The Press Box - Trump's Phone Call Bombshell, Plus Benedict and Keteyian on Their New Tiger Woods Documentary

Episode Date: January 4, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker kick off the year by discussing Trump's explosive phone call to Georgia's secretary of state in which he attempted to sway that state's election results (02:35). Later Bryan sits down with authors Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian to discuss the new HBO documentary based on their Tiger Woods book (21:26) before David guesses the first strained-pun headline of 2021 (54:44). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, we just came out of that rough Christmas to New Year's transition period. What I want to know is, what was yours like? It was relatively tame. I think I said it was chaotic. I underestimated the chaos, and that was true for a while. But we came out of Christmas and right into what we in the Shoemaker household called the holiday birthday season very smoothly. So I had incredible... Yeah, happy birthday, David Shoemaker.

New Year's Eve, baby. I had the best birthday of my life. I can share pictures of my two kids in a steakhouse waitstaff costumes if you want to see it. But we had a beautiful at-home birthday dinner that literally took me by surprise. And then the baby, Aubrey's birthday, is January 1st. So we segue right into that. I'm going to ask you for some help off the air about how you explained to your kids. After you got done explaining them what Christmas is for the first time in their,

young minds, how you explain to them that this doesn't happen on a daily or as he believes at a weekly basis, that there, we had Christmas and then literally seven days later, we had, six days later, we had six days, seven days later, yeah, his birthday. So it's, he just, he, he thinks that if he just points at the sky and says Christmas time, then gifts appear. I was yours. Well, it's a little bit less romantic than yours. We had the gingerbread house over at the Curtis household because if you're a parent, you are contractually obligated to have a gingerbread house somewhere and I was a little worried that the kids would not want to part with the gingerbread house after the holiday but in fact David they took it out to the front lawn when it was time to

throw it away and they took a Nerf baseball bat and they just beat it into pieces on the front line it reminded me at one of those videos you see where they're demolishing the Vegas casino You know, it's a pinnata. Yeah, that's great. Kind of my kid saying goodbye to 2020. But if we're being honest, none of 2020 was the gingerbread house's fault. It really wasn't. Coming up on today's show, we talk about the Washington Post's explosive Trump tape story.

Plus, executive producers Jeff Benedict and Armin Gattain on HBO's new Tiger Woods documentary. All that more on the press box. Part of the Ringer podcast network. Happy New Year, media consumers. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. David, we got to start right here. 2021 was not even 48 hours old when we heard Carl Bernstein of CNN. The legendary Carl Bernstein utter some of our favorite words.

It's not deja vu. This is something far worse than occurred in Watergate. Worse than Watergate. The press box bat symbol went up. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if he's contractually obligated to say that at this point. But do you think if you, what do you think the cameo fee is? He's like your son with Christmas, you know, like every week, Carl Bernstein says,

is this worse than Watergate? Do you think for like $100 you could on cameo, you could get Carl Bernstein to say that like your marriage to your wife is worse than Watergate? I would not do the marriage version of that, but I would absolutely pay for Carl Bernstein to call a friend of mine and said your recent piece was worse than Watergate. Fantastic. Bernstein was talking about an incredible scoop in the Washington Post because on Saturday, David, Donald Trump called Brad Raffensberger, Georgia's Secretary of State. Now, this is Georgia in the American South, not Trump pulling another Volodymyr Zelensky overseas.

Though, as we'll see, the pitch was basically the same in both cases. The Washington Post, Amy Gardner, got a recording of the Trump-Raffensberger phone call, and we found out that Trump said this. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more that we have because we won the state. Now, Mr. President, where are we going to find 11,000 plus votes to put you over the top in Georgia? The people of the country are angry. And there's nothing wrong. We're saying that, you know, that you've recalculated.

Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have. is the data you have is wrong. Recalculated. David, your initial thoughts on the Washington Post bombshell of the week. Well, as with so many things over the last four years, your option is either to be like immediately outraged, like nuclear level outraged and then sort of reconnoiter with yourself after that to see how right your outrage justified your outrage was.

Or you can do what I did this time, which is to sort of subliminally just underwerectur, play the story. I saw the headlines and I was just like, okay, man, that doesn't surprise me too much. And only then through the incessant bubbling up of social media and I should say the, you know, the more justified awareness of my wife, did I realize that this was immediately rising to the level of national catastrophe? Because, but I think that's sort of a lot of what the last four years have been about. It's like absolutely galling behavior. that we just sort of roll our eyes at.

It's amazing, isn't it? Trump plots to steal the election on tape. And your first thought is, do I really need to read this? Is this really how I want to spend a Sunday afternoon? I don't know that we need to go in to try to figure out at this point. We don't need to parse to what degree Trump is self-aware or aware of his criminality or aware of his conspiratorialness or whatever.

I don't know that that's even interesting right now. but it is sort of, I don't know, telling, worth mentioning that he didn't have a line of argument. I mean, basically it's like he watched O-A-N for 48 hours and, like, you know, took notes and then just repeated it. But, like, it would have been both more tactically compelling if he were, whether he was trying to steal the election or overturn it legitimately. it would have been tactically compelling for him to take one line of attack that he truly believed and could back up even speciously. But it's sort of like, it's also telling that that's like the disconnectedness, the disjointedness of the entire, not just the past four years.

