The Big Picture · Interview
February 3, 2017/ 56 min/ Sean Fennessey
Sean Fennessey talks with Oscar-nominated director Ezra Edelman about the seven-and-a-half-hour first cut of O.J.: Made in America, reading his way into a subject for months, and what O.J. Simpson explains about race, celebrity, and America.
5 films across 1 segment.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
In conversation
Commissioned at five hours, screened for ESPN executives at over seven and a half. Edelman says he never cut for time, only for content: the length was the appeal, with O.J. as the lens for a story about Los Angeles, policing, and race.
Cited by Fennessey among Edelman's earlier work; Edelman describes building it as concurrent narratives that cut to black between chapters, the same pacing he brought to O.J.
The two-hour Dodgers film he co-directed at HBO. As a Brooklyn baseball guy himself, he says this is where he found his footing, sinking into a subject over nine or ten months.
Fennessey singles it out as a favorite; another of Edelman's subjects used prismatically.
Edelman's shorthand for the affection that made audiences refuse O.J.'s guilt: 'I watched him in the naked gun, and he made me laugh.'
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