 All right, welcome back to another edition of yes, we're here and this is a big thrill We don't get our basketball fix from the NBA But we're getting it from the last dance and the director Jason hair is with us today But let's forget about basketball for just a minute and the Chicago Bulls in the last dance Talk about the evil Empire up there in Boston. You're a Red Sock fan. What is going on with your baseball team? We're the evil Empire. Yes Where where you want all the time that's evil or the light side. No, no, no, we've become that I realized I'm a very self-aware Red Sox fan. So all Yankees fans, please don't hate me. I don't know what's going on, man It's From where we were a couple of years ago to where it is now it just seems to be kind of a mess And you know what? I hate it to be just like the cynical defeatist Boston fan It will never be as fun as it was In those 0304 at the height height height of that Yankees rivalry I remember going to in 0 for the opening weekend game I think we're opening night of the season Friday night Fox put the game on National TV and they don't normally start broadcasting those games until later on in the summer But it was such a big deal that that Friday night game at Fenway I was at that game and and they screwed our tickets up and they somehow it's a long story But they somehow put us in the owner's box. Nice They didn't do the owner's box my dad my my brother Paul and our friend Billy McMurtry We're sitting in the owner's box next to Louis Tion and it was so cold out that no one would sit outside so all these owners like 89 year old owners are huddled up inside and they were just serving us salmon and steak and free drinks We wanted the game to go into extra innings. We're having such a great time So I don't know when it will hit those heights Yeah of those playoffs, you know rushing home to be with friends and watch that every single night It was incredible. Yeah, I was at that game 70 Yankee stadium I could still see the Johnny Damon home run leaving I still say a great part of the rivalry was the Red Sox finally win next year an opening day when they Introduced Mariano Rivera at Fenway the crowd gives me ovation and Mariano being classy goes along with it has a big smile It kind of tips his cap that was very mind It reminded me of when two really great boxers who have talked so much smack to each other and the lead up to a fight Having an incredible historic fight and then they hug each other afterwards. That's the kind of respect that it's always kind of tongue-in-cheek There's jerk fans everywhere, and I think you know the worst of the Boston fans might be worse than the worst of the Yankee fans but There's so much respect there I know mutually from our side for the Yankees and for for Jeter and for the guys that that are pillars of the Yankees Dynasty that we have the respect for them. It might come out in a little bit of a different way But it's all in good fun. All right You're becoming a big star now Jason. The last dance has been a huge hit. Everyone's watching it all over the country We're happy with it. I'm gonna assume for a minute that you're happy with it But let's get to the nuts and bolts is Michael Jordan thus far happy with the product. I Encourage you to ask him. I don't We're still not done with it is the crazy part because we're still finalizing episode 10 We just finished episode 9 less than a week ago With all the the pandemic madness and and the technological workflow Obstacles we had to overcome in the last six to eight weeks Everything's been slowed, you know grind ground almost to a halt. So we're still finishing it up So it's interesting to kind of peek our head out and see what the what the world is is saying about or at least the viewing Sports-feeling public is saying about it. So it's been really gratifying because we've worked really hard to move up the date obviously and It's just been great to see people are enjoying it just to I think it's kind of a fun nostalgic Escape for people. It seems to be like just the right thing at just the right time. I'm doing I do an NBA Radio show on Sirius and one of the big topics of conversation has been everything with the dream team and Isaiah Thomas and walking Off the court has that kind of been the one thing that stuck out in term for you? Just in terms of how much attention kind of that relationship Isaiah Thomas Michael Jordan dream team Bulls Pistons How much that's been getting over the past couple of weeks? I've certainly seen his name more in social media and as Isaiah has spoken about it. I Think it's probably eye-opening to younger Fans and even younger players just how intense those rivalries were I mean Michael said to this day I said how authentic was that hatred for the Pistons and he said I hated them and that hate carries to this day He doesn't mince words and none of these guys do You know Isaiah Has his version of the events and and I think that he articulates himself really well And he's gotten a chance to explain his side of the story even further in in the media these days It's just incredible. You know how visceral Though and intense those rivalries were that you can still be talking about it 20 30 years later And it's still garners eyeballs. Yeah, you know, I've texted him a couple of times and last week I said, what are you apologizing for? I mean that was the image that you guys wanted in Detroit you embrace the idea of being the bad boys You know the one thing about them walking off the court there And I think you know, I thought you guys did a really good job telling the story So for people who are talking about well, is it going to be fair? Is it going to be too much slanted towards Michael Jordan? I think that you guys did a fair job at that because number one you showed the Celtics Then you had the pistons but more importantly you gave Isaiah Thomas a chance to explain it How important was that for you a documentary about the bulls to make sure that both