The Press Box - Ep. 251: Interview With ‘O.J.: Made in America’ Director Ezra Edelman

Episode Date: February 3, 2017

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey sits down with filmmaker Ezra Edelman to discuss the making of 'O.J.: Made in America,' his epic eight-hour Oscar-nominated documentary examining O.J. Simpson’s rise and fall through the lens of race, place, celebrity, and time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, my name is Chris Ryan. My name's Andy Greenwald. And we are the co-host of The Watch, a pop culture podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. We are on Mondays and Thursdays. We mostly talk about TV, movies, music, pop culture, Jeremy Renner, House Flipping, The Papacy, Reese Weatherspoon dancing at wedding videos. We used to talk about Kanye West.

He's in the, like, timeout corner right now. Never ever talk about Christine Bransky. You can listen to The Watch on Mondays and Thursdays on SoundCloud, iTunes. Anywhere you get podcasts, subscribe now. And thanks for listening. It's a good hang. Hello and welcome to a very special Channel 33 podcast. This is Sean Fennessey. I'm the editor-in-chief of The Ringer.

I'm very lucky to be joined today by Oscar-nominated filmmaker, Ezra Edelman. Ezra is the director of OJ Made in America, a very special film that debuted in 2016 over the summer. And today we're going to be talking about that movie, Ezra's career, and maybe the world at large. Ezra, thank you very much for joining me. Thank you, Sean. So Ezra, I'm going to start in October of 2015, which is when you and I first met. You and I met because I got a chance to see your film very early on. It was sort of a rough cut, somewhere between a rough cut and nearing completion.

I mean, it was a rough cut. It was the first, and I'm being, I'm being annoying. It was September. September, geez. September, 2015. I remember it because that was the date that, you know, we had kind of had etched on our board. in our three edit rooms of like, okay, we're finally going to have to show this to some people. And so we had a screening at ABC for ESPN executives, which they were smart enough and kind

enough to invite you to. And we showed the entire movie over the course of a day. And I think we took a couple breaks for meals. But I would say that was like the first screening thing where really like in terms of the anxiety and the nerves of we've been working so hard to try to put this thing together, okay, how are people going to respond watching it this way? And we were still on our way to trying to maybe making it shorter. And the wonderful thing about that screening, I don't mean to get ahead of you because we can talk about that day. It's sort of like we screen something that was a little over seven and a half hours long and

the wonderful thing about it is at the end. and I'm kind of sitting there and going like, I don't know what happened because you're in this room. It is a long day. It's not exactly a comedy. So you're not like, oh, yeah, there's a lot of last. Like, yeah, we got the room. You know, and then it's like what happened. And then hearing Connor Shell, who is the, at then the, I guess the ran any ESPN films in his, you know, executive at ESPN.

And he said, well, why don't we, this is great. Like, you should just keep going on this. It's fine if it's this long. Like, this works. And I was like, oh, great, thank you. Because I don't know how to make it shorter. Yeah, I remember not being, certainly not bored and utterly engaged. And we should say, obviously, the film is about OJ Simpson and Los Angeles and race and many other things.

And it's a really, really big canvas that you're painting on. And I was warned ahead of time before the screening that it was going to be quite a long cut. So there was an expectation. But even still, I remember coming out of the screening room and chatting with you very briefly. and just sort of saying, you did it. This is amazing. And you sort of looked shocked and not happy, but you were very sweet about it. But at that point, did you think because the film was originally commissioned at five hours,

did you think you were going to get a chance to make it at that length? Or did you think you were going to have to bear down then and start doing a lot of cutting? I think, well, at that point, when I walked into that day, we had already had two conversations where it went from, like, somewhere in that range of five hours to being like, no, it has to be 300, give me at least 300 minutes. So when I showed up that day for that screening, I was still trying to get it down at six hours.

And so that was the sort of the wonderful gift that was that screening because we came out of it and it was like, oh, no, you're good. The response was very positive. Yeah, and it was almost like, oh, and there's some things that we would love potentially to hear more about.

I never cut anything out of the film because of time. I cut some things out of the film because of content or because of fluidity within, you know, in some ways, might be time within the sort of structure of what I was building, but not time for the sake of we have to hit something. And so in a weird way, this was almost like the ultimate independent movie. It was like we got to, you know, work on our own over the course of almost a year of editing and create the thing that we set out to create. And it ended up being almost three hours

longer than we thought it would initially be. But we were given the leeway and we were giving the support. And so, like, looking back on, you're like, holy shit, like, does this happen? I don't know that it happens that often. So this is a very unique circumstance beyond the unique sort of presentation of the movie itself. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit more about the editing. I haven't heard you talk about that as much. But one thing, you know, you've talked about the origin of working on this that Connor approached you, said, I want you to make a film about OJ. It's a five-hour film. And you've said that the most appealing aspect of that was the length and not necessarily the subject.

What was appealing about the length to you specifically? And also, was there a moment when you were working on it when you knew you were going to move beyond five hours where you got nervous or concerned about doing the work that you wanted to do? I think that it wasn't the specificity of like I'd always set out. I've always wanted to make something that is, you know, epic and length or scale. Who knows, I don't know what motivates me sometimes until I hear it. You know, you don't know exactly where you're tapped out on something or

board with something based on what you've been doing. So I'd sort of existed in a space where I'd been doing sports documentaries for, you know, a decade or a little less than that. And like everything is, every film I've done is different and unique, even if, you know, they sort of exist within the same way I do the films in terms of interview-based films and thematically, almost all of them have to do with race in some form, some more prominently than others. And then, you know, at a certain point, you're exploring similar themes and you're doing within this sort of same framework and the same landscape.

