[7.0/10] There’s an old chestnut about the importance of objectivity in documentary filmmaking. Documentary filmmakers, the sentiment goes, should be at a remove from their subjects and their movies so as not to insert themselves into the proceedings, because that way leads to madness. (Recall the hue and cry when Werner Herzog comforted a grieving woman in Grizzly Man.) I’ve always thought this was something of a crock. Objectivity is fine as an aspiration, but almost any filmmaker is going to reveal their sentiments on the proceedings in what they choose to focus on, in the talking heads they cut or include, in way they decide to tell the story. Why hide that under a veil of “objectivity”?
But “This Was the XFL” is forcing me to rethink this stance, at least at the margins. Having Charlie Ebersol, the son of one of the creators of the league and the surrogate nephew of the other, direct this film means there’s a lack of exactingness to it. Sure, Charlie is willing to look at places where the league failed, but he never gives Vince or Dick much less than a lionizing gaze. That’s understandable. I don’t think I could do a even-handed, incisive documentary about my dad, but it begs the question – then why have him do it at all?
The answer may be a very practical one – that Dick Ebersol and Vince McMahon were less than likely to talk about one of their greatest failures without the incentive and reassurance that their part in it would be treated with the care and consideration of someone who loves and admires them apart from this debacle of a professional football league. Getting to hear Ebersol and McMahon talk about the XFL in their own words, reflecting back on where they went wrong, justifies the gentle and very conflict-of-interest approach ESPN and Charlie Ebersol took.
But as someone who remembers the XFL, and who watched enough of WWF/E in his time to develop strong opinions about Vince McMahon behind the scenes, something immediately rings false about the hushed tones in which the film speaks about McMahon and Ebersol. “This Was the XFL” treats the two of them as a pair of visionaries who dreamed a little too big and had some bad luck, rather than simply two guys who messed something up this badly.
Maybe I’m unfairly slighting Charlie Ebersol for making the film he wanted to make rather than the one I wanted to see. I would kill for a documentary on Vince McMahon’s failed business ventures outside of wrestling, of which the XFL is only one stone along the path, his constant attempts to be accepted by the “respectable” world of business and shed the carny origins of his fortunes, and the ways in which he cannot help but inject the same approach he takes in the wrestling world to everything else he does, whether it’s called for or not. This documentary barely dips into that notion, instead choosing to focus on the friendship between two titans.
There’s some juice there. Though clearly staged, the meal shared between the two of them at the end of the piece is mildly affecting, and Vince seems genuinely touched and a smidge vulnerable in the setting, a look that folks who follow wrestling aren’t used to seeing from him. While the documentary charts McMahon’s and Ebersol’s successes and portrays the XFL as a mere bump in the road along the way to greater fame and fortune, glossing over many more stumbles in the process, it does make good on its premise and focus – that this abortive enterprise was the product of two people who were friends inside and outside of the boardroom, and that’s what made the XFL’s failure both harder and easier for them.
The film is less an autopsy than a chronicle. It charts the league’s meager successes – the effective marketing, the initial ratings booms – and its quick decline, but it’s lighter on reasons. And yet, it can’t help tell a familiar story, one of tremendous hype and overwhelming promises with little in the way of substance behind it.
The core of the XFL’s product – the football itself – was substandard. It’s easy to laugh and cringe at the sleazy ways McMahon and company attempted to goose the proceedings, but that’s essentially what it comes down to. The promise of “real football” and extreme play on the gridiron built up enough hype to rock a few Nielsen boxes, but when people tuned in, they saw a meager version of the game they knew. The XFL, and its founders, hoped that what they lacked in quality relative to the NFL, they could make up for in spice, and the truth was that people quickly saw through the flash and weren’t interested in what was behind it.
The documentary does point to other culprits. There’s certainly an impression that Vince and Dick rushed into this, that with more lead time to figure out the rules, assemble the players and teams, and establish exactly what this league was going to be before promoting it, they might have made good on the promises of those successful promos. There’s also the sense that when the league started failing, Vince got desperate, giving the XFL more and more the character of the WWF whether it fit the game or not, and scraping the bottom of the barrel when that clearly wasn’t working. In-game blackouts and blimp crashes certainly didn’t help, but there’s still the sense that people saw what was being offered, quickly said “no thanks” and everything after just looked like running out the clock.
And yet, Charlie Ebersol tries to paint the XFL as a noble failure, championing its legacy as the right idea at the wrong time. Elements from it like the skycam have been incorporated into the NFL (though far more sparingly than the XFL used it) and its football-as-entertainment-first mentality has slowly seeped into the rest of the sporting world (though much of the XFL’s “innovations” were just doubling down on things the NFL in particular was already trending toward). It’s a nice story, it just doesn’t fit with the facts.