I'm not talking about that, the past couple of months. You know, we were going into the election with this kind of warning that he was going to try to, you know, correct, quote unquote, the election results in real time, that he had this plan and the plan didn't make much sense, but it didn't really matter because the plan was the statement of having a plan. And now it really is just like the Republican Party or that not, I don't want to give anybody too much credit. So I'll just say the Republican Party, the right wing, whoever, can't get their arguments together because there isn't one. So everybody's trying out all this

different shit to see what'll stick. And instead of picking one, because no one's organized enough to do it, the president is just left regurgitating all the different things people have thrown at the wall. He's just pointing it pieces of shit on. the walls as they're like sliding down. I completely agree. And what makes this scoop amazing to me is that we hear him regurgitating it. We don't just read him plotting to do this. We can hear it. We can hear the language of criminality or near criminality. There is such a big difference in that. Because Trump has been doing this in public for a month and a half now. This is not really new. He's been having conversations like this that we read about all the time.

But as you say, hearing him try to wrap his mind around why he is asking Raffensberger to do this, other than the fact that Raffensberger should just do it because he's a Republican and make Trump president for four more years. Yeah. Which, by the way, Georgia would not do on its own, but never mind that part. A couple of notes from the language, David. Trump had a very, I'm reading something from a piece of paper that I don't understand. voice for much of this phone call. I'm looking here, 11,700 votes.

That was funny. He called Raffensberger a child at one point. Also got confused and called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, George. And what may have been the comic highlight of this whole thing, on the call was Raffensberger's General Counsel, whose name is Ryan Germany. Ryan Germany. And Trump told him, you have a nice last name. Now, come on.

Come on. Are we absolutely sure that Christopher Buckley or some political satirist did not come up with that line? Trump, one Germanophile to another, Mr. Germany, you have a nice last name. There was just, it was just one joke after another, except it's not a joke. It's, you know, worse than Watergate. whatever you want to say. I mean, it's, it's, uh, I mean, it's sort of unbelievable. I think that hearing, you mentioned hearing it. I mean, hearing it was the real thing. And we know from, well, I hesitate to use rollout, but rollout's the right word that Raffinsberger didn't intend on

releasing the, or the audio, unless Trump attacked him subsequently, which Trump did, and which and then the Washington Post immediately had access. But part of this was my, my engagement with, with the story. But I saw the headlines first and knew that it had been recorded but wasn't aware there was actual audio. Then there were like the snippets of audio

and then there was the whole the audio of the entire thing along with the transcript of the entire thing that were released. And it felt a little bit like we know that Raffinsberger well if we take him at his word he was just doing it sort of as a defensive maneuver

but I guess to take you know the conflict metaphor a little bit further, it feels like we've kind of entered this world in presidential journalism where everything has to be a rope-a-dope. We're like, you have to do the slow release just so you can get whoever's going to object to it on the record objecting to some small part of it that you can immediately counteract by releasing the entire thing. Does that make sense? Yeah. And in fact, I thought the reasoning was completely cuckoo. Yeah. This was in the New York Times, which is the nugget you're talking about, where he said, if you, he said, I'm not going to

I'm going to have somebody in my office record this phone call, but I don't see the need to release it unless Trump attacks me or denies the, you know, invents facts from this conversation publicly, which Trump did on Twitter on Sunday morning. What does that even mean? Like, Trump made the call. The important thing is that Trump made the call and said the things on the call, not that. that Trump did a mean tweet about Raffensberger afterwards. That doesn't make any sense to me.

It's like if you, if you morally object to Donald Trump doing this, surely the moment Donald Trump picked up the phone was what you were objecting to. It was weird to have this kind of like, we need to have this second thing happen before it goes to the press. Well, but I think that that's now what you're seeing

throughout the right wing broadly stated, kind of in general now. Well, there's certainly a number of people in a week that will talk about them that are that are sort of trying to inherit the Trump mantle, right? And those are the people who are the Congress people who are talking about raising this objection to the ratification. But everybody upsetting them aside, everybody else is sort of trying to figure out how to

treat the president now and presumably going forward, right? It's sort of like, well, Ted Cruz is obviously the part I just set aside, but you can look back to Ted Cruz in the primaries four years ago, four and a half years ago. Or he thought that he had Trump and Trumpism under control, right? He's like, bring him in for the hug so that he doesn't have any power over me and then watch. But then we did watch. We saw Ted Cruz get thrown out of the bus. Now it's a lot of people who were, well, there was one loon, whoever, some kook on Twitter who was like,

immediately objected to this whole thing because he said a gentleman would never release a recording. I forgot who it was. It doesn't matter. But if you ever, if you have a private conversation, a gentleman would never let that out in the air. and of course that's nonsensical and he contradicted himself and blah, blah, blah, blah. But there is this sort of like question of gentlemanliness. There's a question, there seems to be the sort of underlying question of decorum on how we treat this man that we all agree, that we all seem to now agree is an unworthy lunatic on the way out

