Pablo Torre Finds Out - Share & Tell with "The Last Dance" Director Jason Hehir and The Charlotte Wilder Effect

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

What got left on the cutting-room floor of The Last Dance? That shrugging security guard, Scottie Pippen's cattle prod, almost Obama — and so much more. Plus: the iPad trick, pulling a Stat Boy, what it feels like to be parodied/cancelled on SNL… and a pickup-line surprise featuring butterflies, a bulldog puppy and a newborn.Further reading:Watching the National Championship at a Georgia bar is what heartbreak looks like (Charlotte Wilder) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. I'm going to stick a cattle prod up Jerry Krause's butt. Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraff Kings Network. Yeah, how are you doing? Good. Great. I mean... You look not haggard. Thanks.

How old is you said? He's seven weeks. He'll be eight weeks Thursday. Oh, so he was in the Nicki. He was early. Jason Harris is handing Charlotte an iPad with his baby on it. Okay, that is a very cute baby. And I'm not going to lie, I don't always say that. I feel like I get hit by a Mac truck most days.

Because I was an uncle. I am an uncle five times over. And I'm 47 years old. So all of my friends have been down this road. And I've played like the quasi-uncle to a dozen other kids. I figured like I have this figured out. Jason came to me for advice and I was like, aha. Finally, I'm being recognized from my parental wisdoms.

This is something I want more than professional success or anything else. I do need to tell Charlotte that when you came to me to talk about having a kid, my scouting report on you was this is the most sincere enthusiasm I've encountered for having a child. I appreciated a lot more because I thought that that ship had sailed. I got married late in life and had a kid late in life and really was kind of married to my job and my kids were my projects. And it wasn't something I was proud of or indignant about. But I just figured, you know what? I have such good friends, such good family.

I have a dream job. The other part is probably not going to happen for me. And you can't have it all. Now, is your son aware of what a big deal you are? I've told him many times. He doesn't seem to care. Now, he hasn't seen the last dance yet. He is not.

He's not aware of any sort of lingering feud between Michael Jordan and Scotty Pippin. He doesn't know any of those stories yet. Wait, but you told him that Larsa Pippen's ex-wife is or was dating Michael Cohn's stuff. Well, he heard the pod already. In vitro, he heard the pod because my wife was listening to it. I just want to be sure. Because that's the important stuff. Yeah.

And Scotty sent a baby gift, obviously. He did. He did. Did he? No. I was going to say he sent a flaming bag of poop. I don't think that Scotty, I hope Scotty doesn't have any ill will. I don't think he would know who I was if I was standing in front of him. I think it's my guess that he has not seen the last dance.

That he has been told. That's the favorite part of this whole. Wait, really? I think that I think he's been told by several people they did you wrong and all that. But I would bet a lot of money that he did not sit down and watch all 10 hours of that dock and say, in conclusion, I can see why they did this and why they did that. they gave me my flowers at the, I don't, I don't think that he did that. Scotty, happy to discuss on the pod. Yeah. Anytime. If there's any pod, guess wants to offer an olive branch to the Pippin family, it is this one. Oh, man. So I bring Jason Hare into the studio, Charlotte, because I

wanted you guys specifically to be at the same table. And so Jason is, for those who are not aware based on the prelude to this part, director of the last dance, director of so many great films, Andre the Giant, Fab 5, go down the IMDV page. All of it is impressive and it's really worth your time. That's not why he's here, though. Jason wanted to bring us a topic that he had selected. And so Jason, what are we starting here with? We've discussed my fatherhood and my lovely wife.

And I have a lovely picture that we can show for our video. Yes, on YouTube and the rankings network. You can see this. And that picture is of my wife, my newborn son, and our dog Ozzie. And that picture would not be in existence were it not for Charlotte Wadler. Wait. Wait, wait. What?

So back in 2008, what do you think is about to have? I'm going to blush so hard. I have no idea. So just the context, though, of you guys having met before, what is it, Charlotte? What is your experience with Jason previous to this table? I don't know that we have met. I don't think we have. I think we're aware of each other maybe as fellow Bostonians.

Very well. Huge fan of your work. Likewise. Was always proud that you were also from a Boston suburb. I was like, look, we, you know, there is a place for Boston people in the media. Yeah. Because they're not enough of us. No, you have to search in deep corners, but leave it to Pablo in his intrepid journalism. I regret this already.

Nomagasy a para. So, 2018, I think we were working on Andre the Giant at the time. And I'm at a boxing gym. I used to go to this boxing gym in Tribeca regularly. And there was this attractive woman there who was there as a business consultant to kind of save the business they brought her in as a freelancer. And there's a line of guys who want to talk to her because there's a lot of testosterone. It's a bunch of dudes hitting inanimate objects.

And it's not the best place to try and get someone's number or try and strike up a conversation because you're doing it on a stage, first of all. And what is your boxing skill? What is your self-scouting report on that? Slow, 42 years. year old white guy amateur as you can be. Like, picture that and then just go a little less athletic, and that's me. But did you commit? Like, were you committed to the bet? Oh, yeah. Okay. I mean, I wasn't like grunting or anything. Yeah, yeah. I wasn't like doing the rocky thing.

