This bonus episode of the Patriots Dynasty Doc Recap features exclusive interviews with executive producer/author Jeff Benedict and executive producer/director Matthew Hamachek of The Dynasty. Patriots.com's Matt Smith, Paul Perillo and Fred Kirsch discuss fan reactions and their personal reactions to the show plus a behind the scenes perspective about the production of the documentary. The 10-part documentary event, ‘The Dynasty: New England Patriots’ is streaming now, exclusively on Apple TV Plus.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Some of the content in this podcast may not be
suitable for all audiences.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
All right, welcome to the Ultimate Dynasty wrap Up Show,
as we're here to wrap up the Dynasty documentary. The
Dynasty Documentary series is streaming on Apple TV, and we
couldn't be more pleased to have joining us the executive
producer and the author of the book The Dynasty, Jeff
Benedict and the director of the series, Matt Hammachik Matt Smith,
(00:29):
along with Paul Brow and Fred Kirshkuis.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Thank you so much. You guys are on tour.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
You know, everybody's taking a crack at you guys, and
we just wanted to have a discussion about can you
believe this project has come to light, has been aired,
has been viewed, You've got to the finish line. Is
that a bit of a relief maybe that you've got there?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I thought you were going to say, And we just
wanted to have a crack at you two yeah.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, We'll see it
might be a crack.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
There might be a crack here there. Oh.
Speaker 6 (00:57):
It feels good to be to be at this stage
of the project because it seems like a really long
time ago when we started. I was flipping through some
photographs on my phone yesterday. I was looking for something
completely unrelated to this, and I actually came across a
picture of you and Matt and myself and Justin Wilkes,
(01:19):
who was the executive producer from Imagine.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
And it was like when we first met here in
the archives the very first time.
Speaker 6 (01:27):
And you know, when you look at the dates on
those pictures, it's a reminder of how long this project
has been going on.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Jeff, did you For those who are watching and listening,
let's just kind of recap a little bit you wrote
the book. Was it your intention when you wrote this
book A La Tiger, there's going to be a documentary.
There's going to be a series behind this, is your hope.
Speaker 7 (01:49):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 6 (01:50):
And I talked about it or broach the subject even
before I started writing the book. So I had spent
about a year with the team, and i'd met you
by then, and I think i'd even met you Fred,
But before I started putting pen to paper, you know,
I was thinking about the potential for other ways that
(02:12):
the story could be telled after the book was published,
and so It was an early consideration. It's something that
I raised with the team and with the organization. And
then as soon as I turned the narrative in, which
was right after Tom went to see Robert to tell
him that he had decided to leave and they made
the phone call to Bill and to Jonathan, I wrote
(02:35):
that last scene like within a few days of that
actually happening, and then I was done. Because I was
actually done, kind of like Matt being done with the
film until we're kind of waiting for the last thing
that he would put in. I was in the same
situation with the book. I had everything done except the ending,
and then that happened. And as soon as that happened,
(02:55):
I turned it in. And then there's like six or
seven months before the book's on sale, and I immediate
pivoted to starting on the steps to be taken to
turn it into a docu saries.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
You know we're going to get into, you know, the details.
But something you just said made me think, you know,
you had done everything except the ending. If the Patriots
had had an amazing season in twenty three, gone to
the playoffs or even better, would Apple have been willing
to hold off or would they have come out at
the same time.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Anyway, I think that well, look, if they had, like,
let's say, I think it would have been up to
me to say, Okay, I think what we should do
is we should take the ten that we've already had,
because you know, we basically were done by maybe even
midway through the season or something like that. They had
been going on a Super Bowl run and they got
(03:47):
there or something happened that was just extraordinarily. Maybe we
could have gone and said, okay, Apple, can you give
us a little bit more money, we want to do
episode eleven or something like that. So that that's the
kind of that's the way the conversation would have happened.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
And so did you hear the conspiracy theorists oh the
time it's coming out?
Speaker 7 (04:03):
Oh yeah, right, you know it's.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
So the one thing that we did know for a
very long time was that it was basically this question
of Apple came to me and they said, how long
do you think you're going to need to make something
like this? And if I had had my true drothers,
I probably would have said I need three and a
half four years. But that's not the way TV works.
They want it right as soon as possible. Right. So,
so what we came to an agreement on was that
(04:27):
basically the week after the Super Bowl in twenty twenty
four gave us two and a half years. That was
more or less enough time to go make this thing.
And that's the date that we had locked in stone.
And the reason for that was, just like myself and
every other football fan out there, the Super Bowl happens,
you start to go through football withdrawal, and so if
you know, it's like, well, let's give people the greatest
(04:49):
football story of all time, and that's it was locked
in stone for two and a half years. Basically that
was going to happen that way. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
So, Matt As, you're from New York, correct.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
I I live in New York. I'm from DC.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Okay, so you're not a Patriots fan, you're not a
New Englander and everything like that. As you experience the
aftermath and the and everybody indulging in this, have you
noticed a distinctive flavor between the reaction in the six
state region and the entire rest of the country.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
Yes, does that surprise you?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
It does surprise me, because I this was all kind
of new to me, right, I didn't understand anything when
I first started making this thing right. And so the
good part about that is that you get to talk
to the seventy plus players and coaches and front office
exact the rivals and everything. And these are a lot
of these questions like why did you decide to go
(05:41):
with Drew Blood's or Tom Brady over Drew Blood. So
are questions that these guys have been asked over and
over and over again, and they sort of have their answers.
But I think it helps when somebody who genuinely doesn't
know the answer to these questions and is actually curious
asked them of these things, because it elicits new answers
because you say, I think a lot of times things
like that, history has proven them to be the greatest
(06:02):
coaching decisions in the history of the NFL. Right, they
made the obvious choice because history has proven it right.
At the time, it wasn't like that. And that was
always the thing is, I don't know the answers to
these questions. I want to know why when every when
all the archive I'm watching is saying that this was
a horrible decision, Why did you think it was right then?
And what was it like to be in the room
at that point in time, So I didn't know any
(06:23):
of this stuff, and I have to sit back and
listen and just ask follow up questions and just and
here and kind of get out of the way and
let these people talk. So when this thing came out,
I think, you know, I had an inkling of the
fact that I surely knew that in Boston the reaction
was going to be strong one way or the other, right,
because there's sort of this where at the stadium right now,
(06:44):
we're having this conversation, and within a fifty mile plus
radius of this place, there is a giant bubble, right,
and the reaction within this bubble has been a mixed bag,
but a very vocal mixed bag.
Speaker 7 (06:58):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Everybody's on Twitter and they're saying all these different things,
and it's like all these conspiracy theories and stuff, and
I'm just sitting there just like, guys, I have no
idea what any of these people were talking about. Now nationally,
it's just like, hey, they sort of viewed this thing
the way that I viewed this thing, which was this
wasn't my team. I don't have a dog in this fight.
(07:19):
We're just gonna sit back and we're gonna watch, and
it's sort of this balanced thing where some people can
look at episode five and see it the way that
I see it, which is it's a love letter to
Bill Belichick and what he did when his back was
up against the wall, and as he puts it, he
lost the greatest quarterback of all time for a season.
And that's what episode five is. Now. The people in
Boston who are convinced that somehow this is some kind
(07:40):
of a Bill Belichick hitchob, they just completely overlook all
of that, and all they pay attention to is one
line in the middle of the episode when Tom Brady
Senior says Bill, he's cold. He's calculating, if you're not
on the team, you're out of state, out of mind.
That's the only line they hear. And then the other
thirty something minutes of that thing just doesn't exist. And
this is the thing that I keep seeing, and I
think this is something that goes on in our society
and gen today, is if you believe something, you cannot
(08:03):
be talked off of that that belief no matter what,
and you will cherry pick every piece of evidence that
helps support the thing that you already believe, and and
and you'll accumulate all those things and you will ignore
everything else and that, and and then you have it's
it's it's there. It's proof. It's obvious.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
And before this even came out, there were people saying it's.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Going to it's going to without Selichick hit piece, not
just that Craft, not just that, not just that there
was some some some guy.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
It goes and he writes, Oh, it's it's going to be.
It's all this thing. It's going to be the Robert
Craft Craft puff piece that helps get him into the
Hall of Fame. So so this is what I thought
when I read that. I was like, all right, now,
let's imagine this conspiracy to be the case where there's
a puppet master who's sitting around and he's pulling the
strings to get into the Hall of Fame. Okay, so
what are the Hall of Fame decisions that you know
(08:51):
would have gone into what what are the Hall of
Fame moments that would help this case. Bill Belichick leaves
the Jets. Everybody in the league based thinks that Bill
Belichick can't coach to save his life, there's one person
who does. It's Robert Craft. He's not only does he
believe in it, but he's also willing to give up
a first round draft pick in order to get him.
Proves out as history has proven to be a Hall
(09:12):
of Fame choice, even you know, Mike Lombardi said that
it's a Hall of Hall of Fame decision. The next
thing would have been the twenty eleven CBA stuff. Right,
Robert Craft comes in, he talks to Jeff Saturday, you
know it, under very difficult personal circumstances, and they have this,
they come to an agreement, players and coaches. There's no lockout,
et cetera, et cetera. Then it would have been all
(09:34):
about all the deals and the TV you know, the
TV things, all the money he's made for the league.
None of these things are in the series, right, and then.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
They are in the book.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Yeah, they're not in the series. But let's let's go
back to then also in two thousand and one. So
we're talking about the greatest coaching decision in the history
of all time in the NFL right now. In the
middle of this, Robert Craft admits that he didn't think
it was it was unfair to Drew and that he
admits that he was on the other side of it.
(10:03):
In the time because of his personal connections to Drew.
Now again, if this was some puff piece, why would
he ever admit to something like that. So I'm sitting
here and I'm listening to all these guys say this stuff.
But I'm just like, guys, like, what are you talking about?
Just watch the thing? I think people outside of New
England who aren't part of the One thing.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
I did learn is don't have a side.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Don't have a side, haven't been covering this team, uh,
you know, all sorts of things. And there's these turf
battles that have been happening in New England for all
these years. Right, every journalist in this place, everybody, every journalist,
and this I didn't know this, and it's wild because
from an outside you're just like, this is just insane.
Every journalist everybody goes around, they say, oh, well so
and so he's he's he's a he's a Belichick guy, right,
(10:45):
and then oh this guy he's he's a craft guy
like you know, and he's this guy's a Tom guy
and all this kind of stuff. Yeah, but I didn't.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
I didn't.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I didn't understand. I didn't understand any of this. And
so I'm just sitting there. And so when this documentary
comes out within this little bubble that we're talking about,
it's not just a documentary that's made by a guy
who doesn't really care about, you know, any of this nonsense.
It's how does this fit into this larger, this fast
conspiracy of what side this is on? And all these
kind of things. And you know, I go back to
(11:14):
like Bill Bird was just on the Pat mcafew show
a couple of days ago, and he said, one of
the guys there is like a diehard New England fan,
and he's like, oh, I don't like it at all.
It should have been called The Evil Empire and it
should have been called The Dynasty. And then Billboard is like, yeah,
because some nerd who went to film school made the thing.
And I am that nerd who can care less about
all of this other nonsense that's going on. I just
(11:36):
had a simple task and here's what it was. I
interviewed Ernie Adams for the first time. It was the
first time I ever spoke to him. And one line
that's in episode ten, he says he says everybody at
the beginning of every year wants to win the Super Bowl,
but not everybody who's willing to do what it takes
to get there. And when he said those words to me,
(11:58):
in that moment, a light bulb went off of my head.
It's that this is the question that you're trying to ask,
what does it take to get there? And in a
somewhat cold way, the patriots and all the people I
talk to are really a conduit just to get to
the answer to that question. And every time you're telling
a movie, you're you know, look, you could just do
the timeline version of the movie, the first this happens,
(12:18):
and this happens, and this happens, and this happens, and
then this happens. Once you figure out what that question is,
it drives every decision you make. And that was the
only thing I had an interest in. And normally my
opinion is I really don't like doing, I don't like watching,
nor did I really have any interest in making a
ten part series about anything. Because the truth is, the
more time you spend trying, you know, doing ten episodes
(12:41):
as opposed to two or three, the further you have
to get away from just answering that central question because
there is other things that you naturally have to cover.
A little bit of I really like making Tiger because
this is two episode thing. It was two one and
a half hours that really allowed me to say sort
of be ruthless in the approach of if it isn't
answering this question, the question for Tiger, which to me
was this guy's a canvas that everybody wants to paint
(13:04):
something onto. If there isn't a moment in an interview
or an archive it isn't getting to that sort of thesis,
then I'm not touching it. And that's what d're of
everything with. The sort of what does it take to
get here? Is what drove of everything in this one.
And so you know, again I don't have a dog
in any of these fights that are going on, but
(13:24):
it's you know, on one hand, it's infuriating to see
because you're just like I just watch the thing and
enjoy it. You know, there's a lot of great stuff
in here.
Speaker 5 (13:31):
Well to the point of, like, you know, you found
that question that yeah question, how much though, did the
interviews drive you know, the direction of the documentary and
were you surprised by any of the answers in that
it changed how we were looking at absolute direction of
the documentary Tons.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
A great example of that was in episode six. So
we're interviewing Dion Branch and we're having this conversation about
the things that you would talk to Deon Branch about.
I'm in the chair, I'm talking to him, and it's like,
you know, we didn't know at the time that we
were going to not go into great detail about the
thirty eight and thirty nine Super Bowls. So I'm asking
about being an MVP and all these kinds of things.
(14:12):
We're talking about football stuff, and I get a text message.
Because I work off when I'm interviewing people, I have
a laptop in front of me that has an Internet connection,
so I can I can get feedback from producers, from Jeff,
from anybody who's in the room, saying hey, by the way,
you know, the person you're interviewing used a pronoun instead
of saying tom, right, so you need to just remind hey,
you could you could you say it one more time?
