Share & Tell with "The Last Dance" Director Jason Hehir and The Charlotte Wilder Effect

Summary

Podcast Summary: Pablo Torre Finds Out

Episode: Share & Tell with "The Last Dance" Director Jason Hehir and The Charlotte Wilder Effect
Release Date: August 1, 2024
Host: Pablo Torre (Le Batard & Friends)
Guests: Jason Hehir (Director, "The Last Dance"), Charlotte Wilder (Writer/Journalist/Bostonian)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out centers on two main threads: the serendipitous connections between sports, media, and relationships, and the lasting impact of "The Last Dance" documentary. Host Pablo Torre is joined by Jason Hehir, its director, and Charlotte Wilder, whose work played a surprising, pivotal role in Jason’s personal life. The group explores stories behind the making of "The Last Dance," the unintended cultural ripple effects it caused, and shares a heartfelt, funny look at how a sports blog post indirectly led to Jason meeting his future wife.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Jason Hehir’s New Parenthood (00:33 - 02:17)

• Jason introduces his seven-week-old son, reflecting on the late arrival of fatherhood in his life.
• "I was an uncle five times over...47 years old, so all of my friends have been down this road. I figured, like, I have this figured out." — Jason Hehir

2. The Charlotte Wilder Effect (04:35 - 13:15)

• Charlotte Wilder’s Article as the Catalyst:
  • Jason recounts how an SB Nation article Charlotte wrote about Georgia football fans at a New York bar (“Watching the National Championship at a Georgia Bar is What Heartbreak Looks Like”) became his icebreaker to connect with a woman at the gym—now his wife, Erin.
  • Memorable moment: Charlotte discovers for the first time, live on the podcast, that her writing was critical to Jason’s romantic life:
    • "This is the most meaningful thing... I’ve always been like, yeah, okay, here, I’ll be a clown in a bar and write about it." — Charlotte Wilder (12:44)
• Butterfly Effect in Action:
  • Pablo coins it "The Charlotte Wilder effect," tracing how a seemingly trivial sports blog post paved the way for a marriage and, humorously, for "The Last Dance" being as good as it was due to Jason's improved well-being.

3. Behind the Scenes of The Last Dance (16:48 - 49:25)

• Origins and Omnipresence:
  • The “industrial complex” of Michael Jordan re-emerged due to the documentary’s popularity during the pandemic when the world was starved for content.
• Saturday Night Live Parody (17:00 - 22:00):
  • Jason perceives his SNL parody for the first time and laughs about becoming a meme:
    • "The slowest four seconds of my life. I was like, I know you’re gonna bleep this but what the [bleep] is going on?" — Jason Hehir (19:16)
• Documentary’s Global Impact and Memes (22:02 - 26:10):
  • Discussion of how minor characters—like Michael Jordan’s security guard—became pop culture memes unexpectedly.
  • Obama’s “Former Chicago Resident” title sparked online debates but was intended as tongue-in-cheek:
    • “That was so tongue in cheek. It was so funny. FORMER CHICAGO. It’s like, this guy loves basketball and that’s what we’re talking to him about.” — Charlotte Wilder (24:28)
• Pandemic Timing and Cultural Reception:
  • Jason notes the documentary’s “forgiving audience” due to COVID lockdown, making it a uniting event:
    • “If this came out in a time of non-pandemic, regular level cynicism...I think there would have been a lot more vitriol.” — Jason Hehir (25:36)
• Michael Jordan’s Rarity and Gravitas (27:25 - 28:26):
  • Charlotte: “He’s so real, but he’s also so behind his own myth... the best thing to do is not say anything and not disturb it.”
• Isaiah Thomas, Scottie Pippen, and Dissatisfied Bulls (28:48 - 40:36):
  • Jason reflects on players who felt misrepresented and details the iPad reaction approach to interviews: “handing NBA legends a tablet with their life on video... like giving a toddler a toy on an airplane.”
  • Sheds light on missteps (e.g., unintended portrayal of Jerry Krause).
  • “The one thing that the NBA pushed back on...was a clip where Scotty...said, I’m gonna stick a cattle prod up Jerry Krause’s butt...I wanted people to see what this guy was going through day in and day out.” — Jason Hehir (33:15)
• Aftermath: Bulls' “No Bull” Response Tour (37:17 - 38:21):
  • Pablo and guests discuss how some Bulls used documentary backlash to launch their own tours, noting the odd cycles of criticism and monetization.
  • "You have given a lot of people a second wind to make money off something here. Like, that doesn't happen if the Last Dance..." — Charlotte Wilder (37:48)
• The Phrase “The Last Dance” Goes Viral (40:38 - 44:44):
  • The documentary title has crossed into pop and sports culture, even getting misapplied (e.g., Venom: The Last Dance, youth sports teams).
  • Jason reveals he didn’t come up with the title, credits Phil Jackson’s “Last Waltz” inspiration, unsure if Phil even knew the real name of the Scorsese documentary.

4. Notable Production Anecdotes

• Phil Jackson Slammed the Door (45:16 - 46:44):
  • Jason describes showing up at Phil Jackson's Montana home for an interview, only to have the door closed on him because Phil had no idea about the scheduled documentary shoot.
  • Phil Jackson built the log cabin seen in the film with his own hands.
• Emotional Reflections on Impact (47:14 - end):
  • Jason and Charlotte exchange gratitude about the unforeseen ways their work and lives have intersected, with themes of serendipity and the ripple effects of creative work.
  • "You never know who is watching and you never know the connections that you're making that you're completely unaware of." — Jason Hehir (48:49)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On finding out Charlotte wrote the pivotal article:
  “This is the most meaningful thing… that’s the sweetest thing. Oh, thank you for telling me that.” — Charlotte Wilder (13:09)
• On being parodied on SNL:
  “The slowest four seconds of my life…I literally stood up and said, what the [bleep] is going on?” — Jason Hehir (19:14)
• On Michael Jordan’s gravitas:
  “He’s so real, but he’s also so behind his own myth... like the sightings of the Loch Ness Monster.” — Charlotte Wilder (27:33)
• On the cultural impact of The Last Dance’s timing:
  “We literally had a captive audience globally.” — Jason Hehir (26:13)
• On unintended consequences:
  “The Splag Nation effect has led to this baby being born.” — Pablo Torre (12:58)
• On post-documentary blowback:
  “People thought the filmmakers hate Jerry Krause and made him the villain. That was not the intent. That’s my misstep.” — Jason Hehir (33:15)
• On career and fate:
  "You never know... what connections are made that you never even were aware of." — Jason Hehir (48:49)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:33: Jason discusses new fatherhood
• 04:35 - 13:15: Jason reveals Charlotte’s role in his relationship origin story
• 16:48: Transition to discussion about The Last Dance’s cultural reach
• 17:00 - 22:00: SNL skit and reactions to becoming a meme
• 22:08: Obama “Former Chicago Resident” meme
• 25:32: COVID-pandemic’s impact on the documentary’s reception
• 27:25 - 28:26: Michael Jordan’s mystique & speaking out
• 28:48: Isaiah Thomas, Scottie Pippen, Krause, and interview tactics
• 33:15: Details on the Krause family & editorial regrets
• 37:17: The “No Bull” Tour response by ex-Bulls in Australia
• 40:38: Meme-ification and title proliferation of "The Last Dance"
• 45:16: Phil Jackson’s door slam & log cabin anecdote
• 47:14 - end: Reflections on serendipity, legacy, and gratitude

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Tone & Style

• The episode is candid, humorous, and imbued with both self-deprecation and genuine gratitude. Jason and Charlotte share vulnerable stories, Pablo injects witty asides, and everyone is affably self-aware about their roles in both sports media history and each other’s lives.
• The guest conversations flow naturally between sports minutiae, big-picture legacy, and intimate personal moments—perfectly modeling the “beyond the game” theme of Pablo’s show.

