O.J. truly was ‘Made in America’

One of the best long-form, true-crime documentaries I've ever seen was produced by ESPN. My review, which I wrote for Spokane Public Radio, follows:

I don’t remember everything about June 17, 1994. What I do remember is this: I was just leaving a gym on the North Side of Spokane, looking forward to enjoying a cold beer, when I noticed people in the lobby crowded around a TV.

Naturally curious, I joined them. And I began to watch one of the most bizarre would-be getaways in American crime history. A white Ford Bronco was creeping along a Los Angeles freeway, pursued by a convoy of police black-and-white cruisers. It became immediately clear – the news announcers were just as intrigued as the rest of us – that this Bronco carried the former football player and movie star O.J. Simpson.

These 22 years later, long after his subsequent murder trial, its controversial verdict and the turbulent aftermath, Simpson is again in the news. His story is simply something that we as a nation can’t let go of. The FX Network covered it in the dramatic production “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story,” and now the sports channel ESPN – as part of its critically acclaimed “30 on 30” documentary series – has produced “O.J.: Made in America.”

Available by streaming on ESPN.go.com, “O.J.: Made in America” is far more than a mere sports documentary. It is nothing less than a sociological, historical and cultural-anthropological look at race relations as they have developed over the past several decades in the United States.

Told in five parts, each in excess of 90 minutes, it comprehensively covers all things Simpson: his football years – both for USC and later for the NFL Buffalo Bills; his post-football jobs as a pitchman for Hertz Rent a Car and star of the “Naked Gun” movies; his love affair with future wife Nicole Brown; the murder of Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman; Simpson’s flight in the Bronco, and his subsequent arrest, trial and all the attendant drama; and, finally, Simpson’s post-acquittal life, which slowly unraveled in Miami and then Las Vegas, where he committed the crime that would, this time, earn him a long prison sentence.

Directed by Ezra Edelman, whose works include co-producing the documentary “Cutie and the Boxer,” “O.J.: Made in America” uses hours of impressive archival news footage to provide the backdrop for how and why Simpson’s not-guilty verdict came down, despite the LAPD having amassed a virtual mountain of evidence. As lead prosecutor Marcia Clark said, “I’ve never seen so much evidence, even on the first day, as I did in that case.”

Clark is just one of dozens of interviewees, all of whom had much to say about Simpson and more. The cast includes some of Simpson’s lifelong friends, some of the detectives who investigated the case – including Mark Fuhrman – members of Simpson’s defense team, the so-called Dream Team; journalists, civil-rights activists, and even a couple of jurors, at least one of whom makes it clear that she voted to acquit Simpson because of the LAPD’s history of brutalizing the city’s African-American community.

The overall result is a fascinating look at today’s America – and how we got this way.