New York magazine's Will Leitch has called ESPN's new documentary "O.J.: Made in America" a masterpiece, and he thinks it'll be "the only thing this country's going to be talking about" as it airs next week. The Nose has already seen it, and it's all we're going to be talking about this week.
The film, directed by Ezra Edelman and produced by Edelman and Caroline Waterlow, is seven hours and 45 minutes long. It will air in two-hour installments over five nights (a lot of TV includes commercials, it turns out, so the math there makes sense; I promise). Three of this Nose's panelists watched it in a single sitting. It's that kind of television.
Whatever you imagine* when you hear that there's a 465-minute documentary about O.J. Simpson, it's that, and it's everything else too. It's about the trial. It's about the crime. It's about race. It's about domestic violence. It's about celebrity. It's about Los Angeles. It's about the media. It's about television. It's about sports. It's about the 1990s. Mostly: It's about America.
"O.J.: Made in America" goes deep on all of that, and probably more. This hour, The Nose goes deep on "O.J.: Made in America."
*Unless you imagine Kato Kaelin. It's almost entirely not about Kato Kaelin. Sorry.
GUESTS:
- Will Leitch - Contributing editor at New York magazine, senior writer at Sports on Earth, founder of Deadspin, and a whole bunch of other things
- Irene Papoulis - Lecturer at the Allan K. Smith Center for Writing and Rhetoric at Trinity College
- Kate Rushin - Poet, writer, educator
- Caroline Waterlow - Emmy-winning documentarian and a producer of O.J.: Made in America
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Colin McEnroe, Lydia Brown, Greg Hill, Leah Myers, and Chion Wolf contributed to this show.