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Bottom Line

This episode isn’t just for fans of "The Last Dance" or sports documentaries; it’s an engaging meditation on how our creative acts ripple through the world in unforeseen ways, changing personal and cultural history. Whether it’s a blog post that leads to a marriage or a documentary that changes how we meme and remember a global superstar, it’s all here: hilarious, poignant, and richly detailed.

For anyone who missed it, this episode is a poignant, behind-the-scenes journey through sports, media, and the unpredictable journey of life’s connections.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out I am Pablo Torre. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is.

[Jason Hehir]

I'm gonna stick a cattle prod up Jerry Kraus butt right after this ad.

[Charlotte Wilder]

You're listening to Giraffe.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. How are you doing? Good.

[Jason Hehir]

Great. I mean, you look.

[Pablo Torre]

You look not haggard.

[Jason Hehir]

Thanks.

[Charlotte Wilder]

How old is your son?

[Jason Hehir]

He's seven weeks. He'll be eight weeks Thursday. He was in the Nikki. He was early.

[Pablo Torre]

Jason Hare is handing Charlotte an iPad with his baby on it.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Okay, that is a very cute baby. And I'm not gonna lie. I don't always say that.

[Jason Hehir]

I feel like I get hit by a Mack truck most days because it's. I was an uncle. I am an uncle five times over, and I'm 47 years old. So all of my friends have been down this road and I've played like the quasi uncle to a dozen other kids. And I figured, like I have this figured out.

[Pablo Torre]

Jason came to me for advice and I was like, aha, Finally I'm being recognized from my parental wisdoms.

[Jason Hehir]

This is something I wanted more than professional success or anything else.

[Pablo Torre]

I do need to tell Charlotte that, like, when you came to me to talk about, like, having a kid, my scouting report on you was, this is the most sincere enthusiasm I've encountered for having a child.

[Jason Hehir]

I appreciated a lot more because I thought that that ship had sailed. I got married late in life and had a kid late in life and really was kind of married to my job and my kids were my projects. And it wasn't something I was proud of or indignant about, but I just figured, you know what? I have such good friends, such good family. I have a dream job. The other part is probably not gonna happen for me. And you can't have it all.

[Pablo Torre]

Now, is your son aware of what a big deal you are?

[Jason Hehir]

I've told him many times. He doesn't seem to care.

[Pablo Torre]

Now, he hasn't seen the Last Dance yet.

[Jason Hehir]

He has not. He's not aware of any sort of lingering feud between Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen? He doesn't know any of those stories yet.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Wait, but you told him that Larsa P. That Scotty Pippen's ex wife is dating?

[Pablo Torre]

Well, he heard.

[Jason Hehir]

He heard the pod already. In vitro. He heard the pod because my wife was listening to it. So she was up on all that.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Cuz that's the important stuff.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. And Scotty sent a baby gift, obviously.

[Jason Hehir]

He did. He did, did he? No, I was going to say he.

[Pablo Torre]

Sent a flaming bag of poop I.

[Jason Hehir]

Don'T think that Scotty. I hope Scotty doesn't have any ill will. I don't think he would know who I was if I was standing in front of him. I think it's my guess that he has not seen the Last Dance, that he has been told my favorite part of this whole.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Wait, really?

[Jason Hehir]

I. I think that. I think he's been told by several people they did you wrong and all that, but I. I would bet a lot of money that he did not sit down and watch all 10 hours of that doc and say, in conclusion, I can see why they did this and why they did that, but they gave me my flowers at the end. I don't. I don't think that he did that. So, Scotty, happy to discuss on the pod anytime.

[Pablo Torre]

If there's any.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Come on the pod, Scotty, if there's.

[Pablo Torre]

Any podcast, wants to offer an olive branch to the Pippen family, it is this one.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Oh, man.

[Pablo Torre]

So I bring Jason Hare into the studio, Charlotte, Because I wanted you guys specifically to be at the same table. And so Jason is, for those who are not aware, based on the prelude to this part, director of the Last Dance, director of so many great films, Andre the giant Fab Five. Go down the IMDb page. All of it is impressive, and it's really worth your time. That's not why he's here, though. Jason wanted to bring us a topic that he had selected. And so, Jason, what do we. What are we starting here with?

[Jason Hehir]

We've discussed my fatherhood and my lovely wife and I have a lovely picture that we can show for our video.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. On YouTube. And later on, you can see this.

[Jason Hehir]

And that picture is of my wife, my newborn son, and our dog, Ozzy. And that picture would not be in existence were it not for Charlotte Wilder.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Wait, wait, wait. What?

[Jason Hehir]

So back in 2008, Charlotte, what do you think?

[Pablo Torre]

What do you think is about to happen?

[Charlotte Wilder]

I'm gonna blush so hard. I have no idea.

[Pablo Torre]

So, just the context, though, of you guys having met before. What is it, Charlotte, what is your experience with Jason previous to this table?

[Jason Hehir]

I don't know that we have met.

[Charlotte Wilder]

I don't think we have.

[Jason Hehir]

I think we're aware of each other, maybe as. As fellow Bostonians.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Huge, huge fan of your work.

[Jason Hehir]

Likewise.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Was always proud that you were also from a Boston suburb. I was like, look, we. You know, there is a place for Boston people in the media. Yeah, because they're not enough.

[Jason Hehir]

No. You have to. You have to search in deep corners, but leave it to Pablo and his intrepid journalism.

[Pablo Torre]

I regret this already.

[Jason Hehir]

Noma GARCIA Para so 2018, I think we were working on Andre the Giant at the time and at a boxing gym. I used to go to this boxing gym in Tribeca regularly and there was this attractive woman there who was there as a consultant, business consultant, to kind of save the business. They brought her in as a freelancer and there's, you know, a line of guys who want to talk to her because there's a lot of testosterone or it's a bunch of dudes hitting inanimate objects. And it's not the best place to try and get someone's number or try and strike up a conversation because you're doing it on a stage, first of all.

[Pablo Torre]

And what is your boxing skill? What is your self scouting report on.

[Jason Hehir]

That slow 42 year old white guy, amateur as you can be. Like picture that and then just go a little less athletic and that's me.

