O.J. Simpson has died of cancer, he was 76. Gosh, I can’t wait for all the hot takes today about Simpson. His movie career was fairly short lived, he was pretty hilarious in ‘Naked Gun.’ That’s about it.
He was also a pretty good football player. Oh, and he authored “If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer” — one of the more perplexing and WTF moments in literary history.
If anything, this is a good reason for me to write about Ezra Edelman’s 2016 documentary, O.J: Made in America, which was better than almost any movie I saw that year. Almost nothing came close to the gripping, assaultive nature of this 464 minute film. It meticulously fleshed out the larger picture of the O.J. trial in America — this monstrous story of class and racial warfare. It actually feels more relevant today than it ever has before.
Edelman’s doc split its focus between the racial issues in ‘90s Los Angeles and Simpson's all-American story turned to hell. It was a sheer genius feat of editing and, really, the definitive way to tell this story. The whole thing was a masterwork of scholarship, journalism and cinema. If you haven’t seen this towering achievement then it’s absolutely worth a look.
I'm old enough to remember, quite vividly, the O.J trial in the ‘90s. That was an intense moment in culture. I also remember exactly where I was when the white Bronco car chase was broadcast live, to everyone's amazement. It was like watching a mystery unfold in real time.
And, then there was the trial, with its headline-grabbing sensationalism and the racial overtones. You did, and still do, have people that believed he was innocent, but a majority of the American public knows the evidence and the larger consensus in 2024 is that he, in fact, killed his ex Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman
After 20 plus years, the gawker effect still lingers with this terrible case. Edelman’s doc really proved how dramatized it all was and how, essentially, everyone was guilty in their own way. It changed the cultural landscape forever.
Coppola lost more than $100M on "Megalopolis," got hammered for it, and he knows the clock is running out for one more film. If "Glimpses of the Moon" is that film, someone needs to write the check soon.