Because as long as you're really trying, that's what matters. I do it for, definitely. I still do it a little bit now, but I did it for 10 years religiously. I was, it puts you in great shape. My trainer was a great guy. I had some good friends from the gym. You're also the guy who was doing like 24-7. That's all I got into it. Because I was, I lived in, in, in, In gyms, I was at HBO for seven years, and the majority of those years, I was spending in boxing gyms, profiling the Floyd Mayweather's and De La Jolla's and Fernando Vargasus and all those people of the world. And you said, I could do that. Yeah, it looks easy. Just boada-da-bada-da-bada-da-bada.

Come on. Real, real quick aside, when I did a story on like amateur wrestlers who want to be pro-wrestlers training, I went and trained with them and it was at Gleason's in Dumbo. Sure. And I went back multiple times and just took boxing lessons. It's addicted. something about being in that environment, you're like, I must hit something. And also, I'm a dive bar guy, more than like a lounge club guy. And I'm definitely a boxing gym guy over an Equinox guy. I moved to L.A. in 09. And the first day I went to Equinox in West Hollywood, you can imagine

what that scene was. Like, not a dive bar, Jason. No, it's not. It's the opposite. The perfumed air. The eucalyptus matched the scent of everyone's sweat and the headbands matched all the tube socks. It was everyone was color coordinated and like ready for their close-up. And I was like, this is not the place for me. And then I found this boxing gym with no mirrors, no nothing, just like a sweaty old wooden place with like hip hop blasting. And I was like, that's the spot for me. That owner of that gym has a place in New York. Fast forward to 2018. And Aaron, my now wife, is there. And I have really nothing to talk to her about and not a lot of time to even strike up a conversation if I did have something to talk about. But I knew she was from Georgia.

I knew she was a former cheerleader for the Falcons. So being a Pats fan, I could talk a little bit of smack about that. And she was a Georgia football fan. So this is in 2017 season, 2018 National Championship against Alabama. Oh, my God. Charlotte now, the light bulb was going off. So I needed to get Aaron's number in order to talk with her outside the gym and ask her out for a drink. Because you would never actually just say, hey.

If I did this and it didn't go well, I could never go back to that gym. It would be very difficult. So you're a coward. Yes. immensely. So I had to, I mean, this is, you know, I've grown up figuring out ways around actually confronting things. So now in the most important moment of my life, it turns out, she told me about this bar that she would go to with her Georgia friends to watch games called American Whiskey. And being an avid reader of Charlotte's content, Charlotte wrote an article called Watching the National Championship.

I'm very flattered. an article called Watching the National Championship at a Georgia bar is what heartbreak looks like. So I came in... Do you remember this story? Vividly.

So the story was Georgia was playing Alabama would have been the first time in 40 years that Georgia had won a title if that went well for them. And I, you know, I've always been fascinated by fandom. It's something that I kind of understand, but I think we'll also never fully understand.

And that's why I keep going back to that well. And I was like, I would love to see what the experience is when the stakes are so high, but I am in New York City. I can't go to the game. What is a way to get that experience? And I think Amanda Mall, who now writes for, I believe, insider, she is a huge Georgia fan. And she was like, the bar to go to is American whiskey. And I was like, okay. So, I went there and there was a bulldog there. There were like a bulldog puppy. That's what Aaron had told me is she goes to this bar and being Aaron, she cares more about puppies than football.

And she said this bar is incredible. They have bulldog puppies there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was the most devastating thing I've ever seen because there was hope. Yeah. And then was that the Jalen Hertz game? Yeah, that was the Tuna Vailoa. Tung of Iloa try to make up for it.

Fires to the end zone. Tuts! Comes in. in relief and throws that touchdown and wins the game. I was at that game. Oh my God. Well, you guys are doing this. I'm over there actually in the...

Oh, I wasn't even there. I wasn't like... I didn't know her yet, and I wasn't got to show up with this part by myself. That would be something that's outside of my purview. Yeah, so Georgia loses and everyone... It was like truly one of the most depressing. It was like worse than funerals.

Some guy was like, he literally... He was standing by a railing because it was a multi-floor. He was like, I'm going to throw myself off this. And I was like genuinely concerned for the people inside. I was there for subsequent SEC championship losses to Alabama. And it was just as depressing. And I felt like I didn't belong. Like I didn't deserve to be amidst this mass morning.

Because I really didn't have a dog in the, oh, no pun. But I didn't have a dog in the fight. But it was also in Atlanta. Yeah. This is the key part. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. It's there.

Like Georgia has overtaken as much as they possibly could. And the father versus the son, Kirby Smart facing Nick Sabin. Yes. So all of these subplots, the sadness was, of course, powerful. And let's say that I had gently overstated my fervor and passion for the SEC at this point. Okay. As a talking point. I'm more of a pro football guy than a college football guy.

I'm from Boston. We had Doug Flutie. I was Doug Flutty for Halloween when I was eight years old. Wow. Not to brag. Wow. Because I was No more when I was eight years old Were you really?