But in the hands of the offspring of one of the XFL’s founders, the documentary can do the one thing the XFL managed to succeed at – promotion. It manages to gloss over Vince’s missteps inside and outside the world of wrestling, to paper over Dick’s SNL speedbumps, and present the XFL as the brainchild of two geniuses who couldn’t quite get it right. It’s not a narrative I buy, and the person pitching it is clearly not a fair dealer, but it’s almost admirable, even sweet, how someone can examine the worst failure of their father and would-be uncle, and still put them in the best light.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-02-07T18:04:25Z
[7.0/10] There’s an old chestnut about the importance of objectivity in documentary filmmaking. Documentary filmmakers, the sentiment goes, should be at a remove from their subjects and their movies so as not to insert themselves into the proceedings, because that way leads to madness. (Recall the hue and cry when Werner Herzog comforted a grieving woman in Grizzly Man.) I’ve always thought this was something of a crock. Objectivity is fine as an aspiration, but almost any filmmaker is going to reveal their sentiments on the proceedings in what they choose to focus on, in the talking heads they cut or include, in way they decide to tell the story. Why hide that under a veil of “objectivity”?
But “This Was the XFL” is forcing me to rethink this stance, at least at the margins. Having Charlie Ebersol, the son of one of the creators of the league and the surrogate nephew of the other, direct this film means there’s a lack of exactingness to it. Sure, Charlie is willing to look at places where the league failed, but he never gives Vince or Dick much less than a lionizing gaze. That’s understandable. I don’t think I could do a even-handed, incisive documentary about my dad, but it begs the question – then why have him do it at all?
The answer may be a very practical one – that Dick Ebersol and Vince McMahon were less than likely to talk about one of their greatest failures without the incentive and reassurance that their part in it would be treated with the care and consideration of someone who loves and admires them apart from this debacle of a professional football league. Getting to hear Ebersol and McMahon talk about the XFL in their own words, reflecting back on where they went wrong, justifies the gentle and very conflict-of-interest approach ESPN and Charlie Ebersol took.
But as someone who remembers the XFL, and who watched enough of WWF/E in his time to develop strong opinions about Vince McMahon behind the scenes, something immediately rings false about the hushed tones in which the film speaks about McMahon and Ebersol. “This Was the XFL” treats the two of them as a pair of visionaries who dreamed a little too big and had some bad luck, rather than simply two guys who messed something up this badly.
Maybe I’m unfairly slighting Charlie Ebersol for making the film he wanted to make rather than the one I wanted to see. I would kill for a documentary on Vince McMahon’s failed business ventures outside of wrestling, of which the XFL is only one stone along the path, his constant attempts to be accepted by the “respectable” world of business and shed the carny origins of his fortunes, and the ways in which he cannot help but inject the same approach he takes in the wrestling world to everything else he does, whether it’s called for or not. This documentary barely dips into that notion, instead choosing to focus on the friendship between two titans.
There’s some juice there. Though clearly staged, the meal shared between the two of them at the end of the piece is mildly affecting, and Vince seems genuinely touched and a smidge vulnerable in the setting, a look that folks who follow wrestling aren’t used to seeing from him. While the documentary charts McMahon’s and Ebersol’s successes and portrays the XFL as a mere bump in the road along the way to greater fame and fortune, glossing over many more stumbles in the process, it does make good on its premise and focus – that this abortive enterprise was the product of two people who were friends inside and outside of the boardroom, and that’s what made the XFL’s failure both harder and easier for them.
The film is less an autopsy than a chronicle. It charts the league’s meager successes – the effective marketing, the initial ratings booms – and its quick decline, but it’s lighter on reasons. And yet, it can’t help tell a familiar story, one of tremendous hype and overwhelming promises with little in the way of substance behind it.
The core of the XFL’s product – the football itself – was substandard. It’s easy to laugh and cringe at the sleazy ways McMahon and company attempted to goose the proceedings, but that’s essentially what it comes down to. The promise of “real football” and extreme play on the gridiron built up enough hype to rock a few Nielsen boxes, but when people tuned in, they saw a meager version of the game they knew. The XFL, and its founders, hoped that what they lacked in quality relative to the NFL, they could make up for in spice, and the truth was that people quickly saw through the flash and weren’t interested in what was behind it.
The documentary does point to other culprits. There’s certainly an impression that Vince and Dick rushed into this, that with more lead time to figure out the rules, assemble the players and teams, and establish exactly what this league was going to be before promoting it, they might have made good on the promises of those successful promos. There’s also the sense that when the league started failing, Vince got desperate, giving the XFL more and more the character of the WWF whether it fit the game or not, and scraping the bottom of the barrel when that clearly wasn’t working. In-game blackouts and blimp crashes certainly didn’t help, but there’s still the sense that people saw what was being offered, quickly said “no thanks” and everything after just looked like running out the clock.
And yet, Charlie Ebersol tries to paint the XFL as a noble failure, championing its legacy as the right idea at the wrong time. Elements from it like the skycam have been incorporated into the NFL (though far more sparingly than the XFL used it) and its football-as-entertainment-first mentality has slowly seeped into the rest of the sporting world (though much of the XFL’s “innovations” were just doubling down on things the NFL in particular was already trending toward). It’s a nice story, it just doesn’t fit with the facts.
But in the hands of the offspring of one of the XFL’s founders, the documentary can do the one thing the XFL managed to succeed at – promotion. It manages to gloss over Vince’s missteps inside and outside the world of wrestling, to paper over Dick’s SNL speedbumps, and present the XFL as the brainchild of two geniuses who couldn’t quite get it right. It’s not a narrative I buy, and the person pitching it is clearly not a fair dealer, but it’s almost admirable, even sweet, how someone can examine the worst failure of their father and would-be uncle, and still put them in the best light.