I know. This newsletter is about the future, so why am I looking back to something that happened 50 years ago? The answer is simple: I was one of the executive producers of the documentary “Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream,” which was released 29 years ago in 1995. The documentary won several awards.
It won a George Foster Peabody Award, one of the most revered and respected awards that can be won in media.
It won the Annual Heartland Award
It was nominated for a national Emmy for Best Documentary.
It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary
The title of the special exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame is named after this documentary.
How did I get involved with this film?
A good friend of mine, Jack Myers, and I had put together a consortium of major network advertisers to fund network programming. The goal was to upset the model of how network programs were made. We felt, and the 10 advertisers agreed, that advertisers could own the “backend” of the programming revenue stream through all windows.
Jack and I had put this stellar group of advertisers together [ ATT, McDonalds, Sears, MasterCard, Coca-Cola, Clorox, Coors, GM, Reebok, and Campbell Soup] to fund network programming that met their quality and subject criteria. This meant that all kinds of programs and producers came to us with groundbreaking programming that the networks were not interested in, with their ‘90s focus on sitcoms.
Hank / David / Jack / Denzel
One of the people who was looking to produce was Denzel Washington, whose own production company- Mundy Lane- had a commitment to produce uplifting programs for young black males. Mike Tollin and Brian Robbins had a production company and brought a script to Denzel about how Hank Aaron, during his pursuit of Babe Ruth’s 714 career home run record, had received more hate mail than anyone else in the history of the U.S. Postal Service. Denzel loved the script and treatment and then Mike Tollin brought the project to Jack’s and my company, Television Production Partners to fund and executive produce.
GM, Coke, Sears and Reebok signed up as they loved the project. We began production and the response was overwhelming because of the great respect that people had for Hank Aaron. Sandy Koufax a notoriously private man who never gave interviews said that because he respected Hank so much he would agree to be interviewed on camara. Andrew Young, Harry Belefonte, President Jimmy Casrter, Maynard Jackson, and a slew of Hall of Fame baseball players all agreed to be interviewed. The respect and love of Hank Aaron made the production a delight!
Jack and I always had problems with the studies and how their “studio accounting” kept us from making any money on it for TPP and the advertisers. We also thought, as do most producers, that it could have been a bigger hit than they let it be.
Now, it is finally up on YouTube, for all to see. The quality is not at the level it was when it ran in theaters and on TBS, but you can see it.
David, Excellent historic perspective and your significant role in this documentary about Hank
Aaron. Congratulations for an excellent article......Best, Henry