And so you want to figure out a way to like, what's my avenue to, you know, expand my own sort of repertoire and to sort of challenge myself. And so you can't just decide like, okay, I'm just going to do this one day and do something completely off the map and think that somehow you're going to get it done

or the world's going to respond to it. And here was someone that was coming to me and said, here's this opportunity and it was like oh this is a challenge that I didn't even realize I knew I wanted but like I'm that's like that's how my brain responded to it I was like this sounds

different this sounds like something that however masochistic I am for wanting to do something like this it's like this struck me as correct and the combination yeah OJ himself that story in terms of the murder and the trial no I wasn't interested but it was the combination I wouldn't say

I mean it was initially the formal challenge of that, of the length. But it was also the combination of it because that story meant that you were giving me a canvas that I can explore things that I do want to talk about. I do want to spend time thinking about and asking questions about. And it doesn't have to be about that year and a half period in 94 and 95. I really do want to tell a story of what happened to him after the trial. I really do want to go back and help explain what that.

the hell happened and why we lost our minds during that year and a half period. And I realized that once you started digging into the story and seeing how people had written about it, how what people had done in documentary form about it, it was really unsatisfying. It's like, it was so focused in on these same questions. Did he do it? Did he not do it? And then it's like, oh, maybe it's a, it's about the media, like, sort of, or it's a, I'm like, I'm, okay, we need to sort of take a different viewpoint. We need to go 30,000 feet up and look down and go, where did this all come from? And there were things that I feel like viewpoints that were still entrenched, black, white, why people, you know, like how we looked at the case and how that I was like,

well, this is pretty clear. Like there are antecedents to this. Why isn't this clear to everybody? If I can make a film where I can discuss this history and educate an audience about what had come before and have them emotionally experience the landscape of, you know, policing in Los Angeles as it was as it was sort of absorbed by the black community here and talk about this bigger story of, you know, this city at large and who came here and why and the stark juxtapositions not only geographically in terms of who lived where and what their lives were like, but why people came here and for what? And then what, you know, so it's like that's what I was interested in. And O.J. was this incredible lens through which to talk about this. And he embodied

so many of these themes. And when you think of what the movie's about, and yes, it's about race primarily, and that's why I wanted to do it. But it is about celebrity. And it is about identity and masculinity. And then it's about on this sort of other way. It's about the criminal justice system and policing and domestic violence. And by the way, I can keep going, going, going. And so on the other end, of it, you go, well, I guess it makes sense that people, we all have an entry point into the story because we all watched it in some form. Sure. Had an opinion about it. Probably, you know, for people our age, it's like, you know, it's kind of, this is a commentary unto itself, that one of the unifying cultural events that

we shared was a guy in a Bronco on a freeway. It was a former football star accused of killing his wife. It wasn't a president getting assassinated. Right. And that sort of a lot about the thing itself. But in a way, I feel like that was actually easier to sell to the country as a, you know, a means to make this movie. It's very clear what this story was going to be, even though you couldn't see all the shades. If you just had a commercial with a moving white Bronco, there is inbound interest, which is, you know, as you know, sort of rare in documentaries, too.

It's very, it can be a tough sell to say, here's why you need to spend this amount of time watching this thing. Like, yes, come for the Bronco Chase, stay for the education about America. Well, you know, and my biggest memory from seeing it for the first time was the minute you start exploring the Watts riots is when it's clear that it's just a different kind of movie. It's not the movie that the commercial would have you believe. All I knew about it was that you had made a movie about OJ. That was the only piece of information I had. So it transforms.

And I think that's true for most people. I think that's true for people who saw it in a theater, for people who saw it on ABC on Saturday night. Their expectation was it was just going to be about the trial. I prize. You gave them something a little different. How did sports become? the pivot point for your work. You know, you've obviously made, is it five film, six films at this point? It is sort of the core theme that you have used to look at a lot of different ideas.

I think that, you know, my trajectory is such that I've sort of, of, not meandered, but like sort of found my way through the world based on sort of what existed in front of me in line with my interest. And so, you know, even as I sort of first started working out of college, I worked in television. I worked as a researcher in the Olympics. And I was like the first thing I did out of college and you're like, oh, you're a 22-year-old kid and you're traveling around the globe, interviewing all the Olympic athletes to prepare the background research for the Olympics for the broadcasts, you know, in two years. And it's this incredible opportunity and job. And it's very immersive and you do a lot of work, but you're also getting to like see the world. And you have a lot of responsibility.

And so that in itself was this incredible opportunity. And as someone who had certain sort of, you know, I've always a sports nerd. I was always a fan. So I knew this and I wanted, I was a writer in college. I wrote for the paper. So that fit in line with sort of my interests. And then it's like you get spit out in a place where what am I going to do now? And the opportunities, I sort of have just sort of found my way through what was available to me in some ways.

And someone from there said, hey, do you want to be a place? producer on this show, a TV show to produce features on Olympic athletes. I was like, sure, I was 23 or 4 years old. I'd never been on a shoot before. I didn't know how to do that, but someone's like, here, you can do this thing without any training. I said, sure, I'll do that. And then you have like one terrible experience where you're like, I don't know what to do.

Like you got on a shoot, you're like, where am I supposed to stand and you're in the first piece I edited at that point, this was must have been 1998. It was, we were still working on linear edit systems, which meant that if you made a mistake, you to go back at the beginning when you're cutting the thing. It was like so so pressurized when you already didn't know what you're doing. And it was like, I remember having this awful experience where I left this edit room at 4 in the morning, having been like, that was a complete failure. And like getting a phone call from my boss at 9 a.m. when I was in bed.