the door. And I think it's meaningful. I think that even if you're willing to take the stand as the Republican Secretary of State, of Georgia, I'm sure on some level you're worried about being able to say, listen, I, I treated the president with respect. I listened to what he had to say. We investigated every one of those crazy claims. It just turns out that that wasn't really, the problem wasn't here in the state of Georgia. So the line you're pointing out here's the line where you're not helping Trump steal the election, but you are being cordial to Trump in a phone

call even though Trump doesn't think you're being cordial to him. That's basically what it is. You're making the case, yeah, I mean, you're making the case to be able to say you were cordial in a year, in two years, whenever you're up for re-election, you know, basically. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure for the people, legislators in Georgia, to some, I mean, you're seeing the writing on the wall, too. I mean, if this is a 12,000 vote election in 2020, then by 2022, 2024, 2024, 2026, it's probably going to be a lot bluer, right? So, like, you can't, I mean, if your own future employment is probably at stake in the way that you handle this. This is weirdly, in a political sense, one of the most difficult conundrums for the Republican Party. And a lot of it's because there's people like this and, you know, people who are mostly functional, you know, functional governors, lowercase G in states that are just trying to do their jobs, who are now drawn into the political morass that Trump's been, you know, building for the past four years. Yeah. And if he was being polite to Trump or at least, you know, sort of being, I don't know, I read Raffensberger's languages. I am saying exactly what I need to say in the expectation that this will later be played for America. Well, yeah.

And he, yes. I mean, listen, he knew that he was going to release it. I don't think that was a question. And I think that regardless, there was a certain performance to it. It's been, you know, noted sense that this was the 19th time that Trump tried to call. And the only time they ever answered the phone. So what did you make of that, by the way? Didn't it feel like getting those repeated LinkedIn messages that say like, do you have five minutes to connect?

Yeah, exactly. I've actually been getting calls from like the CDC to try to answer a poll about vaccination. And I feel terrible because I really, like I told them to call me back. I was like, I really want to take this poll. And they always call when I'm getting in or out of my car, you know, carrying a baby or something. And so I can understand what the Secretary of State of Georgia is going through here. The other note I just wanted to bring up. was the semi-threat that Trump issued to Raffensberger and Ryan Germany?

Listen to this. You know what they did and you're not reporting it. That's a criminal, that's a criminal offense. And, you know, you can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you and to Ryan. Your lawyer, that's a big risk. So much for liking his last name, huh? Yeah.

I mean, this is not the first time he's uttered those words or words akin to them. and I don't mean, you know, just in the past month when he's trying to contest his election. This is, you know, it's the sound, one could easily imagine him having this phone call with like, you know, talking about like redistricting in the city of New York 10 years ago or something. You know, I mean, it's the, you know, a building permit. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I mean, I'm sort of two minds. I mean, it's, you know, there's a sort of, if he's gone at the end of the month, then he's gone.

And we can move on from there, let the Southern District of New York. have their way or whatever. But at the same time, I think the argument for, like, he's just too dumb to know the implications of what he's doing or sort of not, it's not that I believe them any less or any more. I just think that it's so, it's just, we're past that now. I mean, he's breaking the law in front of everybody, you know? Like on audio, if we're all to see.

I mean, it seems like you can't excuse this, right? It doesn't matter. You don't, you don't get to subvert democracy just because you don't understand your subverting democracy. That's not a defense for anything. No. That's just, that's ridiculous. And the people that are, the people that are supporting him in this, that shouldn't be forgivable either.

I mean, if politics had any actual consequences, I mean, if there were anything resembling a moral compass in the Republican Party, then nobody that is Ted Cruz, none of these clowns who are who are objecting the election results, contesting the election results in Congress should be, I mean, that should be disqualifying for any future run for office. That should just be it. And if you, I mean, it's not going to be, but like, but, and, and, and, and likewise, if you're out here subverting democracy, whether or not you mean to, that's, that's a criminal offense that should be prosecuted to the full extent. I mean, I just don't know. I, I've never been one of these people who's like tripping on Twitter about frog marching Donald Trump out of the White House and handcuffs or whatever, but like, this is just, like,

I don't know if he's dumb enough to have done this on purpose, but the same thing. situation is just dumb. Like, we can't, we can't abide by this. It might all be forgotten in a month, you know, he might be gone, you might be whatever, and we won't have to worry about it anymore. But what's bonkers that he, I understand he's trying to grab on, cling on to the last vestiges of the hope for presidency. But again, if he had just left peacefully, it would have made such a difference in his legacy. And he just can't, he hasn't learned a fucking thing since the day he got into office. Probably not for a long time before that. All right, David, let's do the

Overward Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to At the Pressbox pod where they are always gratefully received. David, as soon as people discovered that Amy Gardner's Trump scoop came with

an actual recording, it was an overward Twitter joke to quote James Comey and say, Lordy, there are tapes. I saw Rob Reiner getting it on that one this morning. Thanks to Nigel D. Greaves and Andy Claussen. From the Globe and Mail newspaper up there in Canada, David, comes this headline. When the pandemic is over, we should continue wearing masks. When the pandemic is over, we should

continue wearing masks. It was an overword Twitter joke to write, did a mask write this? It never gets old. It gets me every time. Thanks to Chris Clark. And finally, David, we need to spend a second on the goodbye to 2020 tweet genre. Remember a couple years ago whenever a celebrity would die and someone would write, fuck you, 2017? Yeah, of course. And finally, they were shamed out of doing that because it wasn't the calendar's fault that someone had died. But I guess 2020 was so irredeemably bad that we have now brought back that genre.