I mean, come on That's why you brought us together right? Bob, you might want to step out. I'm disturbed. So that was one of the things that I could connect with her on. So I literally was like just kind of casually studying up on who they were playing that week. Like this is one of my ways to talk. So I walked in the day after that game.

And I remember I was surprised that she knew my name because I walked past the front desk and she was standing there and I heard her over my shoulder. Jason and I was like whoa and I turned around and she said my dogs and I was like yeah like that's tough I was like so she told me about she watched the game there and I was like oh you this is I think this is the place where you watch you should check out this article um and she took my phone and she put her number in my phone and sent herself the article and then I asked her out that weekend with that number so Charlotte doesn't write this article oh my god this is the most meaningful thing I've

Well, I was been like, yeah, okay, here's a, here, I'll be a clown in a bar and write about it. But it had... A butterfly flaps its wings in London, and there's a hurricane in Florida. We all know the butterfly effect. Well, the Charlotte Wilder effect is... Oh, man. Yeah, an SB Nation... Oh, my...

Flaps her wings. ...has led to this baby being more. Yes. Oh, my God. I'm going to cry. That's the sweetest... Oh, thank you for telling me that. Of course.

You just made my year. I've waited this long to tell you this in person, because we've never had the chance to actually meet each other. Yeah. And I've never been able to tell this story to you directly. Jason? Oh my God. Well, I'm going to start going to more bars and writing about it. Yeah, you never know who you're going to connect. Yeah, maybe people, more people will get married. Wait, so where does it go from? Okay, article, number, sent registered. No, that's a pro move. First of all, that's such a pro move. Here's something I think you might be interested in that is nothing to do with me wanting to talk to. It's just like, hey, you'll like this. And then

Hey, do I still maintain that she must have known what I was doing and she says no to the point where I then asked her out. I think that was like, let's say a Tuesday, like the day after the National Championship was a Tuesday or Wednesday whenever that game was played. And I waited two weekends to ask her out. I saw her at the gym again and then I texted her and said night of on a Saturday, do you want to grab a beer or you're around for a beer or something like that? Wow. And she to this day is like, I hate beer. You know I hate beer. didn't know anything. I barely knew your last name at that point. But she thought I was just like,

hey, buddy, want to grab a beer? She's like, that's what you say to one of your bros. You don't ask a girl out that way. Want to grab a beer? Read some more FB Nation.com blog posts together. Charlotte has a real banger on why Taylor Swift is like the Patriots. It is Saturday. So we went out and I thought it went great, but she didn't think it was a date. So then the next, I mean, she just said, I remember you talked a lot. I was super nervous. She's like, you talked a lot. I remember telling my roommate, like, he's a talker. He's good great stories, but he can talk.

And you know what's funny is that I just started the last dance. So we started the last dance the day after Martin Luther King Day in 2018. So on that Tuesday, whatever that date is, on Wednesday night was our first date. Wow. And I asked her out because I just threw this Hail Mary. I was like, you know what? I'm going underground for the next four years anyway. What happens?

If she says no, I'm not going to that. Jim, I'm not leaving my edit room for the next couple of years anyway, so I might as well throw this Hail Mary and see what happens. But so she had known me for the first two years of our relationship, she knew me as someone who was totally consumed by the 90s Chicago Bulls. I don't think you're the only 47-year-old man who is still totally consumed, but just for the record. I have several Instagram followers who would agree with you. Yeah, there you go. But I am now realizing that Charlotte Wilder arguably deserves credit for the last dance being good. Yeah.

Okay, how did you make that leap? Jason's mental health clearly benefited from a relationship that flourished into his actual household and family. Yeah, absolutely. No question. The way that I was obsessed with the last dance, the way it gave me just something to do sports-wise in the pandemic, you didn't even know it was because of yourself at that point.

Well, it wasn't. It wasn't. You played a bigger role than Pablo did. I'll tell you that. How dare you? Yeah, well, Pablo didn't do anything. A producer credit maybe for Charlotte in like the, you know, the laser

disc re-release? The acknowledgement that like the you know, the producers' directors would like to thank. Like special thanks? Yeah. Yeah, you should get like a very special thanks. For part 11. I'm waiting. Scotty's rebuttal.

I do want to get to the last dance as this thing that has become omnipresent though. So Jason, who's been a listener of this show and has ceded this story in my brain for so long that I wanted to pay off with just you guys finally meeting each other. That was amazing. It also has been dovetailing with the larger sort of subplot of this show,

which is me finding out about the Michael Jordan Industrial Complex and all of the ways in which Jason is arguably editorially responsible for the re-meaming of this guy that we are newly, since the pandemic, obsessed with. And the last dance as a phrase, it's gone everywhere. I also should point out that it also, I guess Charlotte should, deserve credit for this as well. It got Jason onto Saturday Night Live.

One year ago, my documentary about Michael Jordan's final season with the Bulls, the last dance aired on ESPN. And even though it was 10 hours long, there was so much left on the cutting room floor. So tonight, I'd like to share an extended scene that I think really speaks to what made Michael Jordan such a great competitor. Enjoy. Do you remember where you were when you saw

how you heard that you were now being played on SNL? Vividly remember. So we had rented a house in Atlanta near Aaron's family and friends to get out of the city because everything was still locked down. What would this have been? 21?

