No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 392: "Tiger" documentary filmmakers Matthew Heineman and Matthew Hamachek

Episode Date: January 14, 2021

Matthew Heineman and Matthew Hamachek, the directors of HBO's two-part documentary "Tiger," join the podcast to discuss the film, the challenges they faced, the reaction within the golf world, their understanding of Tiger, Earl, what they viewed as the most important cogs in the story, and a lot more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yes! That is better than most. I'm not in. That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No-Lang-Up Podcast. Sully here, this episode is with Matthew Heinemann and Matthew Hammacek, the co-directors of Tiger, the documentary that has been airing on HBO. Part one was this past weekend.

Part two is this coming weekend. We chatted about it. On this last week's podcast, we'll talk about it again this coming weekend, but want to chat with the guys just about the process of making the documentary. You know, some things got left on the cutting room floor. What the mindset was, we had a great chat. As always, it's difficult with two different people in two different locations. Doesn't help things when they both have the same name and the same first initial of their last name. So we try to direct the questions to each person as I saw fit, but that was definitely a challenge.

But I think you guys are gonna really enjoy this interview. You wanna give a shout out to our friends at Woop before we get going here. Woop, WHOP, a fitness wearable, if you're not aware of it, that we've been wearing for quite some time now. I've been hitting some very green numbers this past week. I've been cutting back a little bit on the alcohol. I'm not saying it's a new year's resolution,

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So again, woop.com, WHOOP use promo code NoLangUp at checkout for 15% off your purchase. Without any further delay, let's talk Tiger. Joining me now, the directors of the Tiger documentary on HBO, which we've been covering pretty extensively and plan to continue to cover Matthew Hammacek and Matthew Heinemann. Always got to do this first, you know, when we have two guests on, so people can distinguish the voices a little bit.

Let's start with Heinemann. You can't say Matthew H, either. You're both Matthew H, but Matthew Heinemann, thanks for joining us. You might kind of tell us a little bit about yourself and how you end up on this project and then we'll get to Matthew Hammetscheck Sure, thanks for having us on Yeah, I'm a documentary filmmaker Also make narrative films as well, but you know, I had it done a whole host of different subjects from

you know Mexican cartels ISIS to different things in the US And this is the first film for me that was sort of more of a quote unquote, talking head film, an archive of a based film. And I actually came on after Matt. But I was always interested in Tiger Woods. I was always interested in his story. We all obviously grew up with him looming

in our public consciousness. I can't say that I'm a golf fan. I can't say that I'm much of a golfer, although I did grow up playing golf occasionally. So I think for me, I was much more interested in telling the story of the man and trying to dissect and understand who he is and who he was.

Matthew Hamichek, then as well, how did you get involved with this project and how did you end up working with Mr. Heineman? Well, I've been working in documentary now for about 17 years, done a whole host of subjects ranging from elections in Newark, New Jersey to the Amanda Knox story, work with Matt as a producer and editor before on a couple of films. And then, you know, this is the first one that I directed. I got involved, you know, because I was intrigued by the Tiger Wood story. To me, I think Tiger is arguably one of the most famous and most recognizable faces on the planet, and he's been covered by so many people for his entire life really, and then on 2009 on Thanksgiving night, when he crashed his car into the fire hydrant outside his house in

Isleworth, I think we all sort of realized that we know next to nothing about Tiger despite all that coverage and trying to get to the bottom of who Tiger Woods is, you know, is what really fascinated me and maybe want to dive into the story. How short was the conversation with Tiger's camp on whether or not he would be here, they be involved in participating in the project. It was pretty simple.

Yeah. I mean, we almost somewhere near to the beginning of the process reached out to him via his camp and obviously wanted him to participate, if he was open to it. They pointed to a preexisting relationship with another network that prohibited them from taking part. And it seemed pretty back in white. There was a lot of wiggle room to debate there. And we tried again later on in the process during the edit and got a similarly clear response.

Yeah, I think that's not unique to you guys. That's pretty much can be the same for a lot of people in the golf industry. But before we kind of get into the specifics and some of the storylines and themes and some of the feedback of the documentary, I wanna ask you both, what makes a great documentary, right? You guys do this way outside of the world of golf

as you've documented here. But what is it? Because I think, you know, for golf fans, they can come into a story like this. And if the story is not exactly the way they want it to be told or picture it being told, they can get kind of, I don't know, not confused being the right word, but coming in from the outside of this story and documenting it, I'm interested to just kind of hear your philosophy on story telling, and that's gonna ultimately lead us to this two-part documentary.

