How would you describe Barack Obama if you had to quickly sum him up? Most likely you’d call him the 44th president of the United States. Maybe you would also describe him as a father of impossibly cool daughters. Perhaps you would even go so far as to dub him a former lover of tan suits, rekindling a nontroversy still frequently rehashed by “If Obama Ever Did This!” Twitter. (To be fair: It is ridiculous that anyone got mad about that suit!)
So there’s much to think about, many ways to describe the man. But in the new Michael Jordan docuseries, The Last Dance, which premiered Sunday and featured an interview with the former president, Obama’s chyron went in an entirely different direction, labeling him thusly: “former Chicago resident.”
Twitter had a good laugh about the chyron and the surprisingly casual way it identified Obama. Bill Clinton—who is, quick refresher, also a former president—was also featured in the doc and given similar treatment, labeled in his chyron as a “former Arkansas resident.”
So why the chyrons? Director Jason Hehir explained the choice in an interview with Richard Deitsch, saying he only wanted to include people in the film who had an “organic connection” to Jordan’s story, rather than just interviewing as many famous people as possible.
“I’m a filmmaker first, and I just want to tell the story of this team as if they were not super famous,” he said. “Who were the human beings who make up this team, and how did they become famous, and how did they handle that fame?”
In the doc, Obama—who, yes, was a longtime Chicago resident!—spoke about his obsession with Jordan’s team, the Chicago Bulls. Clinton, meanwhile, was featured because of his connection to Arkansas native and Bulls player Scottie Pippen—not merely because “he was the president when Michael was playing, and he saw Michael play live,” Hehir said.
“Whey should he be considered an authority on basketball just because he’s Bill Clinton?” Hehir continued. “Now, if Bill Clinton says, ‘I was governor of Arkansas when Scottie Pippen was in high school, and I saw Scottie play,’ that’s organic to the story and much more interesting.”
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Hehir spoke candidly about the making of the ESPN doc, which was rushed to air as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down live sports programming indefinitely. The filmmaker spent eight hours total interviewing basketball legend Jordan, walking away with stunning material.
“For him to be so candid and so unguarded and so honest in those moments—I mean, if you listen in the mix, you can hear the camera crew laughing, because part of it is just the humor of watching him respond the way he responds,” Hehir said. “And part of it is the pure joy of seeing that this is going to be documentary gold.”
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