Some examples from December 31st. Yes, hindsight is in fact 2020. That was a big one. Actor James Kahn tweeted the gif from the movie. movie misery where he's giving the finger to 2020. ESPN insider Adam Schaefter tweeted, 2020 has been fired per sources. That was good.

And finally, this tweet from Counting Crows, not kidding, the official counting crows account. Wow, okay. Maybe this year will be better than the last. Thanks to Elizabeth Gardner, Andrew Graning, Sugar Lemon, and Lorenzo Quioge. If you bid goodbye to 2020 with a searching vocal that was played in David's car during high school.

Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. Can confirm. Can confirm. Good joke. Never owned a Counting Crow's album in my entire life. It was never a big fan. Much more into compatriots,

gin blossoms that towed the wets rocket, the sole asylum. Who else of that era was I really into? But I will say this. I demand a recount. There's been some voter fraud here. As an adult, I have realized that, Counting Crows, for whatever reason, the algorithm, for Counting Crows Radio on Pandora,

on Playlists on our parent company, Spotify, Counting Crows is the way in to the music of my high school years. So I always go Counting Crows first. There we go. All right, David, time for the notebook dump. And you'll remember that two years ago there was a Great Tiger Woods book by Jeff Benedict and Armand Catan. It was so good that I remember going into Bill's office at the ringer back when we actually went to the office. said, Bill, you need to read this right now, because this is the whole Tiger Woods story like you've never read it before. That book is the basis for a new Tiger Woods documentary,

which will premiere on HBO on Sunday, January 10th. The doc is fantastic. We will spend time on it next week. But first, I want to talk to Benedict and Catan, who are also executive producers of the doc, about how a nonfiction book like theirs becomes a documentary. Here are Jeff Benedict and Armand Catan. Jeff and Armand, thank you both for coming on the press box. Thanks for having us. Pleasure. All right, I'll start with you, Armine.

We're in an age of high-end sports documentary. When you were writing the book, did you see a possible documentary here? Without question, I think we saw not only a documentary, but actually a scripted series as well, because what Jeff and I really tried to do was write the book cinematically, you know, scene by scene by scene. and the dialogue, you know, recreating moments in Tiger's life

in various places with an abundance of people. You know, I've been in a television for 30 years. This comes pretty easily to me, and I can see right away that this had all the makings of not only a doc, but a scripted series as well. Armin, how often did you guys talk to the filmmakers as they were putting this together? Well, I think Jeff and I spent a lot of time.

I'll talk personally. You know, Matt Heinenman, I did an interview for the film. I spent five hours in the chair. And I think that was pretty much the average time that somebody who sat for the film, it was an exhaustive process from beginning to end. That was Matt Heineman. But I think Jeff and I spent the vast majority of our time with Matt Hammichick. and really going over everything from, you know, the themes to the characters to the roadmap,

to Matt would call us with questions about certain moments in time in Tiger's life. You know, how did you see it? What did you think he was thinking during this period of time? And so I think what Jeff and I brought was this, you know, when you spend three years, with someone and now five years with someone as Jeff and I have done. I think you get to know them pretty well. I don't think anybody can really know Tiger, but I think we felt like we were in a position where we could offer our opinions on things based on our reporting. And so, you know, I don't know, Jeff, how many times are we talked to Matt? I mean, I probably talked to him,

I don't know, 100 times over the course of two years. Yeah, I would say I've probably had more than a hundred phone calls as well. And not just with him, also with Alex Gibney. And I mean, it's a pretty big team of people that worked on this project. It's, I mean, it's a big project and there's a lot of moving parts. A lot of people that needed to be tracked down and in one form or another persuaded to participate in the film. I was going to ask you about that. Jeff, did you go to people who you convinced to participate in the book and say, hey, we're doing this film? film and what kind of ask was that and how was it different than getting them to participate in the book?

Yeah, we did do that. Both Armand and I did that because both of us had cultivated relationships with key people while we were working on the biography. And it's very different to sit in front of a camera and be interviewed for television than it is to sit down with someone who's writing a book. And so there were a number of people who were reluctant initially to participate in the film. But because of the relationships that we'd forged with them, we were able to facilitate that, make introductions. And one of the things that both Matt Hamichick and Matt Heinemann are really good at is they're good communicators. And they're really good in when they meet people for the first.

time making a great impression. They're honest. And I think, you know, the honesty comes through. And the other thing that helped us was that there were a number of people that Armin and I were not able to persuade to go on the record for the biography. However, because of the way we dealt with them and worked with them after the book came out and before the film started, they actually approached us. And I think a couple of them, you know, had wished that they had participated in the book. And so we continued a relationship with them after our book was done. And then once the film process started, we introduced them to the filmmakers. And some of them made huge contributions to the film, which I think are some of the most powerful participants. And who's an example of that?

