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Overlooked & Underrated Docs & Features
(click on broll or dschwartz for all his posts)
Losing Lebron: Hope, Loss (and Hope) Produced and directed by Boston-based filmmakers Nicole Hart and Allyson Sherlock, “Losing LeBron” tells the story of basketball legend LeBron James’ departure from Cleveland, Ohio and its pro team, the Cavaliers, to the Miami Heat.
One of too many "rust belt" towns, Cleveland owned James as he brought star power to this suffering sports-obsessed community, and along with that power, the more-important, much needed economic boost.
With his Cavalier contract up, in an unusual, if not unprecedented, move, James made a national show of his struggle to decide which professional basketball team he would play with next. Eschewing normal PR communications routes, he announced his decision on ESPN.
With the on-air announcement of "Heat," Cleveland was devastated. James was vilified.
“Losing LeBron” is a study of the impact of this loss on the community through archival footage and interviews with six Clevelanders: Candice Vicek, Mike Brenkus, Zachary Shavers, Tyrone Shavers, Mike Polk, and Scott Rabb.
Near the beginning of the film we learn that Rabb was a serendipitous winner in Cleveland’s loss. A senior writer for Esquire Magazine, Rabb bemoans on camera the loss of professional journalism to blogging.
‘If you can’t beat ‘em...’ Rabb, as a matter of course, blogged the story of LeBron’s departure; and bemoaning notwithstanding, ended up with a publishing contract for his “The Whore of Akron”. (James is from Akron, Ohio.)
Obviously, this is a story about Cleveland, a dramatic, anecdotal study by two talented filmmakers. A very tiny leap leads us to America’s rust-belt, countless stories of devastated communities in the Northeast and Midwest which have been victimized by the nation’s massive exporting of manufacturing and service jobs.
In a phenomenon similar to the 1979 release of James Bridges’ “The China Syndrome”, about a fictional nuclear plant’s possible meltdown which happened to be accompanied by an actual partial nuclear meltdown at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island facility, right in the middle of the release of “Losing Lebron”, James announces his return to the Cavaliers.
I hope Sherlock and Hart have already made their airline reservations.