21. Yeah, I think so. These are crazy Saturday nights that I have. Oh, yeah. Reading SB Nation. Yeah, right. Pizza, beers by myself. This particular Saturday,

night's a little bit crazier. I'm doing the Sunday Times crossword on my laptop while watching. You click before Sunday? I don't let myself click it before midnight. I do it because Sundays get crazy, you know. Do they? Clearly. More SB Nation articles to read. I mean, I can't keep up. So Saturday night, I'm sitting there by myself. Aaron's in bed. A dog is asleep at my feet. And I have the TV on, but it's muted. So I'm on my laptop, just kind of like looking around Twitter. I remember doing the crossword. And then I see that logo, the ESPN Films logo. So I look up and the first thing that I see is this guy talking and it says Jason Hare underneath his face. Yes, Mikey Day, the SNL cast member. It's the slowest four seconds of my life. I was like,

I know you're going to bleep this because I listen to your show, but what the fuck is going on? I literally stood up and said, what the fuck is going on? And then I turned it up. I immediately thought, now, if you're on SNL, it's probably not for a good reason. Right. And being where we were, especially in 21, coming off the tumultuous year of 20, I was thinking, what have I done? Yeah, exactly.

Have I been canceled? What did I do, honestly? I didn't want to use the, the, Cancel work is it just feels lazy, but I was like, I'm canceled. What did I do? I'm rocketing through my past. Just rolodexing, like, who did I offend? How did it make it to the writer's room at SNL?

A million thoughts going through. And then I turned it up. And we had joked about that exact scenario so many times in the making of the dock of like, how brutal did this get when the cameras weren't there. Tip-off is in two hours. I am playing quarters on the wall with my head of security. John here, John. Say hi.

Don't get me. I'm ready for my close. Because Michael was ruthless to everybody. He makes exponentially more than these guys. We was taking their $20 bills. So watched it, laughed, and then my phone exploded. I took a screenshot of it and went upstairs and woke Aaron up. And I was like, hey, I'm sorry to do this, but I got to talk to somebody.

Like, this was on SNL just now. And she was like, bleary-eyed, like, what? What are you talking about? And then, you know, she cared. She loved me. She kissed me in the cheek and went back to sleep. That was, I can say, without a doubt, the most surreal moment of my life. What did you think of the casting?

What did you think of the wardrobe they gave you? I don't think that was supposed to be me. Now, here's the sad part. I think they went, let's go just standard white documentarian nerd, and they nailed it. Like quarter zip. The hair, though. The wig. If he wasn't wearing the glasses, because I don't wear glasses.

I mean, I wear glasses like late at night. I wear contacts. But if he wasn't wearing glasses, I'd be like, oh, wow, they found a picture of me watching a game last weekend at some bar in Atlanta. Like, the quarter zip button down, hey, guilty. That probably is me in the winter. I feel like they found a pic. The hair, too, though. Can we just show the visual?

Again, yeah, here we go. So they did find a picture of me, Jason? His hair looks great. I wish I still had that hair. His hair looks tremendous. And he's in great shape. Props to Mikey Day for how Jason Hare wishes he look. My brother and several of my friends, when I call their phone, that's what comes up.

Oh, that's good. They have saved that as my picture. But that scene, it's a sample of the way in which the last dance, like the minor, minor characters. Yeah. Became globally famous. Like Heidi Gardner playing, and I forget his name, but the security guy. James. John Michael Wozniak.

Yeah. Who, by the way, deserves his own. We interviewed him, and it didn't make the cut. If I had known. Oh, wait, wait, wait. There's John Michael Wozniak. He was one of the 11 interviews that did not make the final cut. Oh, my God.

Wait, what did he, what was his view on all of this? Well, we didn't interview him about that. We interviewed him about, like, Michael at home and what the fans were like on the road. And we had other sound bites that were frankly better than John Michaels. But we interviewed him at Michael's still unsold home in Chicago, where he passed away. but he was the head security detail at the home until his death. So he was there.

We interviewed Will Purdue there. We interviewed Tony Kukoch there. So we decided to sit him down and ask him some questions that didn't make the cut. But it never occurred to me that there would be a meme, let alone a slew of memes from this thing.

That's what I was going to ask was like your predictions for what would go super globally viral. No concept of that. No concept. Maybe like the montage of like, I wanted to make sure there was like some fun in this and that kids, my, my nephew's ages could understand how fun it was to watch him and to put some, some era-specific music in it

because we didn't get to see Michael playing to hip-hop back then. They were playing, you know, Dionne Warwick and Jeffrey Osborne for NBA superstars, those kind of things. So that was fun to do. But it didn't, we had a thousand decisions to make per day. We were not thinking, like, how can we meme this episode? It got funny, like the former Chicago resident, that was never planned. Oh, the Obama, Chiron. Yeah, because that was a little bit of me being a brat because the powers of be insisted that certain people be in this doc.