[Charlotte Wilder]

But did you commit? Like, were you committed to the bit?

[Jason Hehir]

Oh, yeah.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Okay.

[Jason Hehir]

I mean I, I would, I wasn't like grunting or anything. Like, I wasn't like doing the Rocky thing.

[Charlotte Wilder]

As long as you're really trying, that's what matters.

[Jason Hehir]

I, I did it for definitely I, I still do it a little bit now, but I did it for 10 years religiously. I was you in great shape? My, my trainer was a great guy. I had some good friends from the gym.

[Pablo Torre]

You're also the guy who was doing like 24, 7.

[Jason Hehir]

That's how I got into it because I was, I lived in, in gyms. I was at HBO for seven years and the majority of those years I was spending in boxing gyms profiling the Floyd Mayweathers and De La Hoyas and Fernando Vargas's and all those people of the world.

[Pablo Torre]

And you said I could do that.

[Jason Hehir]

Yeah, looks easy. Just bottom.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Come on Real, real quick aside, when I did a, a story on like amateur wrestlers who want to be pro wrestlers training, they. I went and trained with them and it was at Gleason in Dumbo and I went back multiple times and just took boxing lessons.

[Jason Hehir]

It's addictive.

[Charlotte Wilder]

There's something about being in that environment. You're like, I must hit something.

[Jason Hehir]

And also I'm a dive bar guy more than like a lounge club guy. And I'm definitely a boxing gym guy over an Equinox guy. I'm. I moved to LA in 09 and the first day I went to Equinox in West Hollywood, you can imagine what that scene was like.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Not a Dive bar, Jason.

[Jason Hehir]

No, it's not. It's the opposite.

[Pablo Torre]

Perfumed air.

[Jason Hehir]

The eucalyptus matched the scent of everyone's sweat, and the headbands matched all the tube socks. It was. Everyone was color coordinated and, like ready for their close up. And I was like, this is not the place for me. And then I found this boxing gym with no mirrors, no nothing, just like a sweaty old wooden place with like hip hop blasting. And I was like, that's the spot. For me, that owner of that gym has a place in New York. Fast forward to 2018 and Aaron, my now wife, is there, and I have really nothing to talk to her about and not a lot of time to even strike up a conversation if I did have something to talk about. But I knew she was from Georgia. I knew she was a former cheerleader for the Falcons. So being a Pats fan, I could talk a little bit about that. And she was a Georgia football fan. So this is in 2008, 17 season 2018 national championship against Alabama, Charlotte. Now the light bulb was going off, so I needed to get Aaron's number in order to talk with her outside the gym and ask her out for a drink.

[Pablo Torre]

Because you would never actually just say.

[Jason Hehir]

Hey, if I did this and it didn't go well, I could never go back to that gym. It would be very difficult.

[Pablo Torre]

So you're a coward.

[Jason Hehir]

Yes, immensely. So I had to. I mean, this is, you know, I've grown up figuring out ways around actually confronting things. So now same in the most important moment of my life, it turns out she told me about this bar that she would go to with her Georgia friends to watch games called American Whiskey. And being an avid reader of Charlotte's content, I'm very flattered. An article called Watching the National Championship at a Georgia Bar is what Heartbreak Looks Like. So I came in.

[Pablo Torre]

Do you remember this story?

[Charlotte Wilder]

Vividly. So the story was Georgia was playing Alabama would have been the first time in 40 years that Georgia had won a title if that went well for them. And I, you know, I've always been fascinated by fandom. It's something that I kind of understand, but I think we'll also never fully understand. And that's why I keep going back to that. Well, and I was like, I would love to see what the experience is when the stakes are so high, but I am in New York City. I can't go to the game. What is a way to get that experience? And I think Amanda Mull, who now writes for I Believe Insider, she is a huge Georgia fan right Right. She was like, the bar to go to is American whiskey. And I was like, okay. So I went there and. And there was a bulldog there. There were a bulldog puppy.

[Jason Hehir]

Right?

[Charlotte Wilder]

A bulldog puppy.

[Jason Hehir]

That's what Aaron had told me is she goes to this bar and being. Being Aaron, she cares more about puppies than football. And she said, this bar is incredible. They have bulldog puppies there.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was the most devastating thing I've ever seen because there was hope.

[Jason Hehir]

Yeah.

[Charlotte Wilder]

And then was that the Jalen Hurts game? Was that.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, that was the Tua Tango Bailoa.

[Jason Hehir]

Tango by Loa trying to make up for it. Fires to the end zone. Touchdown.

[Pablo Torre]

Alabama wins. Comes in in relief.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

And throws that touchdown and wins the game. I was at that game, incidentally. While you guys are doing this, I'm over there actually in the. Oh.

[Jason Hehir]

I wasn't even there. I wasn't like. I didn't know her yet. And I wasn't gonna show up at this part by myself. That would be something that's outside of my. My purview.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Yeah. So. So Georgia loses and everyone. It was like, truly one of the most depressing. It was like, worse than funerals. I've been. Some guy was like, I'm. He literally, he was standing by a railing, so it was a multi floor. But he was like, I'm going to throw myself off this. And I was like, genuinely concerned for the people inside.

[Jason Hehir]

I was there for subsequent SEC championship losses to Alabama, and it was just as depressing. And I felt like. I felt like I didn't belong. Like I didn't deserve to be amidst this Mass morning because I. I really didn't have a dog in the. Oh. No pun. But I didn't have a dog in the fight.

[Pablo Torre]

But it was also in Atlanta.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

This is the key part.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Oh, my God. It was at Mercedes Benz.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Oh, my God.

[Pablo Torre]

It's there. Like Georgia has overtaken as much as they possibly could.

[Charlotte Wilder]

And the father versus the son, Kirby Smart facing Nick Saban.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. So all of these subplots. The sadness was, of course, and let's.

[Jason Hehir]

Say that I had gently overstated my fervor and passion for the SEC at this point. As a talking point. I'm more of a pro football guy than a college football guy. I'm from Boston. We had Doug Flutie. I was Doug Flutie for Halloween when I was 8 years old.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Wow.

[Jason Hehir]

Not to brag.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Wow. Because I was Nomar when I was 8 years old.

[Jason Hehir]

Were you really?

[Charlotte Wilder]

Yeah.

[Jason Hehir]

I mean, come on.

[Charlotte Wilder]

That's why you brought us together.

[Jason Hehir]

Probably you might want to step out.

[Pablo Torre]

So I'm disturbed.

[Jason Hehir]

So I. That was one of the things that I could connect with her on. So I literally was, like, just kind of casually studying up on who they were playing that week. Like, this is one of my ways to talk. So I walked in the day after that game, and I remember I was surprised that she knew my name. Cause I walked past the front desk, and she was standing there, and I heard her over my shoulder, Jason. And I was like, whoa. And I turned around and she said, my dogs. And I was like, yeah. Like, that's tough. I was like. So she told me about. She watched the game there. And I was like, oh, I think this is the place where you watch. You should check out this article. And she took my phone and she put her number in my phone and sent herself the article. And then I asked her out that weekend with that number. So Charlotte doesn't write this article.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Oh, my God. This is the most meaningful thing. I've always been like, yeah, okay, here's a. Here, I'll be a clown in a bar and write about it.