Certainly Rachel, you could tell. I mean, Rachel, is, you know, she's in our book, as you know, and she's a really important part of Tiger's biography. And we did have correspondence and communication with her while we were writing the biography, but she chose not to be included in the book as an on-the-record source. And we respected that. We never hounded her. But after the book came out, you know, we continued our correspondence with her. And she's a, you know, a really powerful voice in the film.

And I think Rachel's got a great story to tell that, you know, we wished we'd had for the book more intimately than we did. But we're thrilled that she's in the film. I think we can look at another one, Brian, in Stevie Williams in terms of relationships. he and I communicated, I don't know, multiple times, New Zealand, you know, East Coast, the United States, and much of it was just trying to get things right in terms of the accuracy of moments in Tiger's life. And I think Stevie appreciated that. And then when the filmmakers approached him, he had read the book. He was impressed with it.

and Jeff and I, I think having met Alex and everybody on their team, we were able with confidence to say, look, at the very least, meet these people, sit with them, get their vision of how they see the film, you know, because it's not going to be, it can't be in any possible way, taking 400 pages and turning it into a, you know, it's three and a half hours of storytelling. And it's a remarkable piece of work. But I think in some cases, I should mention, you know, Jeff, Jenna Millman, who's one of the producers on the film, she was not only dogged, but she was just so passionate about her belief that this was something that people should be involved with because of the high level of care that they were taking

with it. And, you know, that's, as Jeff said, it's not easy to get somebody, you know, you talk on the phone with somebody or you meet them in person to get them to sit in that chair for four or five or six hours or more in some cases is a it's an art form and you have to trust the filmmakers and i think both matts and alex when we needed them and jennah and um you know sam and a bunch of other people trevor all these people that were involved they did a remarkable job in in um bringing these people you know to the table jep you guys did all this reporting for the book was there a piece of footage that the filmmakers used in the dock that you thought it had a different power when you saw it versus when it was rendered on the page? Yes. I would say in a couple of

instances, certainly the Haskins dinner, which is something that a scene that we have in the book and Gary Smith that Sports Illustrated obviously first introduced that scene when he profiled Tiger Woods right as he became a pro. We recreated that scene in our book. But what the filmmakers did, was really take it to another level. And one of the reasons they were able to do that is, and this is a telltale sign of a great documentarian, is they found the footage of the actual speech that Earl Woods gave. And it is phenomenal footage.

It's just, it's so captivating when you watch it and you hear it and you see the emotion from Earl Woods that it's just different than it is on the page. when we wrote about it. And we were frankly thrilled at the archival work that these guys did. Some of the footage that they came up with, Dina, Tiger's first girlfriend, provided some jaw-dropping home videos. And this goes back to the days of VHS and the handheld recorders that, you know, got used way back in the day. But there's just some great raw footage of Tiger as a teenager. And I think that the archivists in this project just did some amazing work there.

Yeah, the Dina home videos. This is Dina Parr. She was Dina Gravel when she and Tiger were dating in high school. Those home videos are amazing because Tiger is laughing and dancing and having this great time. And I realized watching it, it's one of the first times I'd ever seen Tiger Woods smile that was not connected to winning a golf tournament. He looked happy. And that was just so striking to see. I mean, just as a viewer, when we were seeing rough cuts,

I was just, I was blown away by it because it humanizes Tiger in a way that we'd never seen him before. And when you think about him at that period of his life as a teenager, when he is the number one, pretty much the number one amateur in the country, certainly for his age group. And the whole, you know, the whole movie has basically been set up by Earl as to how everything is going to play out in the end. And you see this raw teenage excitement and energy and love for Dina. And when he's playing that air sacs and on his back and he's kicking his legs up in the air,

I was like, I was like, oh my God, this is just an incredible piece of footage. And honestly, that's the difference. As much as Jeff and I tried to recreate these scenes and write. them cinematically, there's a difference between film and the written word. And what you see in this film is an extraordinary job in the archival footage and really bringing some really important people to the table as well, whether it's Brian Gumbull or whether it's Nick Faldo or whether it's Dina or whether it's Rachel or whether it's Joe Groman. I mean, there's just a cast of characters here that, you know, we're specifically asked and then specifically brought into the film

to tell a very, you know, powerful, mesmerizing human story that's intimate and personal, yet I think it's journalistically, it's really fair. And it tells the story in a way that some people may know, but they don't know. I think what's interesting about seeing these people interviewed on camera, too, is when we think about a figure like Tiger Woods, who has treated people often very coldly in his life, when you see people interviewed about him, one thinks, oh, well, they're just, you know, they're, they have an axe to grind or something. Which you can see in a lot of these people's faces that they love Tiger.

