Baseball probably had the most complicated performance enhancing drug scandal of any professional sport. Especially as Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa assault the single season home run record, Major League Baseball saw attendance, fandom, and finance all enhanced by drug enhanced home runs. Later on, things came to a head with Alex Rodriguez and his positive test for steroids. Within that scandal, and the whole human growth hormone scandal, are a number of unique characters. A few form the basis for the documentary Screwball, which finds a unique spin on what otherwise could have been a special on ESPN. This take helps set the doc apart and give it a fun bit of variety. The film is a very untraditional non fiction story. Truly a documentary, it also functions like a true crime dramedy, in that all of the non talking head or archival footage is dramatic recreations where the...
- 3/31/2019
- by Joey Magidson
- Hollywoodnews.com
In baseball and comedy, the term “screwball” has roughly the same meaning — something that breaks in a wildly unexpected direction. Or a series of them, in the case of director Billy Corben’s new documentary Screwball, which shines a light on the comedy of errors that led to the 2013 Biogenesis scandal, arguably the biggest in Major League Baseball history. Named for the Miami-area clinic where an unlicensed doctor dispensed performance-enhancing drugs to a variety of athletes, the affair blew up after a whistleblower walked off with boxes of medical records...
- 3/27/2019
- by Alex Bhattacharji
- Rollingstone.com
The real-life misadventures of central figures in the 2013 Major League Baseball doping scandal play like outrageous twists and turns in the seriocomic crime fiction of Carl Hiassen or Elmore Leonard throughout “Screwball,” an impudently entertaining documentary that suggests what might result if the Monty Python troupe were given carte blanche to produce an investigative report for “60 Minutes.”
It comes to us from Billy Corben, a filmmaker whose previous chronicles of illicit activity and entrepreneurial drug traders in and around Miami might now be viewed as warm-up pitches for his latest effort. This time on the mound, he throws heat and scores impressively with help from a lineup that includes baseball All-Stars, mob-connected lowlifes, tanning and bodybuilding enthusiasts, free-spending Mlb investigators, and an unlicensed anti-aging expert whose lack of bona fide medical credentials scarcely hindered his ability to provide, one way or the other, performance-enhancing drugs for his clients. The latter shady character,...
It comes to us from Billy Corben, a filmmaker whose previous chronicles of illicit activity and entrepreneurial drug traders in and around Miami might now be viewed as warm-up pitches for his latest effort. This time on the mound, he throws heat and scores impressively with help from a lineup that includes baseball All-Stars, mob-connected lowlifes, tanning and bodybuilding enthusiasts, free-spending Mlb investigators, and an unlicensed anti-aging expert whose lack of bona fide medical credentials scarcely hindered his ability to provide, one way or the other, performance-enhancing drugs for his clients. The latter shady character,...
- 9/24/2018
- by Joe Leydon
- Variety Film + TV
Exclusive: While Alex Rodriguez long ago hung up his Yankees uniform and put his performance enhancing drug scandals behind him as he works as a respected baseball analyst for ESPN telecasts, that doping past is bound to rear back up at Toronto. That’s where the Billy Corben-directed documentary Screwball will premiere and re-explore the performance enhancing drugs scandal known as Biogenesis that will challenge A-Rod’s attempts to make the Hall of Fame, even though he hit the fourth highest all-time number of home runs with 696.
The filmmaker has put together a procedural on how the Miami-based Biogenesis proffered performance enhancing drugs to Rodriguez and other sluggers like Boston Red Sox star Manny Ramirez. Corben, whose past documentaries include Cocaine Cowboys and The U, acknowledges the comic absurdity behind the whole drug fiasco by adding an Our Gang element and featuring reenactments that put children in the roles...
The filmmaker has put together a procedural on how the Miami-based Biogenesis proffered performance enhancing drugs to Rodriguez and other sluggers like Boston Red Sox star Manny Ramirez. Corben, whose past documentaries include Cocaine Cowboys and The U, acknowledges the comic absurdity behind the whole drug fiasco by adding an Our Gang element and featuring reenactments that put children in the roles...
- 8/28/2018
- by Mike Fleming Jr
- Deadline Film + TV
Ashok Amritraj’s Hyde Park Entertainment Group has acquired the rights to Greg Grandin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Fordlandia to develop as a potential television series, with acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog attached to direct. Oscar-nominated Christopher Wilkinson is writing the series adaptation and will executive produce.
Fordlandia tells the extraordinary true story of the richest man in the world in the 1920s, Henry Ford, and his attempt to recreate small-town America deep in the heart of the Amazon. Amritraj and Herzog are also serving as executive producers, with Addison Mehr and Priya Amritraj co-producing the project. Grandin’s book was published by Macmillan in 2009.
“Fordlandia is an incredible true story and we are thrilled to be working with Werner, one of the world’s most iconic filmmakers, and Chris, a truly exceptional writer,” Amritraj said. “The story of a tycoon with absolute power imposing his vision...
Fordlandia tells the extraordinary true story of the richest man in the world in the 1920s, Henry Ford, and his attempt to recreate small-town America deep in the heart of the Amazon. Amritraj and Herzog are also serving as executive producers, with Addison Mehr and Priya Amritraj co-producing the project. Grandin’s book was published by Macmillan in 2009.
“Fordlandia is an incredible true story and we are thrilled to be working with Werner, one of the world’s most iconic filmmakers, and Chris, a truly exceptional writer,” Amritraj said. “The story of a tycoon with absolute power imposing his vision...
- 6/14/2018
- by Denise Petski
- Deadline Film + TV
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