[Jason Hehir]

But it had a butterfly flaps its wings in London, and there's a hurricane in Florida. We all know the butterfly effect.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, the Charlotte Wilder effect, an ESP Nation blogger. The Splag Nation effect has led to this baby being born.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Oh, my God. I'm going to cry. That's the sweetest thing. Oh, thank you for telling me that.

[Jason Hehir]

Of course.

[Charlotte Wilder]

You just made my year.

[Jason Hehir]

I waited this long to tell you this in person because we've never had the chance to actually meet each other. Yeah. And I've never been able to tell this story to you directly, Jason.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Oh, my God. Well, I'm going to start. I'm going to start going to more bars and writing about it.

[Jason Hehir]

Maybe you never know who you're going to connect.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Yeah. Maybe people. More people will get married.

[Pablo Torre]

Wait, so where does it go from? Okay, article number no, that's a pro move.

[Charlotte Wilder]

First of all, that. Such a pro move. Here's something I think you might be interested in that has nothing to do with me wanting to talk to. It's just like, hey, you'll like this. And then, hey.

[Jason Hehir]

Well, I still maintain that she must have known what I was doing, and she says no to the point where I then asked her out. I think I. Wait, that was like, let's say a Tuesday. Like the day after the national championship. Was it Tuesday or Wednesday, whenever that game was played. And I waited two weekends to ask her Out. I saw her at the gym again and then I texted her and said, night of on a Saturday, do you want to grab a beer? Are you around for a beer? Or something like that?

[Charlotte Wilder]

Wow.

[Jason Hehir]

And she, to this day is like, I hate beer. You know I hate beer. I was like, I didn't knew anything. I barely knew your last name at that point. But she thought I was just like, hey buddy, want to grab a beer? She's like, that's what you say to one of your bros. You don't ask a girl out that way.

[Pablo Torre]

Want to grab a beer? Read some more SB Nation.com blog posts together.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Charlotte has a real banger on why Taylor Swift is like the Patriots.

[Jason Hehir]

It is Saturday, so we went out and I thought it went great, but she didn't think it was a date. So then the next, I mean, she just said, I remember you talked a lot. I was super nervous. She was like, you talked a lot. I remember telling my roommate, like, he's a talker. He's got great stories, but he can talk. And you know what's funny is that I just started the last dance. So we started the last dance the day after Martin Luther King Day in 2018. So on that Tuesday, whatever that date is, on Wednesday night was our first date.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Wow.

[Jason Hehir]

And I asked her out because I just threw this Hail Mary. I was like, you know what, I'm going underground for the next four years anyway. What happens if she says no? I'm not going to that gym. I'm not leaving my edit room for the next couple of years anyway. So I might as well throw this Hail Mary and see what happens. But. So she had known me for the first two years of our relationship. She knew me as someone who was totally consumed by the 90s Chicago Bulls.

[Charlotte Wilder]

I don't think you're the only 47 year old man who is still totally consumed.

[Jason Hehir]

But just for the record, I have several Instagram followers who would agree with you.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Yeah, there you go.

[Pablo Torre]

But I am now realizing that Charlotte Wilder arguably deserves credit for the Last Dance being good.

[Jason Hehir]

Yeah.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Okay. How did you make that leap?

[Pablo Torre]

Jason's mental health clearly absolutely benefited from a relationship that flourished into his actual household family.

[Jason Hehir]

Yeah, absolutely. No question.

[Charlotte Wilder]

The fact the way that I was obsessed with the Last Dance, the way it gave me just something to do sports wise in the pandemic.

[Jason Hehir]

I, like you didn't even know it was because of yourself at that point.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Well, it wasn't. It wasn't.

[Jason Hehir]

But you played a bigger role than Pablo.

[Pablo Torre]

Did I tell you that Pablo didn't do anything. A producer credit maybe for Charlotte in, like, the, you know, the laser disc.

[Charlotte Wilder]

The acknowledgement, the, like the know, the producers, directors would like to thank, like, special thanks.

[Jason Hehir]

Yeah, yeah, you should get, like a very special thanks for part 11. Scotty's rebuttal.

[Pablo Torre]

I do want to get to the Last Dance as this thing that has become omnipresent, though. So Jason, who has been a listener of this show and has seeded this story in my brain for so long that I wanted to pay off with just you guys finally meeting each other.

[Charlotte Wilder]

That was amazing.

[Pablo Torre]

Wow. It also has been dovetailing with the larger sort of subplot of this show, which is me finding out about the Michael Jordan industrial complex and all of the ways in which Jason is arguably editorially responsible for the re meming of this guy that we are newly. Since the pandemic, obsessed with. And the Last Dance, as a phrase, it's gone everywhere. I also should point out that it also. I guess Charlotte should deserve credit for this as well. It got Jason onto Saturday Night Live. One year ago, my documentary about Michael Jordan's final season with the Bulls, the Last dance, aired on ESPN. And even though it was 10 hours later long, there was so much left on the cutting room floor. So tonight I'd like to share an extended scene that I think really speaks to what made Michael Jordan such a great competitor. Enjoy. Do you remember where you were when you saw how you heard that you were now being played on Disney?

[Jason Hehir]

Remember? So we. We had rented a house in Atlanta near Aaron's family and friends to get out of the city because everything was still locked down. What would this have been? 21? 21.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, I think so.

[Jason Hehir]

These are crazy Saturday nights that I have. Oh, yeah, Reading SB Nation, Pizza, beers by myself. This particular Saturday night's a little bit crazier. I'm doing the Sunday Times crossword on my laptop while I'm on a Saturday.

[Charlotte Wilder]

You click before Sunday. I don't let myself click it before midnight.

[Jason Hehir]

I do it because Sundays get crazy, you know?

[Charlotte Wilder]

Do they?

[Jason Hehir]

Clearly. More SB Nation articles to read. I mean, I can't keep up. So Saturday night, I'm sitting there by myself. Aaron's in bed, dog is asleep at my feet. And I have the TV on, but it's muted. So I'm on my laptop just kind of like looking around Twitter. I remember doing the crossword, and then I see that logo, the ESPN Films logo. So I look up, and the first thing that I see is this guy talking. And it says, Jason Hare, underneath his face.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. Mikey Day, the SNL cast member.

[Jason Hehir]

The slowest four seconds of my life. I was like, I know you're gonna bleep this cause I listen to your show, but what the is going on? I literally stood up and said, what the is going on? And then I turned it up. I immediately thought, now if you're on snl, it's probably not for a good reason, right? And being where we were, especially in, in 21, coming off the tumultuous year of, of 20, I was thinking, what have I done?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, exactly. Have I been canceled?