(14:32):
But just can you say tom so the people know
who you're talking about. Just things like that. Right in
the middle of the interview with Dion Branch, one of
the producers, Vin Deanton texts me and he goes by
the way I just found this article. He wasn't even
in the studio, he was away, it was someplace else.
And he said, I think Dian might have known Aaron.
(14:53):
So I see that, and I just turned Dean and
I say, hey, tell me about Aaron. And you know
how episode six starts out. It starts out there in
front of the green screen and everything right, and then
you cut to Dion Branch and he's sitting there and
there's this pause and he's thinking, and he's what what
is going on there is? He's thinking, you don't hear
me say it? But I just said that. I just said,
(15:14):
tell me about Aaron. And then he goes, he corrects me,
he goes, we used to call him Chico man. And
you just see that. And when I asked him that question,
I saw his eyes change and and he looked down
and he started to talk about how did you not
see that? How did you not see it?
Speaker 7 (15:30):
Right?
Speaker 4 (15:30):
And then a little emotional yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
But that's that's what was the most That's what was
the most shocking thing about that entire story and asking
people about that was I didn't know for sure that
we were ever going to do the Aaron Hernandez episode
that wasn't like a preconceived though right interesting, No, you
have no idea. But but what I will say is
(15:53):
this What made it worth doing to me was I
think that you know, Ernie talked about this idea of
we're getting first round talent at fourth round price. We
had heard some things, but these are minor things. These
are bar fights. This is you know, marijuana use like
you know whatever, big nothings. But there was risk, right,
(16:14):
So that started to get towards the question of what
does it take to get there? What are the risks
you take things like that?
Speaker 7 (16:18):
Right?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Of course, nobody had any idea that what was going
to happen was going to happen, so that's part one
of it. But the other thing that was so impressive
to me was how much everybody still cared deeply about
this guy. This wasn't just some somebody that came through
and it was all this bad stuff. It was people
love this guy and they still care about them, and
they're still haunted to this day. That they didn't see
(16:39):
these things. That was fascinating to me. And so once
I started to see that kind of stuff, like everything
in this series, it was I think my general philosophy
was the thing that's never happened before the Patriot story
is that you get all seventy plus of these people
in a room and you let and they get to
talk right.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
In and of itself. Yeah, a tremendous or complish.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
It was I want, I'm just gonna get out of
the way and I'm gonna let them tell. I'm gonna
ask questions and I'm gonna let them tell their stories,
and that's it. But in the Hernandez episode in particular,
it was this still this is still an open wound
in a lot of ways for a lot of these guys,
and in particular for that one. Let's take some care
and make sure we're not putting our thumb on the
scale in any way, shape or form. It's just get
(17:20):
out of the way and let these guys tell their stories.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
So that's fascinating as you hear that. And I want
to bring you into this because it's something you and
I talked about. One of the criticisms from the people
in this area as you're talking about is she say
gloss over thirty eight and thirty nine. Yeah, yeah, your
intention going into this sort of a blank slate. But
it's in the book, Jeff's written about thirty eight and
thirty nine. Yeah, we're gonna cover thirty eight and thirty nine.
(17:43):
Oh boy, look what happened when I just mentioned Aaron Hernandez. Yeah,
And creatively that takes you to a different spot because
of the interviews that you're asking about, Like you're not
going into going episode six gotta be Aaron Hernandez and
I'm gonna you know.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
I had I had at one point in time, there
was Jeff saw the early versions of it. There were
episodes that were cut where the two thousand and two
season happens, they don't make the playoffs. What does that mean?
Why did that happen? I asked all the players what
happened after the first one? Right? And then you get
into two thousand and three, and then you get into
the Okay, lawyer Malloyne, Rodney's brought in, Lawyer's gone, We
(18:20):
get into the hole. There was the practice where Rodney
went after somebody and then like the whole team piles
on top of him, and everybody's fighting and Bill smiling
in the NFL films, but you know the whole thing, right,
then Tom Jackson says what he's going to say, and
he's like, well, and then they go to Buffalo and
then they lose by the exact same score that the
final game of the season they win by the exact
game score. All of it was cut. There was an
(18:41):
entire there was an entire the beginning of the episode
about like Teddy Bruski's stroke. It's not that we just
didn't think about it or we didn't ask the questions.
We made a creative choice, very consciously for every single
thing that was done. This is the story that we
want to tell that gets to this question of what
does it take now. Some people will come in and
they'll say, you know, Matt, this was this great moment
(19:01):
where Tom Jackson said this thing about Bill and then
the whole team had his back and they went out
and they and they did great, and like, you know,
all this kind of stuff. Well, that's true to me.
There was another version of that same kind of moment
where something happened and everybody had Bill's back, And to me,
the more interesting one was they become Goliath and the
(19:22):
entire league has their hooks out and their knives out
for the Patriots, so everybody in the league is doing it,
but they kept. The Patriots are the one who get caught,
you know, doing the taping and everything right, and Bill
is betrayed by his former mentee, am using Scott Yieldie's
words here and then and then this is when the
(19:43):
culture of the patriot the Patriot way, which I know,
you know, some people don't ever want to use that expression.
And Tom and billipoth said that. But this is when
everything that Bill has created here with Tom and with Robert,
and it's all going to be tested, right any other team,
if this happened to the Jets, the whole team would
have fallen apart. They might have gone one game the
entire season. And instead you have this moment where Teddy
(20:05):
Bruski comes into the locker room after that after a
game and says, how do we feel about being coached
by Bill Belichick? And then he goes, oh yeah, and
everybody has Bills back. Now, if I have to make
a choice between a one week story basically, which is
the lawyer Malloy leaving and Rodney and all that kind
of stuff, versus an entire season when the whole team
rallied around their coach at one of those lowest moments
(20:28):
and they go on the run of all runs, and
they are saying f you to everybody in their path.
And they're doing it because how dare you invalidate everything
we've done because of a signal? I'm quoting Teddy Bruwski there, right,
there's vengeance, there's anger, there's great stuff in that. So yeah,
when you start to hear those kind of things, you're like,
I'm sorry, but I'd rather be with that team than
(20:48):
the team that just replicated the exact you know, we
got there, we showed what made this team so special
in oh one, right, we heard it, and all those
players said, yeah, the other ones were great, but being
on the team that went from a non super Bowl
team to a super Bowl team, that was the one
that was the most important. And then, as we all know,
the poor guys that won the second three had to
(21:11):
spend their entire lives coming back for your alumni weekend
and hearing Willie McGinnis and Teddy Brusk you say, you
guys aren't part of the guys on anything until you
get the three right, right, So I'm just saying, you know,
then the next thing is, Okay, why do you have
to spend an entire episode on Matt Castle. Well, let's
see what the greatest coach of all time does when,
(21:32):
in his words, he loses the greatest quarterback of all time,
one of the greatest players of all time, his back's
up against the wall. What does he do? He has
an eleven and five season and he pulls off one
of the greatest coaching feeds of all time. And in
the midst of this, everybody's saying they're starting to wonder
about the greatness of Tom Brady. Right That's more interesting
(21:53):
to me because that's the question of what does it
take to get to that level? Right now, that might
not be an example of when they got to that level,
but that is part of what it takes to get there.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
And going back to what you said, you're coming at
it from a curiosity stand. Yeah, those of us are
here never worried that Tom.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Brady wasn't going to get his job back.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
But I can understand where somebody looking at it with
fresh eyes would think that. And I think you did
a very very deaf job of going back to Michigan
and started to build the mindset of Tom Brady of
you know, beginning with the Drew Henson and all these
other things that make up how he ticks. And I
(22:35):
thought you did a really good job at that. Just
what was leading up to Tom Brady eventually saying I'm
out of here.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
We're out of here.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
It's also you said I did a really good and
I understand I put together and everything with a team
of amazing people and Jeff and we were all doing it.
But here's what I would say, is this is what
they were saying.
Speaker 7 (22:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Everybody in there was saying that. Everybody that we talked to,
every player that was close to time, his family, they
were all talking about how his entire life, he feels
like the guy who's been sort of passed over and
everything right, and so and so then we would go
into the archives. We had thirty five thousand plus hours,
mostly much of which you've been overseeing for many, many years,
and you know, we would find things that would help
(23:18):
elucidate the things that we were hearing in the interview chair. Right.
And so when we went to the Michigan story, it was,
you know, finding those moments where you see Henson coming
in and all the fans are cheering hands and you know,
he's like all that stuff, right, It's and so everybody
talks about this, and I'm trying to put myself in
Tom's shoes. He has come back from the four game
(23:41):
to flakek thing one more time where he leaves and
the show goes on without him. It's three and one
when he comes back right the year before, a couple
of years before his his replacement has been drafted essentially right.
And this is a guy from everybody that talks about
him says he always feels like he's sort of getting
past over and overlooked and all this kind of stuff,
(24:01):
and this all leads up just not being fully appreciated.
Appreciation sure, And so finally we get to this the
Falcon super Bowl, and there's this moment where he's on
his knees, he's just thrown the pick six, and nor Princiatti,
the journalist, comes in and she says, maybe Belichick was right,
Maybe every quarterback at a certain age falls off of
(24:22):
a cliff and and all this stuff. And then you know,
it's like, just from a human perspective, the idea that
you have been doubted and all these things, and people
have just accused you of cheating, and you've been forced
not because you actually did something necessarily, but because it
(24:43):
is more reasonable than whatever the language of the deflate
Gate report was. It's more reasonable than not that you
may have known something that dada that happened. It's it's
all nonsense. And then and then here you are, You're
on your knees, you throw a pick six, and then
somehow you find a way to get up and launch
the greatest come back and NFL if not sports history,
on the biggest stage imaginable.
Speaker 5 (25:04):
It's like, Okay, the fuel he gets from the doubters
was amazing. And even in that moment, Brady says it
in the documentary, it wasn't I threw the pick six.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
We're gonna lose this game. I threw the pick six.
They're gonna say I'm washed off.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Yeah, yeah, it's a human That's the thing, is right.
Most of the time when you're making these documentaries, like
I made something about public defenders in the Deep South, right,
and so it's like these these small stories that people
that nobody's ever heard of before. They gave up jobs
in a in a nice law firm to do this
thing that they're passionate about, so nobody knows them. So
you take these people and you build them up into
(25:39):
being larger than life characters because you want to make
the story interesting for somebody to watch, right, And then
you take the cases that they have and you build
those things up and you make it you make them
seem larger than life. With this story and stories like this,
whether it's Tiger or the aman in Ox thing that
I also worked on, not as a director, but as
a writer and producer and editor, you sometimes find these
(26:00):
larger than life characters and stories, and what you want
to do is you want to show people why they're
humans just like us. They may happen to be on
the biggest stage, imaginable, going through things that we can't
possibly fath them, but the emotions and the things that
drive them are the same thing as all of us.
That you know, if you're a doctor, yeah yeah, or
people doubt me, people are going to pass me over
because I'm too old. These are like universal stories that
(26:22):
that that trust me.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
No.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
But I'm just saying like that, this is this is
what makes us human beings. These are stories that have
been told for you know, centuries, and so this is
this is the kind of thing. And once, and like
I said, once you get back to the central question
of what does it take to get there? And that
being your driving principle, and that answers your question, and
what it took for Tom Brady to get there is Yeah.
It's the thing that I always found fascinating is everybody
talks about how hard Bill was on him and everything, right.
(26:48):
I always and this is not anybody said, this is
just my outside perspective. I always wonder if he had
any other coach who had never who is not always
keeping that carrot just one foot out of reach constantly
throughout all these years with the Super Bowls that he
would accumulate in the stardom that he was. He was
a global celebrity very early on. Would he have done
(27:09):
it on his own? I don't know the answer to
this question, but I wonder if that style of coaching
is part of what motivated him to be great. And
I go back to this, you know, I have it here.
I'm gonna I'm gonna pull this thing up. But there's
this Tom Landry quote that I think is great. The
job of a football coach is to make men do
what they don't want to do in order to achieve
(27:31):
what they've always wanted to be. And it's like if
that doesn't describe Bill Belichick and his coaching style. I
don't know what does and it's and so I don't know.
I just look as an outsider. I think all these
things are endlessly fascinating and I sort of got taken
on this journey just talking to people, and yeah, it
would This is a very long, long answer to your question.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
You know, it's fascinating.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
You mentioned something earlier about Belichick and you know, this
Spygate episode, him feeling betrayed a lot of people. I heard,
why did they use this state trooper from you know,
New Jersey. I thought that was a great way of
kind of going full circle on loyalty, betrayal, betrayal and
loyalty and and you know, even though he was undercover
(28:16):
with you know, bad people, he felt bad about betraying them,
you know, like I got their confidence, I got their
their loyalty to me, and then I had to betray
them as part of my job and I had to
get out, you know. And I thought that was a
great way to weave in how Bill felt, not that
he was working with bad people, but he felt betrayed.
He felt betrayed.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
And then when when we get back to him, later,
and that's time the brad Jersey State Police guy. He says,
it's right, after all the stuff about Eric and he
has betrayal. It's sometimes it's really hard to swallow. And
then he takes a big gulp, right, and it's and
it's like, I don't know this this it's like that.
That's that to me is fascinating, Right, is how you
(28:57):
take this guy that happened to be the guy that
confiscated the tape and the camera and all this stuff.
And that's what he talks about. And this is a
story about betrayal and then what the team does because everybody,
I mean, that's part of the vention story is everybody
there in the building felt like they had been betrayed,
maybe by Eric, but also by the league in general. Right, yes,
you hypocrites, you're all doing this, As Ernie said, that's
why they all cover their mouth, right, And how dare
(29:19):
you try to invalidate everything that we've accomplished that we
can and because you guys know, we've talked that, we've
seen them talk about it. They come in every day,
they're they're they're all grinding away to find any edge.
