O.J.: Made in America

[wilder]

Directed by Ezra Edelman
Release Date - June 11, 2016

The rise and fall of American football star, O.J. Simpson, from his days growing up in Los Angeles to his murder trial that polarized the country.

It is the defining cultural tale of modern America - a saga of race, celebrity, media, violence, and the criminal justice system. And two decades after its unforgettable climax, it continues to fascinate, polarize, and even, yes, develop new chapters. Now, the producers of ESPN's award-winning "30 for 30" have made it the subject of their first documentary-event and most ambitious project yet. From Peabody and Emmy-award winning director Ezra Edelman, it's "O.J.: Made in America," a 10-hour multi-part production coming summer of 2016. To most observers, it's a story that began the night Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were brutally murdered outside her Brentwood apartment. But as "O.J." lays bare, to truly grasp the significance of what happened not just that night, but the epic chronicle to follow, one has to travel back to a much different, much earlier origin point, at not the end, but the beginning of the 20th century, when African-Americans began migrating to California ...

[matt35mm]

Such a great trailer. They were recently playing a 7.5-hour version of this in Santa Monica to qualify for the Oscars. I didn't have the nerve to go.

[Tictacbk]

Does John Travolta play anybody?

[wilder]

The whole thing is available on WatchESPN (and through the WatchESPN app on Roku, Apple TV etc.)

[matt35mm]

For folks (like me) who don't have a cable provider, you can do a 7-day free trial at SlingTV, which is a service that allows you to watch live TV just through streaming. The OJ doc is not on the SlingTV app, BUT once you sign up for an account, you can go to WatchEPSN.com and then enter SlingTV as your service provider and that will gain you access to watch it on the ESPN website (took me a few moments to figure out how to do this, but it works).

[wilder]

Holy cow. What an unbelievably sharp, spotless lens to view the last half century of this country through. Truth is seriously stranger than fiction, too. It’s a tale so poignant it practically feels divinely planned.

I’m awestruck that such a perfect confluence of people and events exist to make up O.J.’s micro/macro story. It’s O.J.’s self-mythologizing as America’s self-mythologizing… the denial, idealism, exploitation, narcissism, greed, resentment, self-hatred, pride, jealousy, opportunism, revenge, tragedy - all of it reflected in one life. The doc focuses our larger cultural battles into fully encapsulated avatars - mirror images and competing themes everywhere in O.J’s personal and professional circles. I guess it takes the gravitational pull of celebrity to spin all of these pieces into a narrative this clear. O.J. is the once in a lifetime character elevated to exalted status who can convey how dissonantly we treat our past.

And there are no real lessons learned by the end of it. Maybe that’s what makes it feel most poignant of all? Even when O.J. is forced to make a brush with redemption through the trial...and then gets a second chance — it’s not enough to kill the ego, the opportunity is squandered. He turns a blind eye to his guilt and goes full-throttle into self-destructive decadence in a way that tracks with our nation’s historical reactions to failure. Seriously what the fuck. This doc is amazing. I can’t stop thinking about it. It so skillfully portrays the impossible tug-o-war between the small-scale human solutions to race relations and the unhealed lineage that brought America to this point. Devastating. Must see.

[wilder]

Blu-ray on July 19th

[Reelist]

Thanks for that great write up on this brilliant documentary. After the mini-series, I thought I'd had my fill of this case. Boy, was I sorely mistaken! This makes the show look like a Zucker brothers production. Even in attempting to watch the first episode after reading all your praise, I found myself so bored with the glorification of his Footballing that I stopped it halfway through. Then I heard so much discussion of it on radio and podcasts that I couldn't ignore it. So, yesterday I started back where I left off and have blown through the first 4.

I don't think our generation and even a bit older truly has a grasp of how far reaching OJ's legacy went until seeing this. You get such a deep glimpse into his lifestyle and how the public received him 30 years before we were even born. It becomes a lot clearer, the forces in place that would allow him to get away with such a heinous crime. I never really understood how cloistered from the black community he was, refusing to comment on any issues affecting them, saying he's only responsible for his and his family's wellbeing. Then, by the end of the trial, the black community and the issues they face with law enforcement is what got him off! It's unbelievable, the circumstances that came together to sway the public's mind away from the evidence to only focus on the politics of race. It's the greatest example of how powerfully manipulative a legal team has the potential to be, ever. Anyone who hasn't seen this simply has to before you assume you have the slightest inkling of knowledge about this case. I've never been so floored by a documentary in it's explanation of events and cogent relevance to recent times.

[Alexandro]

I ended my movie watching year on an extremely high note with this one. This takes the detailed approach to a criminal case that we saw on Making a Murderer and expands it into a fascinating saga of the history of race in America. OJ turns out to be quite the character, but the greatest strenght of the film lies in the way it connects his story with a whole bunch of larger subjects, painting a full portrait of american reality in the last 50 years. the last chapter was the most surprising to me, as for some reason I completely ignored or got disconnected from OJ Simpson after the first trial; the bizarreness of his last fall is equal to Dirk Diggler's.

Awesome, one of the year's best.