And I'm like kind of like, I'm kind of like, what happened? And I'm like, I don't know how to do this. And then it's like, you know, trial by fire. And then the next time I did it, it's like, I can't fuck up again. So I learned quickly and then I did that for a while not even that long 10 months a year and a lot of people I'd worked with On the Olympics had gone over to HBO and we're working on real sports I said want don't you come over and maybe interview for a job and I got hired to work there to work on real sports and I don't know within six months or so I was getting to produce pieces

Which was wonderful same kind of steep learning curve and like oh I don't two cameras correspondent 12 to 15 minute stories. First piece was miserable. Didn't know what to write a script, didn't know how to do. Again, just had a similar sort of experience to like, I remember having a meeting with the boss at the time, with my boss, but also the boss of the department, like showing them this script that I didn't work on the guy.

He was basically like, yeah, no, like go rewrite this. And it was like, again, that's an all-nighter. Like you sort of, and like, but I got reps. You start working and you improve really quickly. and that's how it went for me. And within a few years of doing that, I loved working on real sports. It was like, oh, I'm interested in a different challenge. And I worked in a building where they did documentaries.

And I said, we did sports documentaries, mostly historical base. And this was actually, frankly, more in line with who I was in the things I liked to do. I was a history major in college. Probably would have been an American Studies major if I had gone back and done it again. And we were doing these sort of at HBO, these historical-based sports documentaries. that I liked separately. And, you know, there was one that was being done about the Brooklyn daughters. And I lived in Brooklyn.

I'm a baseball guy. And I was like, I want to do that. Can I? And it turned in this thing where we did a two-hour film. And I was one of the two directors in the movie. And it was like that process, it was like, oh, I'd sort of found a home in terms of how I work. Like, I was like, I got to sink into something over the course of not a month or maybe six weeks or two months, but nine or ten months.

And I could read and think and sort of shape this in a way that was much more creatively satisfied. And at that moment, I thought, okay, this is what I want to do. And it was what I had access to. And so I thought that was a sort of a good path to go down. So I would recommend if you haven't seen any of Ezra's other documentaries do so, immediately, courtship of rivals, the magic and bird film, Ghost of Flatbush, the Dodgers movie. I like the curious case of Curt Flood quite a bit.

You've obviously found very smart subjects to use prismatically as a director. I'm curious what you do the minute you get an assignment. What is your first move? Say you get, you decide to do OJ. Read. So what do you go on Amazon and buy seven books? Yeah, I mean, really, I mean, OJ was for four months, I just read every day. however luxurious that existence sort of seems to a lot of people, but that's what I knew I needed to do.

So it's like, okay, there are all these books about the trial, and that exists in the middle. So I went and read Tubin's book, and I went and read Larry Schiller's book called American Tragedy. He was embedded with the defense team. But then I read Lou Cannon's book called Official Negligence, which he's a former Washington Post writer, and he'd written this huge history of the LAPD and chronicling a lot of these events that sort of stem from this terribly, you know, fraught history. between the black community here and the police department. And then I'm finding everything that's been written about OJ. So I'm reading every feature story from every magazine from the 60s and 70s and 80s.

And then I'm reading books about the media. And then I'm just trying to sort of, you know, I have my intuitive sort of sense of what this is about. But then I'm trying to sort of go, okay, what's been on the record? How do I sort of start to form my thoughts about this? And in some ways, there's nothing, you can't rush that. Like, when you think about it, I'm like, okay, there's a stack of books, however high, I kind of have to go through them before I can start it. Like there's certainly, I imagine there might be people who get an opportunity to do something like this

and say, oh my God, I'm doing this movie and I know at least it's going to be, you know, involve these characters. So I better, maybe the first thing I have to do is call Marsha Clark. And I'm like, no, I'm not. calling Marsha Clark until I have thought a lot about what I'm doing because that's the quickest way to get a know.

And so there's a lot of that. It's like the filling your brain intellectually with the topic. It's coming to your, with finding your own sort of way into the story, your point of view. And then there's, and that's separate from the strategy of how to

actually attack this. So let's, in between those two things, you're reading these books, you're fully immersed, yourself in this universe. Are you at dinner with friends talking about OJ Simpson? Yeah, it's funny. I even have this, I have a friend of mine who lives out here who's a filmmaker and he was, had a film at Tribeca and he was in New York for like two days. I remember showing up at a hotel where he was staying and I just was carrying Lou Cannon's book around with me. He was like light reading and I'm like, yep. Yeah, and there's a, there's a level. I think if you

talked a lot of my friends, it's like, I don't know, maybe I can't put things away. I sort of, and this is, I think, more than anything else I've ever done when I, you know, sort of said I would do this and accepted that sort of challenge. It sort of felt like, okay, I get it. Like, this is going to be a very immersive exercise. And my friends, I think, have been extremely generous and patient over the last couple years because there have been few conversations that didn't involve this in some form. Because it's just like, it's all I got, man. this is what I'm doing. Sorry. And, you know, I guess it's nice to have something to talk about,

but I think, you know, people around me, you know, I think talked about O.J. And sort of, you know, how he related to a lot of things a lot more than they ever imagined they would have in their life. It's good to have good friends. It is very useful. What did you think your job was in making the movie? Did you think that there was something duty bound?

Yeah, but I always feel that way. I mean, first of all, I'm a filmmaker. I want to tell a good story. and I actually sort of philosophically believe in making a documentary that there is a, if not a duty, there is sort of for me a mission to entertain while educating because I actually do want to educate. But I also know that you can try to do that and bore people and it can't be. So it's like how do I make something engrossing while sort of giving you your medicine? And with this, when you know you're taking on a story that has already been picked over and picked over and picked over, had already been watched and thought about and absorbed and obsessed over, you're like, well, getting back to why I didn't want to do in the first place, it's like, well, what more is there to say? And so I think the burden is greater.