sides were told paramount concern? It would be tough to turn down access to Michael Jordan, especially coming from the era that I came from I was eight years old when he was a rookie So he's kind of the holy grail of stories you would want to tell of that era in sports But if there were certain Restrictions that were made and we weren't allowed to pursue storylines or pursue interviewing characters Then I would have had to say no and we always had we always had permission and carte blanche And we were encouraged to tell every side of the story because Michael and and his closest advisors I think are smart enough to know that viewers are savvy and they'll see right through something That's going to be thoroughly one-sided So of course he's going to be the hero in a lot of these stories because the things he did on the basketball court in a sports sense, I think heroic is is Bandied about a little bit too often these days But he's going to be the victor in a lot of these stories because he won But I think you'll see as the series goes on and especially next week We're really confronting the stuff that I wanted to confront to to to satisfy that need to to be a responsible Comprehensive telling of the story so it's Michael's perspective But you're also getting the perspective of the teammates that he played with that He was really tough on you're getting the perspective of the Isaiah's and the Gary patents and the Reggie Millers and the guys who he was You know keeping from that that Mountain top it's still painful for these guys Yeah, it took us a while to get Reggie Miller and and you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that part of it Wasn't that he's still it still stings to talk about he knows what we want to talk about So it it takes I give them credit because it takes a lot of guts and it takes a lot of trust that they put in us That we're going to tell this story responsibly. So that's why I'm even over defensive of Isaiah and people like that in these stories Because I do make an effort to to give their side of it as much as we can believe me as a Celtics fan a It hurt me to even have to show that the Celtics handled it the way that they did in Detroit and B I never knew that so when you're researching something for two years and reading Tens of thousands of pages and books after books and watching all the films and trying to uncover every stone or unturn every stone When you hear something new in an interview That's you know that that is going to be something that resonates with people because I feel like I've heard just about every story That's been written or read every story that's been written. So I didn't know that the circumstances are different because yeah They were worried about court storming in yes at the Silver Dome and they're the and they're the visiting team Yes, Detroit is the home team. Yes, and they're walking off the court So there is a bit of a difference that the Pistons kind of don't really know Let me ask you this about and we're talking of course with Jason here was the outstanding director of the last dance The whole stuff with the dream team You have Michael coming out and he really doesn't want to be responsible for Isaiah not being on the team Then you have magic recently came out and said no I had nothing to do that What's gonna happen? Is it Justin Timberlake's fault? Is it Christian Layton's fault that Isaiah wasn't on the dream team? How fascinating were you by that whole story of the dream team not only Isaiah But also the Tony cuckoo challenge, which I thought you guys did an unbelievable job on how fascinating was the whole dream team stuff It was Extremely fascinating to me. I I went into it though. I knew a lot about that. I have read the Jack McAllen book I had seen the NBA entertainment Documentary which was fat and which is fantastic. So I was fearing that this was gonna be Material that people were really used to and kind of bored with by then So then we had people this is why it was really valuable to have all the partners that we had because I'm sure the NBA probably thought Yeah, we've told that story before the Netflix people came in and said a we've never seen this stuff and B The people around the world don't know anything about this. So maybe the Monte Carlo practice was great NBA's documentary But it had a limited audience if it was showing on NBA TV or wherever they showed it This was an opportunity to to to recycle that stuff and delve into what a bit deeper and have access to these guys again And to ask them about it again the crew coach stuff. I found fascinating. I could have done two hours on Tony Cuckoo coach. He's Because of the reputation he had when he came into the league as being quote-unquote soft and it took him He had language barriers. He was a very young kid himself He had his family was in great danger back home He had kids and he had parents and brothers and sisters there and I asked him about that reputation of being soft and he said soft I had Shells being dropped on my house when I was a kid He was pulled out of his home when he was 14 or 15 and put in a dorm room to shovel snow and play basketball all day That was that was all that they let those kids do when they were identified as being potential Olympians to represent Croatia So he is he is one of the most mislabeled athletes I've come across in terms of his softness Being part of his part of his narrative because he's the opposite. Yeah, I thought I thought it was really unfair My thing was okay What if they traded places of Scotty Pippen had to play for Croatia and then Tony Cuckoo She's playing for the dream team, you know the results might have been a little bit different but of course a lot of that centers around Jerry Krause and Jerry Krause now isn't around to defend himself once again I think you guys do a fair job getting sound from Jerry Krause and having him try to explain himself, you know after the fact But when people talk about Michael Jordan, I