Yeah, I think Matt will agree with me on this. I think there's many different types of documentaries. You can have sort of these encyclopedic, almost like a Ken Burns style thing where you cover things over multiple different parts and you look at the Civil War, it's every single battle and all these different people. I think the type of films that Matt and I have made together

and the things that I know I like are sort of character-driven documentaries where you get inside one person's life or a couple different people's lives and you really sort of get to know them and understand who they are or what makes them tick, things like that. And I think that's sort of the first part of the answer. I think the second part, for me at least, is I don't like to be told exactly how I'm supposed to feel when I'm watching something. And I prefer documentaries that often sort of ask more questions than they answer.

And so, especially with the Tiger story, there's just been so much that's been done about him that has been, you know, fawning sort of golf media that, you know, I've watched so many things about Tiger and our extensive research for this and it's like, you know, everything from his golfing prowess down to, I recently saw a five minute segment about his, you know, Starbucks drink of choice on golf TV and so it's, you know, there's that sort of that side of the Tiger story and then there's, They're that side of the Tiger story, and then there's the tabloids sensationalistic side

that was, as we talk about in the film, there were more New York Post covers dedicated to the Tiger Wood story than there were for 9-11. And so I think I'll let Matt sort of pick up on this, but I think that we wanted to sort of come from a different perspective, to understand who Tiger Woods is, and to make a complex and nuanced story.

I agree with everything that Matt said, obviously, and I think when I laugh, he's heard me say this a million times, but when I was 21, a mentor of mine in the film world said that if you end up with the story you started with, then you weren't listening along the way. And I think that's good advice for life. And I think that's good advice for filmmaking is, is don't be dogmatic, don't script things,

don't go into things with a deeply preconceived notion, let the story sort of dictate where it should go. And I think that's a really wonderful way to approach filmmaking and documentaries in particular. And that's something that I've held very near and dear to my heart in every film I've ever made. And again, most of the films I've made have been out in the field, you know, filming in far away countries or in dangerous places and in shooting things that are happening in real time. So this is a completely different exercise here because we were trying to find that same intimacy, that same depth, but with more constraints, obviously, were constrained by the footage that we're able to find

and more constrained by the characters that we're able to get to sit in the chair. But similarly, we tried to have the same ethos of trying to tell as intimate and deep a portrayal of Tiger as we possibly could and sort of embrace again the complexity of the human condition and not shy away from it. I think so many stories and so many people in general like to paint Tiger with a simple brushstroke and that's just not at all what we're interested in. And I think, you know, the reaction to the doc

has been interesting. You know, I think there's been a lot of people that just don't want to hear anything negative about tiger at all. You know, I think it was yesterday, a couple days ago, maybe someone wrote on Twitter a journalist, something like, he was a flawed, but loving father, referring to Earl, who produced a flawed, but loving father, referring to Earl, who

produced a flawed, but transformed with athlete. Life is messy, but beautiful. Really interesting response to the doc. That was that was that was Brando L. Chambley, who's a yeah. And then and then someone wrote which which really made me laugh one step forward and two steps back. Sometimes I just don't get where your head is. You really confuse me laugh. One step forward and two steps back. Sometimes I just don't get where your head is. You really confuse me. You like Tiger, then you don't. Then you do, then you don't. Tiger

fans just like Tiger. We don't psychoanalyze him. Stop pretending you like Tiger. Stop being self-righteous. And I think what's interesting about that, in particular, and in general, the response that we've seen is it's not even the people, you know, so much salacious tabloid stuff has been written about Tiger, and we really cover that, and it's a large, you know, component of, especially the second half of the film. I think what's interesting is that people don't even want them to be humanized. And I think there's a difference between salaciousness that you see in the tabloids and just humanizing somebody. It sometimes it feels as if people want to hang on to the image that they have of tiger in their mind as sort of a godlike figure. And that's also a huge

component of what we talk about in the documentary. Well, it's interesting. You said the word salacious and you said tabloids there. And I think what comes with those words is, you know, borderline lies or stretches of the truth. And as far as I can tell, and I'm curious, your guest feedback, that doesn't seem to be the case with what was printed in these tabloids, right? It ended up being quite true and confirmed

by many, many people. And I think the documentary is part of it is covering the salaciousness of that media reaction. The documentary itself, I would most definitely not classify as salacious. I actually thought in many ways it was sympathetic to Earl Antatiger and to the relationships he had with some of these women. Was that, is that your guys' reaction to it? Is that a conscious decision? How did you go about handling something that,

obviously, was so insanely public. I couldn't help but notice the text messages were not in there. The voicemail that he left, that was circulating throughout so many different places. That's my response to the people that say, it was too salacious. I'm like, give me. Guys, this happened and it could have been a lot worse in terms of how this was depicted in the documentary. I think Matt, I had no interest in, like, capital and no interest in making a salacious

regurgitation of the sort of lured details of tires' infidelity. That had been well documented. And I think we wanted to, as you said, and we wanted to highlight the positive and the negative. And hopefully, as you say, create a sympathetic portrait. I mean, one example, obviously, is with Rachel. With Rachel took a long time to get her to trust us and to gain a trust to get her to sit down and talk to us. You know, she obviously had her reasons.