They really cared about Tiger. and that comes through, I think, perhaps in video maybe more than it even does on the page. When we were deciding who we wanted to interview for the biography, we were pretty particular in finding people and approaching people that didn't have an axe to grind because there's a lot of those folks out there. And particularly the women that are in the biography, are women starting with his kindergarten teacher up through his first girlfriend, up through some of his first true friends who were females, not lovers, but friends,

through Alicia O'Meara, you know, all the way up the ladder. The women that we included in the book for the most part were women who truly cared about Tiger as a human being. And I think the film does a great job of building on that. And because a lot of those same women that are in the book are in the film. and a couple that aren't in the book are in the film. And you can tell that these are women. The way you can tell they care is just by you can look in their eyes in the film. And that is a different thing than a book,

is you can actually see them when they're talking about him. And the eyes don't lie. You know, when you see these moments in the film, there's moments where you're crying. There's moments when you're laughing. But these are, you know, great human emotions that we're not accustomed to associating with Tiger, the golfer. So many of these women that are in the film

are introducing you to Tiger the human being. You know, Brian, I think the success of the book, and I'm certainly the success of the film, is when you look at it, it's a father-son story. It's an Earl Woods, Tiger Woods story. But in the big picture, I always found when I would talk to Jeff, I said, you know who's going to love this book and is going to love this film?

women are going to love it because Tiger's relationships with women all over the map, you know, in terms of his fame and fortune and whether it's Eland or Rachel or his mom or Amber Loria or, you know, anybody and everybody that's crossed his path, I always was attracted to that side of the story because I felt like I understood to a certain degree Tiger's greatness in the price of genius, but his relationship. his relationship, and I think you go back to A, his mom, but then B, Dina, what happened there, I think it colored his perception of women and certainly his father's infidelities in a relationship with his mother colored Tiger's outlook and perception of women. But at the same token,

he was he was captivating with a lot of these women. And certainly, Certainly, I think Rachel, who I think was portrayed in the absolutely 180 degree wrong way by the media, to me, comes across very believable and very loving and very caring in this film. And I think that's going to hold an audience in a way that you just can't do with the written word. Okay, so speaking to those portrayals, so Tiger has his car accident near his home in Florida in 2009. Then that's when the public discovers all these affairs. There's this lurid fascination with these women in the media and the tabloids and also the respectable, what we'd call the respectable media. And then there's this whole sort of strain of moral condemnation, which includes Augusta National Chairman Billy Payne saying Tiger has disappointed us.

When you guys went over that material, how did that stuff read in retrospect? When you say go over that material, you mean the way that the sort of moral high ground that the media was taking? Sure. Yeah, I mean, Armine and I talked a lot about that, actually. I remember many phone calls that he and I had at nighttime after long days of writing when we were particularly plowing through those chapters in the book, which to me are, you know, to me, those are the most interesting and compelling chapters because you see a man who's really getting hit from all sides. His whole life is sort of caving in around him. And you're watching how he's responding to that. And I thought there was a lot of, it's so easy when you're on the sidelines to throw stones and pass judgment and forgetting, you know, that we're all human. And that really none of us, this is the thing that Armand and I kept saying to each other when we were writing is that we've never been in the situation he's in. We don't know anybody who's ever been in that situation.

because Tiger's life was so unique. And the level of stardom and fame that he'd attained as an athlete was, he was more like Elvis Presley than he was a golfer in terms of his fame and the stature that he had around the world. And so it's really interesting when someone who hasn't really experienced fame at all, i.e. the guy you mentioned from Augusta, who starts, you know, taking the pulpit and basically preaching at someone like Tiger, about how they've let everybody down.

So what we were trying to do was just, you know, we're writing his biography. And so as much as we could, we were trying to show the reader from his point of view what it was like to see and experience what he was going through. I thought that moment where he's putting up butcher paper on his windows of his house to keep people like cameras and paparazzi from seeing in,

to me, it's the little moments like that that tell you how invasive it had become, that he had really lost any sense of privacy for anything. I mean, when you get to that point. And so it wasn't that we were trying to excuse in any way what he had done. That's not our job. But our job is to try to give the reader some sense of appreciation and some context for what he's going through. Brian, if I could just add something. I was always fascinated by that moment in time because it was the,

culmination or the combination of social media tabloids mainstream. It was a avalanche of late-night television. And I think one of the things in the film you see that we really couldn't, you know, you can't really duplicate it in a book is it's sorted, you know, and it becomes it becomes entertainment for other people. And when you watch the Jay Leno show, where you watch the view where they're talking about, you know, Rachel, you could tell in the most unseemly of ways. And I look at it now and I really still cringe at it because you, if you go back to maybe like, I don't know, obviously O.J. Simpson, but then you can maybe go to Marve Albert and what happened with Marv. It becomes a form of entertainment for other people

so their lives become better or more less, less important than they visualize. So they can look at somebody else and go, oh, well, he's failing so my life isn't as bad. And I think with Tiger, it was the absolute peak of that. When you see it in the film and when you do the kind of reporting that we did, it was, there were times that I was like, I mean, I don't even know, sick to my stomach with some of this stuff. and it's, I think, I think it's a lesson for America in ways to rewatch this again, to see how he was treated. Yes, he brought it on himself.