Now, there's probably no one on earth I'd rather sit down an interview than Barack Obama. But I didn't think he belonged in this documentary just because he was a president. Wait, we're going to get that aggregated. Jason Hare did not want Barack Obama to be in the last stance. The messages I've received and the research people have, done to see how I've voted and how disrespectful it, like, because they took it seriously. They thought that I deliberately did that. That was so tongue-in-cheek. It was so funny. Former Chicago, it's like this guy loves basketball,

and that's what we're talking to him about. He's not just a president saying Michael was great at basketball. It's that he was there in Chicago, couldn't afford a ticket to the upper deck, blah, blah, blah. Same with Clinton, that he was in it. I didn't want him just to say, like, yeah, they were great during the 90s. Why are you organic to this story? And it was that he was the governor of Arkansas and used to drive to see Scotty Pippen play college basketball. So it was former Arkansas governor for him. So anyways, those things we never could have imagined. And if you told me beforehand, I probably would have thought that the show was a huge flop and that people were just joking about it online. I still think that when it came out was probably

the most generous forgiving moment culturally of my lifetime. And that people were so grateful for anything new. If this came out in a time of non-pandemic, regular-level cynicism of the American, especially sports viewing public, during a finals in which LeBron may or may not have been playing, that's when it was supposed to air. It was on off nights of the finals in June.

Oh, I forgot. That's right. So I think there would have been a lot more vitriol, there would have been a lot more criticism, and people would have been a lot more scrutinizing of the stuff. But when it came out, I think, people were just so happy to have something to watch and something to forget about this horror around them for two hours that they were willing to just say, you know what, entertain me, I'm going to drop the remote, and then we can all talk around this virtual water cooler for the next week until the next one comes out. It was also one of the rare times in the past 10 years that there was one thing everybody was watching.

Yeah. That wasn't a live sports game. We literally had a captive audience globally. That's what was so interesting to me is that I think we're so ethnocentric as Americans. It's like, okay, this is happening here. We're going to have to get into cricket. No, they're indoors too.

But this was also about a guy that they were aware of. Yeah. So it's also getting back into the time machine to get to a truly globally monocultural figure. Who, through his own business and media savvy, and because of the times that he played in. And the Olympics was scarce. Michael Jordan could go on and read the phone book for 10 hours during the pandemic,

and it still would have gotten incredible ratings because he'd never speak. That's the thing that, so in the aftermath of all the memes, what has been forgotten is that it was the Hall of Fame induction speech where he cries, which was an incredible, my favorite all-time basketball Hall of Fame speech. But short of that, there really wasn't Michael Jordan talking in a way that felt real until the last dance. And when we got it all in this 10-part format, I think people have since forgotten, like, oh, this was like a wild, endangered sort of like creature had emerged. And he went back into Highland. Like, I've seen a few things with him since, but he's still super, super

picky about what he does. Well, he's a, he's a rare person in that he commands a kind of gravitas. Like, there is a, there is like a weight to. to Michael Jordan in that, like, if he, I've been writing about sports for a while, I talked to a lot of athletes, I think if I were to encounter him in person, I would have a, like, oh, you're real moment. It's almost, you know, it's like the sightings of the Loch Ness Monster of, like, he's, we know. Like, he was. The Loch Ness Monster loved Tequila.

Yes. Like, he's so real, but he's also so behind his own. myth that he doesn't if you have the reputation he has the best thing to do is not say anything and not disturb it and then he managed to solidify that when he did talk about it in the last

and then he disappeared again and look at what he hasn't engaged in battles he's won because he's just chosen not to stoop to that level it's a lesson for all the rappers out there dude Isaiah Thomas is on Twitter all of the time just tweeting I feel bad about that too because I was an Isaiah Thomas fan

even as a Celtics fan I was an Isaiah Thomas fan There's things that I wish I had like my five minutes with some of the people who feel slighted by that. Let's do that list. Oh, boy. Isaiah wasn't a fan. I would imagine he hasn't expressed it to me, but like Isaiah Thomas, bigger than you think in person. And I'm not too psyched to be in the same room with them again. I don't know that I would get the chance to explain myself.

But he pulled me aside. This is why I feel especially bad. we did the interview down in Atlanta before taping it. They were doing MBA TV that night. So we did it at Turner and Ted Turner's old office which was like this cool. It's like a house on the campus of Turner. So there was

like historic room that we did it in. And as we were setting up and getting him, Mike, he pulled me aside and said, who was making the decisions on the storytelling? And I said, me. And he said, what kind of research have you done? Phil Jackson did the same thing. And I told him the books that I had read and I told him you know, my fandom going back as a kid.