think the one thing that you guys done, which is very fair He there are certain cases where he comes across as a bully now Krause Gets a little blame here. Why are you coming out and saying Phil Jackson? This will be your last year and any chance he gets he kind of pokes Scotty Pippen and Michael Jordan through the media. What about telling the story about Jerry Krause? You know a gentleman who's no longer with us It was important to me to get as much sound as we could from Jerry in the dock and to have him be as Vibrant a figure as possible you know, he's no longer with us and and You know, maybe we should have made it clear at the beginning of the documentary that Jerry is not alive And that's the reason why we didn't do an interview. I felt that that would become evident as this as the series progressed You know, I think David Halberstam said it best he said I forget what the exact quote is but but it was that Jerry deserved more credit than he got but he thought he deserved more than he actually did so It was he was stuck in the middle and he couldn't get you know Part of it is you know, Michael ribbing him and saying are those the pills you take to keep you short and all that those are That's almost a camaraderie element in locker rooms If you're not getting those kind of jokes if you're not being referred to it would be more disrespectful for Michael Just not even respond to Jerry and look straight past them rather than to rib him a lot of the times That's how Michael shows affection and friendship. I'm not saying that he and Jerry were the best of friends You can see what he said about him all the way up until his his all-fame speech But I think that the ISIS thought a bit with all of these guys With Jerry's passing and I think that the farther away they get from from that time The more they appreciate the vital role that Jerry played in building those teams the only piece that was in place when Jerry came in to to be GM was Michael Jordan and it's a it's an enormous piece Maybe the biggest piece in the history of the NBA puzzle But he had the foresight to know the text winner was an offensive genius and that he wanted to install the triangle He had the foresight to see something in Phil Jackson that nobody else saw Phil got laughed out of many NBA offices when he tried to interview to be a coach He made guts he trades he traded Charles Oakley Michael's best friend football Cartwright He saw something in Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant that few people saw he got John Paxson He got Steve Kerr. He got all these little pieces that made those championship teams what they were So I hope that by the end of this people appreciate the role that he played and I can guarantee you by the end of this You'll see some unlikely voices often offering him superlative praise All right, Jason, how many sit-down interviews did you do with Michael Jordan? And how much footage do you have of just those interviews that you did with them? We did three interviews with him and we have eight hours of interviews with Michael How do you go through all that? With joy So sit there and to listen back to I remember the first one we did and Obviously you plan extensively for these things because you have a limited amount of time Especially with a guy like Michael who was only contracted to do two interviews and ended up giving us three because we just had so much that We needed to get to but after the first one, which was in June of 2018 My brother we did it down Florida my brother lives down there in Florida I golfed with him the next day and then I flew up to Boston to see my family For the weekend just to take a few days. I think it was over fourth of July a weekend it was was after that and I had just gotten back the transcript and the MP3 of the interview and my dad picked me up at the airport and we Listened to the audio of the interview on the way home and it was still to me like I couldn't believe that that it happened I felt like I was 10 years old and I'm certainly not jaded by that at this point, but luckily It became more and more routine to go and interview him and to get the stuff that we needed And also in the moment You know this for what you do you have to lock in there's no time to think of anything else of There's very few moments to have this out-of-body experience Picture of Michael on my wall as a kid because you have a job to do in that moment You have to lock in because if you don't do a good job with an interview with Michael Jordan He could come in in a bad mood the huge mansion that we interviewed him And there could have been a huge thunderstorm and there could have been rain thrashing against those windows Which would ruin the audio and ruin the look there's so many things that had to line up So the universe just smiled on us for eight hours out of the two years that we're making this thing And I think that that's the difference maker and the quality of the doc All right Jason What about Michael Jordan here in terms were there any questions that you asked him or he said hang on a second turn off The cameras I'm not answering that did you get any kind of blowback for Michael Jordan was every was there any topic that he wasn't going to discuss? zero and My first meeting with him ever was was eight or nine months before we actually rolled cameras It was in September of 2017 and we didn't interview him with cameras until June of 2018 and During that interview I said that there's there's going to be some places that we're gonna have to go that may be difficult There's questions I have to ask you that are going may be difficult to hear I have to ask them but you can choose how you want to answer them But I had to ask them in order to be responsible in what I do and he told me then you can ask me Anything you want I'll be truthful and I think and I know that that that continued the second interview We did the one where he's in the maroon shirt I had emailed Not specific questions