Yes, he ran into the fire hydrant, but man, when that Pandora's box was open, I'd never seen anything like that in my life. And I doubt we'll see it again for maybe in my lifetime. Brian, it's also certainly has to be mentioned that there's also a wife and two small children who are caught in this maelstrom. And, you know, people who are all over this story the way they were, I think completely forget or neglect or just don't care that the fact that there's a mother, a wife, two little children that are just in this crossfire. And so that was another thing that I think we tried a lot in the biography, in the book, to remind people of that. And I think the film does a good job of that as well. So many, I mentioned it was the golden age of the high-end sports doc.

So many of these that we see on TV are authorized documentaries, where the subject is not just participating, but actually using editorial control to shape the documentary. Tiger Woods, the Tiger Dock is basically the opposite of that. He's not involved, and clearly he would have told the story much differently. How did you guys view that against this sort of backdrop of how so many documentaries have turned out? The same way, I would say, that we viewed the book. You know, books are the same way. You can have autobiographies or authorized biographies, or you can have the kind of biography that we had, which I think was a great opportunity for Armine and

I to be able to write that kind of biography, where we were basically getting access to everybody who was around Tiger and was intimate in one portion of his life or another. And I think the filmmakers once again took it to another level with their filmmaking skills. And some of the time when they were doing these interviews, you know, Armand mentioned five and six hour interviews. There were actually people that sat in the chair for over 10 to 12 hours. And the reason it's also important, I think, you know, Armand mentioned Jenna Millman, one of the, you know, producers and editors on this film who did an incredible job, particularly with the women that are in this film. She is a big reason that some of these women are in the film. And also she's a big reason for why some of these

women opened up to the depth that they did. And I think that that kind of candor is what gives, it gave the book, the powerful feel that it did. And it's what gives the film that feel. I mean, when you're watching this film, whether you see it for the first time or many times, like we've seen it, it still pulls at your heartstrings. I mean, I have seen my eyes well up each time I see a new cut. And I already know the story inside out. And so I think that that's just, that's a quality of not having all that editorial control. And it's also, Brian, it's also, in the end, you know, Jeff and I had this conversation, how much better would the book have been had Tiger sat for the interviews or an interview that were you requested? And in the end,

given the kind of person he is or was at that period of time and his unwillingness to really unspool any critical parts of his life in any kind of depth and having read everything, literally almost everything he'd ever said about anything, including all his books and all his press conferences and all that, I don't know what we would have gained in terms of the depth of our reporting. And I think in this film, both Mats and all the people that were associated with it, because they took the kind of care, and I can't tell you how many really deep conversations that I had, and I know that Jeff had with Matt Hammachack about, is this too much? You know, how far do we go here? How salacious or sensational or what do you feel about this moment? And it's really

almost, you have to think about it in terms, almost, I think about it in terms of orchestral, like a piano playing, you know, how hard do you hit those keys and how fast do you move through a certain part of the score? And I think with that, because it can be so, it can be cringe-worthy at times, and you don't need it. And I think that's where, you know, I found myself going, they just, they just hit, there was a perfect pitch here. They, you know, they knew, did they need Tiger, did they ask for Tiger? They did. He didn't want to participate. They offered him the opportunity. He declined, as did other people that were close to Tiger. But in the end, I think as a journalist, you know, I feel like I didn't need the subject. And I don't think you need the subject here

because the subject is there. When you pick the right moments and you pick the right things that that person says, you understand that person. And I think that's what this film does better than anything. It's one of the best. I know just internally, HBO feels like this is one of, if not the best sports stocks they've ever done. And that's, you're talking about, what, 30 years of sports stocks. And I know it's been very well received inside Time Warner, Warner Media, AT&T. So, you know, we're just excited to see this thing finally find its way to the public. Let's in here having watched the doc, I don't think of the Tiger Woods story is a redemption story exactly, nor is it a tragedy. Jeff, how do you think of the shape of this story now?

Well, I think the shape now is what I would say, full circle. It is a, it's a complete panoramic view of his life. You know, when you, when you, when you, when you get into biographies and documentaries, you talk about having a sort of a two-dimensional view, you try to see from multiple sides. This is so much more than that. It is a multi-dimensional view of his life. And it's told completely from basically from birth till the present. And you see his evolution, you see the evolution of a boy into a young man, into a mature man like he is today. And I don't know. I think as you watch it, you're right, it's not a redemption story. That's not what the filmmakers were trying to do here. And I think they did the right thing and chose the

right path by going the way they did. Because by the time you get to the end of this, for one thing, you're out of breath. I mean, literally, you're sitting on the sofa and you feel like you've gone through this life with him. And it is absolutely exhausting at times. And then at other times, It's so exhilarating. And I was, one of the things I was most taken with, Brian, is watching a documentary is a, it's like watching a sporting event, right? You are sitting still seeing something. You're not actually doing anything.