[Jason Hehir]

What did I do? Honestly, I didn't want to use the canceled word because it just feels lazy. But I was like, I'm canceled. What did I do? I'm, I'm rocketing through my past, just rolodexing, like, who did I offend? How did it make it to the writers room at snl? A million thoughts going through. And then I turned it up. And we had joked about that exact scenario so many times in the making of the doc of like, how brutal did this get when the cameras weren't there? Tip off is in two hours, I am, I'm playing quarters on the wall with my head of security, John here. John, say hi, come to me.

[Charlotte Wilder]

I'm ready for my close up.

[Jason Hehir]

Because Michael was ruthless to everybody. He makes exponentially more than these guys. We was taking their they're $20 bills, so watched it, laughed, and then my phone exploded, went upstairs, I took a screenshot of it and went upstairs and woke Aaron up. And I was like, hey, I'm sorry to do this, but I gotta talk to somebody. Like this was on SNL just now and she was like bleary eyed, like, what? What are you talking about? And then, you know, she, she cared, she loved me, she kissed me on the cheek and went back to sleep. But that was, I can say without a doubt the most surreal moment of my life.

[Pablo Torre]

What did you think of the casting? What do you think of the wardrobe they gave you?

[Jason Hehir]

I don't think that was supposed to be me. Now here's the sad part. I think they went, let's go just standard white documentarian nerd. And they nailed it.

[Pablo Torre]

Like quarter zip the hair though.

[Jason Hehir]

Glasses. If he wasn't wearing the glasses. Cuz I don't wear glasses. I mean, I wear glasses like late at night. I wear contacts. But if he wasn't wearing glasses, I'd be like, oh wow. They found a picture of me watching a game last weekend at some bar in Atlanta. Like the quarter zip button down. Hey, guilty. That probably is me in the winter.

[Charlotte Wilder]

I feel like they found a. The hair too, though.

[Jason Hehir]

The hair.

[Pablo Torre]

Can we just show the visual again? Yeah, here we go.

[Charlotte Wilder]

So they did find a picture of his face.

[Jason Hehir]

His hair looks great. I wish I still had that hair. His hair looks tremendous and he's in great shape. Props to Mikey Day for how Jason Hare wishes he looked. My brother and several of my friends, when I call their phone, that's what comes up.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Oh, that's good.

[Jason Hehir]

They have saved that as my. As my picture.

[Pablo Torre]

But that scene, it's a sample of the way in which the last dance, like the minor, minor characters.

[Jason Hehir]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Became globally famous. Like Heidi Gardner playing. And I forget his name, but the security guy, James.

[Jason Hehir]

John Michael Wozniak.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Jason Hehir]

Who by the way, deserves his own. We interviewed him and it didn't make the cut. If I had known.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, wait, wait, wait. There's John Michael Wozniak.

[Jason Hehir]

He was one of The Cutting Board 11 interviews that did not make the final cut.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Oh, my God.

[Pablo Torre]

Wait, what did he. What was his view on all of this?

[Jason Hehir]

Well, he. We didn't interview him about that. We interviewed him about, like, Michael at home and. And what the fans were like on the road. And we had other sound bites that were frankly better than. Than John Michaels. But we interviewed him at Michael's still unsold home in Chicago, where he passed away. But he was the head security detail on the home until his death. So he was there. We interviewed Will Perdue there. We interviewed Tony Kukoc there. So we decided to sit him down and ask him some questions that didn't make the cut. But it never occurred to me that there would be a meme, let alone a slew of memes from this thing.

[Pablo Torre]

That's what I was gonna ask was like, your predictions for what would go super globally viral.

[Jason Hehir]

No concept of that. No concept. Maybe like the montages of like. I wanted to make sure there was like some fun in this and that kids my. My nephew's ages could understand how fun it was to watch him and to put some. Some era specific music in it, because we didn't get to see Michael playing to hip hop back then. They were playing, you know, Dion Warwick and Jeffrey Osborne for NBA superstars, those kind of things. So that was fun to do, but it didn't. We had a thousand decisions to make per day. We were not thinking, like, how can we meme this episode? It got funny. Like the former Chicago resident. That was never planned.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, the Obama Chiron yeah, because that.

[Jason Hehir]

Was a little bit of me being a brat. Because the powers that be insisted that certain people be in this doc. Now there's probably no one on earth I'd rather sit down and interview them. Barack Obama. But I didn't think he belonged in this documentary just because he was a president.

[Pablo Torre]

We're going to get that aggregated. Jason Hare did not want Barack Obama in the last.

[Jason Hehir]

The, the messages I've received and the, the research people have done to see how I've voted and how disrespectful it is, like, because they took, because they.

[Pablo Torre]

Took it serious, because they thought that.

[Jason Hehir]

I deliberately did that.

[Charlotte Wilder]

That was so tongue in cheek. It was so funny. FORMER CHICAGO it's like, this guy loves basketball and that's what we're talking to him about.

[Jason Hehir]

He's not just a president saying Michael is great at basketball. It's that he was there in Chicago, couldn't afford a ticket to the upper deck, blah, blah, blah. Same with Clinton that he was in it. I didn't want him just to say, like, yeah, they were great during the 90s. Why are you organic to this story? And it was that he was the governor of Arkansas and used to drive to see Scottie Pippen play college basketball. So it was former Arkansas governor for him. So anyways, those things we never could have imagined. And if you told me beforehand, I probably would have thought that the show was a huge flop and that people were just joking about it online. I still think that when it came out was probably the most generous, forgiving moment culturally of my lifetime and that people were so grateful for anything new. If this came out in a time of non pandemic, regular level cynicism of the American, especially sports viewing public during a finals in which LeBron may or may not have been playing.

[Pablo Torre]

Right.

[Jason Hehir]

That's when it was supposed to air. It was on off nights of the finals in June.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Oh, I forgot. That's right.

[Jason Hehir]

So I think there would have been a lot more vitriol, there would have been a lot more criticism and, and people would have been a lot more scrutinizing of a lot of the stuff. But, but when it came out, I think people were just so happy to have something to watch and something to forget about this horror around them for two hours that they were willing to just say, you know what? Entertain me. I'm going to drop the remote and then we can all talk around this virtual water cooler for the next week until the next one comes out.

[Charlotte Wilder]

It was also one of the Rare times in the past 10 years that there was one thing everybody was watching.

[Jason Hehir]

Yeah.

[Charlotte Wilder]

That wasn't a live sports game.

[Jason Hehir]

We literally had a captive audience globally. That's what was so interesting to me is that I think we're so ethnocentric as Americans. It's like, okay, this is happening here. We're going to have to get into cricket. No, they're indoors too.

[Pablo Torre]

But this was also about a guy that they were aware of.

[Jason Hehir]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

So it's also you getting back into the time machine to get to a truly globally monocultural figure who through his.

[Jason Hehir]

Own business and, and, and media savvy. And because of the times that he, that he played in.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. And the Olympics was scarce.