I mean, he wasn't, I'm sure he wasn't happy to hear that I was a Celtics fan, especially during those days. But I said, like, essentially I was trying to impart to him that you're in responsible hands. And I believe that he was still. I can see, though, how especially the use of the iPad, these guys would be like, what the fuck? You also pioneered that in a sense. I'm going to hand you a tablet with your life in video on it.

react as we watch you watch yourself. I've tried that technique in past docs, and I've had people say no. Really? Get that, get the camera off. You're not going to watch me, watch this and get my reaction. And it was never meant to be like, I'm not twirling my mustache as they do this. Like, it really started out as a toy for Michael Jordan and to a lesser extent, Dennis Rodman, taking care of my seven-week-old baby and trying to keep his attention is reminiscent of my my experience with Dennis. But for Michael, it was he had been interviewed

8,000 times. At the outset of this thing, and I feel like I've hijacked this thing from you because this shouldn't be some last dance retrospective. This is Charlotte's film. What are you talking about? Yeah, I made the movie, Jason.

I don't know what you're talking about. There are ghost writers and there are ghost executive producers, ghost muses. Oh, wow. So. I'm going to come out here so, I'm going to be so cocky after this.

I'm going to be like, well, I'm the last dance are welcome. At the outset of this, they said, he said all he has to say for years. And you can just call. from those interviews, he doesn't need to be interviewed for this. And I was pretty adamant that he needed to be interviewed, that we couldn't just show old clips of him saying thing.

I think that retrospect was more interesting than archival video. But it was like, how can we keep this kid, this guy occupied and in the chair? And when I say kid, I thought back to when my mom, when we used to go to church as kids, my mom would have like a matchbox car for the first 10 minutes of the mass and then like a bag of Cheerios and like there was something to occupy us at all time so that by the time they say like the mass has ended go in peace her three year old's fine like you barely knew he was there for that long so your strategy for handling NBA Hall of Famers was the same that I have when I'm trying to take my daughter on an airplane kind of yeah give them the iPad say do you need a snack would you like something to drink had a snack he had a snack right there there. He had a cigar and a tumbler of tequila. Yeah. That's what I give to most three-year-olds also. So you just rub a little on the gums. Yeah, yeah, right. Rub a little encirro on the gums and they're right out. So that was meant to, I had a line

that I was looking at of his shoulders on the chair. And once his shoulders sunk below that line, it was time to give him seriously. Just because that was a signal that like he needed to pep up. And he loves games and loved that game of like, We should put the outtakes of what clips did not make it that I showed him, did not make it onto their... Right. I'm surprised that there haven't been more creative uses on the Internet of people showing him clips that he was not looking at. You know, follow the Berlin Wall. It's like, I can't believe Michael Jordan reacted to J.D. Vance's position.

Childless cat ladies. Dennis Robin reacts. He thinks it's hilarious. The list is of people that you wish you could have five minutes with to... Scottie Pippin, Isaiah Thomas, the Krause family. The Krause family, by the way, obviously Jerry wasn't around to interview. And the harder we demonstrated that the team was on him, the more sympathy I thought that would garner for Krause. Because I thought that people would appreciate, okay, he's the one who put the pieces in place.

This poor guy is kind of a fish out of water with these NBA alpha males. Look at how they're hazing him. And instead, people thought like, the filmmakers hate Jerry Kraus and have made him the villain. That was not the intent. So that's my misstep. If you have a problem with how he was portrayed, that one, both hands up, that's on me. The one thing that the NBA pushed back on in the entirety of this process was a clip where Scotty in the locker room, they were joking around with saying what they were going to do when they won the title.

and Scotty i'm paraphrasing here but basically said i'm going to stick a cattle prod up jerry krause's butt and give that guy a heart attack or something like that and everybody laughed it wasn't like oh my god keep the cattle prods away from scotty he said it in the heat of the moment that we're like you know what i'm going to kill that guy so i included that in our rough cuts because i wanted people to see what this guy was going through day in and day out and that's the one thing thing that they made me take out in three or four years of doing this. It wasn't like Michael calling people a bitch or anything. It wasn't that. It was that comment from Scotty to Jerry Krause. In deference to the Krauss family, all right, we've done enough to show that this guy is the

butt of all the jokes. As it were. And I, yeah, so I followed poor Dionne Kouros, who is a producer still for the NBA. I followed him to Grand Central and went to the platform. And went to the platform of his train before he was as he was getting on to plead my case of why i wanted to do this it wasn't out of cruelty it was out of respect and he didn't see it that way and they they made me take it out so yeah the krause family especially with what happened to his wife earlier this year and all this popped up again to remind listeners she was booed when they they had an anniversary night for the bulls back in january right NBA executive of the year represented by his wife phelma and Thelma Krauss, when they spotlit her and said his name,

a lot of the crowd at the United Center booed. They had watched the last dance. I felt terrible about that, honestly. Like, I don't feel responsible or guilty, but a part of me is like, you know, if we never did this, then this poor woman wouldn't have gone through what I'm sure was one of the worst moments of her life. I cannot believe that Charlotte did that.

Yeah, it was irresponsible of me to be standing behind her with onions that night. You know, I will say this. Steve Kerr had was ambivalent, I think, about the doc because he was literally front and center on the poster and wasn't a starter. You know, he's got a good case that Ron Harper deserved to be a bigger part of the doc because he was a bigger part of the team.

Luke Longley, who didn't participate and people thought that I deliberately kept him out and was too lazy to fly to Australia. By the way, if the NBA and Netflix NiasPN wanted to fly me to Australia, sure. I'm on that plane. Right. I absolutely would have done this.