They're running the hills they're lifting the weights in the
off season, all that stuff to just get a little
bit better, and now everything is going to be invalidated
because of this one thing that everybody else is doing.
And then you get mad and you go and as
(29:40):
Rodney Harrison says, f a mall, f the mall. Now
that to me again just comes back to the why
didn't you cover thirty eight and thirty nine. It's like
because that, to me is much more interesting, not because
of scandal, which is what everybody likes to say, Oh,
you just wanted to get eyeballs and all this stuff.
It's like, no, it's a more interesting human emotion than
just the foundation of this thing is set and then
(30:02):
we're going to watch the foundation kind of accomplish it
over and over and over again. It's this is new,
this is different. This is a different emotion, and this
is a different thing, and that is fascinating to me.
Speaker 7 (30:12):
So that, to me, there was two different sort of things.
Speaker 8 (30:14):
And I go back to what you said a while
ago about answering the question, you know, like what does
it take? YEA, everybody wants it, but is everybody willing
to do it? And I wanted to tie that to
something Scott Poley said toward the beginning about the narcotic
you know, the winning, and then you sort of, I think,
really follow that through.
Speaker 7 (30:33):
You guys did a great job. I thought of following
through with that same theme.
Speaker 8 (30:36):
And I'm wondering when you got all of those different things,
you know, like so now they told you to stop taping,
but you're still tape from that area where you weren't
spot We kind of fell off a little bit in
eight o nine, you know, and ten comes around, We're
going to take a little bit of a chance on
Aaron Hernandez. You know, do you feel like that maybe
it was part of what some of those things like,
(30:57):
is everybody willing to do what it takes to get
at But.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Here's here's the here's the thing I want to be
The answer is yes. But I want to be very
clear about one thing. When I say yes, I'm not
trying to say they were willing to take a murderer
in order to win, because but no. But I'm just saying,
you're not saying you're not saying. But if I say yes,
then the the lunatics that are that are that are
that are dming me on to every assume that that's
(31:22):
what I'm saying. We're getting him too. Anyway, my point
is they were willing to take a slight risk because
they were going to get first round talent at a
fourth round price. That is part of it, and part
of it is.
Speaker 7 (31:37):
But a lot of teams had him off the board. Okay,
completely off.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
But guess what they had brought in other people? Remember
Randy Moss had run over a meter made or whatever
the story was, right, Okay, okay, guess what they He
came into the Patriot Way and everything worked out. And
as Robert Craft says in the Thing, we hoped and
and it was our belief and we hoped that the
Patriot Way would whatever.
Speaker 5 (32:01):
The Bill's relationship with urban Meyer, I'm sure that played
into it.
Speaker 8 (32:06):
You know, speculation right in a negative willing to do
anything too, That's my point. So, and I wanted to
ask you specifically about the Hernandez episode.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (32:16):
I thought that that's really powerful. I thought that was
a really really strong episode. And we talk a lot
about all that. Would you say over seventy people were yeah, yeah,
Brandan Lloyd, Yeah, like how did you come up with?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
You know, his locker was next to his locker was.
Speaker 8 (32:34):
Because I thought he It's as simple as that, all
it is. And there's a guy that was I was
in that locker room. I was covering those teams I
covered from from nineteen ninety nine. Fred hired me and
I've been here ever since. Brandon Lloyd's not a guy
that would have been front of mine for me. Yeah,
but his man when he started to speak, do not
go out?
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Yeah, I am. And the answer is this West Well
West Wes Welker was next to his locker. I had
no idea, you know, there's one of these.
Speaker 7 (32:58):
I knew some of the Welker stuffs. He didn't see.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
The thing is, I didn't even realize, like, you know,
I'm not a fan. I don't know how NFL locker
rooms are situated and what is it by number? Whatever
the reason was, Yeah, okay, So whatever it was, they
happened to be next to each other, right, And I
didn't know that. And then when I when we found
that out, that's the reason you ad and you find
that person because he was there. He witnessed the eff.
(33:20):
It's the simplest answer in the entire world.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
So, Jeff, you are in New England, Okay, and maybe
a little bit used to the personalities Northeast Quarter or
not that you're not used Matt to the Northeast Corridor.
I asked, Matt, this, are you surprised at what has
bubbled up from inside the six state region with this
great piece of work that you guys have done and
all the reaction to it.
Speaker 6 (33:45):
Probably not that much, just because I do live here,
and I I admit I do listen to radio sometimes
when I'm driving around.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Thanks and you know everybody. I had a guy come
up to me yesterday.
Speaker 6 (34:05):
When I was over at Harvard who he said, I
hate to admit this, but I was listening to the
EI this morning.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
He said, don't tell anybody, you know.
Speaker 6 (34:12):
But the truth is, I think a lot of people
listen to it because it can't help themselves.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Because they're huge sports fans out here.
Speaker 6 (34:18):
And I listened to it, so I've you know, I
know how how we can be here. I don't know
that it's the same though, when we say the all
six states in New England, Like I live in Connecticut,
and there's a lot of people in Boston who don't
necessarily even consider Connecticut part of New England.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
And Connecticut I don't want to.
Speaker 6 (34:37):
That's right, because half of our state is considers themselves
New Yorks, right, And so where I live, which isn't
that far from Gillette, people don't feel the same way
that they do within the one twenty eight corridor. And
there isn't the angst where I live about the documentaries,
because I mean, there's there's a lot of people talking
about it down there, and we have local radio there
(34:59):
that talks about it in the tenor is a lot
different than it is up here within the six one
seven five.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Await area code.
Speaker 6 (35:05):
But yeah, I wasn't surprised. But I also I actually
think it's good for the series to have to not
have everybody like taking a lap. Yeah, I mean, and
that the idea that most of the you know, the
(35:25):
arguing and fighting is going on right here is kind
of a good thing. It sort of reminds me of
a family. Yeah, that's what it's like.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
But don't you better not say anything about my family?
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Right?
Speaker 2 (35:36):
If I want to ball out my brother for being.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
It's the Tom Jackson thing. We can say things about
our coach, but you can't.
Speaker 8 (35:42):
Right exactly right, And that was the part, and you
touched on that earlier too, you know, and you mentioned
when they rallied behind Belichick after Spygate and they went
on this run. I would argue that they rallied behind
Tom Jackson and then won twenty one games in a row.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
Yeah, and Bill, when Tom Jackson said that, yeah.
Speaker 8 (36:00):
Yeah, they rallied around the Tom Jackson comment, right, that went,
that's right. Tom Jackson said that that's what Tom was
on Landcat Strike.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (36:09):
Tom Brady was.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Going to The Great Moment book, which is one of
my favorites, is at the end of that super Bowl.
I think Tom Jackson is on some stage at the
Super Bowl and Bill walks up and says, f you right.
Speaker 8 (36:22):
I don't think they've really spoken. I don't think they've
really spoken since.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
If I had, if I had, you know, like these
are I mean, I know that's great, right, but I
just felt that we that the that that episode that
the episode four was just more fascinating to me.
Speaker 8 (36:38):
I know, it's all great, yeah, and so speaking, so
I just not like, I understand the difference between a
documentary and sort of a highlight video. And I totally agree.
I don't need the I know what happened. I was
at all the games. Like all the other Patriots fans,
some of them are not looking at it that way.
They should because it's a documentary. It's a different vehicle.
So I didn't need like a recap of the twenty
(36:59):
one game winning reade and then going to Houston and
winning the Super Bowl and going to Jacksonville and all that.
And I just thought that was a really pivotal moment
because a lot of those players were really tight with Lawyer.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
Malone, and a lesser coach could have lost the locker run.
Speaker 8 (37:13):
But there was always but there were many other I
just think that's a fascinating moment in history.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
So that leads the question, Matt, and I don't know
if you had a preconceived notion in this with the
book and the success of the book and everything, was
there an intended audience for this documentary because I heard
and read you say Films does a great job with
America's game. Films does a great job with three Games
to Glory three, Like this is are you mining new
(37:39):
territory here because you know that that those other works exist.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
Yeah, I think that that gave me the confidence when
I made the choices of the kind of story that
I wanted to tell, and the team wanted to tell.
My team wanted to tell that. You know, look, this
has all been out there before. It's been covered so
many times. Not only the film cover it, but Tom
Brady covered the Lawyer Maloy thing because Tom was very
(38:03):
close to the Lawyer Maloy. They had just done the
commercials together and all you know, it's just like all
sorts of stuff, they were close. I just felt so
many different people, including Jeff, had done it in a really,
really great way. And I guess if I feel like
I'm answering the question and and there are and that
(38:23):
question is leading me towards something that isn't the conventional
timeline version of this, which why do I feel this?
Why do I'm not going to have any remorse or
regret over saying I'm going to skip over these things?
And truthfully, one of the things that really was the
thing that gave me that was when Pioli said the
line about addiction and he says, he says, look, you know,
(38:48):
your relationship with the drug starts to change at first
when you win their elation, and then after a little
while it's just relief, and then when you lose, it's dark.
And you'll do anything you can to keep it going.
And that was one of those moments where it was
like that was one of those things. It was just like, well,
(39:08):
you know, I told you how we had cut the
version of the three season and all this stuff. Well,
at the end of that or at the end of
the four season, we would we would we would always
get to peel these line And it just felt in
a way like we were doing all this stuff that
was just kind of getting us further and further away
from getting to peel these line because that was the
(39:31):
next thought. I had worked for this guy for a
long time that had a little sticker on his uh
his computer that he worked off of, and the sticker said, Oh,
that's interesting, tell me something new. And his theory was
a filmmaker, he's a great director, he's won an Oscar,
He's was that's what you want the audience to be
thinking every time they every word, every sentence, every scene
(39:54):
is oh, that's interesting, Now what kind of right? And
so in a way, as infuriating as I'm sure it
is for a lot of fans, which I understand, there
was an element of those that just kept getting in
the way of now what and so the next the
answer to now what was getting to Puli's lines faster
(40:16):
and let's see the next chapter of this thing when
everything changes and that and that and that and and
and because otherwise it you know, you're not really getting
further along in the answering of the question.
Speaker 5 (40:27):
Yeah, you talk about the creative decisions you made along
the way. Do you care to share maybe how some
of the sausage was made between maybe even the two
of you, you know, creative people in a work of
this magnitude.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
There's gonna be disagreements, oh all the time?
Speaker 5 (40:41):
Do you guys like have it out at any time
or with some of the other producers.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Or yeah, there was there's not just between me and Jeff,
but also like, oh gosh, I'm trying to think of
some of them. I mean, there would be times where
we would be taught. Okay, So for example, in episode ten,
we break out into the footage of Bill. This is
when I was wrong about something. I'm gonna tell this version.
(41:10):
We in the series break out into the footage of
Bill with the team when he's showing the like rams
footage and stuff like that. Right, there's this moment where
we like leave the super Bowl, and I thought I
and my lead editor, longtime collaborator Dan Kohler, is the
one who sort of had this idea to do this,
to break away from the super Bowl and actually show
some of this stuff. I was thinking, I don't want
(41:32):
to leave the energy of the super Bowl. I don't
want to do this, like this is a bad idea.
And we got into like like we would get into
fights about it, right and I would just be like, look,
just don't do it, and he's just like a positive,
you gotta do this. You gotta do this, to the
point where I had to pull like five people and
say I think this guy's nuts, Like you know, he's
got it all wrong. We shouldn't leave the super Bowl.
And everybody was like no, you got your head up
(41:53):
your ass, like he's right, you're wrong. And when I
heard that enough times, said all right, I'm wrong, and
I just said, let's go for it. And I think
it's really really important. And Jeff and I have talked
about this a lot. You've got to surround yourself with
people who are willing to tell you when you have
your head of your ass, and there is an adversarial
(42:17):
I think adversarial but but good relationships that have moments
of of you know, tension and everything. Creative tension is
what makes for great things. I think that happened here
a lot in this building with between Tom and Bill.
That makes for greatness because people are pushing each other
(42:38):
to get to their best and there are going to
be disagreements, and you just have to make sure that
you know, and you know, this is what we talk
this is what Michael Holly talks about. You just got
to make sure that as you obtain success that you
kind of don't get to the point where you don't
want to hear the nos anymore. And you and you
you want to make sure you're surrounded by those people
still for a very very long.
Speaker 5 (42:58):
Time, iffect Belichick a little bit. As the brain drain
happened with his coaches. You know, there were less you know,
veteran coaches in the room to kind of push back.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
On well, and like, let's not just that, but just
like let's think about when Ernie Adams left. Right, still
believe I believe to this day that the Raiders game
where there was the lateral that then Chandler Jones came
and got it and scored the defensive touchdown on I
still believe to this day that Ernie Adams would have
been in every year of every coach that was on
the field at the time, saying repeatedly, if this happens,
(43:30):
they take a knee, they don't start to do laterals,
make sure this doesn't happen. I think that there was
a lot of people like that now scarneki is you know,
and those all those people, Peoli, all the people that
were there that were always thinking about all the other stuff.
When that stuff leaves, it changes things. And this is
again it goes back to this line that Puly has
in the tenth episode. I said, well, you know, I
(43:51):
asked him the question that you know, everybody has to ask,
and everybody wanted to know. Even though it is as well,
I'll say the question. I agree with Scott on this.
I say, so was it more Bill or was it more?
Speaker 4 (44:00):
I thought that was brilliantly placed, and he goesspect.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
It's disrespectful, disrespectful for everybody who came through this building
over the last twenty years. And and he doesn't just
mean the players, he means everyone.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
I thought Poli was a star in this by the way.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
He was great We've.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
Had opportunities to talk to Scott and I think, you
know some of it, you go, really does he believe
that or anything like that? Or is he just shine
in our shoe? But I think Scott after his time here,
has become very reflective. I think that's what I think
the narcotic line that you know was it was really
all of us him in his personal life as well.