[Jason Hehir]

Michael Jordan could go on and read the phone book for 10 hours during the pandemic and it still would have gotten incredible ratings because he'd never speak.

[Pablo Torre]

He had never. That's the thing that. So in the aftermath of all the memes, what has been forgotten is that it was the hall of Fame induction speech where he cries, which was an incredible, my favorite all time basketball hall of Fame speech. But short of that, there really wasn't Michael Jordan talking in a way that felt real until the last dance. And when we got it all in this 10 part format, I think people have since forgotten like, oh, this was like a wild endangered sort of like.

[Jason Hehir]

Creature had emerged and he went back into hiding. Like I've seen a few things with him since but he's still super, super picky about what he does.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Well, he's a, he's a rare person in that he commands a kind of gravitas. Like there is a, there is like a weight to Michael Jordan in that, like if he. I've been writing about sports for a while. I talked to a lot of athletes. I think if I were to encounter him in person, I would have a, like, oh, you're, you're real moment. It's almost, you know, it's like the sightings of, of the Loch Ness Monster of like he's, we know, like he.

[Pablo Torre]

Was the Loch Ness monster. Loved tequila.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Yes. Like he, he's so real, but he's also so behind his own myth that he doesn't. You kind of. If, if you have the reputation he has, the best thing to do is not say anything and not disturb it. And then he managed to solidify that when he did talk about it in the last dance and then he disappeared again.

[Jason Hehir]

And look at what he hasn't engaged in battles he's won because he's just Chosen not to stoop to that level. Rappers out there, dude.

[Pablo Torre]

Isaiah Thomas is on Twitter all of the time, just tweeting.

[Jason Hehir]

I feel bad about that too, because I was an Isaiah Thomas fan. Even as a Celtics fan, I was an Isaiah Thomas fan. There's. There's things that I wish I had, like my five minutes with some of the people who feel slighted by that.

[Pablo Torre]

Let's do that list.

[Jason Hehir]

Oh, boy.

[Pablo Torre]

Isaiah wasn't a fan.

[Jason Hehir]

I would imagine he hasn't expressed it to me, but like Isaiah Thomas bigger than you think in person. And I'm not too psyched to be in the same room with him again. I. I don't know that I would get the chance to explain myself, but he pulled me aside. This is why I feel especially bad. We did the interview down in Atlanta before taping. They were doing MBA TV that night. So we did it at Turner in Ted Turner's old office, which was like this cool. It's like a house on the campus of Turner, so there's like historic room that we did it in. And as we were setting up and getting him miked, he pulled me aside and said, who is making the decisions on the storytelling? And I said, me. And he said, what kind of research have you done? Phil Jackson did the same thing. And I told him the books that I had read. And I told him, you know, my fandom going back as a kid. I mean, he wasn't. I'm sure he wasn't happy to hear that I was a Celtics fan, especially during those days. But I said, like, essentially I was trying to impart to him that you're in responsible hands. And I believe that he was still. I can see though, how especially the use of the iPad, these guys would be like, what the.

[Pablo Torre]

You also pioneered that, in a sense. The. I'm gonna hand you a tablet with your life in video on it. React as we watch you. Watch yourself.

[Jason Hehir]

I've tried that technique in past docs and I've had people say, no, really get that. Get the camera off me. You're not gonna watch me watch this and get my reaction. And it was never meant to be. Like, I'm not twirling my mustache as they do this. Like, it really started out as a toy for Michael Jordan and to a lesser extent, Dennis Rodman. Taking care of my 7 week old baby and trying to keep his attention is reminiscent of my experience with Dennis, but for Michael, it was. He had been interviewed 8,000 times at the outset of this thing. And I feel like I've. Hijacked this thing from you. Cause this shouldn't be some Last Dance retrospective.

[Pablo Torre]

This is Charlotte's film. What are you talking about?

[Charlotte Wilder]

Yeah, I made the movie, Jason. I don't know what you're talking about.

[Jason Hehir]

There are ghost writers and there are ghost executive producers, ghost muses.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Oh, wow. So I'm going to come out here. So I'm going to be so cocky after this. I'm going to be like, well, I'm the last dancer. Welcome.

[Jason Hehir]

They. At the outset of this, they said, he said all he has to say for years. And you can just call from those interviews. He doesn't need to be interviewed for this. And I was pretty adamant that he needed to be interviewed. That we couldn't just show old clips of him saying thing. I. I think that retrospect was. Was more interesting than archival video, but it was like, how can we keep this kid. Kid. This guy occupied and in the chair? And when I say kid, I thought back to when my mom, when we used to go to church as kids, my mom would have like a Matchbox car for the first 10 minutes of the mass and then like a bag of Cheerios. And like there was something to occupy us at all times so that by the time they say, like, the mass has ended, go in peace, her three year old's fine. Like, you barely knew he was there for that long wait.

[Pablo Torre]

So your strategy for handling NBA hall of Famers was the same that I have when I'm trying to take my daughter on an airplane?

[Jason Hehir]

Kind of. Yeah.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Give them the iPad.

[Jason Hehir]

Yeah.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Say, do you need a snack? Would you like something to drink?

[Jason Hehir]

He had a snack. He had a snack right there.

[Pablo Torre]

He had.

[Charlotte Wilder]

What was it?

[Jason Hehir]

A cigar and a tumbler of tequila.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Yeah, that's what I give to most 3 year olds also.

[Jason Hehir]

So it's. It's. You just rub a little on the gums.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Yeah, yeah, Right.

[Jason Hehir]

Rub a little sakura on the gums and they're. They're right up. So that was meant to. I had a line that I was looking at of his shoulders on the chair, and once his shoulders sunk below that line, it was time to give him seriously. Just because that was a signal that, like, he needed to pep up. And he loves games and loved that game of, like, there's. We should put the outtakes of what. What clips did not make it. That I showed him. Did not make it onto there.

[Pablo Torre]

Right.

[Jason Hehir]

I'm surprised that there haven't been more creative uses on the Internet of people showing him clips that he was not looking at, you know, Follow the Berlin Wall.

[Pablo Torre]

It's like, I can't believe Michael Jordan reacted to J.D. vance's position.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Childless cat ladies. Dennis Robin react.

[Jason Hehir]

Thinks it's hilarious.

[Pablo Torre]

The list is of. Of people that you wish you could have five minutes with to Scottie Pippen.