She wanted to tell her side of the story. She wanted to, after years of being silenced, after years of having her name dragged through the mud, she wanted to finally come out and speak. And, but, you know, we also wanted to talk to you again for those little details, but to understand who was Tiger at that time. What was he thinking? What was it like to be in a bedroom with him and what was going through his mind during those moments? That was much more interesting to us than, again, the slacious details.

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Use code NoLayingUp20 and you get $20 off your total order. So go to walkertrawlies.com today, use code NoLangUpt20, and you get $20 off your total order. Let's get back to the podcast. Did she have a non-disclosure agreement? And did she break it for this? Why haven't we heard from her in 10 years? I think the answer to that is probably, if you, when you watch part two,

which is gonna be airing this Sunday at 9pm, you'll see the way that the media went after her after the story came out. And it was an interesting thing because, you know, as she talks about it, she talks about how she'd walk out of her apartment and they'd say things like, I hope you get AIDS and die and you could see the way that the women on the view sort of called her a whore and things like that. I think that if you've been pummeled like that in the public eye for so many years,

I still remember one of the things that she talked to us about when we first met with her is she just said, sometimes I'll be in the school pick up line at her child's school and people will still come up and make comments to her about it. I think she was just constantly having to be reminded of this thing, the sort of mistake that heck, we're all flawed people, right? And she made a mistake and she had to live with it for the rest of her life. And I think, if you go through something like that, do you really want to dig all that

stuff back up again? And I think that's why I took 10 years and sort of, at his mat set, even when we got into the room with her and we were able to talk to her about it, she still was hesitant for quite some time before she finally sat down and talked to us. So I'm a, like many people, I read the book, Tiger Woods by Arm and Gatain and Jeff Benedict,

which I, to full disclosure, I listened to the audio book, which helped a lot on a road trip, which I think it was something along the lines of 16 hours in the audio book. This documentary is three hours. What is the process like for taking, you know, that's the source material, you know, that is some of the source material you're also doing, all these additional interviews on top of it. How do you take, you know, a story that took these guys this long to spell out and take it into three hours? I mean, was there thought to making this a 10 part series? And from there, I kind of want to get into some of the things

that you had to leave on the cutting room floors, strong storylines that you couldn't even broach because it would have taken an hour just to fully cover it. I'm wondering if you can speak on some of that. I mean, look, so much has been written about Tiger, and you know, we certainly started with Jeff and Armand's book and read it, but we, I mean, you know, you also go back in time and you read Gary Smith's article, you know, in 1996 called The Chosen One and Charlie Pierce's article that followed that. I think if anything, there has been so much incredible

pieces written about Tiger Woods over the years. Right, Thompson's piece, The Secret History of Tiger Woods, that detailed some of the Navy SEAL stuff. But what I would say is, and Jeff in Armand's book was incredible and was an inspiration for us as well, obviously. But one of the things that Matt alluded to earlier, and I think was really important to our process, was we were very fortunate to be able to find people that were actually in the living room with Tiger when he was growing up. Or we're on the golf course with him,

Joe Grum and the pro at the Navy golf course, or his caddy of 11 years who won 13 of the 15 majors with, you know, these are people that were there. And a lot of our process was about listening to these people and really letting them tell us this is what the story has been because a lot of these people have really participated in things before and haven't had a chance to tell their story and they sort of peel back that layer and let us see who the real Tiger Woods was. So a lot of the process for us was listening. What I enjoyed about the book was I felt like it gave me a golf fan. The best look into how Tiger

became the person that he is, as we know him, how he ended up with the scandal, how he ended up so great at golf, how he ended up tearing his body down. As you're doing the background research for this, what are the key pillars of his childhood that you fell back on? We're not nearly storytellers to the extent that you guys are, but when we're creating some kind of story in a video, there's always three, four, five extent that you guys are, but when we're creating some kind of story in a video, there's always three, four, five things that you're like,

we want this message to make sure it gets in clear. I'm wondering how you guys would define what those kind of pillars are in this project. I think for us, it's, it's, it comes down to, the subject that we were able to talk to for the doc. And, you know, Matt and I had a rule, from the beginning that we were able to talk to for the doc. And Matt and I had a rule from the beginning that we really wanted everyone we spoke to to have had some sort of relationship with Tiger.