Speaker 4 (44:37):
I think you look, yes, I know, depth to some
of the stuff.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
I don't think he liked himself. I think if he
looks back at himself now in hindsight, I'm not.
Speaker 4 (44:45):
Sure he loves the way he was back in the day.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
You guys should interview is yeah we did we did
just like this. Yeah, no, no, I know, And I
think that there has Look, that's the best that all
of us can do.
Speaker 7 (44:58):
Right.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
We look back on the mistakes we've made, and we
do a lot of self reflection and a lot of
a lot of self scouting, and we figured out, you know,
what do we do wrong? What could we have done better?
And I think that the you know, then what you
see is with the guy, he talks about it like
he's done a lot of that stuff. And I think
that you know when we got him, We got him
at a place where he was very thoughtful about this,
(45:20):
and he really hadn't had the opportunity, saying with Ernie
to really be on the record, at least in film,
because they both I think talked to Halbert stan Win.
Education of a Coach was written, but they really hadn't
had a chance through all these things that were made.
They'd never really been on the record before and actually
talked about this stuff. And it was an opportunity for
them to really tell their side of the story, just
(45:41):
like it was an opportunity for all these players who
really were in a lot of ways not front and center,
and to tell their side of the story.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
So I think I had heard you say something about
what somebody asked you while you guys have been on tour.
Speaker 4 (45:53):
You know, what's the big Fish tour.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
He makes it sound like I'm on a bus going
from town to town. No' you're in a gulf stream.
I wish that me and Jeanie probably was on your list.
He didn't talk. So let's move raicle over to the side.
Is there somebody in your guy's mind? You talk to
seven over seventy people, Is there somebody that you said,
I wish we could have gotten.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
Him or her.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
The honest answer is now, looking back, the answer is
really no. There isn't one person that I think, oh,
if we had just gotten this person, it would have
been because I think I was very conscious of Ernie
and Scott are going to be the people along with
McDaniel who can come in and talk about the perspective
from the coaching, along with Bill obviously, but who were
(46:41):
the people that were Tom's friends that can speak for
you can speak in addition to Tom for him from his perspective,
his family members, you know, whoever, Alex and Alex, Yeah,
I being able to interview out that Nancy Brady was
fin She was amazing, amazing. There are interviews on the
cutting room floor that were great interviews. We talked about
(47:01):
skipping over. I know we keep going back to skipping
over thirty eight and thirty nine. Rodney Harrison did a
three hour long interview that is incredible. It's on the
cutting room floor. We have a little bit of it
in but basically the extent of him is, you know,
in the middle of the episode four he says, you know,
FM all kind of thing right that was like that was,
but that interview is incredible. Do you have the rights
to come out after the feb It's Apple? Yeah, it's Apple.
(47:24):
That's a easy answer. It's Apple. It's and so you know,
I got to talk to Rex Ryan, right, and you know,
I asked Rex. I asked Rex Ryan. I said, Rex,
I'm really sorry to do this, but can you tell
me about the foot video and because the whole thing?
And then I went to Wes Welker and I said, Wes,
that press conference you did, when you found a way
to work the word feed into every single answer you
(47:45):
gave for about an hour, was one of the best
press conferences I've ever seen in my entire life. And
Rex Ryan, while we were interviewing, said that he actually
sent Wes Welker a pair of like rubber feet to
his wedding.
Speaker 4 (47:55):
That's great, Yeah, is good for Rex, say is Apple?
But wanted director's cut or something?
Speaker 1 (48:01):
You got to you got to call You got to
call them and they make it happen. Man.
Speaker 7 (48:04):
Yeah, So can I ask you a lighter hearted thing?
Speaker 1 (48:07):
So wait, Rex Ryan's foot thing wasn't.
Speaker 8 (48:09):
Yeah, but you know, I don't necessarily mean this as
serious as it sounds. So you're you're the at the
end in nine or ten or towards the end the
Malcolm Butler stuff, and you ask Bill about Malcolm not playing,
and he says, we've already been over.
Speaker 7 (48:25):
That, and you rightly say, well, I just asked, yeah.
Speaker 8 (48:28):
Yeah, there's nobody that does the awkward pause like Bill Belichick.
Speaker 7 (48:33):
Yeah, and he will wait you out forever.
Speaker 8 (48:35):
And as someone like you now that has been on
the other side of one of those awkward pauses, what
did it feel like?
Speaker 1 (48:43):
I don't know. The thing is, I think when you've
been here for a long time, he has been mythologized
and talked about and built up and he is and
he is the greatest coach of all time. I'm not
trying to downplay his accomplishments at all. But I felt
like and I sort of felt the same. I mean,
I was interested and excited to talk to these guys,
(49:03):
but it wasn't like, oh my gosh, what is this
going to you know, I'm like, yeah, no, and so
and so I always you know, what I kept talking
thinking about was in that seventh season they play the Redskins.
They they're up like, you know, forty something to nothing.
Fourth down there you know, they couldn't they they could,
they could take a knee. At that point, they score
(49:25):
another touchdown, and afterwards Bill Belichick's asked and they say, well,
why'd you do that? He says, what do you want
to do? Kick a field goal?
Speaker 5 (49:30):
Right?
Speaker 1 (49:31):
That's what we love about Bill. We love the Bill.
That was all it was. It against Gas or whoever
it was, when he kept doing all the false starts
things to get to eat the clock up. He didn't
like it as much when Rabel was doing it to him.
But yeah, but my point is that's what people love
about Bill Belichick. He never takes his foot off the gaft,
He never takes his foot off the gas. He doesn't care.
(49:51):
He just does the thing that he's supposed to do,
which is to win games and do what's best for
the team. And so when I went when I when
I got to talk to him, I was just like, well,
I'm just gonna ask him the same ques since I
ask everybody else. You know, Ernie got all the same questions,
you know, why wasn't Malcolm Butler playing? And or what
about Hernandez? Ernie answered that question, you know, and and
then when we got to that one, he's gonna get asked.
(50:13):
It's an important question to ask Bill Belichick.
Speaker 5 (50:15):
No, I'll have to do it.
Speaker 8 (50:16):
Yeah, And I just wanted just some individuals quick, the
guys that are involved in the scandals, Oh, Matt Walshwitz, Spygate,
John Destremsky.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
And never reached out. Now he did never reached out.
Speaker 8 (50:29):
Okay, yeah, I mean there that would have been an opportunity,
I guess, to get some information.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
That would have been a forensic examination of it. Did
they do it or didn't they do it? And that
wasn't the question that I was ever trying to answer, right.
So with the flate Gate, the thing that I always
try to find these things that are like this is
the guiding principle through everything right for to flay Gate,
it was this. We found this piece of archive. It's
the Today Show. It's Matt Lower. He starts off and
he says, we lead our stories today with the ongoing
(50:58):
to flate Gate investigation. This is when it's like back
and forth in the courts and stuff. Then a few
stories later he goes and in other news isis has
beheaded another hot The tansition was so great and I
saw that. I saw that and I was like, all right,
that's it. This whole thing is a farce. Right, that's
what this whole thing is going to be. The whole
episode is right. Yes, we get into all the details,
(51:18):
we get into like what's said about from one side
to the other, but it's just about the lunacy behind
the idea that an equipment violation, even if he did it,
even if he did would take up become a two
year national news story that was consumed to the level
where something like isis was a secondary news Yeah, that
(51:41):
that was it. So you know, we talk about these things,
what's the one sentence things that just triggers everything. That's it.
That's the guiding principle. And so the entire thing was
how is this thing of farce? Right it? And and yes,
I'm not trying to say that we skirt over whether
or not the evidence is one side or another, but
what was much more interesting in that entire thing was
it's a farce. It's insane.
Speaker 3 (52:03):
So, Matt, here's a chance to give a shout out
to some of the people, because you need a team
of people to find that, Matt lower Yeast. You need
you need a team of people who's sitting there looking
for in another news fifty of them?
Speaker 4 (52:16):
Right, what was what was that?
Speaker 1 (52:18):
Like?
Speaker 3 (52:18):
I mean, I know what it's like for our little
library here. But I think what really makes this series
are some of the audio and visual montages about some
of the scandals or the seven season when they're rolling
over everybody. Those are widely entertaining, and that takes a
huge team of people to play.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
Yeah, so Matt Fisher is are a lead Archila producer.
Then he has a bunch of producers that are working
with him, Vin de Anton, Paul Williard, Riley Bloom, Riley
Riley I think came in here and stuff. Yeah, yeah,
good time here and I love that. So that's the
beginning of it. Then there's a team of loggers whose
(52:57):
job is to just comb through this stuff and and
and say and put markers in where there's something. Then
we had different colors of markers that would be like
just yellow would be okay, green would be this could
be good. Then there would be like purple or magenta
would be like okay, this is going in the cut.
Speaker 7 (53:12):
You know.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
They would be all these levels. So they would go
through all of this stuff and start doing and there
was a team of people all over the country because
we were we started this thing during COVID still, so
our system was set up so that you could be
anywhere in the country and just sort of beam in
and work on it, and said they would make all
these things. I will never forget. We were in the
middle of cutting the first cut of the Aaron Hernandez
episode and Paul Williard, one of these people, walks in
(53:36):
and it doesn't walk in. He I'm a man imagining
it as if we were in an office, but we weren't.
He on slack basically video messages me, and he says,
I just found this stuff from the Rookie symposium that
was and he's looking at this and he's just he's
just he was just giving through footage, and all of
a sudden he sees this moment where Chris Carter is
(53:56):
sitting there and he's he's saying, this is the fork
in the road for all lot of you guys. This
is where you separate yourself from your friends and you
you know, and blah blah blah. And it's like that
finding that footage completely reshaped the entire.
Speaker 5 (54:08):
Structure of that that Hernandez asked a question, right, he
must have thought he found the treasure, the Bury treasure.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
Yeah, you know, but there was there was a bunch
of those things. Yeah like that. But that that reshaped
everything because then it was, okay, well we have we'll
introduce the draft room and the limited things that they knew.
We'll have seen Dion talking about it a little bit,
and then we'll sort of go back in time and
we'll start with Aaron's childhood and then we'll very slowly
(54:36):
get back to the rookie symposium and then basically it's
now he joins the team. Finding that footage completely changed
how we told the entire structure of that episode. And
that's the thing you talked about, like we'll do the
interviews inform how you do things and change the way
you're looking at things. The footage would change and informed
things just as much. And it was just this journey
that we were constantly on to try to figure out
how I.
Speaker 5 (54:56):
Would say, for anyone that is interested, go to IMDb
and look at the Dynasty and you'll see the cast
of that you had helping me.
Speaker 1 (55:04):
It was there was there was eight editors, right, and
some of them some of them were Vindienton, who was
the producer on the thing. He's a diehard Giants fan.
So every time we would go, he would sometimes come
on to set and he would be there for the
Teddy Bruce Key interview. He never told anybody this, and
certainly not Teddy, but he always had an eighteen and
one T shirt underneath his button up right. That was
(55:25):
his little thing that he you know, he would do right.
But then there was also people Freddie Shanahan and Nick
ba Jetty. They brew both grew up like two towns
outside of Foxborough. And these were guys that had the
Homeland Defense posters you know from back in the day.
They had them above their bed. And I still remember
I had to call and get fact check confirmation for
something from Teddy at one point in time, and I
(55:47):
just told one of them, I said, hey, come on
my zoom for a second. And they didn't understand why,
and then we and then we zoomed with with Teddy.
He pops on and I just said take a second,
take thirty seconds and tell Teddy how much you you know,
how much you love him. And for them it would
just like they got to meet their heroes now. And
so it was a mixed bag of people who were
like some of the people were diehard Patriots fans, and
some people were our line producer of Laura mckewn, and
(56:08):
she grew up in Buffalo. And and now is another
conversation I had to have with people. They would just say,
I can't do this. I can't work on the project
that is gonna, you know, is going to be about
the Patriots because I just I my family won't my
family will disown me, you know, and all this kind
of stuff. And they would say that, and then I'd
just be like, look, we're gonna not do the wedding video.
This is going to be the unvarnished truth and it
(56:29):
and it's just going to be what people talk about
and that's it.
Speaker 3 (56:32):
And so so as we wrap things up, Jeff, I
just was I wanted to ask you, you know, when you
see this thing, you've got an idea in your head,
you're going to pitch this book. Do you pinch yourself
now that that book, which is a New York Times bestseller,
is now one of the most highly trafficked.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
Stream number one on Amazon, just a little plug, number
one on Amazon ahead of Tom Brady's TV twelve Method.
But yeay, Jeff Bennett, Oh, yeah, okay, sorry, but anyway,
my point is he'd beat Tom Brady.
Speaker 4 (56:58):
Okay, what how does that make you feel?
Speaker 7 (57:01):
It's great.
Speaker 6 (57:01):
I mean, it's it's great to see, you know, something
like this at the end of.
Speaker 1 (57:08):
A very long road.
Speaker 6 (57:09):
It's very it's rewarding and satisfying, and it's great for
my family.
Speaker 2 (57:14):
Kids love it, friends and neighbors. It's fun.
Speaker 5 (57:18):
I asked Matt before if he's working anything, he's taken
some time off, anything in the works for you?
Speaker 2 (57:24):
Yeah, I mean, I'm a writer. I have to work
all the time. Yeah, there's no time off.
Speaker 4 (57:31):
Care to share.
Speaker 2 (57:32):
I can't, Okay I can't, but all right, yeah, I am.
Speaker 4 (57:36):
I am.
Speaker 1 (57:36):
I know, But as Ernie Adams would say, there are
some things I'm taking.
Speaker 3 (57:41):
Matt, Jeff, thank you very much for joining us. It
was wildly entertaining. It's gotten a lot of I mean,
I believe that the talk and the opinions and the
tweets and everything like that have got to be good
for business. It wasn't a straight line with this organization
to greatness and you know, the ultimate dynasty, But I
(58:02):
think you guys did it very It was very entertaining,
very thoroughly researched, uh interviewed the whole nine yards, and
I can't thank.
