Sports Documentary Quotes

I agreed to film after my rookie year in Golden State. I was more used to cameras and felt that my journey to the NBA was a story worth sharing. Little did we know how much bigger the platform and documentary would become after Linsanity.

Let's say I go completely broke, I'm about to star in the next '30 for 30: Broke.'

It was January 1983 when we launched 'Frontline' on PBS with 'An Unauthorized History of the NFL.' The program was anchored by Jessica Savitch. We wanted to get attention, and we got it.

I remember when we were making 'They Call It Pro Football,' which was our 'Citizen Kane.' The first line is 'It starts with a whistle and ends with a gun.'

I had a DVD and I think it was called 'Newcastle United: Flying High' in 2002 or 2003. I used to watch that all of the time, I think it was the year Shearer scored that famous volley against Everton.

I did an HBO movie called Undefeated that I directed. It was too hard.

NFL Films has had one continuous, creative vision for 47 years. These are timeless things; timeless stories that we capture just like people go back and read Greek mythology.

I would love to do a biopic on a bowler like Zaheer Khan or Harbhajan Singh. I would love to see their struggles on screen.

I knew nothing about football, then someone showed me a film of Petit and I realised how interesting the game could be. He is divine. When I met him I could barely speak, he was so gorgeous. Women will love that show.

I never thought of what I was doing as a way to sell the NFL. I was making movies about a sport that I loved, about players and coaches that I respected. I wanted to convey my love of the game through film. And most artists convey their love through art. And my art and my love was expressed through film.

It is much easier to do a film about something that the audience readily knows about - say, cricket. It is much more difficult to write a film based on golf.

Doing a sport film is not easy.

I would love to do a sports biopic. I love sports and I think it would be amazing to be a part of a true story and play an athlete.

On its surface, the HBO documentary series 'Hard Knocks,' about the New York Jets' training camp, resembles another HBO series, 'The Sopranos.' Both star the stout patriarch of a New Jersey 'family' preoccupied with food, intimidation, and florid profanity.

I really want to do a sports biopic.

I wanted to make a film that wouldn't just appeal to Formula One fans. That's what the great sports documentaries do - 'Hoop Dreams,' 'When We Were Kings' - they're human dramas first, sport second, if at all.

Anytime the premiere sports channel calls you and says they want to do a movie about you, you're going to say, 'Yes.'

'Hard Knocks' seems to have done for the self-serious NFL what the witch did for Rapunzel: persuaded it, somehow, to let its hair down.

It was no accident that I made 'Hoop Dreams' because it concerned a sport that I loved and hoped would be my dream, however far-fetched that turned out to be. Because of the success of that film, Hollywood pigeonholed me as a sports biopic guy, which led to 'Prefontaine' and two cable sports films.

That [film What's My Line] was very useful to me because it had Branch Rickey in a social situation. Every other bit of film [42] that I had was him making a speech.

Man, if they played the commercials for 'Murderball' as much as they do for 'Hustle & Flow,' 'Murderball' would blow up!