They had to have known him in some way more than just covering him as a journalist. And therefore, through the subject that we were able to speak to, we didn't feel an obligation ever to do this sort of full encyclopedia entry, you know, cradle to present of Tiger Woods. You know, that's what the Internet's for, that's what, you know, other things before. We never felt that that was our duty. You know, we wanted to find this sort of, in highlight,

the key moments, both in his childhood and his teenage years, in his life as a college golfer, and then ultimately, obviously a pro, that really elucidated and shed light on who, the main question that we're trying to answer, who is Tiger Woods, and doing so, obviously, we did not cover every single event of his life. If I was to ask you, if you had to pick one person that's in the documentary that had

to be, so if we're playing Russian Roulette and somebody gets removed from the documentary, and you're able to power rank who you would want to be removed the least the key cog the most important person I'm curious both of your answers and I'll share mine after I have to hear your answers I Think I'll give the golf I'll give the golf base dancer for this And Heinemann can give maybe the non base golf base dancer I think there's no question that's if this if we didn't have Steve Williams. I think that would be You know a pretty significant loss to the Williams, I think that would be, you know, a pretty significant

loss to the film. I think that, you know, yes, the insight that Steve Gilves in terms of golf is fascinating. I think, you know, his story about Tiger sort of pulling over on the side of the road, and I'm sure for golf fans, you know, that feeling of needing to work on the swing, you know, not even at the hotel room, but needing to pull over on the side of the road and work on the swing, something that had gotten inside his head right there on the side of the road and work on the swing, something that had gotten inside his head right there on the side of the highway is good. I think that story he tells, which I love, of the sort of game within the game between Tiger

and Phil at the 2001 Masters when Tiger was about to complete the Tiger slam. I think that's fascinating, but, you know, I think again, for us, the thing that intrigued me about Steve is the moments that maybe weren't even necessarily golf moments where he's talking about riding in the car and Tiger said, talking, telling him about how he feels about the burden of basically being an extremely famous person and also eventually the fame and the pressure that he's under building up around him

to the point where he just said to Stevie that he's gonna give up golf and join the Navy SEALs. I think those conversations, those sort of more intimate moments between the two of them when they're driving in a car, things like that are just fascinating. And I think he gave insight to Tiger's mind in a way that you have. I think for me, I mean, look, this is a, you know, a mental exercise months after finishing

something. So there's no obviously right or wrong answer. I think we, if we, you know, we'd probably both list multiple people. But I think if we're going down to one, I would say Dina. Yeah, that's my, his high school girlfriend. Just because I feel like she, you know, first of all, she hasn't, she's not well known. Most people don't know her story. She's barely spoken in the public eye. And, you know, I think she sheds such insight into Tiger Woods at a time of his life where we don't know a ton of about him.

And I think the sort of innocence that she feels was lost that you know There's a real sort of poignancy that she brings the doc in sort of You know again illustrating that part of his life and I think the sort of before Tiger became part of the Tiger machine before Tiger became Tiger And I find that part of his life and her deeply insightful comments on that, you know, really fascinating. And then, you know, on the other side, just from a purely practical point of view,

she gave us, you know, those amazing videos of home videos of Tiger goofing around, playing the saxophone. And I feel like, obviously we're in the business of image making, and those images of a smiling Tiger, wide eyed, glistening, eyes glistening, grinning cheek to cheek, it's just a Tiger

that we don't see walking down the masters on the 18th hole. We don't see, it's not the, quote, unquote, assassin between the ropes that we've all grown to know. And so I just found that to be unbelievably interesting. Yeah, that's, that's really well said, you know, as someone that has followed his golf career for so long and, and knew a teeny tiny part of that story, but to see the images, I felt that, I thought that that was that was very powerful.

And something that, you know, it all contribute. Again, all this stuff, I'm trying to, there's somewhat of a theme in the questions I'm asking you, they're contributing towards, you know, this understanding of the guy that we know we've, a lot of people have been covering for a long period of time, but yet have no idea how he functions or how he operates. And I just thought that that spoke to, you know lot of you know the some of that innocence lost as soon as he turns professional or maybe even maybe even before that. So how do you think the not that this is my job to ask you questions but how do you think the golf world is responded to the documentary? I think well one is one of the questions I had for you guys is I was going to ask you if is it fair to say that this film is not a golf film and

Because I wouldn't classify it as a golf film. I don't think it's about golf. I think it's about the man and I think a lot of the golf fans, you know, are gonna want to view this more so and you know a common theme I guess I'm seeing is you know it the golf stuff feels very secondary and I'm like well I think that's kind of the point and you know, the golf stuff feels very secondary. And I'm like, well, I think that's kind of the point. And it doesn't, it isn't like a shot by shot, you know, recreation. And I would say to that, like that stuff exists out there, that's out there.