Speaker 7 (58:10):
You enough for doing us.
Speaker 1 (58:11):
Thanks for so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (58:12):
Yeah, thank you,
Some of the content in this podcast may not be
suitable for all audiences.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
All right, welcome to the Ultimate Dynasty wrap Up Show,
as we're here to wrap up the Dynasty documentary. The
Dynasty Documentary series is streaming on Apple TV, and we
couldn't be more pleased to have joining us the executive
producer and the author of the book The Dynasty, Jeff
Benedict and the director of the series, Matt Hammachik Matt Smith,
(00:29):
along with Paul Brow and Fred Kirshkuis.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Thank you so much. You guys are on tour.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
You know, everybody's taking a crack at you guys, and
we just wanted to have a discussion about can you
believe this project has come to light, has been aired,
has been viewed, You've got to the finish line. Is
that a bit of a relief maybe that you've got there?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I thought you were going to say, And we just
wanted to have a crack at you two yeah.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, We'll see it
might be a crack.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
There might be a crack here there. Oh.
Speaker 6 (00:57):
It feels good to be to be at this stage
of the project because it seems like a really long
time ago when we started. I was flipping through some
photographs on my phone yesterday. I was looking for something
completely unrelated to this, and I actually came across a
picture of you and Matt and myself and Justin Wilkes,
(01:19):
who was the executive producer from Imagine.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
And it was like when we first met here in
the archives the very first time.
Speaker 6 (01:27):
And you know, when you look at the dates on
those pictures, it's a reminder of how long this project
has been going on.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Jeff, did you For those who are watching and listening,
let's just kind of recap a little bit you wrote
the book. Was it your intention when you wrote this
book A La Tiger, there's going to be a documentary.
There's going to be a series behind this, is your hope.
Speaker 7 (01:49):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 6 (01:50):
And I talked about it or broach the subject even
before I started writing the book. So I had spent
about a year with the team, and i'd met you
by then, and I think i'd even met you Fred,
But before I started putting pen to paper, you know,
I was thinking about the potential for other ways that
(02:12):
the story could be telled after the book was published,
and so It was an early consideration. It's something that
I raised with the team and with the organization. And
then as soon as I turned the narrative in, which
was right after Tom went to see Robert to tell
him that he had decided to leave and they made
the phone call to Bill and to Jonathan, I wrote
(02:35):
that last scene like within a few days of that
actually happening, and then I was done. Because I was
actually done, kind of like Matt being done with the
film until we're kind of waiting for the last thing
that he would put in. I was in the same
situation with the book. I had everything done except the ending,
and then that happened. And as soon as that happened,
(02:55):
I turned it in. And then there's like six or
seven months before the book's on sale, and I immediate
pivoted to starting on the steps to be taken to
turn it into a docu saries.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
You know we're going to get into, you know, the details.
But something you just said made me think, you know,
you had done everything except the ending. If the Patriots
had had an amazing season in twenty three, gone to
the playoffs or even better, would Apple have been willing
to hold off or would they have come out at
the same time.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Anyway, I think that well, look, if they had, like,
let's say, I think it would have been up to
me to say, Okay, I think what we should do
is we should take the ten that we've already had,
because you know, we basically were done by maybe even
midway through the season or something like that. They had
been going on a Super Bowl run and they got
(03:47):
there or something happened that was just extraordinarily. Maybe we
could have gone and said, okay, Apple, can you give
us a little bit more money, we want to do
episode eleven or something like that. So that that's the
kind of that's the way the conversation would have happened.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
And so did you hear the conspiracy theorists oh the
time it's coming out?
Speaker 7 (04:03):
Oh yeah, right, you know it's.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
So the one thing that we did know for a
very long time was that it was basically this question
of Apple came to me and they said, how long
do you think you're going to need to make something
like this? And if I had had my true drothers,
I probably would have said I need three and a
half four years. But that's not the way TV works.
They want it right as soon as possible. Right. So,
so what we came to an agreement on was that
(04:27):
basically the week after the Super Bowl in twenty twenty
four gave us two and a half years. That was
more or less enough time to go make this thing.
And that's the date that we had locked in stone.
And the reason for that was, just like myself and
every other football fan out there, the Super Bowl happens,
you start to go through football withdrawal, and so if
you know, it's like, well, let's give people the greatest
(04:49):
football story of all time, and that's it was locked
in stone for two and a half years. Basically that
was going to happen that way. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
So, Matt As, you're from New York, correct.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
I I live in New York. I'm from DC.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Okay, so you're not a Patriots fan, you're not a
New Englander and everything like that. As you experience the
aftermath and the and everybody indulging in this, have you
noticed a distinctive flavor between the reaction in the six
state region and the entire rest of the country.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
Yes, does that surprise you?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
It does surprise me, because I this was all kind
of new to me, right, I didn't understand anything when
I first started making this thing right. And so the
good part about that is that you get to talk
to the seventy plus players and coaches and front office
exact the rivals and everything. And these are a lot
of these questions like why did you decide to go
(05:41):
with Drew Blood's or Tom Brady over Drew Blood. So
are questions that these guys have been asked over and
over and over again, and they sort of have their answers.
But I think it helps when somebody who genuinely doesn't
know the answer to these questions and is actually curious
asked them of these things, because it elicits new answers
because you say, I think a lot of times things
like that, history has proven them to be the greatest
(06:02):
coaching decisions in the history of the NFL. Right, they
made the obvious choice because history has proven it right.
At the time, it wasn't like that. And that was
always the thing is, I don't know the answers to
these questions. I want to know why when every when
all the archive I'm watching is saying that this was
a horrible decision, Why did you think it was right then?
And what was it like to be in the room
at that point in time, So I didn't know any
(06:23):
of this stuff, and I have to sit back and
listen and just ask follow up questions and just and
here and kind of get out of the way and
let these people talk. So when this thing came out,
I think, you know, I had an inkling of the
fact that I surely knew that in Boston the reaction
was going to be strong one way or the other, right,
because there's sort of this where at the stadium right now,
(06:44):
we're having this conversation, and within a fifty mile plus
radius of this place, there is a giant bubble, right,
and the reaction within this bubble has been a mixed bag,
but a very vocal mixed bag.
Speaker 7 (06:58):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Everybody's on Twitter and they're saying all these different things,
and it's like all these conspiracy theories and stuff, and
I'm just sitting there just like, guys, I have no
idea what any of these people were talking about. Now nationally,
it's just like, hey, they sort of viewed this thing
the way that I viewed this thing, which was this
wasn't my team. I don't have a dog in this fight.
(07:19):
We're just gonna sit back and we're gonna watch, and
it's sort of this balanced thing where some people can
look at episode five and see it the way that
I see it, which is it's a love letter to
Bill Belichick and what he did when his back was
up against the wall, and as he puts it, he
lost the greatest quarterback of all time for a season.
And that's what episode five is. Now. The people in
Boston who are convinced that somehow this is some kind
(07:40):
of a Bill Belichick hitchob, they just completely overlook all
of that, and all they pay attention to is one
line in the middle of the episode when Tom Brady
Senior says Bill, he's cold. He's calculating, if you're not
on the team, you're out of state, out of mind.
That's the only line they hear. And then the other
thirty something minutes of that thing just doesn't exist. And
this is the thing that I keep seeing, and I
think this is something that goes on in our society
and gen today, is if you believe something, you cannot
(08:03):
be talked off of that that belief no matter what,
and you will cherry pick every piece of evidence that
helps support the thing that you already believe, and and
and you'll accumulate all those things and you will ignore
everything else and that, and and then you have it's
it's it's there. It's proof. It's obvious.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
And before this even came out, there were people saying it's.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Going to it's going to without Selichick hit piece, not
just that Craft, not just that, not just that there
was some some some guy.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
It goes and he writes, Oh, it's it's going to be.
It's all this thing. It's going to be the Robert
Craft Craft puff piece that helps get him into the
Hall of Fame. So so this is what I thought
when I read that. I was like, all right, now,
let's imagine this conspiracy to be the case where there's
a puppet master who's sitting around and he's pulling the
strings to get into the Hall of Fame. Okay, so
what are the Hall of Fame decisions that you know
(08:51):
would have gone into what what are the Hall of
Fame moments that would help this case. Bill Belichick leaves
the Jets. Everybody in the league based thinks that Bill
Belichick can't coach to save his life, there's one person
who does. It's Robert Craft. He's not only does he
believe in it, but he's also willing to give up
a first round draft pick in order to get him.
Proves out as history has proven to be a Hall
(09:12):
of Fame choice, even you know, Mike Lombardi said that
it's a Hall of Hall of Fame decision. The next
thing would have been the twenty eleven CBA stuff. Right,
Robert Craft comes in, he talks to Jeff Saturday, you
know it, under very difficult personal circumstances, and they have this,
they come to an agreement, players and coaches. There's no lockout,
et cetera, et cetera. Then it would have been all
(09:34):
about all the deals and the TV you know, the
TV things, all the money he's made for the league.
None of these things are in the series, right, and then.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
They are in the book.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Yeah, they're not in the series. But let's let's go
back to then also in two thousand and one. So
we're talking about the greatest coaching decision in the history
of all time in the NFL right now. In the
middle of this, Robert Craft admits that he didn't think
it was it was unfair to Drew and that he
admits that he was on the other side of it.
(10:03):
In the time because of his personal connections to Drew.
Now again, if this was some puff piece, why would
he ever admit to something like that. So I'm sitting
here and I'm listening to all these guys say this stuff.
But I'm just like, guys, like, what are you talking about?
Just watch the thing? I think people outside of New
England who aren't part of the One thing.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
I did learn is don't have a side.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Don't have a side, haven't been covering this team, uh,
you know, all sorts of things. And there's these turf
battles that have been happening in New England for all
these years. Right, every journalist in this place, everybody, every journalist,
and this I didn't know this, and it's wild because
from an outside you're just like, this is just insane.
Every journalist everybody goes around, they say, oh, well so
and so he's he's he's a he's a Belichick guy, right,
(10:45):
and then oh this guy he's he's a craft guy
like you know, and he's this guy's a Tom guy
and all this kind of stuff. Yeah, but I didn't.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
I didn't.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I didn't understand. I didn't understand any of this. And
so I'm just sitting there. And so when this documentary
comes out within this little bubble that we're talking about,
it's not just a documentary that's made by a guy
who doesn't really care about, you know, any of this nonsense.
It's how does this fit into this larger, this fast
conspiracy of what side this is on? And all these
kind of things. And you know, I go back to
(11:14):
like Bill Bird was just on the Pat mcafew show
a couple of days ago, and he said, one of
the guys there is like a diehard New England fan,
and he's like, oh, I don't like it at all.
It should have been called The Evil Empire and it
should have been called The Dynasty. And then Billboard is like, yeah,
because some nerd who went to film school made the thing.
And I am that nerd who can care less about
all of this other nonsense that's going on. I just
(11:36):
had a simple task and here's what it was. I
interviewed Ernie Adams for the first time. It was the
first time I ever spoke to him. And one line
that's in episode ten, he says he says everybody at
the beginning of every year wants to win the Super Bowl,
but not everybody who's willing to do what it takes
to get there. And when he said those words to me,
(11:58):
in that moment, a light bulb went off of my head.
It's that this is the question that you're trying to ask,
what does it take to get there? And in a
somewhat cold way, the patriots and all the people I
talk to are really a conduit just to get to
the answer to that question. And every time you're telling
a movie, you're you know, look, you could just do
the timeline version of the movie, the first this happens,
(12:18):
and this happens, and this happens, and this happens, and
then this happens. Once you figure out what that question is,
it drives every decision you make. And that was the
only thing I had an interest in. And normally my
opinion is I really don't like doing, I don't like watching,
nor did I really have any interest in making a
ten part series about anything. Because the truth is, the
more time you spend trying, you know, doing ten episodes
(12:41):
as opposed to two or three, the further you have
to get away from just answering that central question because
there is other things that you naturally have to cover.
A little bit of I really like making Tiger because
this is two episode thing. It was two one and
a half hours that really allowed me to say sort
of be ruthless in the approach of if it isn't
answering this question, the question for Tiger, which to me
was this guy's a canvas that everybody wants to paint
(13:04):
something onto. If there isn't a moment in an interview
or an archive it isn't getting to that sort of thesis,
then I'm not touching it. And that's what d're of
everything with. The sort of what does it take to
get here? Is what drove of everything in this one.
And so you know, again I don't have a dog
in any of these fights that are going on, but
(13:24):
it's you know, on one hand, it's infuriating to see
because you're just like I just watch the thing and
enjoy it. You know, there's a lot of great stuff
in here.
Speaker 5 (13:31):
Well to the point of, like, you know, you found
that question that yeah question, how much though, did the
interviews drive you know, the direction of the documentary and
were you surprised by any of the answers in that
it changed how we were looking at absolute direction of
the documentary Tons.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
A great example of that was in episode six. So
we're interviewing Dion Branch and we're having this conversation about
the things that you would talk to Deon Branch about.
I'm in the chair, I'm talking to him, and it's like,
you know, we didn't know at the time that we
were going to not go into great detail about the
thirty eight and thirty nine Super Bowls. So I'm asking
about being an MVP and all these kinds of things.
(14:12):
We're talking about football stuff, and I get a text message.
Because I work off when I'm interviewing people, I have
a laptop in front of me that has an Internet connection,
so I can I can get feedback from producers, from Jeff,
from anybody who's in the room, saying hey, by the way,
you know, the person you're interviewing used a pronoun instead
of saying tom, right, so you need to just remind hey,
you could you could you say it one more time?
(14:32):
But just can you say tom so the people know
who you're talking about. Just things like that. Right in
the middle of the interview with Dion Branch, one of
the producers, Vin Deanton texts me and he goes by
the way I just found this article. He wasn't even
in the studio, he was away, it was someplace else.
