No No: A Dockumentary Review

I don't much care for sports.  If I can attend a sporting event, I can enjoy it.  The atmosphere of the stadium, the immediacy of the action, the communal joy and woe of the crowd all go a long way in making the experience one worth having.  I sometimes try to find parallels between my passion, film, and sports, so that I can understand and maybe even start sharing the enthusiasm that permeates much of the world.  But I can't.  Players aren't actors, and games aren't movies.  There isn't an obvious story to be found in a given match, and unless you follow the seasons and careers, the players aren't usually compelling characters.  They're parts of a larger machine, a hugely lucrative machine, and the output of that machine a game being played by a bunch of people.  The appeal eludes me.

But I love sports movies, both narrative and documentary.  When tales of great athleticism, of underdogs and champions and significant moments, make their way to the big screen, I so easily get sucked in.  The game falls away, the story surfaces, and I start to care.  Usually, it's the behind-the-scenes stuff that grabs me, but as the characters are defined and the stakes clarified, the action on the court/pitch/field/whatever becomes more compelling, and I find myself absorbed in the recreations of games in a way that I never would be watching the actual events on TV.  It's one brand of cinematic magic: film can shape something that lacks inherent interest for a specific viewer into something amazing.

No No: A Dockumentary is the latest sports film to capture my attention.  It's the second great baseball documentary of the year - following Netflix's utterly watchable The Battered Bastards of Baseball - and it all rests on the shoulders of a most colorful character: legendary pitcher Dock Ellis, known for pitching a no-hitter while high on LSD.

Debut director Jeff Radice demonstrates tremendous promise behind the camera.  He's found a fascinating subject in Ellis, and rather than fall at the athlete's feet, praising him for his athletic prowess and pioneering efforts as an African-American player, Radice looks at Ellis's life and career with an unflinching bluntness, finding a man who made lots of mistakes, some repeatedly.  No No is, ultimately, a story of redemption, but redemption that perhaps comes too late for the man who needs to be redeemed.  Ellis's late work as a counselor is admirable, and life-changing for many of the young men he came in contact with, but for Ellis, the relief of doing good might not be enough to outweigh the darkness of his past.

No No is a perfectly constructed documentary.  A plethora of stock footage from Ellis's long career shows his incredible talent on the mound.  The opening montage is cleverly accompanied by an acid trip rendition of the National Anthem, effectively setting the stage for a drug-addled ride through professional baseball.  Ellis himself proves a most candid interview subject, clearly relieved to share his highs and lows, including an immensely emotional reading of a letter Jackie Robinson wrote him, in which Robinson encourages Ellis to continue on in the face of adversity.  Indeed, the film reveals that, while Robinson was the trailblazer for black ball players, Ellis was perhaps even more radical in his contributions to racial equality in the game.  While Robinson simply stepping foot on the field was a revelatory statement, Ellis fanned the flames by wearing curlers in his hair during practices, a seemingly harmless gesture that led to intense controversy from the higher-ups in the league.  Ellis went on to be part of the "team that changed baseball," the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates, a team half-comprised of Afircan-American and Latino players.

Like other documentaries such as The Armstrong Lie and Bigger Stronger Faster*, No No pulls back the curtain of drug use in professional sports and, thus, somewhat diminishes the achievements of professional athletes.  The widespread use of drugs, including performance-enhancing "greenies", is discussed, and Dock Ellis proves himself a poster boy for substance abuse of all sorts, resulting in impressive feats on the field and spectacular failures in his personal life.  Fellow players, ex-wives, and childhood friends are all accounted for in film's interviews, recalling the nigh impossibility of avoiding drugs if one wanted to play major league ball, and the frightening behavior that those drugs resulted in at home.

It's a wonder, and a relief, that Ellis eventually turned his personal demons into a source or service.  Even with his lauded career, No No shows that the work he was proudest of, and certainly the most important work he did, came after he left the game.  The latter portion of the film shows Ellis mentoring young men and counseling them about substance abuse.  In typically Dock Ellis fashion, he still manages to break the rules while doing so.  The lives he touches speak to the power of celebrity, especially when combined with the coherence of sobriety; with great power comes great responsibility, and with great responsibility, great change.

Dock Ellis is one of those athletes who undoubtedly deserves to have his life and career documented on film.  A militant black athlete, an all-time great pitcher, a crusader for change, and a tragic hero, Ellis is perhaps one of the most fascinating figures ever to play professional sports.  Radice has given Ellis the cinematic portrait he deserves, and No No serves as a loving, brutally honest eulogy to a great player, and a good man.