A few days ago, I had the opportunity to talk to filmmaker Brian Schodorf, who produced a soon-to-be released documentary on the life of former Sacramento Kings great Wayman Tisdale. Here a few excerpts from the Q&A, which you can read in its entirety over at SLAM.
Schodorf on what compelled him to make a documentary on Tisdale:
I get that question a lot. And it’s interesting because I really didn’t know that much about him. I really wasn’t a jazz guy. I didn’t follow his career. I remember he had been in the NBA and he was a pretty good player. But when I saw a little bit about what he was going through with his leg, I just felt like that’s a story I had to tell, and I just had to do it.
On telling Tisdale’s story:
I think in the history of my life – I’m not going to say in the history of the world – but in the history my life, I’ve never came across a more flawless person with the coolest life. I mean the guy lived 44 years. He had nine records – many of them went number one. He played 12 years in the NBA. He was a three time All-American. He was (an Olympic) gold medalist. And there wasn’t any one person who had anything bad to say about him. Going from Michael Jordan to Toby Keith – and that’s a pretty tough crowd to impress [laughs].
On Michael Jordan’s participation:
For Michael Jordan, the PR person with the Bobcats told me he gets 300 interview requests a day. Not a week. Not a month. A day. [laughs] That just shows you how rarely he does interviews. But once he saw Wayman Tisdale’s name, he said “I’ll do that one”.
The documentary is set to debut nationally on NBA TV next month on November 10th. But the Kings are having a special screening of the film this Wednesday night at 7 pm at Power Balance Pavilion. You can get tickets for the event here.
Meanwhile, I encourage you to read this thoroughly written piece on Tisdale over at Kings.com by our friend Alex Kramers.
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