What's the point in doing this if you can't sort of reach a certain threshold of newness, of difference, of sort of. something. In some form it was for me to try to explain this context and this history. That's something that I thought if either there were people who unfortunately didn't know about it at all, and there are others who needed to be reminded. And it was to then elucidate O.J. as a character in a way that, look, we forgot who he was in 94. We ceased to think of him as why he, you know, it's like, by the way, there's a reason why there was this such this. dissonance when we did see him on the freeway in the Bronco, you're like, not that guy. Right.

That guy has brought us joy. That guy is a celebrity that we love. That guy is a star football player. He doesn't murder people. And if you didn't understand the emotional connection we all had to him, then you weren't going to understand the story. But that's what you would get when you would watch these things or read these things. You're like, you know that he used to be this really pioneering cultural figure.

He embodied so much more that was in line with our. American story then has been given credit to him and or to the story in general. And so in my mind, there was a way of reframing the story. I thought immediately that was important to understanding it, but I thought that's what I had to do to make it worthwhile. I thought there was a commentary about this country that I had the opportunity to try to offer. But it also felt like that was the burden if you're going to spend this much time and money

and energy trying to do it. It's like, I think we have to do something. that feels unique. You know, you mentioned possibly reaching out to Marsha Clark too soon. The roster of people that you spoke to for the film is very long. This is obviously a very complex story. How do you go about making the list? How do you go about getting in touch with people and compelling them to participate in something like this?

Well, so the first thing that I sort of needs to be said is that, you know, something that's massive. you can't do it alone. And so practically, it's like I went, the first thing I did after in the middle of me reading all those books was I called my friend Caroline Waterlo is this incredibly talented producer who has a background as an archival producer. And it was like, this gets back to the strategy and the mechanics. How am I going to get this done? Call Caroline. Okay. Convince her to do it.

She says, OJ? I'm like, OJ. And I make my, it's like, I have to pitch her. And you're like, this is, okay, this is in line with how this is going to go. She says, yes. And she, and then we started to build this team. So, you know, we hired these two incredible producers that she found. Tamara Rosenberg and Nina Krista.

Nina is an archival wizard. And tomorrow is this woman. He's a great filmmaker. And as a background has made films for PBS. And she's a lovely French woman. And she wouldn't be the person you would think would be working on a film about OJ. And her job, frankly, mostly was outreach to people. And so I amassed this sort of big document that's the encapsulation of the story I'm hoping to tell,

60 pages long or something. And that's part of what I'm doing when I'm reading. I'm sort of writing this out. I'm building this up for myself. And it's like, I'm writing, I could give it to you and be like, this is what this thing. It reads like a story. And you'd be like, okay. And I'm sourcing things from what I've read and what I've seen.

Is that common for all your documentaries? Yeah, this was, and this was more extensive. But I sort of, that has been the way I've gone. And that's sort of almost part of the fun for me. I'm like creating this thing on my own before I've actually started doing the thing. And so within that process, you're already sort of amassing names. And when we, you know, we found an office in Dumbo and Brooklyn, we, we, we, we, we, bought these two canvas boards.

They probably were each nine feet long. So we put them side by side on one of these long walls. And we just put cards of all these people underneath the either topic, time frame. And we started this whole system all the way down to the robbery in Vegas. And it was all the way, you know, it started with, you know, his childhood. And we had this thing. Like the wire. You made the case file in real time.

And then we had a system of who had we talked to him. And they said, no, yes, maybe. And at a color-coded system with dots. And like, this is how we did it. You were Lester Freeman, yeah. That's right. And well, I think tomorrow was Lester Freeman. And we had Brian Becker, our PA, like, tomorrow would be like, okay, here's this name.

We've got to find this person. And he'd go and, like, try to track him down, like using whatever sources that you would do as an investigative journalist or a detective. And, like, that's how we'd find people. Generally speaking, how did people receive you when you guys reached out? Oh, warily at best. It was like, you know, we've, like, leave me alone. Yeah. I mean, this is the thing.

We were fighting, you know, in some ways, we're up against the sins of the media for 20 years, which is every year on these anniversaries. And you're talking about a certain sort of primary group of people. They get harassed. They get called and say, we're doing this story. We're doing this. We're doing this. We're doing it. Nope.

Nope. I'm in the business. I know it. Yeah. Yeah. And so how do you cross that sort of, I keep using the word threshold, this threshold with them, it's like, just listen, hear me out. We're doing, so the pitch was we're doing a five-hour movie. It's not just about the murder and the trial.

This is a story about the city of Los Angeles. It's really about the history of everything. And trying to basically tell them, this is different. This is much more. You're going to get to sort of say your piece. This is not sensationalist in any way. Most importantly, like this is history. This is a living document that's going to live beyond this thing

And I know a lot of things have been done But like in by the way you even know when you're doing that You can even in your soul you're like How are you even convince these people? It's like they don't know me from a hole in the wall You know and Tamara by the way who is much more Charming than I am And she did yeoman's work sort of finding people

And getting him on the phone And prep you know sort of talking about what we're trying to do For me I felt good if we could if I could talk him in person, if I could get them in say, here's what, because that's where the thought, that's where the preparation and the research helps, because, you know, I had been thinking about this for four, five, six, seven months. And it wasn't like, I'm doing this thing. Will you be in it? It was, I could start talking about what I'm trying to do and where it comes from and all the different

sort of strands. I'm trying to, you know, sort of play out. And I think people were like, okay, you guys seem to have thought about this a little bit more than other people. And, but I would say we, so we interviewed 72 people, you know, I would say 40 of them. It was a real challenge to get them in a process to find them, convince them, say yes, and I'd say 10 of them that were like really hard. And so, and there are people that we, again, we knew we'd never get and some people we didn't get and all these. And it was, you know, I think sitting here now and I, you know, but I felt this for the past, you know, six months or so, there's just, so many unknowns.