And he said, I think Dian might have known Aaron.
(14:53):
So I see that, and I just turned Dean and
I say, hey, tell me about Aaron. And you know
how episode six starts out. It starts out there in
front of the green screen and everything right, and then
you cut to Dion Branch and he's sitting there and
there's this pause and he's thinking, and he's what what
is going on there is? He's thinking, you don't hear
me say it? But I just said that. I just said,
(15:14):
tell me about Aaron. And then he goes, he corrects me,
he goes, we used to call him Chico man. And
you just see that. And when I asked him that question,
I saw his eyes change and and he looked down
and he started to talk about how did you not
see that? How did you not see it?
Speaker 7 (15:30):
Right?
Speaker 4 (15:30):
And then a little emotional yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
But that's that's what was the most That's what was
the most shocking thing about that entire story and asking
people about that was I didn't know for sure that
we were ever going to do the Aaron Hernandez episode
that wasn't like a preconceived though right interesting, No, you
have no idea. But but what I will say is
(15:53):
this What made it worth doing to me was I
think that you know, Ernie talked about this idea of
we're getting first round talent at fourth round price. We
had heard some things, but these are minor things. These
are bar fights. This is you know, marijuana use like
you know whatever, big nothings. But there was risk, right,
(16:14):
So that started to get towards the question of what
does it take to get there? What are the risks
you take things like that?
Speaker 7 (16:18):
Right?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Of course, nobody had any idea that what was going
to happen was going to happen, so that's part one
of it. But the other thing that was so impressive
to me was how much everybody still cared deeply about
this guy. This wasn't just some somebody that came through
and it was all this bad stuff. It was people
love this guy and they still care about them, and
they're still haunted to this day. That they didn't see
(16:39):
these things. That was fascinating to me. And so once
I started to see that kind of stuff, like everything
in this series, it was I think my general philosophy
was the thing that's never happened before the Patriot story
is that you get all seventy plus of these people
in a room and you let and they get to
talk right.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
In and of itself. Yeah, a tremendous or complish.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
It was I want, I'm just gonna get out of
the way and I'm gonna let them tell. I'm gonna
ask questions and I'm gonna let them tell their stories,
and that's it. But in the Hernandez episode in particular,
it was this still this is still an open wound
in a lot of ways for a lot of these guys,
and in particular for that one. Let's take some care
and make sure we're not putting our thumb on the
scale in any way, shape or form. It's just get
(17:20):
out of the way and let these guys tell their stories.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
So that's fascinating as you hear that. And I want
to bring you into this because it's something you and
I talked about. One of the criticisms from the people
in this area as you're talking about is she say
gloss over thirty eight and thirty nine. Yeah, yeah, your
intention going into this sort of a blank slate. But
it's in the book, Jeff's written about thirty eight and
thirty nine. Yeah, we're gonna cover thirty eight and thirty nine.
(17:43):
Oh boy, look what happened when I just mentioned Aaron Hernandez. Yeah,
And creatively that takes you to a different spot because
of the interviews that you're asking about, Like you're not
going into going episode six gotta be Aaron Hernandez and
I'm gonna you know.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
I had I had at one point in time, there
was Jeff saw the early versions of it. There were
episodes that were cut where the two thousand and two
season happens, they don't make the playoffs. What does that mean?
Why did that happen? I asked all the players what
happened after the first one? Right? And then you get
into two thousand and three, and then you get into
the Okay, lawyer Malloyne, Rodney's brought in, Lawyer's gone, We
(18:20):
get into the hole. There was the practice where Rodney
went after somebody and then like the whole team piles
on top of him, and everybody's fighting and Bill smiling
in the NFL films, but you know the whole thing, right,
then Tom Jackson says what he's going to say, and
he's like, well, and then they go to Buffalo and
then they lose by the exact same score that the
final game of the season they win by the exact
game score. All of it was cut. There was an
(18:41):
entire there was an entire the beginning of the episode
about like Teddy Bruski's stroke. It's not that we just
didn't think about it or we didn't ask the questions.
We made a creative choice, very consciously for every single
thing that was done. This is the story that we
want to tell that gets to this question of what
does it take now. Some people will come in and
they'll say, you know, Matt, this was this great moment
(19:01):
where Tom Jackson said this thing about Bill and then
the whole team had his back and they went out
and they and they did great, and like, you know,
all this kind of stuff. Well, that's true to me.
There was another version of that same kind of moment
where something happened and everybody had Bill's back, And to me,
the more interesting one was they become Goliath and the
(19:22):
entire league has their hooks out and their knives out
for the Patriots, so everybody in the league is doing it,
but they kept. The Patriots are the one who get caught,
you know, doing the taping and everything right, and Bill
is betrayed by his former mentee, am using Scott Yieldie's
words here and then and then this is when the
(19:43):
culture of the patriot the Patriot way, which I know,
you know, some people don't ever want to use that expression.
And Tom and billipoth said that. But this is when
everything that Bill has created here with Tom and with Robert,
and it's all going to be tested, right any other team,
if this happened to the Jets, the whole team would
have fallen apart. They might have gone one game the
entire season. And instead you have this moment where Teddy
(20:05):
Bruski comes into the locker room after that after a
game and says, how do we feel about being coached
by Bill Belichick? And then he goes, oh yeah, and
everybody has Bills back. Now, if I have to make
a choice between a one week story basically, which is
the lawyer Malloy leaving and Rodney and all that kind
of stuff, versus an entire season when the whole team
rallied around their coach at one of those lowest moments
(20:28):
and they go on the run of all runs, and
they are saying f you to everybody in their path.
And they're doing it because how dare you invalidate everything
we've done because of a signal? I'm quoting Teddy Bruwski there, right,
there's vengeance, there's anger, there's great stuff in that. So yeah,
when you start to hear those kind of things, you're like,
I'm sorry, but I'd rather be with that team than
(20:48):
the team that just replicated the exact you know, we
got there, we showed what made this team so special
in oh one, right, we heard it, and all those
players said, yeah, the other ones were great, but being
on the team that went from a non super Bowl
team to a super Bowl team, that was the one
that was the most important. And then, as we all know,
the poor guys that won the second three had to
(21:11):
spend their entire lives coming back for your alumni weekend
and hearing Willie McGinnis and Teddy Brusk you say, you
guys aren't part of the guys on anything until you
get the three right, right, So I'm just saying, you know,
then the next thing is, Okay, why do you have
to spend an entire episode on Matt Castle. Well, let's
see what the greatest coach of all time does when,
(21:32):
in his words, he loses the greatest quarterback of all time,
one of the greatest players of all time, his back's
up against the wall. What does he do? He has
an eleven and five season and he pulls off one
of the greatest coaching feeds of all time. And in
the midst of this, everybody's saying they're starting to wonder
about the greatness of Tom Brady. Right That's more interesting
(21:53):
to me because that's the question of what does it
take to get to that level? Right now, that might
not be an example of when they got to that level,
but that is part of what it takes to get there.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
And going back to what you said, you're coming at
it from a curiosity stand. Yeah, those of us are
here never worried that Tom.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Brady wasn't going to get his job back.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
But I can understand where somebody looking at it with
fresh eyes would think that. And I think you did
a very very deaf job of going back to Michigan
and started to build the mindset of Tom Brady of
you know, beginning with the Drew Henson and all these
other things that make up how he ticks. And I
(22:35):
thought you did a really good job at that. Just
what was leading up to Tom Brady eventually saying I'm
out of here.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
We're out of here.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
It's also you said I did a really good and
I understand I put together and everything with a team
of amazing people and Jeff and we were all doing it.
But here's what I would say, is this is what
they were saying.
Speaker 7 (22:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Everybody in there was saying that. Everybody that we talked to,
every player that was close to time, his family, they
were all talking about how his entire life, he feels
like the guy who's been sort of passed over and
everything right, and so and so then we would go
into the archives. We had thirty five thousand plus hours,
mostly much of which you've been overseeing for many, many years,
and you know, we would find things that would help
(23:18):
elucidate the things that we were hearing in the interview chair. Right.
And so when we went to the Michigan story, it was,
you know, finding those moments where you see Henson coming
in and all the fans are cheering hands and you know,
he's like all that stuff, right, It's and so everybody
talks about this, and I'm trying to put myself in
Tom's shoes. He has come back from the four game
(23:41):
to flakek thing one more time where he leaves and
the show goes on without him. It's three and one
when he comes back right the year before, a couple
of years before his his replacement has been drafted essentially right.
And this is a guy from everybody that talks about
him says he always feels like he's sort of getting
past over and overlooked and all this kind of stuff,
(24:01):
and this all leads up just not being fully appreciated.
Appreciation sure, And so finally we get to this the
Falcon super Bowl, and there's this moment where he's on
his knees, he's just thrown the pick six, and nor Princiatti,
the journalist, comes in and she says, maybe Belichick was right,
Maybe every quarterback at a certain age falls off of
(24:22):
a cliff and and all this stuff. And then you know,
it's like, just from a human perspective, the idea that
you have been doubted and all these things, and people
have just accused you of cheating, and you've been forced
not because you actually did something necessarily, but because it
(24:43):
is more reasonable than whatever the language of the deflate
Gate report was. It's more reasonable than not that you
may have known something that dada that happened. It's it's
all nonsense. And then and then here you are, You're
on your knees, you throw a pick six, and then
somehow you find a way to get up and launch
the greatest come back and NFL if not sports history,
on the biggest stage imaginable.
Speaker 5 (25:04):
It's like, Okay, the fuel he gets from the doubters
was amazing. And even in that moment, Brady says it
in the documentary, it wasn't I threw the pick six.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
We're gonna lose this game. I threw the pick six.
They're gonna say I'm washed off.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Yeah, yeah, it's a human That's the thing, is right.
Most of the time when you're making these documentaries, like
I made something about public defenders in the Deep South, right,
and so it's like these these small stories that people
that nobody's ever heard of before. They gave up jobs
in a in a nice law firm to do this
thing that they're passionate about, so nobody knows them. So
you take these people and you build them up into
(25:39):
being larger than life characters because you want to make
the story interesting for somebody to watch, right, And then
you take the cases that they have and you build
those things up and you make it you make them
seem larger than life. With this story and stories like this,
whether it's Tiger or the aman in Ox thing that
I also worked on, not as a director, but as
a writer and producer and editor, you sometimes find these
(26:00):
larger than life characters and stories, and what you want
to do is you want to show people why they're
humans just like us. They may happen to be on
the biggest stage, imaginable, going through things that we can't
possibly fath them, but the emotions and the things that
drive them are the same thing as all of us.
That you know, if you're a doctor, yeah yeah, or
people doubt me, people are going to pass me over
because I'm too old. These are like universal stories that
(26:22):
that that trust me.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
No.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
But I'm just saying like that, this is this is
what makes us human beings. These are stories that have
been told for you know, centuries, and so this is
this is the kind of thing. And once, and like
I said, once you get back to the central question
of what does it take to get there? And that
being your driving principle, and that answers your question, and
what it took for Tom Brady to get there is Yeah.
It's the thing that I always found fascinating is everybody
talks about how hard Bill was on him and everything, right.
(26:48):
I always and this is not anybody said, this is
just my outside perspective. I always wonder if he had
any other coach who had never who is not always
keeping that carrot just one foot out of reach constantly
throughout all these years with the Super Bowls that he
would accumulate in the stardom that he was. He was
a global celebrity very early on. Would he have done
(27:09):
it on his own? I don't know the answer to
this question, but I wonder if that style of coaching
is part of what motivated him to be great. And
I go back to this, you know, I have it here.
I'm gonna I'm gonna pull this thing up. But there's
this Tom Landry quote that I think is great. The
job of a football coach is to make men do
what they don't want to do in order to achieve
(27:31):
what they've always wanted to be. And it's like if
that doesn't describe Bill Belichick and his coaching style. I
don't know what does and it's and so I don't know.
I just look as an outsider. I think all these
things are endlessly fascinating and I sort of got taken
on this journey just talking to people, and yeah, it
would This is a very long, long answer to your question.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
You know, it's fascinating.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
You mentioned something earlier about Belichick and you know, this
Spygate episode, him feeling betrayed a lot of people. I heard,
why did they use this state trooper from you know,
New Jersey. I thought that was a great way of
kind of going full circle on loyalty, betrayal, betrayal and
loyalty and and you know, even though he was undercover
(28:16):
with you know, bad people, he felt bad about betraying them,
you know, like I got their confidence, I got their
their loyalty to me, and then I had to betray
them as part of my job and I had to
get out, you know. And I thought that was a
great way to weave in how Bill felt, not that
he was working with bad people, but he felt betrayed.
He felt betrayed.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
And then when when we get back to him, later,
and that's time the brad Jersey State Police guy. He says,
it's right, after all the stuff about Eric and he
has betrayal. It's sometimes it's really hard to swallow. And
then he takes a big gulp, right, and it's and
it's like, I don't know this this it's like that.
That's that to me is fascinating, Right, is how you
(28:57):
take this guy that happened to be the guy that
confiscated the tape and the camera and all this stuff.
And that's what he talks about. And this is a
story about betrayal and then what the team does because everybody,
I mean, that's part of the vention story is everybody
there in the building felt like they had been betrayed,
maybe by Eric, but also by the league in general. Right, yes,
you hypocrites, you're all doing this, As Ernie said, that's
why they all cover their mouth, right, And how dare
(29:19):
you try to invalidate everything that we've accomplished that we
can and because you guys know, we've talked that, we've
seen them talk about it. They come in every day,
they're they're they're all grinding away to find any edge.
They're running the hills they're lifting the weights in the
off season, all that stuff to just get a little
bit better, and now everything is going to be invalidated
because of this one thing that everybody else is doing.