I was told by multiple sources that he wasn't interested in doing it. And we had a ton of footage on him. And he wasn't the greatest interview from the interviews he did in 98. And I thought, all right, what if we do force him to do this? We get on a plane. We go all the way there. And he's a dud. It wasn't a budget thing.

It was a time thing. We were, I've never had that kind of a tsunami crashing over my head for that many years. At a certain point, it was like after a couple months, we're like, when is this going to calm down? And someone was like, it's never going to calm down. So we didn't have time to go. To that point. So earlier this year, I laughed when I saw this.

There's a headline. It was Bulls Legends going on No Bull Tour to respond to the last dance. In Australia. In Australia. It was Scotty Pippen, Luke Longley, and Horace Grant. Yeah. who were, yeah, basically going on. The opposite of a public apology tour is a public,

we're going to fucking talk about Jason hair specifically. Here's the thing, Jason, you have inadvertently, sure, there are things that might have happened because of certain things, you know, like the Thelma Krauss, but also you have given a lot of people a second wind to make money off of something here. Like, that doesn't happen if the last... That doesn't happen if I don't executive produce the last dance.

That's right. If you had told me that Horace Grant would be front and center at the Sydney Opera House, talking about, I don't think that he played the Opera House. But I do know that they went on a mini tour of Australia. People sent me this. You gave them that, Jason. I looked this up. Tasmania, Melbourne, and Sydney.

And I heard that it was toothless when they actually did it. Like they did this press conference when they were like, we're going to tear the cover off this thing and show you that there wasn't. The real last. Yes. The No Bull Tour, right? The No Bull Tour. Yeah.

So no Bull. But I heard that it was actually complimentary of Mike. I don't think they even mentioned the doc. Like Horace Grant, that's a good example. I think he had a beef with it because Michael said Horace Grant was the source that Sam Smith used primarily for the Jordan Rules, the book that he wrote in 91. Right. That kind of tore the lid off of Michael's like pristine, squeaky clean image. and Horace and Sam are adamant that it wasn't them.

All of those people that I just mentioned to you expressed those sentiments in the dock. It wasn't like we said, Michael said, he did it and we just left it at that. That's the funny thing about the iPad is like a lot of people push back at him laughing at Gary Peyton and they brought up, I mean, my Twitter mentions as we were trying to finish this thing were just like people, Michael Jordan haters just furious and throwing stats at me, as if we were going to recut. make like an episode 11 and 12 and and pull a stat boy to talk about you right yeah to reference your world so what was I supposed to do though is let give Gary Peyton an iPad of Michael looking at an iPad of him and then we get into this vortex of iPads and the next thing you

like like it's a house of mirrors of people just looking at iPads of each other looking at iPads it was a trick that we used that in the moment um seemed to work in the edit room and so many decisions when you're working on that kind of a schedule are like, okay, it's like going to the eye doctor, like this one or this one, that one, okay, go, this one or this one, that one, go. It was decisions made in the moment and you just got to kind of white-knuckle it and hope for the best. So I understand why there are some people who are upset with it. And if they are upset, like, again, don't be upset with Jordan. Don't be upset with the MBA. Be upset with me. and let's come on Pablo's show and talk about it.

Oh, I love this. There is a funny thing that's been happening, though, where The Last Dance, as this phrase, becoming an industry unto itself. So, like, the new Venom movie is called Venom, the Last Dance. But that's not deliberate. The funny part to me is when I see, like, Madeline's fifth grade soccer team, the last dance,

and they show, like, pictures of this girl's last... That's good. Like, the J.V. Field Hockey Team, Last Dance. Yeah. Which is more or less what Aaron Rogers did with Devante Adams when they went on Instagram and basically did the fifth grade girl soccer team. But that makes sense because it would have been their last season and blah, blah, blah. I've been told by many people, some who have the capacity to make a doc and some who don't, you need to do a doc about Messi's last dance. Sure.

I just scribble that on my hand and go back and research it. I'm watching Novak Djokovic and Rafah Nadal go back and forth during the Olympics this week. I hope we get to meet because there'll probably be one last dance for both of us. Is this their last dance or whose last dance is it? And Rafa's fighting it and Novak's leaning into it. And I'm like, this is because of you guys. But here's the thing. I can't take credit for that title.

My worst, my biggest blind spot in this business is titles. You're talking to someone who did a documentary about the Fab Five, the 85 Bears and Andre the Giant. And the titles were the Fab Five, the 85 Bears. 85 Bears and Andre the Giant. Because that's how I refer to these things anyway. Like, we know Ezra. OJ. Made in America. I don't say, hey, remember that part in OJ made in America?

I'll say the OJ doc. We weren't going to call this the Jordan dock. We weren't going to call it Jordan. We weren't going to call it Bulls. But that's why it's amazing is that it's not called that. People say the last dance. Yeah. They actually break the rule because of what you apparently did not even name it yourself.