[Jason Hehir]

Isaiah Thomas, the Krause family. The Krause family, by the way. Obviously, Jerry wasn't around to interview. And the harder we demonstrated that the team was on him, the more sympathy I thought that would garner for Kraus because I thought that people would appreciate, okay, he's the one who put the pieces in place. This poor guy is kind of a fish out of water with these NBA alpha males. Look at how they're hazing him. And instead, people thought like, the filmmakers hate Jerry Krause and they've made him the villain. That was not the intent. So that. That's my misstep. If you have a problem with how he was portrayed, that one, both hands up. That's on me. The one thing that the NBA pushed back on in the entirety of this process was a clip where Scotty, in the locker room, they were joking around with saying what they were going to do when they won the title. And Scotty, I'm paraphrasing here, but basically said, I'm gonna stick a cattle prod up Jerry Krause's butt and give that guy a heart attack or something like that. And everybody laughed. And it wasn't like, oh, my God, keep the cattle prods away from Scotty. He said it in the heat of the moment that we're like, you know, I'm gonna kill that guy. So I included that in our rough cuts because I wanted people to see what this guy was going through day in and day. And that's the one thing that they made me take out in three or four years of doing this. It wasn't like Michael calling people A or anything. It wasn't that. It was that comment from Scotty to Jerry Krause, in deference to the Krause family, that, all right, we've done enough to show that this guy is the butt of all the jokes, as it were. And I, yeah, so I followed poor Dianka Koros, who is a producer still for the NBA. I followed him to Grand Central and went to the platform of his train before he was, as he was getting on to plead my case of why I wanted to do this. It wasn't out of cruelty. It was out of respect. And he didn't see it that way. And they made me take it out. So yeah, the Kraus family, especially with what happened to his wife earlier this year. And all this popped up again to remind listeners she was booed when they had an anniversary night for the Bulls back in June.

[Pablo Torre]

Exactly right. NBA Executive of the Year, represented by.

[Jason Hehir]

By his wife, Thelma, Basketball hall of Famer and Thelma Krause. When they spotlit her and said his name, a lot of the crowd at the United center booed.

[Pablo Torre]

They had watched the Last Dance.

[Jason Hehir]

I felt terrible about that, honestly. Like, I don't feel responsible or guilty, but a part of me is like, you know, if we never did this, then this poor woman wouldn't have gone through what I'm sure was one of the worst moments of her life.

[Pablo Torre]

I cannot believe that Charlotte did that.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Yeah, it was. It was irresponsible of me to be standing behind her with onions that night.

[Jason Hehir]

You know, I will say this. Steve Kerr had. Had. Was ambivalent, I think, about the doc because he was literally front and center on the poster and wasn't a starter. You know, he's got a good case that Ron Harper deserved to be a bigger part of the doc. Cause he was a bigger part of the team. Luke Longley, who didn't participate. And people thought that I deliberately kept him out and was too lazy to fly to Australia. By the way, if the NBA and Netflix and ESPN wanted to fly me to Australia, sure. I'm on that plane. I absolutely would have done this. I was told by multiple sources that he wasn't interested in doing it. And we had a ton of footage on him. And he wasn't the greatest interview from the interviews he did in 98. And I thought, all right, what if we do force him to do this? We get on a plane, we go all the way there, and he's a dud. It wasn't a budget thing. It was a time thing. We were. I've never had that kind of a tsunami crashing over my head for that many years. It was. At a certain point, it was like, after a couple months, we're like, when is this gonna calm down? And someone was like, it's never going to calm down. So we didn't have time to go to that point.

[Pablo Torre]

So earlier this year, I. I laughed when I. I laughed aloud when I saw this. There's a headline. It was Bulls Legends going on no Bull Tour to Respond to the Last Dance. And in Australia, in Australia, it was Scotty Pippen, Luke Longley and Horace Grant.

[Jason Hehir]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Who were. Yeah. Basically going on. The opposite of a public apology Tour is a Public. We're gonna talk about Jason Hair specifically.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Here's. Here's the thing, Jason, you have inadvertently. Sure, there are things that. That might have happened because of certain things that you know, like the Thelma Krause. But also, you have given a lot of people a second wind to make money off of something here. Like, that doesn't happen if the last dance. That doesn't happen if I don't executive produce the last dance.

[Jason Hehir]

Right. If you had told me that Horace Grant would be front and center at the Sydney Opera House, talking about. I don't think that he played the Opera House, but I do know that they went on a mini tour of Australia. People sent me this.

[Charlotte Wilder]

You gave them that, Jason.

[Jason Hehir]

I looked this up.

[Pablo Torre]

Tasmania, Melbourne and Sydney.

[Jason Hehir]

And I heard that it was toothless when they actually did it. Like, they did this press conference when they were like, we're gonna tear the COVID off this thing and show you that there was real last dance. Yes, the no Bull tour. Right?

[Pablo Torre]

The no Bull tour, yeah.

[Jason Hehir]

So no Bull. But I heard that it was actually complimentary of Mike. I don't think they even mentioned the doc. Like Horace Grant. That's a good example. I think he had a beef with it because Michael said Horace Grant was the. Was the source that Sam Smith used primarily for the Jordan Rules. The book that he wrote in 91 tore the lid off of Michael's, like, pristine, squeaky clean image. And Horace and Sam are adamant that it wasn't them. All of those people that I just mentioned to you expressed those sentiments in the doc. It wasn't like we said. Michael said he did it, and we just left it at that. That's the funny thing about the iPad is, like, a lot of people push back at him, laughing at Gary Payton. And they brought up, I mean, my Twitter mentions as we were trying to finish this thing, which is like, people, Michael Jordan haters, just furious and throwing stats at me, as if we were going to recut and make like an episode 11 and 12 and pull a stat boy to talk about your. To reference your world. So what was I supposed to do, though, is give Gary Payton an iPad of Michael looking at an iPad of him. And then we get into this vortex of iPads, and the next thing you know, like. Like, it's a house of mirrors of people just looking at iPads, of each other looking at iPads. It was a trick that we used that in the moment seemed to work in the edit room. And so many decisions when you're working on that kind of a schedule. Like, okay, it's like going to the eye doctor. Like this one or this one. That one. Okay, go. This one or this one? That one, go. It was decisions made in the moment and you just got to kind of white knuckle it and hope for the best. So I understand why there are some people who are upset with it. And if they are upset, like, again, don't be upset with Jordan, don't be upset with the NBA. Be upset with me. And let's come on Pablo show and talk about it.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Oh, I love this.

[Pablo Torre]

There is a funny thing that's been happening though, where the last dance, as this phrase becoming an industry unto itself. So like the new Venom movie is called Venom the Last Dance, but that's not deliberate.

[Jason Hehir]

The funny part to me is when I see like Meline's fifth grade soccer team, the Last Dance, and they show like pictures of this girl's last or like, like the JV field hockey team.

[Pablo Torre]

Last Dance, which is more or less what Aaron Rodgers did with Devonte Adams, who they went on Instagram and basically did the fifth grade girls soccer team.

[Jason Hehir]

But that makes sense because it would have been their last season and. And blah, blah, blah. I've been told by many people, some who have the capacity to make a doc and some who don't. You need to do a doc about Messi's last dance. Scribble that on my hand. Go back and research it.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm watching Novak Djokovic and Rafa Nadal go back and forth during the Olympics this week.

[Jason Hehir]

I hope we get to meet because there'll probably be one last dance for both of us.

[Pablo Torre]

Is this their last dance or whose last dance is it? And. And Rafa's fighting it and Novak's leaning into it. And I'm like, this is. This is because of you guys.