So I think it's kind of where I was referring to in the beginning about confusion, you know, from golf fans in terms of, you know, what this is about. And so I think it's, it's, you know, it's interesting. I watched part one, the screener part one with with my wife, and she immediately was like, let's watch part two. And that that reaction was very noteworthy to me in terms of like, I don't think this thing is for golf fans necessarily. It's for everyone. And a lot of golf people are not, they always want to see things necessarily

through the golf lens, right? So I think, you know, some of the reaction, you know, calling it salacious and, you know, you know, whatever tigers, personal life is a personal life blah, blah, blah, blah, all that. I have a problem with just because I, as we, as we mentioned, I think it's incredibly fair to all of that. And like I said, it could have been much, much, much deeper.

And we're talking about one of the most public figures in the world. You're gonna lose this privacy. If you're gonna be a spokesman for this many brands, your life is gonna be under the microscope. And you make decisions like this, it's gonna get documented and that story is gonna be told. So, does that hit to the question? Yeah. And that's exactly what I think Matt and I were always tried to do. This is never

a film about golf. And as you said, there's plenty of channels and publications and podcast and every other way to get media out these days on Just Golf. And we wanted to sort of understand Tiger, the person, and dive deeply into that. And obviously his prowess on the golf course is inherently part of the story, but that was not our focus by any means. And a common critique, and one I have made myself as well is just about how the series ends and how, you know, the comeback at the end of his career almost seems a bit like an epilogue. And in reality, I think it's like the greatest sports comeback of my lifetime. Again, I think that speaks to it,

not being a golf film. But I'm curious, it's like the comeback is not in the book. It was published, you know, before the Masters win happened, before any of his comeback wins happened. A combination of the question, I guess, is how did you go about setting out on this section of the film, and what was the production schedule like for this? Was this project already way in the works when he won the Masters, and then did you have to adjust? I imagine it's a great challenge, kind of trying to document somebody's career that's still ongoing. I imagine it's a great challenge kind of trying to document somebody's career that's still ongoing. Well, you know, we, we actually, no, we were not far into the process. We had done our research and we had, you know, spent multiple months sort of reading and watching everything that we could find and sort of reaching out to

all the different subjects that we thought we might want to talk to. But interestingly, our first interview, which was with Rachel, you could tell happened three days, two days after he won the 2019 Masters. So we had not set out to, you know, to make the story in a different way at all. You know, like everything else, we listened to the people that we were able to talk to and one of the things that fascinated me about the 2019 Master's win is the second it happened, people started to talk about how it was a redemption story. And I always found that funny because I don't know why Tiger needed to redeem himself in the eyes of the public. The things that he did that the tabloids covered for so long were really things between him and his wife and him and his family.

I don't know what winning a golf tournament has to do with redemption to begin with. What I started to hear, what we started to hear from the people that really knew Tiger best, was that they saw Tiger finding a love of the game and enjoyment of the game in a way that they hadn't seen for so many years. You know, after this is sort of after the DUI in 2017, when he started to come back, the sort of the thing that changed Integer was that he seemed to be enjoying himself for the first time in many, many years. And he was, you know, talking to the people he was playing with and becoming more friendly with them and being coming a mentor to some of the younger people on the tour and things like that. So I think that, you know, we really wanted to get away from the sort of redemption narrative that the media, the public, and everybody sort of glommed on to after the Masters win and focus on the joy of the game because, you know, as we were talking about earlier, the video of Tiger that Dina Gravel gave us when we first met her was of this kid who seemed to be full of joy.

And, you know, if you talk to the people that knew and best, they sort of say that that went away to a certain degree. And to see that come back was very special to a lot of them, because, you know, one of the things we noticed is that all of these people, even the ones that, you know, Tiger had sort of cut out of his life in this really, at times, brutal way, they all really care about Tiger. They're all still fiercely protective of him,

and I think they really were happy to see him enjoying the game again. So I think a lot of our focus was on that. On that note, is it difficult to get people to speak for a documentary like this? What's the process like for getting in touch with so many of his contacts? And how do you go about getting them to talk?

