June 17th, 1994 (16 Jun. 2010)

Covers events on the day OJ Simpson was pursued and arrested on charges of murdering his ex wife and her boyfriend. No additional footage or voice over was shot and the entire documentary ... See full summary »

Director:

Brett Morgen

Writer:

Ryan M. Lee

Stars:

Marv Albert, Rex Beaber, Chris Berman

Cast

Episode credited cast:
Marv Albert	...	Himself (voice)
Rex Beaber	...	Himself (voice)
Chris Berman	...	Himself (archive footage)
Tom Brokaw	...	Himself (archive footage)
Nicole Brown Simpson	...	Herself (archive footage)
Frank Buckley	...	Himself (voice)
Chip Carey	...	Himself (voice)
Stan Chambers	...	Himself (archive footage)
Connie Chung	...	Herself (archive footage)
Bill Clinton	...	Himself (archive footage)
Perry Como	...	Himself (archive footage)
Howard Cosell	...	Himself (archive footage)
Bob Costas	...	Himself (archive footage)
A.C. Cowlings	...	Himself (voice)
Clyde Drexler	...	Himself (archive footage)

Storyline

Covers events on the day OJ Simpson was pursued and arrested on charges of murdering his ex wife and her boyfriend. No additional footage or voice over was shot and the entire documentary is encapsulated in sound bites from various feeds on the day.

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Genres:

Sport

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Details

Release Date:

16 June 2010 (USA)

Company Credits

Did You Know?

Connections

Features XV FIFA World Cup 1994 (1994)

User Reviews

Juxtaposition 101

I don't know if Brett Morgen's made-for-TV (would it be any other way?) documentary on June 17th, 1994, is subtle, but how could it be? It's was a Big, BIG day, for sports and for sport figures who become murder suspects. It was a day when the Rangers, having one the Stanley Cup for the first time since 1940, had their parade in NYC; Arnold Palmer, one of the most respected figures in golf history, had his final day as a regular-pro-tournament golfer (albeit not a great day of golf); the Knicks, following close on the heels of the Rangers, were playing at the Garden for Game 5, a deciding game, for the Championship; the World Cup had just started that very day; Ken Griffey Jr matched up to Babe Ruth for a Homerun record. Big news, big emotions, big everything, with commentators like Keith Olbermann(!) and Bob Costas and Marv Albert giving a point-by-point scoop.

And then came O.J., with his arrest warrant and his Bronco being driven by Al Cowling, and assisting whether he knew it or not in the birth of a kind of perverse media-obsessed culture that watches Court TV, Reality TV, whatever-TV that has celebrities in bad (bleep). What I took away from it, from Morgen and his masterful editor, is that the sports figures throughout this day are deified by the media, and indeed at one time O.J. made commercials with Arnold Palmer. They're just people, but they become more in the public consciousness, brought to you by TV. If Marshall MacLughan were alive Morgen's work would be the kind to make him weep in between being thought provoked.

It's a tale of media and sports, and of a kind of circus that overtook the media in-between changing channels (which, cleverly, is used at one point as an editing trick based upon certain news stations in LA getting cross-interference from all of the helicopters in pursuit). For those who were alive then and remember the day (I was a youth but knew very well about the Rangers win and was reminded that guy in the Naked Gun movies wasn't all he seemed), it's a shot from the past, like the best Youtube video you've never seen, without a talking head from today but feeling present as ever. And for those seeing this blast from the immediate past for the first time, I imagine it would be sobering: not only have we not changed much, we've probably gotten more obsessed with Celebrity culture over actual achievements in Sports.