, 2016 8:45 pm

oops, sorry I buried you Roy. I thought he died, (and posted as much, I deleted it) but I must be thinking of someone else.

That was an amazing interview, I remember it well, and it was disgusting at the time.

ETA: this thing happened, which led to the wwlis letting him go.
TV SPORTS; ESPN Stumbles in Knight Interview (NYTImes, June 1, 2000)

etaa: apparently he got hammered on the twitter and the facebook last night.

He answered here on the huffpo: My Regrets About How I Asked O.J. Simpson About Domestic Abuse

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Sun Jun 19, 2016 2:38 am

Carl Douglas is the pinnacle of assholedom. What an indignant scumbag.

I liked that the swearing was left in. It made it feel authentic and raw. Marcia Clark's "What the fuck, dude?" and the "muscle" for the Las Vegas encounter talking about how he ratted out OJ because he wasn't going to jail for him with the emphatic "Fuck OJ!" made me laugh.

I'm bummed Chris Darden wasn't part of the interviews. It would have been cool to hear what he had to say after getting disemboweled in the courtroom by Johnnie Cochran and how his life shook out after the fact.

And those two jurors...ugh. It made me mad how they seemed to just not care. I had no idea that jury deliberations should be "a day per week" on average; but they were like "Nah, we've seen enough. We're going home tomorrow. Fuck deliberation."

What an awesome, awesome documentary.

Rex · Post by **Rex** » Mon Jun 20, 2016 8:28 pm

Between this story and Trumpism, it's a wonder that institutions and the rule of law have survived as long as they did.

Post by **brian** » Wed Jul 20, 2016 11:16 am

I finally got around to watching all of them and I couldn't believe how much stuff I didn't remember between the civil trial and his eventual conviction in Nevada.

I didn't remember the proto-reality show or a lot of that stuff. I feel like the time between the criminal trial and now could have been its own 10-hour documentary.

And I also knew that his conviction here in Nevada was extreme given the actual crime, but I had kind of blocked out just how egregious it was. Like if a random 50-ish year old black guy with no criminal convictions had been given the same sentence for the same crime, the judge would have been removed from the bench.

ETA: And the mere fact that as a white person I had never really given it that much thought circles back to the whole theme of the documentary as a whole and damn if it isn't the best documentary of all-time.

rass · Post by **rass** » Wed Jul 20, 2016 11:29 am

Hey, we just finished up the series last night!

Watching the first couple of episodes, where they established the history of the relationship between the LAPD and the city's black residents, as the Alton Sterling and the Philando Castile and the Dallas incidents were hitting the news was... I don't even know what I'm looking to say. It made the whole setup that much more effective, I guess.

I do feel like the Las Vegas section was a little rushed.

howard · Post by **howard** » Wed Jul 20, 2016 5:27 pm

brian wrote:I feel like the time between the criminal trial and now could have been its own 10-hour documentary.

word. I followed the criminal trial in detail, and followed the civil trial pretty closely, and lived through the rest of the story they presented. I thoroughly enjoyed the walk down memory lane, plus learned a few things. But everything in episode 5 was news to me, just jaw dropping even in the context of his already jaw-dropping life, rise and fall.

rass wrote:…they established the history of the relationship between the LAPD and the city's black residents, as the Alton Sterling and the Philando Castile and the Dallas incidents were hitting the news was... I don't even know what I'm looking to say.

I'll say something. From Leonard Deadwyler in 1966, a year after the riot I lived through as a 3rd grader, to today, I've long expected this rash of nut jobs shooting back at cops. And, as usual, surprised it took this long.

Post by **brian** » Tue Jul 18, 2017 5:36 pm

OJ's life up in Lovelock doesn't sound too much worse than mine.

ETA: We haven't discussed but I assume it's common knowledge that OJ will be granted parole on Thursday and will be departing our beautiful Silver State for greener pastures. I don't know why, but I get a kick out of the fact that we've "lived" in Nevada an almost identical amount of time (I moved to Las Vegas the weekend of the Palace Station robbery.)

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Tue Jul 18, 2017 8:46 pm

His fucking air conditioner works I bet.

Post by **brian** » Thu Jul 20, 2017 11:41 am

Lovelock, NV, a town of 1,841 people, currently has at least 150 media people in it including 11 satellite trucks.

Post by **brian** » Thu Jul 20, 2017 12:24 pm

OJ not doing himself any favors during this parole hearing. His current legal team must really suck.

Post by **brian** » Thu Jul 20, 2017 12:31 pm

This is unintentionally hilarious. Can you imagine being told when you were 18 years old that one day you'd be watching OJ Simpson on TV touting his stint as a prison softball league commissioner as a reason he should be paroled?

Post by **brian** » Thu Jul 20, 2017 12:36 pm

Nine years in prison makes you very long-winded apparently.

https://twitter.com/BryanMVance/status/ ... 5100984320

Post by **brian** » Thu Jul 20, 2017 1:58 pm

And that's it. On Oct. 1, he's a free man.

Ryan · Post by **Ryan** » Thu Jul 20, 2017 2:03 pm

Tony Romo better come out of the gate strong

Post by **brian** » Thu Jul 20, 2017 2:25 pm

I chuckled.

https://twitter.com/PabloTorre/status/8 ... 8394894337

howard · Post by **howard** » Thu Jul 20, 2017 2:30 pm

'Sup, bitches

(yeah, I show up every time Hillary loses, or OJ gets out of jail)

https://twitter.com/SwamperHoward/statu ... 6044107777

https://twitter.com/SwamperHoward/statu ... 2601108480

https://twitter.com/larryabarnette/stat ... 9318779905

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Thu Jul 20, 2017 2:58 pm

howard wrote:https://twitter.com/larryabarnette/status/888111659318779905

Blacked dot com

Moreta · Post by **Moreta** » Thu Jul 20, 2017 3:25 pm

The new Bronco should be out just in time.

Rex · Post by **Rex** » Thu Jul 20, 2017 5:25 pm

Can the presidency be far behind?

Pruitt · Post by **Pruitt** » Thu Jul 20, 2017 6:54 pm

Some of us never stopped believing.

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Thu Jul 20, 2017 8:34 pm

https://www.instagram.com/p/BWyLCq0Hc6y/