Because it seems that there is a almost mafia, like if you talk, like you're out of my life kind of thing that comes with Tiger Woods, and it does seem to be included in there or some people that he no longer appears to speak to. And I'm wondering just kind of, how many knows you got and who are the knows and did it take some coercing or kind of encouragement for some of these contacts to actually speak? I mean, having filmed in with Moffe's and Cartel's and other things in my life, the power

of people at the top is quite astounding, no matter where you are. And I think it was obviously, we're not talking about a cartel or mafia here. But I do think the, as Matt said, I think the power that Tiger, the aura, and the sort of power around him and his machine, was, I expected it. I knew it existed. in the power around him and his machine.

I expected it, I knew it existed, but the depth of that existence, I guess I didn't expect it. I didn't expect that every single person that you touched, or that you're trying to get a hold of it, you're trying to gain our trust, you're trying to get them to talk, always was extremely differential to tiger and to, you know, making sure that this

wasn't some sort of hit job and making sure that, you know, they would be okay and they would be handled okay and that, I don't know, it was really fascinating to me how a psychologically connected and impacted everyone was. Even if some of these people no longer were in touch with Tiger and have been cut out of his life, like many people, that power still existed. Nick Fowdo and Maracco Media, I believe, are to be the only professional golfers that speak in the documentary. Why? I don't know if you have it. Nick Fowdo is more prominently featured than Rocco, but why him? Why was he willing to speak and kind of what reaction did you get from him that was

different than I'm sure so many other professional golfers that you had requested? I think for Nick, I think in an interesting way, it was probably one of the easiest Nick, I think in an interesting way, where it was probably one of the easiest people to get to talk. It was a couple conversations. I think we called them up, explained what we were doing, just sort of tried to tell them, we're gonna be making a complex and nuanced portrait of this guy that in a way

that I don't think has ever been done before. And he was interested and really excited to talk to us. And so the great thing about Sir Nick, as he's called, is that he has such an incredible knowledge of the game. And I think really was able to not only talk about two really key instances rather of when he played with Tiger, the first being the 97 Masters because he was the, I think the 96 Masters champion and Tiger was the amateur champion, so they automatically got paired together, I think, for the first day, for Thursday.

And then the second time was right after Tiger's father had passed and he was playing in the 2006 British Open and sort of have insight into those two incredible days through Nick Valdos sort of mind was fascinating. And then also obviously Nick was at the 2017 championships dinner at Augusta. And he was there for the moment when Tiger told a couple of people that he was done, and that he was never going to be able to play again. So, you know, it was great. And then Rocco was just such an incredible character. Really funny, and he is sort of exactly as he appears on camera, he's sort of firing on all cylinders like that at 24 or 7. And it was just a joy to talk to. You know, we make videos that couldn't be much more different

than this one, but I always find it incredibly hard to cut some things out, you know, and you would laugh at the things that I'm talking about compared to what I'm sure you guys had to leave on the cutting room floor. I want to know for each of you, what did you have the hardest time cutting? What's something that, you know, you just, it was painful to say like, all right, this,

you know, for whatever reason this storyline or this clip or this section can't go in. There's always so many things when you're editing and doc that, you know, you wish you could have gotten in and, you know, Mac and and Pi speak more to this. I don't know. I feel like, look, we set out really to make a one long film. We never sort of thought about this as like this is a two-part documentary series and you know, it wasn't like we were producing part one with one set of people and producing part two with another set of people. It was the same team creating one long film that was ultimately broken up into two parts. And obviously there's other examples of sort of series like The Last Dance and other things

that are much longer and multi parts and stuff. And I think we want to make this tight, but I think in doing so and telling a story in just two parts, roughly three hours, I think obviously a lot of the people that we spoke to, we could have gone into much greater depth and there's tons of amazing stories and anecdotes that we weren't able to include. But I think ultimately we felt like we wanted to tell a story that that could be consumed in one sitting and that was really just one long film. I think for me, the simple answer is, I don't think there's a lot that's on the cutting

room floor that I wish could be in the documentary. I think if it was, as Matt said, there was no agenda. There was no, we have to do this in two parts. We have to do this for three hours or anything like that. If it needed to be in there to understand better who Tiger Woods is and how he got to the point that he's at today, it was going to go in the film. I'm very happy though, I will say, with our team's ability to, you know, I talked to the editors a lot about this and we had an incredible editorial team led by Dan Kohler, who's one of the best editors in the business.