Did anybody who was on the impossible's list end up participating? I mean the impossible is this is like his family, Marguerite, people of that

milk. Has anyone found Marguerite? I mean, I know where she is, not literally not her address, but I know where she is. I don't have any reason to blow up her spot.

Yeah, no, understandable. She is sort of one of the major missing pieces of the puzzle for decades now. I mean, more than O.J. himself,

she's the person. I would have chosen almost interview her over OJ. I was going to ask you that, actually. Because she, look, she was with him from the time he was a teenager. She was with him as he rose through these worlds and became this person. And I'm sure he was always kind of that person. Even from a young age, I get the sense that a guy who was that talented, was that good looking,

was that charming even then? And when you even, if you watch the film and look at the story of how they came to be dating in the first place, I mean, you know, that. was an insight into his character as far as, you know, as far as that went. And so I do think that there would be, you know, how much she'd be willing to discuss, who knows, and probably not at all, which is why she can't be found. But, like, yeah, I felt like that that was the one character that really would be a key to understanding more.

And I don't know that anyone's ever going to publicly get to hear from her. Who surprised you the most? I think a lot of people surprised me the most because I think however much work, went into convincing people. Once they sat, what was shocking to me is that they were pretty forthcoming and pretty open. And so it wasn't as if one person shocked me more than anybody else. It was, I think, the totality of people's desire

to actually unburden themselves in a way that I didn't expect. I mean, there are interviews I left where it's like, oh, I went to interview Frank Olson, the CEO of Hertz, who had this very mentor-like relationship with OJ. And look, he didn't want to do the interview. The only reason he did the interview, and this is not uncommon, his wife said to him, convinced him, said, I think this would be good for you, cathartic even. And so I didn't talk to him at all.

And you sit down and it's like a true documentary interview. I actually don't know what he's. I know the questions I want to ask. I know what his relationship to OJ was and, you know, the framing of OJ and these hurts. But like, it was so real. He's fascinating in the movie. I mean, he's devastated and insightful and conflicted. And that is a unique.

There are a lot of figures like that in the movie. And I wonder if at any point when you were talking to people if you felt like you even had too much. Even though you're missing a couple of voices, but there's such a wealth of character. But that's why it got to be eight hours long. Yeah. I mean, honestly, it's like I didn't know how to make a five-hour film. So we just went and said, we just went full bore and just said, okay. these are the, this is the totality of what I'm interested in thematically.

Here's the chronology I'm trying to sort of fill in. Let's go do it. Again, you don't know who's going to talk to you. You don't know what footage you're going to find. The fact that we got as many people in a chair to talk to us, that we got as many people to talk as open as they did, that we found all these sources to call from. That makes this film longer than it was set out to be.

I mean, I still think of this day. And we had a lot, so basically we do really long interviews. And so for me, I can basically do two interviews a day. So we'd plan these shoots at a lot out in L.A. And we'd sort of get one person in the morning and one person in the afternoon. And there's like one day, I think it was in the, we did Ron Ship in the morning. And we did Mike Albany's, the SWAT commander. Again, I guess they're both for law enforcement.

But it's like with Ron Ship, you sit down with him and you know that we go to his house. And I'm like, I'm interviewing Ron Ship because he was friends with O.J. And he testified against him in the trial. and he's a former cop. And so in some ways, I'm just talking to him because he embodies, for me, as I'm telling this story, the chumminess between OJ and the police department. And so the notion that here's a guy who was accused repeatedly of domestic abuse and the cop showed up at his house a bunch of times, nothing happened.

You know, the cops seem to be enamored by a celebrity. And so when we get to the trial, again, all the ironies upon ironies of the story. And now here's the guy who suffered abuse that, you know, he was being framed by the police. So, like, it's like, I'm trying to explore. or that dynamic with this guy. And then you start talking to him, and this is where the character of Los Angeles was so pertinent to sort of what we ended up doing.

Because everyone, you know, he's a guy who grew up in California, and you start to listen to him, and he's like, oh, well, you're a handful of years younger than OJ. You were a football player in your kid. Oh, you snuck into the USC, UCLA game. that game that OJ had the famous run in which it became famous. Oh, and the next year you're on an all-star team

as a football player and you go to a banquet and OJ is the keynote speaker and he name checks you because he knew your brother and then you're like, and your life has changed because of that moment and you start to see that this is not just this is not just a cop who befriended OJ, this is a guy who sort of in runs the sweetest person in the world but there's a level of like OJ, I mean OJ was his idol

And so this is a sort of narrative about celebrity worship and what one does to sort of get close to their heroes. And like there's a much deeper narrative through which you can tell the story. Like he ends up being this sort of, you know, vertebra in the whole tale that I didn't expect, if not spine. And sort of broken, a little very tragic figure in the movie too. So were there any conversations that you had that were just exceedingly difficult that you, didn't enjoy. I actually experience a lot of joy

when I'm having, doing these interviews. I really, I like that. This is why I ask, because I sense that you are. This is my favorite part of the process. I enjoy sitting across from someone having,

it's like, it's like the dessert. I've thought and thought and thought and prepared. Now I actually get to talk to you and you're going to be in line with what I thought or not, but it's up to me to follow you. And so most of the time, they're enjoyable.

