Jason Hehir recently appeared on Reddit to answer some of the doubts fans have about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls’ docu-series ‘The Last Dance‘. One fan asked him how he felt about the general thought that says the documentary one-sided since Jordan had control and made creative decisions about the final product.
Hehir denied all these claims, explaining that neither MJ nor his camp forbid anything and never avoided a topic. In fact, they were very open and collaborative with the crew, even if they talked about controversial topics during interviews.
Q: How do you feel about the criticism that it was a heavily one-sided documentary? I.e, that MJ had too much creative control and it painted him in an overly positive light as a result?
A: Hey, Mikal! We worked very hard to address topics that MJ hadn’t addressed on this big a platform. We didn’t shy away from some of the controversial issues that have dogged him throughout his career. We went in-depth on the murder of his father, on the conspiracy theories surrounding his departure for baseball, on the notion. that he was somehow responsible for his dad’s death, on his hyper-competitiveness as a teammate and an opponent, on his infamous “republicans buy sneakers too” comment. The idea that MJ had total control is false. All partners: ESPN, Netflix, NBA and Jordan Brand (as well as my own internal team) had the right to give notes. There were MANY instances were MJ’s team wanted to go one way and we declined. Michael himself was extremely distant in the process. There wasn’t one issue that we were told to avoid. There wasn’t any question MJ wouldn’t answer. I was adamant that this should be a comprehensive, transparent doc from the inception of the project, and I proud of what we accomplished.
Knowing MJ’s personality, people would think he had a big voice on how things were done for this docu-series. However, that wasn’t the case. You can tell that watching MJ opening up about the hardest things he had to live as a player, how he lost his father and how people think he was too harsh with his teammates when he wanted to make them better.
Hehir stated he wanted something real and transparent and judging what we saw on the TV, he accomplished that.