And, you know, for those of people out there that don't understand how documentaries get made, you know, you accumulate hundreds of hours of interviews and then you have tens of thousands in this case, hours of archival that have to be sort of combed through, and then all that sort of has to be put together. Someone like Dan, our other editors, Nick and Monica, they have an enormous responsibility, and they have such an incredible sort of role in the shaping of these movies.

So what I really appreciate about what they did and what we all did together on this film is I talked to them a lot about how you know we have to keep in mind, we have to, Tiger went through some dark periods in his life, but we have to make sure there were only including things for a very specific reason to show how far he went down into one part of his life. You know, and I would say, keep in mind, there's a chance his kids are gonna watch this thing someday. So there were so many salacious details that were on the cutting room floor that I'm so happy

we didn't ever even think about putting in. And also, there's been so many things written about Tiger over the years. I still remember reading Hank Hainey's book and Hank was talking about how he was angry at Tiger one day because Tiger didn't share popsicles with him or something like that in his living room. And, you know, it's just, there's so many things like that that were written. And it's just like, I don't know what, I don't know what this really contributes to who Tiger

Woods is. And I think, you know, I'm much less concerned about what we didn't get in that I am that, you know, we really didn't cover the really salacious details and really just got to the bottom of who Tiger Woods is. Were you close at all to getting Hank Hainey to be able to contribute? I reached out to Hank one time, I believe, and I don't want to put any words in Hank's mouth, but I think there's still a degree of animosity there and between him and Tiger,

and I don't know how much time Hank really wants to spend discussing the Tiger Wood story anymore. I think he feels like he said his thing with the book, and so it was a very quick conversation If you had to sit down and ask Tiger one question you get to inject him with true serum and he has to answer it truthfully What would it be? It's a good question. Matt, what do you think? I'm putting you on the spot here so I can think of a better answer Yeah, you're getting riff off of me. I don't know. I mean so many things. I think it's not a

it's a you know it's not a mind blowing question, but I think I'd ask him you know what as biggest regret is, what he regrets most in his life, because I feel like that would then lead to a whole host of other questions I could ask. And I think you you know, maybe he doesn't regret anything. And that also is interesting. I don't know, but I surely think that he does obviously wish that things went differently in his life. And so, you know, I'm curious if his answer is around his family, his infidelity is not a thing. His answer around golf, his answer around

his relationship with his father. I don't know. I think that that question is, you know, I would love to ask him. But I think we all know that that answer will never probably be given truthfully. There's an interesting clip in, I hope I remember this right, in the 2016 Charlie Rose interview where he's talking about sitting down with his kids and discussing this. And it almost, it's hardly almost puts the words in his mouth says something along the lines of regret.

You regretting this. And Tiger almost goes out of his way to say, like, no, not regret. I'm not saying regret. And I just, I need to go back and watch that. I hope I remember that right, but I always found that like really bizarre. He was going out of his way to say like,

no, no, like we're not using that word regret. So I don't know if that answers your question at all, but I'd have to go back and watch that again to it. I hadn't thought of that for a while until you had said that. Yeah, I mean, I think for me, I think the thing that, one of the things that really intrigued me about this story was the father's

son relationship with him and Earl. And I think that if I could go back and ask him anything, it would probably be, you know, as you said, if he had truth serum, I would love to just ask him what he thought of his relationship with his father because I think, you know, in talking to the people like Pete McDaniel, who is Earl Woods' biographer, very close to Earl and Tiger and Tita, to this day, and in some of those cases, I think Pete and Joe Groman,

who had a front row seat to their relationship as well, and Dina, all of these people, they all point to how this is, the same time was one of the most you know sort of loving relationships that you could possibly imagine between the two of them, but also an incredibly complicated one. And I'd really love to know you know what Tiger has to say about that. That's the thing that I would just love to know about him. Do you guys ever think this may not be a question for the two of you, but you know, That's the thing that I would just love to know about him.

Do you guys ever think, and this may not be a question for the two of you, but having been in contact with a lot of his contacts and whatnot, do you ever think Tiger will sit down for a documentary about his life? At some point, maybe in his later years, but do you ever picture him kind of being a part of something like this? I don't think anytime soon. I think people will always write about how similar