And then there's Mark Furman. Like far and away, the most challenging, difficult dynamic. I mean, you know not only how he was framed, you actually can see on the records and things that he said and did that you're, you know, it's just like based on who I am. Like, that's, I'm not down with that. But what's my job? Is my job to sit across from you and go, like, are you really a racist? How racist are you?

Let me delve into your past and your psychological makeup and sort of explore why it. I'm like, I don't know that I have that opportunity. Like, I know you don't want to be here. That you're here is a sort of culmination of a couple of circumstances, but by the way, you manned up and you're sitting in this chair and you're talking to me. And I respect that. And so I have to sort of walk a line because I also want to hear your experience is true to who you were at that time and what you went through. And he embodies really the complications of this story Because it's like a both-end universe

You could be this thing, but you also were framed Extremely and unfairly at the same time How do you reconcile those two things within this person you're sitting across? What is my job? And that was hard. He sat for four hours and he listened to everything I asked him and I could sense very early on I asked him a couple things that were like Trying to get in there. He's like And it was like, okay, I kind of can do this once and it has to be reframe within the narrative that I'm talking to you about during the trial.

That's the only way I'm probably going to get a satisfying answer because, again, he's not on trial. He didn't have to be there. And that was the hardest thing. And I have to sort of check my own politics and biases at the door. Have you ever felt yourself getting oppositional with an interview subject while making a movie? I don't think it's my... I mean, I think there was a handful of times in this, film where I went into, and Mark Furman would be one of them, where I went into this knowing,

I'm making a film that's an interview-based film. There is no narration. There's going to be times where I feel like, because you're guarding it, someone can say what they're going to say. How am I going to check them? And I knew I had to be prepared with one or two articulately worded questions, whether that's Mark Furman, Barry Sheck, Danny Bakewell, who's a civil rights activist, but again, comes to do his role in like a guy who was very dismissive of OJ, how little he did for the black community, you know, after having reached out to him to do stuff during the 80s and sort of embodied this divide of like OJ lived in one world, we all lived in this other world.

And then you see during the trial, you know, he's front and center, you know, with the microphone talking about OJ has been framed by the police, you know, sort of after all this stuff about Furman to come out. And you're like, wait a second. Now you're outside, you're like, what happened? And so again, this gets to the like, what is so fascinating about the story and the politics of it. For the longest time I've been meeting to ask you about this. It happens with Bakewell.

It happens with Carl Douglas. It happens with some of the jurors. There are moments, and I know this just from being a journalist, where someone answers a question and they just feed you. It's free money. They're just like, I can't believe you said that. This is unbelievable. Like, I want to high five myself. How do you?

And there are very few moments in the film where you can hear your voice. how do you contain yourself when someone is answering a question is it easy to focus or are you immediately trying to slot what they've said

into the thing you're building how do you balance that? All of the above I think I am I don't know how you do interviews but like it's not that I'm on like I am it's like so you're moving so fast

so I don't really have time to go oh my god oh hmm that was good You know, like, I'm on to the next thing. Are there moments, I'm sure that I can smile and go like, oh, that was, I don't even know. Because I can tell you that it's funny that the people that you named, say the jurors.

Like one of my favorite moments in the movie, getting back to the thing we were just saying, is me talking to Yolanda Crawford, who was the younger juror. And this is, again, a question I knew I'd ask. Like, what the fuck? You guys deliberated for three and a half hours, about a nine-month case. You know, and I say 267 days. That's how long you guys were in the trial. Like 1,100 pieces of trial evidence, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, how the hell did you deliberate for three and a half hours?

And without missing a beach, she just looks me in the eye and goes, 266 nights. 266 nights. We went back to that room alone. And you just want to be like, like when someone hits a great shot, if it's veteran at all, and you just go, what are you going to do? That's right. And was I aware of that in that moment? I don't know.

As soon as you watch the tape, you're like, oh my God, that's like... And so I think that's what happens with me, where... And I love it when someone does return fire. Because that's why you're there. Of course. By the way, this entire story

as it relates to OJ is, how do you explain the unexplainable? Right. How do you explain if you believe him to be guilty? How do you explain a guy like that? But not even just the murder. Fame and policing and...

and every aspect of the film is inexplicable in a way, right? So do you feel a responsibility to say, like, I have solutions here? Well, for some of it, I think part of actually the mission in the film on those other ends were in terms of like why people, so again, the idea of reaction to the acquittal, investment in the trial, why OJ became a symbol. All of these things have historical and decedents. There's a context to it, why people felt this way. this was about our own lives and what we had lived through and why we now projected ourselves onto him, onto this case. There is a way of explaining that that makes sense.

It is hard to explain why a guy who seemed to have it all apparently brutally murdered to people. That's more because you're like on the same level, you're like, but I can't explain that to myself. I can't imagine being pushed to a place in any form with who that guy was. That's a greater challenge to explain. So I thought that was also another thing I had to try to. And that's the character study.

That's the much more challenging part of that film. And so the CTE aspect was it, well, is there something to this? Is there something to the guy who did play football for all these years that was a running back that took more, you know, sort of was tackled as many times as he was? He led the nation in rushing, I think, two straight years. He led the NFL in rushing twice. He has this abnormally large head. And during the 70s when they had air padding in their helmet, He famously didn't play with padding his helmet.