just topics because these a lot of this stuff happened 20 30 exactly so I was trying to remind him You know We're gonna talk about when you guys beat the sons and six or specific things like that just to jog his memory statistically and When he showed up on the set that day. He said um, I saw your email. I didn't even read it You can ask me anything you want. I'll be honest. I honestly think that He doesn't open himself up to sit down and do in-depth interviews like this that often But I honestly think that he if you asked him a question. He would answer it. He was you'll see in episode 8 His beef with with si about that bag at Michael baseball cover Was less that they put that Unflattering picture of him on the cover and more that they didn't ask him about it They didn't ask his side of the story I think he's eager to talk about these things because in his mind He doesn't regret anything and anything that is regrettable. It was a lesson learned So he's eager to talk about that he very much lives in the present doesn't think too much about the past or the future He lives right now. So when he's making these decisions, he's okay with those decisions So when you ask him about stuff in the past, he'll give you an honest answer I think he just hasn't been asked a lot of these questions, but it's not that he's been avoiding them What about The soundtrack that's been getting rave reviews I mean are you the guy that says we're gonna play this song here? Or is your team somebody on your team says no this soundtrack or this song would go good for this scene? I Take it Extremely seriously the music with with any project that I do it always starts with that whether we're gonna use the music in The movie or not. I start out by just walking around my neighborhood going to the gym going on bike rides Whatever it is listening to music that kind of will get me thinking about how the movie is gonna look and feel and with this one Specifically we're talking about the 80s and 90s Not only is that the sports culture that I grew up in it's the music culture as well And I was a massive hip-hop fan from the time that I was seven or eight years old That's when run DMC and Curtis blow and nucleus and all these really early, you know popular hip-hop acts were coming out My brothers and I just ate that stuff up So it was a field day man to go back and try to match Music of the era and we tried to be as era specific or year specific when we could as possible So I would think back just because I listened to it so much like alright in 1992 What would I have been listening to probably black sheet and if 1992 was the year that they repeated How about putting the choices yours underneath the shrug or underneath the highlight reel of 92 rock him is I think You know top five rapper of all time certainly He's my favorite rapper of all time and I think that he changed hip-hop culture the way that Michael changed NBA culture So I knew always that we wanted to use a rock him song for Michael's rookie montage to try and match up those eras So it's not that Michael was hip-hop because I don't think he'd even listen to that a lot But I think the culture was and it's just kind of a fun wink and a nod to people who appreciate that culture That we're trying to match these things up So it's been probably the most gratifying part of the process for me is how people are responding to the music because I didn't expect That it would resonate with people the way that it has And one final one before we let you go. You're a Boston guy. You grew up right in the shadow of Boston College You attended Williams which we didn't know that Williams was such a big NBA place because Duncan Robinson Who's now with the Miami Heat started at Williams and the transfer to Michigan But is in the NBA you did the last dance, but there's another famous Williams graduate that of course George Steinberg How much of a presence on the Williams campus is George Steinberg? I never saw him on campus He was incredibly nice to the I played baseball there and he was incredibly nice to the baseball program So we you know, we're a tiny D3 school. It's it's it's a step up from a high school all-star game, right? But we he gave us the usage we played our home games We had a two-week trip through Florida every year for spring training Spring break for us, but it was half our season. We had to play down there because of the weather And he gave us the use of the Tampa facilities. So this is while the Yankees are in spring training I mean, we had our guys taking batting practice next to Jeter and this was in 96 like Jeter was a young kid just coming up Um, all the Yankees were there using all the same facilities all the bull pens in that They had that there's a huge complex in Tampa. He let us play our home games there So these teams and the teams were playing us were thrilled about it too because they could come in and take BP next to these guys he we were staying in really bad motels. We had no money and We're funding our own trips. This is not like a big-time program when we got to Tampa George Steinbrenner let us stay in his hotel We were staying four guys to a room in these little motels and then all of a sudden was two guys to a room In the Hilton or the Hyatt or whatever he owns down there He let us come to the complex. He gave us a tour He told us to go into the the gift shop and take whatever we wanted. He could not have been a nicer guy So I know that he's vilified in Boston and I grew up thinking of him as this villain figure down in New York But I will forever have a completely different view of George Steinbrenner after my experience with him There it is Jason. Harry admitted. He's a closet Yankee fan. It was good the interview on that Jason We really appreciate to keep up the good work. Congratulations. The project is incredible. Everyone is enjoying it And we'll catch up with you soon. Okay. Thanks so much. All right, that's going to do it for yes We're here. We'll see you again