Jordan and Tiger are in many ways. I think they're also extremely different. I think I can remember who who talked about it, but a lot of our subjects talked about this too is that they're, you know, one, Tiger is essentially a complete introvert and Jordan is a very sort of type A sort of extravert. So they're very different in that way, but you know, I think took LeBron James and the Golden State Warriors to and both of those

that team and that person's individual success and people starting to talk about, you know, who's the greatest of all time to get Jordan to even wanna come out and make, you know, completely authorized documentary. I would have, I don't see, I don't, I shouldn't say that. I'd be interested and surprised if Tiger made a move like that without being pushed by something like that. Somebody coming in and starting to tear apart his records and threatening and people starting to say,

well, this may be the greatest golf ever of all time, maybe then, but I still don't think that we're ever probably going to get the sort of fully exposed, really reflective sort of, you know, fully exposed, really reflective, sort of, you know, dock from tiger. It's also hard for people to reflect on themselves, right? I mean, like, and what is truth? Like, what is truth? Like, what is it? You know, and I think that's, that was inherently a really interesting exercise for Madden lies is yeah of course we don't have tiger and that sucks but you know given the limitations that we have can we actually get at some sort of you know deep for understanding on this man that maybe perhaps we couldn't have gotten if he was controlling the project and

I'd like to think the answer to that question is yes. I'm not sure what you know the proper way to ask this question is, but I know it when I see it on our end in terms of like, oh, that's the clip. Oh, I can't believe we got that. Or you're just so excited about something either just found or just got from an interview subject. What one either archival or, you know, footage you guys got or, you know, access to something you got or something you got from an interviewee.

What was the key part, the most excited you got after you got something from somebody or found a story or kind of, you know, reflecting on it, do the key cog or something that just said, hey, we got it, that was it, we got it. I mean, we spoke about D&I. I think for me, just on the interview side of things, I think the interview with Joe Gromon that we did, it was actually, I think, our first, I think maybe our second or third interview after Rachel.

And his recollection of Earl's infidelity on a young impressionable tiger and his own infidalities on a young impressionable tiger and the depth of sort of sorrow and regret that he had for exposing tiger to that at that age. God knows how many years later, I'm not gonna math, was really, I thought quite profound to me. And I thought it was really, really interesting.

And something that we didn't know going into that interview that that's, and so the fact that we were able to get that out of him was really interesting to me. I mean, there's countless other examples, but for whatever reason that came to mind. Obviously, Joe is a great example, but I think for me, the thing that really struck me was when I actually did a big sort of drive through, you know, starting in, starting in Arizona, driving through California, and then eventually to Utah and Colorado to talk to a lot of these people at the beginning of this thing.

And I remember going and talking to Amber Lawyer in her talking, this is one of Tiger's close friends for many, many years, a niece of Mark O'Mara. And she was in Isleworth for, I would imagine close to a decade sort of getting to know Tiger really, really well. And she told the story about Tiger's scuba diving and his, the pressure that he was facing and the mania that surround him. And when she told that story about how he would escape to the bottom of the ocean and he did it

because as Tiger would tell her, the fishies don't know who I am down there. I thought that that was just fascinating and it was a great insight to sort of Tiger's mind to hear how much that stuff had weighed on him. And it sort of started this pattern that we started to see with all these people of Tiger trying to escape from the real world.

And he did it in a number of different ways over the years. But that was really an incredible detail to me that she told me. Well, I'll get you guys out of here on this. Maybe this is more nerdy documentary talk, but a lot of people wonder why things like these aren't more frequent or don't happen. And a huge hurdle is getting video footage rights. What's the process like for getting PGA tour rights,

getting U.S. open rights, getting masters rights, especially when there's a section in there that's quite critical of Billy Payne, Augusta is very conscious of their image at all times. What is that process like? Is that happen at your guys level? Is it different teams? I'm just curious if you could share anything related to that. First we had an incredible team to archival is when you do a don't like this archival is

everything. So we had an incredible team of producers on this that handled everything, Jenna Milman and Trevor Dovedowski. He, they were instrumental to finding people to that we were looking for, getting contact information in Jenna's case, really convincing them all to come on board and talking to them and sort of cultivating these relationships.

And then, you know, we had a guy named Matt Fisher who's down in Miami who has done a ton of sports documentaries as an archival producer. And when I talked to people that sort of, you know, worked at ESPN and different places, they all said, this is the guy. He's the best in the business, and you have to get him, and they were absolutely right.

He was just incredible. And so that was the start of it. And we just started to comb through hours and hours of footage, just finding things that would help elucidate what the people that new Tiger Best were talking about. And so it was just this incredible process of combing through, like I said, tens of thousands of hours of footage. And that was a testament to our team getting all that stuff. And then our editors really figuring out what needed to be pulled.

So it was really a team effort. Well, thank you guys both for joining today, sharing the story and for sharing the documentary. And I know a lot of listeners are looking forward to watching part two coming up this weekend. And yeah, really appreciate the time. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Cheers. Be the right club today. That is better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Expect anything different? I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go.

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