You know, it's something that one of his teammates told me. Like, that must be sort of, you know, I interviewed Chris Nowinski, who was this sort of concussion guru who works at MIT, who studies NFL player's brains with the scientists there. And again, the hard thing about this conversation is that one doesn't know if you have CTE until you have passed away and someone's examining your brain to see if there's a little towel in these places. dispute. So, and even then, what's the direct correlation? We don't know that yet. We don't know anything. And so we had a couple people saying,

if I had to guess, would I, would I say yes, OJCTE? Probably. But for me, does that explain him? Does that explain what he became in the pattern of abuse and ultimately, you know, that murder? No. And so I kind of thought that was irresponsible to sort of posit as a reason, because I'm like, that doesn't, like, wait, I just spend hours on trying to sort of give you a sense of who this guy was. And then saying he got hit in the head a couple times playing football. That's why he went, no. So, you know, you were talking about kind of keeping the integrity of the film and not having too many scenes that don't fit with sort of the construction that you wanted to have. But because of the vagaries of the fact that this aired on television, that it was an ESPN property, did you have to think about things like commercial breaks and like chapter ending?

and what is that like? Actually, no. I am sort of weirdly defiant of the reality of certain things. And if you talk to one of my editors, it was really funny. You'd get mad at me. Because he's like, you know, ultimately this is going to have to at some point air on TV. And I was like, I don't care. They can figure that out.

Like, I had done a film from ESPN, I didn't watch it on television. I have no idea how it felt with commercials. So I'm building, I build films the same way I built them when I did films for HBO. I actually build films with, with chapter endings because oftentimes I will I mean magic and bird there's these concurrent narratives

for the first half of the film telling his story telling Larry's story telling magic story and so I build you know there's a portion in the film and then you sort of go to black

and you come up and that's just the way I like to tell stories that's the way I sort of like to pace things out to have people understand we're in one world now we're going to rightly or wrongly this is no different, especially when you're having it more extreme sort of intersection of ideas and narratives. So I built it to be just absorbed like you'd be watching it in a theater or watching it, you know, streaming, but not with commercials in mine for sure.

This was the most we had talked about OJ in a long time. Are you sick of talking about OJ at this point? I mean, yes and no. I mean, there's ways of saying, do you get tired of talking about your work and something that, we all, and I say we, you know, Nina Tamara and Caroline and I, Brett and my and Ben are editors, like, we all worked our ass off to sort of create this thing. And we, we tried really hard. And if people are responding to the fruits, you know, this is the fruits of our labor. I mean, I'm honored to talk about it as long as people want to ask me about it. And in some ways,

that's different than am I tired of talking about OJ? Like, maybe. But not about. the world because this movie is not about OJ. And there are too many important issues that this film touches on that need to be talked about. And if someone wants to give me a form and a platform to talk about policing or talking about the sort of the scourge of celebrity in America, like, sure. I think these are things that we all need to listen to. And, you know, it's funny how in some ways people have told me, like, even the lens through which people have watched this film has changed since it came out.

for months, and it should, by the way, it should still be this way, but for months, people were asking me, oh my God, like this notion, you made this film and you're chronicling this history of police brutality in the city over the course of decades. It's so timely with what's happening. And I'm like, well, it should always be timely. And this is the story. I didn't choose to tell this story in this way because of anything that was happening. It almost, that stuff was happening weirdly concurrently.

I don't exactly know the date when Trayvon Martin was killed. and then when Michael Brown was, you know, sort of, but it's like this was happening and certainly informs like I pay attention in the world, but the story I was telling was the story I was telling in terms of how it had bearing on that trial in 1994 and 95. But that's what sort of was like, no,

like we should have always been talking about this because part of the lessons in the film is the only reason why we started talking about in 1991 is because someone, George Holiday, videotaped Rodney King getting beaten. And then it became this different conversation, see what's happening, it has been happening, no different in 2015 and 16.

Now it's look at how we created OJ. Look at Donald Trump. As I walked in here today, my producer and I said, how will we engage with Donald Trump in this conversation because it is all around us? But there are so many thematic. And he made a very interesting comparison about Johnny Cochran and the sort of the presentational aspects of Johnny Cochran

that you really learn about in a specific way in your film comparing him to Donald Trump, but there's notions of celebrity, there's notions of race, there's notions of the police that are obviously all filtering like a stream into this conversation. Does this come up now? As you continue to talk about it, as everyone say, well, how does Donald Trump fit into what you were pursuing? Well, a lot of people say it was hard not to watch your film and think about the rise of Trump. Look at how OJ came to be prominent. Look at, especially to me, when I think about it.

So it's the similar personality traits, the narcissistic. them, the sociopath. All these things are like, oh, you know, then there is look at what we endure. Look at why they got to be who they were, you know, who they are, who they were. Because we sort of indulge them. We sort of encouraged this behavior. We cheered them on. We kissed their ass.

We wanted their autograph. We watched their show when they're firing people. You know, wow. wait, you were on trial for nine months for murder. You were acquitted. Oh, but actually civil trial said you were culpable for those murders. But when you're walking to the airport, I still want your autograph. When you're, oh, I still want to give you a hug.

I'm still willing to want to be in your presence. That's a life moment for me. Why? Because you're famous? That's why? Like, it's pretty sickening. What we have sort of where our culture has gotten in terms of our values. And in that way, there is a direct link.

And you want to be like, oh, my God, how terrible that we help create a guy who likely killed two people. Well, now we've created a guy who's going to kill a lot more. And that's why these are dark, uncomfortable days. And whether we want to sort of, you know, look inside, you know, look inwards and say how much we were responsible. And I'm not saying we, I mean, we collectively, I actually don't believe there's millions and millions of individuals who don't, never condone, nor did I, you know, Trump's behavior. I think it's frankly a lot different with OJ in the sense that that's a different sort of way that he got inside of us. I mean, in a much more organic way when we're watching him play football, he brings us joy. Like, and that's harmless.