And then you get mad and you go and as
(29:40):
Rodney Harrison says, f a mall, f the mall. Now
that to me again just comes back to the why
didn't you cover thirty eight and thirty nine. It's like
because that, to me is much more interesting, not because
of scandal, which is what everybody likes to say, Oh,
you just wanted to get eyeballs and all this stuff.
It's like, no, it's a more interesting human emotion than
just the foundation of this thing is set and then
(30:02):
we're going to watch the foundation kind of accomplish it
over and over and over again. It's this is new,
this is different. This is a different emotion, and this
is a different thing, and that is fascinating to me.
Speaker 7 (30:12):
So that, to me, there was two different sort of things.
Speaker 8 (30:14):
And I go back to what you said a while
ago about answering the question, you know, like what does
it take? YEA, everybody wants it, but is everybody willing
to do it? And I wanted to tie that to
something Scott Poley said toward the beginning about the narcotic
you know, the winning, and then you sort of, I think,
really follow that through.
Speaker 7 (30:33):
You guys did a great job. I thought of following
through with that same theme.
Speaker 8 (30:36):
And I'm wondering when you got all of those different things,
you know, like so now they told you to stop taping,
but you're still tape from that area where you weren't
spot We kind of fell off a little bit in
eight o nine, you know, and ten comes around, We're
going to take a little bit of a chance on
Aaron Hernandez. You know, do you feel like that maybe
it was part of what some of those things like,
(30:57):
is everybody willing to do what it takes to get
at But.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Here's here's the here's the thing I want to be
The answer is yes. But I want to be very
clear about one thing. When I say yes, I'm not
trying to say they were willing to take a murderer
in order to win, because but no. But I'm just saying,
you're not saying you're not saying. But if I say yes,
then the the lunatics that are that are that are
that are dming me on to every assume that that's
(31:22):
what I'm saying. We're getting him too. Anyway, my point
is they were willing to take a slight risk because
they were going to get first round talent at a
fourth round price. That is part of it, and part
of it is.
Speaker 7 (31:37):
But a lot of teams had him off the board. Okay,
completely off.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
But guess what they had brought in other people? Remember
Randy Moss had run over a meter made or whatever
the story was, right, Okay, okay, guess what they He
came into the Patriot Way and everything worked out. And
as Robert Craft says in the Thing, we hoped and
and it was our belief and we hoped that the
Patriot Way would whatever.
Speaker 5 (32:01):
The Bill's relationship with urban Meyer, I'm sure that played
into it.
Speaker 8 (32:06):
You know, speculation right in a negative willing to do
anything too, That's my point. So, and I wanted to
ask you specifically about the Hernandez episode.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (32:16):
I thought that that's really powerful. I thought that was
a really really strong episode. And we talk a lot
about all that. Would you say over seventy people were yeah, yeah,
Brandan Lloyd, Yeah, like how did you come up with?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
You know, his locker was next to his locker was.
Speaker 8 (32:34):
Because I thought he It's as simple as that, all
it is. And there's a guy that was I was
in that locker room. I was covering those teams I
covered from from nineteen ninety nine. Fred hired me and
I've been here ever since. Brandon Lloyd's not a guy
that would have been front of mine for me. Yeah,
but his man when he started to speak, do not
go out?
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Yeah, I am. And the answer is this West Well
West Wes Welker was next to his locker. I had
no idea, you know, there's one of these.
Speaker 7 (32:58):
I knew some of the Welker stuffs. He didn't see.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
The thing is, I didn't even realize, like, you know,
I'm not a fan. I don't know how NFL locker
rooms are situated and what is it by number? Whatever
the reason was, Yeah, okay, So whatever it was, they
happened to be next to each other, right, And I
didn't know that. And then when I when we found
that out, that's the reason you ad and you find
that person because he was there. He witnessed the eff.
(33:20):
It's the simplest answer in the entire world.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
So, Jeff, you are in New England, Okay, and maybe
a little bit used to the personalities Northeast Quarter or
not that you're not used Matt to the Northeast Corridor.
I asked, Matt, this, are you surprised at what has
bubbled up from inside the six state region with this
great piece of work that you guys have done and
all the reaction to it.
Speaker 6 (33:45):
Probably not that much, just because I do live here,
and I I admit I do listen to radio sometimes
when I'm driving around.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Thanks and you know everybody. I had a guy come
up to me yesterday.
Speaker 6 (34:05):
When I was over at Harvard who he said, I
hate to admit this, but I was listening to the
EI this morning.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
He said, don't tell anybody, you know.
Speaker 6 (34:12):
But the truth is, I think a lot of people
listen to it because it can't help themselves.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Because they're huge sports fans out here.
Speaker 6 (34:18):
And I listened to it, so I've you know, I
know how how we can be here. I don't know
that it's the same though, when we say the all
six states in New England, Like I live in Connecticut,
and there's a lot of people in Boston who don't
necessarily even consider Connecticut part of New England.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
And Connecticut I don't want to.
Speaker 6 (34:37):
That's right, because half of our state is considers themselves
New Yorks, right, And so where I live, which isn't
that far from Gillette, people don't feel the same way
that they do within the one twenty eight corridor. And
there isn't the angst where I live about the documentaries,
because I mean, there's there's a lot of people talking
about it down there, and we have local radio there
(34:59):
that talks about it in the tenor is a lot
different than it is up here within the six one
seven five.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Await area code.
Speaker 6 (35:05):
But yeah, I wasn't surprised. But I also I actually
think it's good for the series to have to not
have everybody like taking a lap. Yeah, I mean, and
that the idea that most of the you know, the
(35:25):
arguing and fighting is going on right here is kind
of a good thing. It sort of reminds me of
a family. Yeah, that's what it's like.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
But don't you better not say anything about my family?
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Right?
Speaker 2 (35:36):
If I want to ball out my brother for being.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
It's the Tom Jackson thing. We can say things about
our coach, but you can't.
Speaker 8 (35:42):
Right exactly right, And that was the part, and you
touched on that earlier too, you know, and you mentioned
when they rallied behind Belichick after Spygate and they went
on this run. I would argue that they rallied behind
Tom Jackson and then won twenty one games in a row.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
Yeah, and Bill, when Tom Jackson said that, yeah.
Speaker 8 (36:00):
Yeah, they rallied around the Tom Jackson comment, right, that went,
that's right. Tom Jackson said that that's what Tom was
on Landcat Strike.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (36:09):
Tom Brady was.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Going to The Great Moment book, which is one of
my favorites, is at the end of that super Bowl.
I think Tom Jackson is on some stage at the
Super Bowl and Bill walks up and says, f you right.
Speaker 8 (36:22):
I don't think they've really spoken. I don't think they've
really spoken since.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
If I had, if I had, you know, like these
are I mean, I know that's great, right, but I
just felt that we that the that that episode that
the episode four was just more fascinating to me.
Speaker 8 (36:38):
I know, it's all great, yeah, and so speaking, so
I just not like, I understand the difference between a
documentary and sort of a highlight video. And I totally agree.
I don't need the I know what happened. I was
at all the games. Like all the other Patriots fans,
some of them are not looking at it that way.
They should because it's a documentary. It's a different vehicle.
So I didn't need like a recap of the twenty
(36:59):
one game winning reade and then going to Houston and
winning the Super Bowl and going to Jacksonville and all that.
And I just thought that was a really pivotal moment
because a lot of those players were really tight with Lawyer.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
Malone, and a lesser coach could have lost the locker run.
Speaker 8 (37:13):
But there was always but there were many other I
just think that's a fascinating moment in history.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
So that leads the question, Matt, and I don't know
if you had a preconceived notion in this with the
book and the success of the book and everything, was
there an intended audience for this documentary because I heard
and read you say Films does a great job with
America's game. Films does a great job with three Games
to Glory three, Like this is are you mining new
(37:39):
territory here because you know that that those other works exist.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
Yeah, I think that that gave me the confidence when
I made the choices of the kind of story that
I wanted to tell, and the team wanted to tell.
My team wanted to tell that. You know, look, this
has all been out there before. It's been covered so
many times. Not only the film cover it, but Tom
Brady covered the Lawyer Maloy thing because Tom was very
(38:03):
close to the Lawyer Maloy. They had just done the
commercials together and all you know, it's just like all
sorts of stuff, they were close. I just felt so
many different people, including Jeff, had done it in a really,
really great way. And I guess if I feel like
I'm answering the question and and there are and that
(38:23):
question is leading me towards something that isn't the conventional
timeline version of this, which why do I feel this?
Why do I'm not going to have any remorse or
regret over saying I'm going to skip over these things?
And truthfully, one of the things that really was the
thing that gave me that was when Pioli said the
line about addiction and he says, he says, look, you know,
(38:48):
your relationship with the drug starts to change at first
when you win their elation, and then after a little
while it's just relief, and then when you lose, it's dark.
And you'll do anything you can to keep it going.
And that was one of those moments where it was
like that was one of those things. It was just like, well,
(39:08):
you know, I told you how we had cut the
version of the three season and all this stuff. Well,
at the end of that or at the end of
the four season, we would we would we would always
get to peel these line And it just felt in
a way like we were doing all this stuff that
was just kind of getting us further and further away
from getting to peel these line because that was the
(39:31):
next thought. I had worked for this guy for a
long time that had a little sticker on his uh
his computer that he worked off of, and the sticker said, Oh,
that's interesting, tell me something new. And his theory was
a filmmaker, he's a great director, he's won an Oscar,
He's was that's what you want the audience to be
thinking every time they every word, every sentence, every scene
(39:54):
is oh, that's interesting, Now what kind of right? And
so in a way, as infuriating as I'm sure it
is for a lot of fans, which I understand, there
was an element of those that just kept getting in
the way of now what and so the next the
answer to now what was getting to Puli's lines faster
(40:16):
and let's see the next chapter of this thing when
everything changes and that and that and that and and
and because otherwise it you know, you're not really getting
further along in the answering of the question.
Speaker 5 (40:27):
Yeah, you talk about the creative decisions you made along
the way. Do you care to share maybe how some
of the sausage was made between maybe even the two
of you, you know, creative people in a work of
this magnitude.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
There's gonna be disagreements, oh all the time?
Speaker 5 (40:41):
Do you guys like have it out at any time
or with some of the other producers.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Or yeah, there was there's not just between me and Jeff,
but also like, oh gosh, I'm trying to think of
some of them. I mean, there would be times where
we would be taught. Okay, So for example, in episode ten,
we break out into the footage of Bill. This is
when I was wrong about something. I'm gonna tell this version.
(41:10):
We in the series break out into the footage of
Bill with the team when he's showing the like rams
footage and stuff like that. Right, there's this moment where
we like leave the super Bowl, and I thought I
and my lead editor, longtime collaborator Dan Kohler, is the
one who sort of had this idea to do this,
to break away from the super Bowl and actually show
some of this stuff. I was thinking, I don't want
(41:32):
to leave the energy of the super Bowl. I don't
want to do this, like this is a bad idea.
And we got into like like we would get into
fights about it, right and I would just be like, look,
just don't do it, and he's just like a positive,
you gotta do this. You gotta do this, to the
point where I had to pull like five people and
say I think this guy's nuts, Like you know, he's
got it all wrong. We shouldn't leave the super Bowl.
And everybody was like no, you got your head up
(41:53):
your ass, like he's right, you're wrong. And when I
heard that enough times, said all right, I'm wrong, and
I just said, let's go for it. And I think
it's really really important. And Jeff and I have talked
about this a lot. You've got to surround yourself with
people who are willing to tell you when you have
your head of your ass, and there is an adversarial
(42:17):
I think adversarial but but good relationships that have moments
of of you know, tension and everything. Creative tension is
what makes for great things. I think that happened here
a lot in this building with between Tom and Bill.
That makes for greatness because people are pushing each other
(42:38):
to get to their best and there are going to
be disagreements, and you just have to make sure that
you know, and you know, this is what we talk
this is what Michael Holly talks about. You just got
to make sure that as you obtain success that you
kind of don't get to the point where you don't
want to hear the nos anymore. And you and you
you want to make sure you're surrounded by those people
still for a very very long.
Speaker 5 (42:58):
Time, iffect Belichick a little bit. As the brain drain
happened with his coaches. You know, there were less you know,
veteran coaches in the room to kind of push back.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
On well, and like, let's not just that, but just
like let's think about when Ernie Adams left. Right, still
believe I believe to this day that the Raiders game
where there was the lateral that then Chandler Jones came
and got it and scored the defensive touchdown on I
still believe to this day that Ernie Adams would have
been in every year of every coach that was on
the field at the time, saying repeatedly, if this happens,
(43:30):
they take a knee, they don't start to do laterals,
make sure this doesn't happen. I think that there was
a lot of people like that now scarneki is you know,
and those all those people, Peoli, all the people that
were there that were always thinking about all the other stuff.
When that stuff leaves, it changes things. And this is
again it goes back to this line that Puly has
in the tenth episode. I said, well, you know, I
(43:51):
asked him the question that you know, everybody has to ask,
and everybody wanted to know. Even though it is as well,
I'll say the question. I agree with Scott on this.
I say, so was it more Bill or was it more?
Speaker 4 (44:00):
I thought that was brilliantly placed, and he goesspect.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
It's disrespectful, disrespectful for everybody who came through this building
over the last twenty years. And and he doesn't just
mean the players, he means everyone.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
I thought Poli was a star in this by the way.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
He was great We've.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
Had opportunities to talk to Scott and I think, you
know some of it, you go, really does he believe
that or anything like that? Or is he just shine
in our shoe? But I think Scott after his time here,
has become very reflective. I think that's what I think
the narcotic line that you know was it was really
all of us him in his personal life as well.
Speaker 4 (44:37):
I think you look, yes, I know, depth to some
of the stuff.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
I don't think he liked himself. I think if he
looks back at himself now in hindsight, I'm not.
Speaker 4 (44:45):
Sure he loves the way he was back in the day.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
You guys should interview is yeah we did we did
just like this. Yeah, no, no, I know, And I
think that there has Look, that's the best that all
of us can do.