[Jason Hehir]

Here's the thing. I can't take credit for that title. My worst, my biggest blind spot in this business is titles. You're talking to someone who did a documentary about the Fab Five, the 85 Bears, and Andre the Giant. And the titles were the Fab Five, the 85 Bears, and Andre the Giant. Because that's how I refer to these things anyway. Like, we know Ezra, O.J. made in America. I don't say, hey, remember that part in OJ Made in America? I say the OJ Doc. We weren't going to call this the Jordan Doc. We weren't going to call it Jordan. We weren't going to call it Bulls.

[Pablo Torre]

But that's why it's amazing, is that it's not called that. People say the Last Dance. Yeah, they actually break the rule because of what you apparently did not even name it yourself.

[Jason Hehir]

Do you know they, they made a, they made the Last dance in like 2003. It was a one off 90 minute, 100 minute movie.

[Pablo Torre]

No, I knew nothing about this.

[Jason Hehir]

And this was like urban legend. But I've since verified this. It was on a DVD that's probably still floating around ESPN offices somewhere. The doc world had not yet proliferated enough for there to be a market for 10 hours. And you can thank Making a Murderer and other series for that. But at the time, five years after Michael retired from the Bulls, they made a 90 minute version that called these 500 hours of footage into 90 minutes instead of into 10 hours. And it was voiced by John Cusack in the first person.

[Pablo Torre]

Whoa.

[Charlotte Wilder]

What?

[Jason Hehir]

As a Bulls fan, I haven't thought about John Cusack.

[Pablo Torre]

My first comment is a little too much. Cusack.

[Jason Hehir]

Yeah, he was, apparently is a massive Chicago sports fan and Bulls fan. And it was ice. The rough cut that I saw was a scratch track. So it was someone who sounded nothing like John Cusack saying, hi, I'm John Cusack. Here's the story of the 1997-98 bulls. And it was just that season. So that lived on a shelf for a while and they still hadn't had Michael's, you know, infamous permission to do this, which, which, the reason any of this gets greenlit is that he says, okay, you can show the footage. But yeah, it started as that. I've wondered, like, because the derivation of this was that the Last Waltz, which is Scorsese's concert film about the band.

[Pablo Torre]

Yep.

[Jason Hehir]

That inspired Phil Jackson to call that season the Last Dance. The Last Dance then becomes the name of that one off doc, which then grows into a 10 part doc. Do you think that Phil Jackson thought that the Last Waltz was called the Last Dance?

[Charlotte Wilder]

Yes, absolutely. Oh, 100%.

[Jason Hehir]

And if so, if this was called the Last Waltz, would it have had the cultural impact that it did? No, I agree.

[Pablo Torre]

Absolutely.

[Charlotte Wilder]

The Last Dance, there's, there's something, there's something approachable and romantic and the, the Last Dance, I feel like the reason that that is something that has proliferated or that people gravitate towards is because they're like, well, what happened?

[Jason Hehir]

I do think that Phil Jackson's foggy memory of those.

[Pablo Torre]

Absolutely.

[Jason Hehir]

Which I, I, I'm, I'm willing to bet that there's a reason why he doesn't rem Last Waltz. When he saw it back then, called the Last dance. And he was going to, as an homage to Scorsese and the band in that film, name it the same thing. And now here we are.

[Charlotte Wilder]

You are 100% right. Phil Jackson got the name of a movie wrong.

[Jason Hehir]

In my favorite Phil Jackson piece of trivia from this movie. Two, they both happen on the same day. One is that he slammed the door, literally slammed the door in my face. When we showed up to this remote location in Montana. It was one of the only 106 interviews that my producer and one of my best friends, Jake Rogal, who is right now in Paris documenting the epic basketball project. It's one of the only ones that he wasn't allowed to book himself. We had to go through other parties, and he was like, I don't like this. I don't like this. Because he's by, for good reason, a control freak. We showed up to, I think it was Flathead lake in Montana. Beautiful place, very remote location. And we show up at the house, knock on the door. The morning of the interview, I have 11 pages of questions, each of which is an hour of questions. So I need Phil Jackson to sit there for 11 hours, which I knew wasn't going to happen, but I didn't think that he would slam the door on my. He opened the door and said, hello. And I said, hey, coach Jason Hare with the documentary crew. And he said, can I help you? And I said, yeah, we're here to shoot your interview today. And he said, I don't know anything about this, and literally slammed the door in my face. So he called his daughter, who I think used to work for the NBA or was NBA adjacent, and she somehow verified that, yes, this is a legitimate project, and they're there to interview you. And that was it. So we interviewed him in his backyard for five and a half hours that day.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Oh, my God.

[Jason Hehir]

But this is the piece of trivia. The house behind Phil Jackson that you see, he built with his bare hands that log cabin that feels right. He built with his bare hands with his brother back in the. In the 60s and 70s. And he doesn't remember that either. Foreign.

[Pablo Torre]

At the end of every show, as you both realize, we go around the table and say what it is that we found out today. And what I found out today is pretty simple, which is that a Phil Jackson on Ayahuasca and Charlotte Wilder are both responsible for the success of the last things.

[Charlotte Wilder]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not responsible for that. I. I found out a Major piece of information, which is that I helped Jason get his now wife's number. I'm sure it would have happened without that article.

[Jason Hehir]

I'm not sure.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, I don't know about that.

[Charlotte Wilder]

I don't know, really.

[Pablo Torre]

He was doing a lot of SEC trivia, studying to be going anywhere.

[Jason Hehir]

This felt like, who's this Sony Michelle guy?

[Charlotte Wilder]

I. That is so. That's just like. I feel like when I'm working in sports, there sometimes can be this feeling of is what I'm doing getting anywhere. I think sometimes I forget that anybody can hear what I say or read what I write. And it is not brain surgery. It is not, you know, the. It can feel not trivial because I truly believe that it is important and that it's an amazing cultural gateway and a way to get people into all sorts of different conversations. But, like going to a bar to watch people be sad, you're like, well, you know, there's some beautiful human takeaway, but the fact that. The fact that anything I've done in my life has made someone's life better inadvertently is just like, the most delightful thing. So thank you so much for telling me that.

[Jason Hehir]

You're welcome. And I've been waiting for six years to tell you that. And every year that passes that there's a bigger reason to tell you the story. But what I've learned or has been reiterated to me is that you never know who is watching and you never know the connections that you're making that you're completely unaware of. I try and tell our editors all the time that you never know, like, take every shot really seriously because you never know which shot people are going to take away from this doc and be like, oh, I love that doc. So you never know. Just try and be a good person, keep your head down, do good work, and you never know what connections are made that you never even were aware of.

[Charlotte Wilder]

Wow.

[Pablo Torre]

So, again, to the Pippin family were available for the reconciliation tour that I want to put on. And yeah, Jason, Charlotte, thank you both for. For taking this personally.

[Jason Hehir]

Thanks for having us.

[Pablo Torre]

Wink the shrug. This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out a Meadowlark Media production production. And I'll talk to you next time.

[Jason Hehir]

It.