That's like recreational. That's a diversion for a lot from our lives. And so the idea that's someone who touched that part of us inside, that's why. we would refuse to believe that he was guilty. Right. And like a corruption of something as opposed to a person that has been with us for a long time. And we have known about a very specific part of their ethic, their personality. That's correct.

So right, we allowed Trump to like sort of like somehow it was like, yeah, no, yeah, no, yeah, no, oh. We still did it, but like we never were down with him. Right. And OJ is more complicated in that way. I think that's also what makes the story enduring but also fraught because this was us. This was like us looking in him and deciding if he was capable of this thing was sort of getting inside ourselves and going, I don't want that guy to be capable of doing that. Because what does that say about me?

Like I love that guy. I watched him in the naked gun and he made me laugh. And like, it's OJ's, you know. And so that you sort of start questioning yourself. And that's where, I mean, that's why this story, I do think, you know, the Shakespearean quality of it is apparent. But it's, he truly is a unique lens through which to look at our culture over the past 50 years. And I like to think of, you know, the moment that he came to be famous back in 1967, just to take when that 67-yard run against UCLA.

Ultimately, you know, they won the national championship that year. And you think about when he came to be in that way. 67, the most fraught and 68, most fraught political time in 20th century. even amongst his, you know, his brethren, black athletes at the time, there was this political movement that culminated in, you know, Tommy Smith and John Carlos raising their fists in black gloves at the Olympic Games in Mexico City in 68. And OJ chose the most superficial path.

The most substantial times, he went the opposite. And I feel like there's a trajectory through which we can almost trace our cultural values through him and where we've gotten. And it's like he won. whether it's the trajectory, you know, we've corrected a little bit with black athletes, thankfully, everything that's happening with Kaepernick this day. But even like, I mean, to LeBron's credit, going back for the last few years, finally we sort of, we flipped.

But O.J. in many ways, like, he created Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, these sort of very benign, apolitical, you know, endorsement, emphasizing black athletes. And, like, again, it's like, wait, what happened to the, using your platform to speak out about the, you know, using the power you have. And so in that way, I just sort of, that's what O.J. wrought in some ways. I mean, it's giving him maybe more credit than he deserves. It's hard to know if he was cynical or just disinterested.

You know, you can only get so much from, especially in that time in the 60s where he's surrounded by a radical American moment in California especially. And it's hard to know if he knew what was in front of him, if he just, stayed modest and milk toast about certain ideas, you know? You can't really get to the bottom. It's certainly when he gets more famous. You can see that he is making choices. But it does explain a lot about, you know, where we are and who we worship.

And by the way, and I know it's like we can't talk about this forever, but obviously maybe I can. But like that's also that moment. It was one of the really inspiring things for me about doing the film, which is here's a 20-21-year-old kid. I can think about what I was like when I was that age. You know, going back to what you asked me, how did you get to where you're like, I'm like, I don't know, this thing was in front of me. I got to, there's a job I got. Then I'm going to go that way. I don't know what happens tomorrow. And then what's my path? This guy is 20, 21 years old. He's at this all white conservative school. He's a football star. And did he look around and say, I know how to get over?

where these people that came to him and said, OJ, we can make you a star. But the self-position, and then all these people over here are being, OJ, you have to be this. You have to represent this. You have to be, and you're like, oh my God, my brain would have wanted to explode.

And somewhere between the ambition, which is interesting, weird, but interesting. The self-possession, again, like, very interesting. And then that sort of that pressure, that burden. And when it's like, what's so wrong with, maybe I do want to go over here. By the way, the ambition, which is like, wait, I want to do something that there is no reason for me to think I can do. There's no, there's no paradigm.

No black athlete has ever been a commercial spokesperson. No, you know, okay, we have Jim Brown who went to Hollywood. So we sort of follow that path. But you're like, how did you get to this point? that's fascinating to me. But so the notion of like when you even parse the I'm not black I'm OJ, you can start to kind of go, well, I get what he's trying to say. But then very quickly, that's where you're like, you know, my empathy runs out because

it's like you have a plan. Like you are going and it sort of culminates and, you know, sort of in the film when you even listen to Robert Lipsight a year and a half later when he tells a story about, you know, seeing all those niggers over there at the wedding. He's like, no, no, no, no, they said OJ. Like, I'm not one of them. You know, it's like, oh, you're twisted. And so, but that's, that dynamic to me is really interesting.

And that's where sort of that sort of idea of becoming who we are and the choices that we make. And that's what made this a more interesting story to explore versus, like, did he do it or not do it? Mm-hmm. You know, and this was like, there are a lot more choices and things that are germane to us as Americans. that he speaks to. And that's what I kind of wanted to get into. You're nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary. That's very exciting.

I know that's a very complicated thing to talk about. Has the praise been good for you or not good for you? How do you feel about it? I mean, objectively, it's been good. Who wants to, I mean, rather get praise for your work than not get praise. And, I mean, I think it's an overwhelming honor to be nominated for him. Academy Award. I mean, you know, you know, the really interesting thing about this is, and even that getting back to the first thing we're talking about, the day that you saw me

and we're at that screening, I can't even articulate how purely done of an exercise this was of, like, truly trying to wrestle the bear to the ground. Like, we're trying to do something that none of us know how to do. I hope we can figure it out. Not who's going to see it, where they're going to see it, like whether they're going to like it or not. Like, I mean, yeah, does it work? Is it going to be resonant in some way? Is it going to be worthwhile in the way that I felt it had to be to spend all the time in the first place? And so to come out on the other end and have people not just respond to it,

but have people sort of laud it for, you know, its quality. Like, it's pretty great. Ezra, thank you very much for chatting with me. This was very fascinating. Thank you, Sean.