You're just viewing. And so when a film is so powerful that it can actually make you sweat and actually make you feel tired or exhilarated, that means the filmmakers have really delivered because they've taken you on a journey. And that's what, that's what Matt Hammichick and. Matt Heineman and their team did in this film is they, you're not just watching. You're, you're riding with him. And sometimes the speed is, you feel like you're at the speed that he was at. And I think that that experience when you get to the end gives you a much better appreciation and

respect for who Tiger is, where he's been, and what he's done. It's funny. I would have said that the bow on this whole story was Tiger coming back and winning the Masters in 2019. But having watched Tiger in December at the PNC championship playing with his son Charlie, ooh, that feels like the bow, right? He has literally become Earl in many, many ways. I think it's, I think you're absolutely right. I was very leery of what was going to happen at the PNC with Charlie because if you think back in time, Brian, you know, what Tiger went through, you could go back to the Mike

Douglas days. he was two and a half years old. But let's just say that was, Tiger's 45 now, just go back 35 years. No internet, no phones, no social media. He's in a bit of a cocoon. Charlie was in the absolute epicenter social media over the weekend. And not only did he handle it well, but I was really struck with how Tiger was just a great father and let Charlie be by him. himself, embrace the moment, he didn't overdo it. And I thought back to those times when Earl was on the driving range at the Navy course, and Joe Groman, who was the assistant pro, Earl would be on one end, Tiger would be on the other end, and Joe would come up and say, hey, Earl, you know,

Tiger's down on the other end. Why aren't you, you know, working with them? And Earl, to his ever-loving credit, just said, you know, if Tiger needs me, he knows where I'm at. He's going to find me. And I thought that was that that closeness, but that distance that Earl and Tiger, what they shared his father and son was so extraordinary. And I, you know, Earl had a lot of faults, but he gave Tiger his love of golf and his absolute belief and practice. And I thought, you're right. I thought the Masters is extraordinary. I mean, there's no better moment than the 2019 Masters in terms of comebacks of all time. But I think what we witnessed at the PNC was that humanity, I saw glimpses of it, and I'll just take a little bit of a side track here.

When we were trying to figure out what the end of the book was, this is in January of 2018. The book is due to come out in April of 2018. Jeff and I have not written the last chapter yet. We don't know how this book is going to end. And I would sometimes I would just call them up and I'd have these really dark thoughts. And I would say, you know, I think maybe we should just end it with Tiger in, you know, at the sunset cemetery in Manhattan looking at his dad's grave and something. And Jeff would be like, Armand, I don't think we can end it that way. I don't think that's a great way.

And I was just kind of messing with him. But we didn't know how it was going to end. And then I went out to the farmers. And I saw a tiger engaged and more open and more human than I had ever seen him before. And I think what you're seeing now is a. a tiger that is just so, I just go back to the word human. And I think that's what this film really does. It humanizes Tiger in a way that very, very few people have seen before.

And if you can do that, you know, you use that word redemption. And we had, I can't tell you how many conversations about that single word. Is this a film about redemption? And to their credit of the filmmakers, to both Mats, and particularly Matt Hammondichick, because we were talking to him so much, he was like, no, it's not, it's not about redemption. It's about, it's about humanity. It's like, in the end, tigers just like the rest of us, popular and as, you know, whatever he was as a, the most popular athlete in the world, in the end, he's a human being. And what we see in the

film is that, is that journey, as Jeff said, you know, to a different tiger now. And I think it's the tiger that people are inspired by and have embraced in a way that maybe even beyond any of his greatest triumphs. All right. The documentary unfolds in two parts on HBO on January 10th and January 17th. Jeff Benedict and Armin Coutain's book is Tiger Woods, no subtitle. And the Curtis rule of nonfiction books is any book that doesn't have a subtitle is a big deal. Thank you guys for coming on the press box. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Brian. All right, time for David Shoemaker, guess is a strain pun headline.

Yeah. Last Monday's headline about the Warriors replacing Clay Thompson with bad shooters was replacing clay with bricks. Today's headline comes from Chris Dahl, Eric Whiteley, Danny Sullivan, Josh Siskind, and Ian Herbert.

It's from the Washington Post. Last night in the final regular season, NFL game of the year, David, the Washington football team needed to beat the Philadelphia Eagles to get in the playoffs. It was a competitive game. but in the second half, the Eagles helpfully put in a young quarterback who was not good

and gave them no chance to win. They basically treated this hugely important NFL game as an opportunity to scout the bottom of their roster. So the Washington football team won because the Eagles were trying not to win. What was the Washington Post-strain pun headline? The eagle hasn't landed. The, is it an eagle pun? Is that what I'm going for here?

No, it's a trying not to win pun. Oh, oh, uh, born to lose, uh, losing.

Oh, we have a term for this, David. Uh, usually with the NBA. Tanking. Oh, oh,

uh, tanks for, tanks for the, thanks for the, thanks for nothing. Tank, yeah, not,

not nothing, but tanks for, thanks for, it's the Washington, Post, remember their team, their teams going to the playoffs. Oh, thanks for. Losing. Not nothing, but.

Something? Thanks for everything. Thanks for everything. Thanks for everything. Thanks for everything. Thanks for everything. Thanks for everything. He is David Shoemaker.

I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Steve Allman filling in for Erica Servantes. We are back Thursday with McKay Coppins of the Atlantic and listener mail. Plus, of course, more Luke corn takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.