Speaker 7 (44:58):
Right.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
We look back on the mistakes we've made, and we
do a lot of self reflection and a lot of
a lot of self scouting, and we figured out, you know,
what do we do wrong? What could we have done better?
And I think that the you know, then what you
see is with the guy, he talks about it like
he's done a lot of that stuff. And I think
that you know when we got him, We got him
at a place where he was very thoughtful about this,
(45:20):
and he really hadn't had the opportunity, saying with Ernie
to really be on the record, at least in film,
because they both I think talked to Halbert stan Win.
Education of a Coach was written, but they really hadn't
had a chance through all these things that were made.
They'd never really been on the record before and actually
talked about this stuff. And it was an opportunity for
them to really tell their side of the story, just
(45:41):
like it was an opportunity for all these players who
really were in a lot of ways not front and center,
and to tell their side of the story.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
So I think I had heard you say something about
what somebody asked you while you guys have been on tour.
Speaker 4 (45:53):
You know, what's the big Fish tour.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
He makes it sound like I'm on a bus going
from town to town. No' you're in a gulf stream.
I wish that me and Jeanie probably was on your list.
He didn't talk. So let's move raicle over to the side.
Is there somebody in your guy's mind? You talk to
seven over seventy people, Is there somebody that you said,
I wish we could have gotten.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
Him or her.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
The honest answer is now, looking back, the answer is
really no. There isn't one person that I think, oh,
if we had just gotten this person, it would have
been because I think I was very conscious of Ernie
and Scott are going to be the people along with
McDaniel who can come in and talk about the perspective
from the coaching, along with Bill obviously, but who were
(46:41):
the people that were Tom's friends that can speak for
you can speak in addition to Tom for him from his perspective,
his family members, you know, whoever, Alex and Alex, Yeah,
I being able to interview out that Nancy Brady was
fin She was amazing, amazing. There are interviews on the
cutting room floor that were great interviews. We talked about
(47:01):
skipping over. I know we keep going back to skipping
over thirty eight and thirty nine. Rodney Harrison did a
three hour long interview that is incredible. It's on the
cutting room floor. We have a little bit of it
in but basically the extent of him is, you know,
in the middle of the episode four he says, you know,
FM all kind of thing right that was like that was,
but that interview is incredible. Do you have the rights
to come out after the feb It's Apple? Yeah, it's Apple.
(47:24):
That's a easy answer. It's Apple. It's and so you know,
I got to talk to Rex Ryan, right, and you know,
I asked Rex. I asked Rex Ryan. I said, Rex,
I'm really sorry to do this, but can you tell
me about the foot video and because the whole thing?
And then I went to Wes Welker and I said, Wes,
that press conference you did, when you found a way
to work the word feed into every single answer you
(47:45):
gave for about an hour, was one of the best
press conferences I've ever seen in my entire life. And
Rex Ryan, while we were interviewing, said that he actually
sent Wes Welker a pair of like rubber feet to
his wedding.
Speaker 4 (47:55):
That's great, Yeah, is good for Rex, say is Apple?
But wanted director's cut or something?
Speaker 1 (48:01):
You got to you got to call You got to
call them and they make it happen. Man.
Speaker 7 (48:04):
Yeah, So can I ask you a lighter hearted thing?
Speaker 1 (48:07):
So wait, Rex Ryan's foot thing wasn't.
Speaker 8 (48:09):
Yeah, but you know, I don't necessarily mean this as
serious as it sounds. So you're you're the at the
end in nine or ten or towards the end the
Malcolm Butler stuff, and you ask Bill about Malcolm not playing,
and he says, we've already been over.
Speaker 7 (48:25):
That, and you rightly say, well, I just asked, yeah.
Speaker 8 (48:28):
Yeah, there's nobody that does the awkward pause like Bill Belichick.
Speaker 7 (48:33):
Yeah, and he will wait you out forever.
Speaker 8 (48:35):
And as someone like you now that has been on
the other side of one of those awkward pauses, what
did it feel like?
Speaker 1 (48:43):
I don't know. The thing is, I think when you've
been here for a long time, he has been mythologized
and talked about and built up and he is and
he is the greatest coach of all time. I'm not
trying to downplay his accomplishments at all. But I felt
like and I sort of felt the same. I mean,
I was interested and excited to talk to these guys,
(49:03):
but it wasn't like, oh my gosh, what is this
going to you know, I'm like, yeah, no, and so
and so I always you know, what I kept talking
thinking about was in that seventh season they play the Redskins.
They they're up like, you know, forty something to nothing.
Fourth down there you know, they couldn't they they could,
they could take a knee. At that point, they score
(49:25):
another touchdown, and afterwards Bill Belichick's asked and they say, well,
why'd you do that? He says, what do you want
to do? Kick a field goal?
Speaker 5 (49:30):
Right?
Speaker 1 (49:31):
That's what we love about Bill. We love the Bill.
That was all it was. It against Gas or whoever
it was, when he kept doing all the false starts
things to get to eat the clock up. He didn't
like it as much when Rabel was doing it to him.
But yeah, but my point is that's what people love
about Bill Belichick. He never takes his foot off the gaft,
He never takes his foot off the gas. He doesn't care.
(49:51):
He just does the thing that he's supposed to do,
which is to win games and do what's best for
the team. And so when I went when I when
I got to talk to him, I was just like, well,
I'm just gonna ask him the same ques since I
ask everybody else. You know, Ernie got all the same questions,
you know, why wasn't Malcolm Butler playing? And or what
about Hernandez? Ernie answered that question, you know, and and
then when we got to that one, he's gonna get asked.
(50:13):
It's an important question to ask Bill Belichick.
Speaker 5 (50:15):
No, I'll have to do it.
Speaker 8 (50:16):
Yeah, And I just wanted just some individuals quick, the
guys that are involved in the scandals, Oh, Matt Walshwitz, Spygate,
John Destremsky.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
And never reached out. Now he did never reached out.
Speaker 8 (50:29):
Okay, yeah, I mean there that would have been an opportunity,
I guess, to get some information.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
That would have been a forensic examination of it. Did
they do it or didn't they do it? And that
wasn't the question that I was ever trying to answer, right.
So with the flate Gate, the thing that I always
try to find these things that are like this is
the guiding principle through everything right for to flay Gate,
it was this. We found this piece of archive. It's
the Today Show. It's Matt Lower. He starts off and
he says, we lead our stories today with the ongoing
(50:58):
to flate Gate investigation. This is when it's like back
and forth in the courts and stuff. Then a few
stories later he goes and in other news isis has
beheaded another hot The tansition was so great and I
saw that. I saw that and I was like, all right,
that's it. This whole thing is a farce. Right, that's
what this whole thing is going to be. The whole
episode is right. Yes, we get into all the details,
(51:18):
we get into like what's said about from one side
to the other, but it's just about the lunacy behind
the idea that an equipment violation, even if he did it,
even if he did would take up become a two
year national news story that was consumed to the level
where something like isis was a secondary news Yeah, that
(51:41):
that was it. So you know, we talk about these things,
what's the one sentence things that just triggers everything. That's it.
That's the guiding principle. And so the entire thing was
how is this thing of farce? Right it? And and yes,
I'm not trying to say that we skirt over whether
or not the evidence is one side or another, but
what was much more interesting in that entire thing was
it's a farce. It's insane.
Speaker 3 (52:03):
So, Matt, here's a chance to give a shout out
to some of the people, because you need a team
of people to find that, Matt lower Yeast. You need
you need a team of people who's sitting there looking
for in another news fifty of them?
Speaker 4 (52:16):
Right, what was what was that?
Speaker 1 (52:18):
Like?
Speaker 3 (52:18):
I mean, I know what it's like for our little
library here. But I think what really makes this series
are some of the audio and visual montages about some
of the scandals or the seven season when they're rolling
over everybody. Those are widely entertaining, and that takes a
huge team of people to play.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
Yeah, so Matt Fisher is are a lead Archila producer.
Then he has a bunch of producers that are working
with him, Vin de Anton, Paul Williard, Riley Bloom, Riley
Riley I think came in here and stuff. Yeah, yeah,
good time here and I love that. So that's the
beginning of it. Then there's a team of loggers whose
(52:57):
job is to just comb through this stuff and and
and say and put markers in where there's something. Then
we had different colors of markers that would be like
just yellow would be okay, green would be this could
be good. Then there would be like purple or magenta
would be like okay, this is going in the cut.
Speaker 7 (53:12):
You know.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
They would be all these levels. So they would go
through all of this stuff and start doing and there
was a team of people all over the country because
we were we started this thing during COVID still, so
our system was set up so that you could be
anywhere in the country and just sort of beam in
and work on it, and said they would make all
these things. I will never forget. We were in the
middle of cutting the first cut of the Aaron Hernandez
episode and Paul Williard, one of these people, walks in
(53:36):
and it doesn't walk in. He I'm a man imagining
it as if we were in an office, but we weren't.
He on slack basically video messages me, and he says,
I just found this stuff from the Rookie symposium that
was and he's looking at this and he's just he's
just he was just giving through footage, and all of
a sudden he sees this moment where Chris Carter is
(53:56):
sitting there and he's he's saying, this is the fork
in the road for all lot of you guys. This
is where you separate yourself from your friends and you
you know, and blah blah blah. And it's like that
finding that footage completely reshaped the entire.
Speaker 5 (54:08):
Structure of that that Hernandez asked a question, right, he
must have thought he found the treasure, the Bury treasure.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
Yeah, you know, but there was there was a bunch
of those things. Yeah like that. But that that reshaped
everything because then it was, okay, well we have we'll
introduce the draft room and the limited things that they knew.
We'll have seen Dion talking about it a little bit,
and then we'll sort of go back in time and
we'll start with Aaron's childhood and then we'll very slowly
(54:36):
get back to the rookie symposium and then basically it's
now he joins the team. Finding that footage completely changed
how we told the entire structure of that episode. And
that's the thing you talked about, like we'll do the
interviews inform how you do things and change the way
you're looking at things. The footage would change and informed
things just as much. And it was just this journey
that we were constantly on to try to figure out
how I.
Speaker 5 (54:56):
Would say, for anyone that is interested, go to IMDb
and look at the Dynasty and you'll see the cast
of that you had helping me.
Speaker 1 (55:04):
It was there was there was eight editors, right, and
some of them some of them were Vindienton, who was
the producer on the thing. He's a diehard Giants fan.
So every time we would go, he would sometimes come
on to set and he would be there for the
Teddy Bruce Key interview. He never told anybody this, and
certainly not Teddy, but he always had an eighteen and
one T shirt underneath his button up right. That was
(55:25):
his little thing that he you know, he would do right.
But then there was also people Freddie Shanahan and Nick
ba Jetty. They brew both grew up like two towns
outside of Foxborough. And these were guys that had the
Homeland Defense posters you know from back in the day.
They had them above their bed. And I still remember
I had to call and get fact check confirmation for
something from Teddy at one point in time, and I
(55:47):
just told one of them, I said, hey, come on
my zoom for a second. And they didn't understand why,
and then we and then we zoomed with with Teddy.
He pops on and I just said take a second,
take thirty seconds and tell Teddy how much you you know,
how much you love him. And for them it would
just like they got to meet their heroes now. And
so it was a mixed bag of people who were
like some of the people were diehard Patriots fans, and
some people were our line producer of Laura mckewn, and
(56:08):
she grew up in Buffalo. And and now is another
conversation I had to have with people. They would just say,
I can't do this. I can't work on the project
that is gonna, you know, is going to be about
the Patriots because I just I my family won't my
family will disown me, you know, and all this kind
of stuff. And they would say that, and then I'd
just be like, look, we're gonna not do the wedding video.
This is going to be the unvarnished truth and it
(56:29):
and it's just going to be what people talk about
and that's it.
Speaker 3 (56:32):
And so so as we wrap things up, Jeff, I
just was I wanted to ask you, you know, when you
see this thing, you've got an idea in your head,
you're going to pitch this book. Do you pinch yourself
now that that book, which is a New York Times bestseller,
is now one of the most highly trafficked.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
Stream number one on Amazon, just a little plug, number
one on Amazon ahead of Tom Brady's TV twelve Method.
But yeay, Jeff Bennett, Oh, yeah, okay, sorry, but anyway,
my point is he'd beat Tom Brady.
Speaker 4 (56:58):
Okay, what how does that make you feel?
Speaker 7 (57:01):
It's great.
Speaker 6 (57:01):
I mean, it's it's great to see, you know, something
like this at the end of.
Speaker 1 (57:08):
A very long road.
Speaker 6 (57:09):
It's very it's rewarding and satisfying, and it's great for
my family.
Speaker 2 (57:14):
Kids love it, friends and neighbors. It's fun.
Speaker 5 (57:18):
I asked Matt before if he's working anything, he's taken
some time off, anything in the works for you?
Speaker 2 (57:24):
Yeah, I mean, I'm a writer. I have to work
all the time. Yeah, there's no time off.
Speaker 4 (57:31):
Care to share.
Speaker 2 (57:32):
I can't, Okay I can't, but all right, yeah, I am.
Speaker 4 (57:36):
I am.
Speaker 1 (57:36):
I know, But as Ernie Adams would say, there are
some things I'm taking.
Speaker 3 (57:41):
Matt, Jeff, thank you very much for joining us. It
was wildly entertaining. It's gotten a lot of I mean,
I believe that the talk and the opinions and the
tweets and everything like that have got to be good
for business. It wasn't a straight line with this organization
to greatness and you know, the ultimate dynasty, But I
(58:02):
think you guys did it very It was very entertaining,
very thoroughly researched, uh interviewed the whole nine yards, and
I can't thank.
Speaker 7 (58:10):
You enough for doing us.
Speaker 1 (58:11):
Thanks for so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (58:12):
Yeah, thank you,
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