e Lee Do entary an Encore Performance by Bryant (short Spurs reference)

**lefty** · 04-21-2009

e Lee Do entary an Encore Performance by Bryant

When e Lee watched the 17 cameras fixed on every movement of the French soccer star Zinédine Zidane in the 2006 film “Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait,” he thought to himself: This approach would work even better for a basketball player. But he needed the right one

Michael Appleton for The New York Times
e Lee said Kobe Bryant did the voice-over for a new do entary the night he scored 61 against the Knicks.

None of Lee’s beloved Knicks merited game-in-the-life treatment, but Kobe Bryant did. Lee first persuaded Bryant, to whom he gave a DVD of “Zidane.” Then he got approvals from the N.B.A., the Lakers and Coach Phil Jackson.
“Phil gives me a lot of love,” Lee said Monday during an interview in his office at New York University, where he is artistic director of the graduate film program. “He plays it down, but the Knicks are still his team.”
On April 13, 2008, when the Lakers played San Antonio at Staples Center, 30 cameras, 12 of them ABC’s and 18 of them Lee’s, followed Bryant from myriad angles in the next-to-last game of his M.V.P season for “Kobe Doin’ Work.” The 90-minute do entary will be shown Saturday at the Tribeca/ESPN Sports Festival and make its television debut on ESPN on May 16.
“We’ve all seen basketball games on TV,” Lee said. “But not with this kind of access, sound and commentary from the player. And if you don’t have my seats or Jack’s seats, you don’t hear what we hear.” He said, with a laugh, that he purposely left Jack Nicholson out of any shots.
Bryant proves to be an ideal subject, and it never matters that he scored only 20 points in the Lakers’ blowout win or that he sat out the fourth quarter. “We had what we had,” Lee said.
Bryant might have been playing to the cameras, but Lee insisted that Bryant quickly forgot he was being tracked by an arsenal of lenses. Either way, the film, with music by Bruce Hornsby, shows Bryant as extremely likable and in a joyful state of motion. He directs the team, calls plays, drives to the hoop, talks loquaciously to his teammates on the court and on the bench, speaks Italian to his Slovene teammate, Sasha Vujacic, teases the Spurs’ Kurt Thomas (“You going to play ’til you’re 50?”) and diagrams a play during a timeout on a white grease board. “When I saw him do that, I said, ‘Oh, man!’ “ said Lee, who manned the camera behind the bench.
Because the film is only about Bryant, plays aren’t always shown to their conclusion if he isn’t involved. When he is on the bench, reaction shots head directly to him. The other action is, at best, supporting material. It is not a biography.
Douglas Gordon co-directed the “Zidane” film with Philippe Parreno, and they chose Zidane as the subject because they are enormous soccer fans. Gordon said by telephone that their intention was to create something between portraiture and a do entary, with their relentless focus on one player. “We wanted it to seem as if the viewers were behind the eyes of Zidane,” he said. “That was our existential conceit: you are Zidane.”
A crucial element in Lee’s film is Bryant’s voice-over (“Zidane” had occasional sub les indicating his thoughts). Bryant narrates with a little ego but generosity to teammates and rivals.
He shows why plays fall apart and is self-critical. When he misses on an overly fancy reverse, he says, “That’s doing too much; a dumb play by me.”
He reflects on being guarded by Bruce Bowen, who knows his every offensive move.
After hitting a bank shot, he says he stole it from its master prac ioner, the Spurs’ Tim Duncan. He explains Jackson’s triangle offense as clearly as I’ve ever heard it.
Watching himself during a timeout, he says, “I didn’t know I talked that damn much.”
And after seeing himself interviewed by ABC’s Michele Tafoya at halftime, he said, “You try to catch your breath as best as you can, and I sound like a complete idiot.”
Lee said he was not surprised by the depth of Bryant’s insights. “If I was a high school or college coach, I’d show this,” he said. A smile then came over his face.
“D’Antoni should play this for the Knicks,” he said.
The voice-over was done on Feb. 2 as Bryant looked at the final edit of the film shortly after scoring 61 points against the Knicks. He left Madison Square Garden, arrived at Sound One at the Brill Building on Broadway at about 10:30 p.m., and recorded it with verve over two hours.
“He was on such a high from the game,” Lee said.
Lee was turned down by LeBron James in his attempt to give him the same treatment as Bryant; James is looking toward the fall theatrical release of “More Than a Game,” a do entary about him and his Akron high school teammates. Meanwhile, Lee has been asked by the N.B.A. to make a do entary from more than 500 hours of film that it shot of Michael Jordan during the 1997-98 season, Jordan’s last as a player.
“Mike and I went to a game together last week,” said Lee, who memorably teamed with Jordan on a series of Nike ads. “He’s ready.”

**SA210** · 04-21-2009

Great, is this a game where Pop let Kobe go crazy cuz he didn't use Bowen on him?

**slayermin** · 04-22-2009

Man, I wish Tim would let e do something like this about him.

Kobe is right, he is a jabber jaws. From the clip I saw, Kobe is talking non-stop during the halftime break.

Also, they were plotting on slowing Tony down by knocking him to the floor in the 2nd half of that game.