Five Questions for Winning Time Director Dan Klores

Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks (which airs on ESPN on March 14th at 9 p.m.) is the latest offering from Dan Klores, an award-winning director who makes sports documentaries that get to the core of his subjects as people not stars. That is to say you don't have to be a basketball fan to enjoy Winning Time (but it certainly helps). This classic New York story chronicles the epic rivalry that arose between the New York Knicks and Reggie Miller, playing for the Indiana Pacers. 

Klores came to his calling late in life. After starting one of the city's premier PR companies, he decided to make a documentary about his old neighborhood, Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, set around a group of his friends who played basketball together by day and got into trouble at night. The Boys of Second Street Park (full disclosure: some of my friends are featured in the docu, but I didn't know Klores back then), already bore the markings of his signature style; archival footage cut with new interviews presented in a straight-forward cinematic style that put the story front-and-center. He's probably best-known for Crazy Love, his meditation on a destructive love affair that won a 2008 Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary, but the world of sports has been his greatest preoccupation, from boxing (Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story) to baseball (Viva Baseball) to basketball (Black Magic).

Here he discusses his work, what holds it together and other insights he's had about people and sports over the years. 

Is there a thread that connects the movies you have directed.    
On a subconscious level, the commonality of my films centers around the outsider looking in: a bunch of lower middle class Jewish kids in Brooklyn emotionally trapped and afraid to break out of their small world thus the escape into drugs; the gay immigrant prizefighter, hiding from the outside world; the Spanish speaking ballplayer arriving in a new country unaccustomed to the language, people and skin color of his 'bosses'; the deeply disturbed and scared boy and girls from the Bronx who were too afraid to leave one another no matter how violent the relationship; and the black student, primarily from the South, finding a haven in the university and basketball court in a brutally racist society... Reggie too was relegated to a second class role by the adoration and intimidation that his older sister Cheryl represented.  Vulnerability is the thread.

Having talked to everyone about Reggie Miller, what do you think made him so special? Reggie was special because he grew up in a highly competitive environment, with a father who believed in military type discipline.  His sister Cheryl, one year older, was the greatest woman's basketball player in history.  His need to be better than her after years of living in a secondary role provided his drive, and that was remarkable.  He combined the God-given gifts of athleticism with a psychological yearning to stand out on his own... when you then add a work ethic of a champion you get a special athlete and very, very focused person.    

Of the current crop of sports superstars, which stories fascinate you?    
That's a tough question.  Maybe Oliver Perez of the Mets.  There is something so off with him that makes him interesting...s o much talent yet a basket case, if you will.  And A-Rod, the child prodigy who lives in his own secluded world of self absorption -- he's a "Bubble Boy."  Is it possible he can ever leave the world of the void, or is the damage so great that his vanity is only matched by his lack of curiosity?   

With steroids, guns and gambling grabbing the sports headlines, has the idea of the athlete as role model become passé? Has the era of team sports peaked out in favor of individual sports like skate and snowboarding, biking, etc.?
I don't think the era of team sports has peaked out -- this is, after all America, and the arena is Church-like.  It's no accident that pro football is on Sunday... but, selfishness stems from hope, and young athletes today are told by their parents they'll get into the NBA, a Division I college, an elite crooked high school specializing in "the game" first, second and third, and to do that it is all about themselves -- score more, win less.  We only read about the role of "money" when it comes to the devaluation of the games/sports -- no, these parents invest all their time hoping, training, hyping, scouting for their kids so they and the child will escape.  The result: selfishness, more A-Rods with a lot less talent.  It used to be that kids who played together created their own pecking order.  Now the moronic parents do, and it's all perpetuated by flesh peddler AAU directors and officials.    

How does the head of a prestigious public relations company wind up a documentarian? And what did you learn from doing public relations that helped you in filmmaking?    
I haven't been involved in my old firm for many years.  They do a great job without me.  I had written books and magazine articles before I started that business out of the desperation of being broke -- three dollars to my name in 1980.  I never, ever felt as if I were in PR or marketing, I felt that I was an editor who could create and shape any story.  That's why we hit it big: I'm a storyteller, and the documentary is a form of expression.