Do you know they made the last dance in like 2003? It was a one-off 90-minute, 100-minute movie. No, I knew nothing about this. And this was like urban legend, but I've since verified this. It was on a DVD that's probably still floating around ESPN offices somewhere. The Doc World had not yet proliferated enough for there to be a market for 10 hours. And you can thank Making a Murderer and other series for that. But at the time, five years after Michael retired from the Bulls, they made a 90-minute version.

that called these 500 hours of footage into 90 minutes instead of into 10 hours. And it was voiced by John Cusack in the first person. Whoa. What? As a Bulls fan. I haven't thought about John Cusack in a while. My first comment is, a little too much Cusack. Yeah, he was, apparently is a massive Chicago sports fan and Bulls fan.

And it was, the rough cut that I saw was a scratch track. So it was someone who sounded nothing like John Cusack saying, Hi, I'm John Cusack. Here's the story of the 1997-98 Bulls, and it was just that season. So that lived on a shelf for a while. And they still hadn't had Michael's infamous permission to do this, which the reason any of this gets greenlit

is that he says, okay, you can show the footage. But yeah, it started as that. I've wondered, like, because the derivation of this was that, The Last Waltz, which is Scorsese's concert film about the band, that inspired Phil Jackson to call that season The Last Dance. The Last Dance then becomes the name of that one-off doc, which then grows into a ten-part doc. Do you think that Phil Jackson thought that The Last Waltz was called The Last Dance?

Yes, absolutely. Oh, 100%. And if so, if this was called The Last Waltz, would it have had the cultural impact that it did? No. I agree. Absolutely not. There's something, there's something approachable and romantic. And the last dance, I feel like the reason that that is something that has proliferated or that people gravitate towards is because they're like, well, what happened? I do think that Phil Jackson's foggy memory of those days, which I'm willing to bet that there's a reason why he doesn't remember everything about the last waltz when he saw it back then.

I think that he thought this was called the last dance. And he was going to, as an homage to Scorsese and the band in the film, name it the same thing. And now here we are. You are 100% right. Phil Jackson got the name of a movie wrong. My favorite Phil Jackson piece of trivia from this movie. Two, they both happen on the same day. One is that he literally slammed the door in my face when we showed up to this remote location in Montana.

It was one of the only 106 interviews that my producer and one of my best friends, Jake Rogal, who is right now in Paris documenting the Olympic basketball. It's one of the only ones that he wasn't allowed to book himself. We had to go through other parties. And he was like, I don't like this. I don't like this because he's for a good reason, a control freak. We showed up to, I think it was Flathead Lake in Montana, beautiful place. Very remote location.

and we show up at the house, knock on the door the morning of the interview. I have 11 pages of questions, each of which is an hour of questions. So I need Phil Jackson to sit there for 11 hours, which I knew wasn't going to happen. But I didn't think that he would slam the door. He opened the door and said, hello?

And I said, hey, coach, Jason Hare with the documentary crew. And he said, can I help you? And I said, yeah, we're here to shoot your interview today. And he said, I don't know anything about this. And literally slammed the door in my phone. No. So he called his daughter, who I think used to work for the NBA or was NBA adjacent. And she somehow verified that, yes, this is a legitimate project.

And they're there to interview you and that was it. So we interviewed him in his backyard for five and a half hours that day. Oh, my God. But this is the piece of trivia. The house behind Phil Jackson that you see, he built with his bare hands. That log cabin. That feels right. He built with his bare hands with his brother.

Back in the 60s and the, 70s. And he doesn't remember that either. At the end of every show, as you both realize, we go around the table and say what it is that we found out today. And what I found out today is pretty simple, which is that a Phil Jackson on ayahuasca and Charlotte Wilder are both responsible for the success of the last dance. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not responsible for that.

I found out a major piece of information, which is that I helped Jason get his now wife's number. I'm sure it would have happened without that article. I'm not sure. Yeah, I don't know about that. I don't know. Really? He was doing a lot of SEC trivia studying. You didn't need to be going anywhere?

This felt like... Who's this Sony Michelle guy? That is just like... I feel like when working in sports, there sometimes can be this feeling of is what I'm doing getting anywhere. I think sometimes I forget that anybody can hear what I say or read what I write, and it is not brain surgery. It is not, you know, it can feel not trivial

because I truly believe that it is important and that it's an amazing cultural gateway and a way to get people into all sorts of different conversations. But like going to a bar to watch people be sad, you're like, well, you know, there's some beautiful human takeaway. But the fact that anything I've done in my life has made someone's life better inadvertently is just like the most delightful thing. So thank you so much for telling me that. You're welcome. And I've been waiting for six years to tell you. And every year that passes,

that there's a bigger reason to tell you the story. But what I've learned or has been reiterated to me is that you never know who is watching. And you never know the connections that you're making, that you're completely unaware of. I try and tell our editors all the time that you never know, like take every shot really seriously because you never know which shot people are going to take away from this doc and be like, oh, I love that doc. So you never know.

Just try and be a good person, keep your head down, do good work, and you never know what connections are made that you never even were aware of. Wow. So again, to the Pippin family, we're available for the reconciliation tour that I want to put on. and yeah Jason, Charlotte, thank you both for taking this personally. Thanks for having us.

Weak the shrug. This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.