The 2008 season hasn’t even started, but Oscar fever is spreading through Cubs camp.
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“It wouldn’t surprise me,” left-hander Ted Lilly said. “It has been a long time coming. I’ve gotten looked past a few times, but there are only so many times they can pass you by before they realize they made a mistake.”
A documentary on the ’08 Cubs with the working title “We Believe” has begun production, and the Oscar buzz is unmistakable. According to Mark DeRosa, all the Cubs need is to write a happy ending, like, say, end the 100-year drought.
“If we win the World Series this year, it’ll probably win an Oscar,” DeRosa said. “I’ll get to walk the red carpet. We’re going to Sundance!”
The Cubs may or may not get to Hollywood, but Hollywood definitely has discovered the Cubs. Producer/director John Scheinfeld, whose most recent documentary was “The U.S. vs. John Lennon,” approached Cubs management last year to gauge interest in a project about the franchise and its relationship to Chicago.
It didn’t take long before he got the green light from club Chairman Crane Kenney.
“You see movie people coming to Wrigley Field to throw out the first pitch, and they get a huge kick out of being around us,” DeRosa said. “[It’s] something you can look back on in years to come and show your kids how special it was to be part of the Chicago Cubs.”
Scheinfeld, who grew up in Highland Park and attended Northwestern, said he had wanted to do something on his hometown team for years.
“I’d just done a documentary on John Lennon, I’ve done one on God and heaven (‘In the Name of Heaven’), and it was like, ‘Now what do I do?'” Scheinfeld said Tuesday at HoHoKam Park. “[It’s] about the love affair between a great city and its team.
“We’ll have a little bit of the history of the Cubs, and of Chicago, but mostly it’s: ‘How does this thing come together, and what is this tapestry all about?'”
The usual suspects will be mentioned in the documentary — the black cat, the Billy Goat curse and, of course, the Bartman episode.
But Scheinfeld insists the film will go beyond the basics and delve deeply into the psyches of the city and its famously inept franchise. The documentary will not be made “observational” style, so you won’t get to see players or manager Lou Piniella filing into the clubhouse after a heartbreaking loss. It’s not going to be “Hoop Dreams” or one of those HBO documentaries on Floyd Mayweather Jr. or the Dallas Cowboys training camp.
“For the players, you can’t have that [fly-on-the-wall] filming,” shortstop Ryan Theriot said. “There would be some bad interviews after certain games.”
The possibility of the film crew becoming a distraction is minute because it won’t be around every day. Even if it was, Derrek Lee said it wouldn’t bother anyone.
“When you’re at the ballpark or on the field, it’s not really that personal,” Lee said. “What goes on in here or on the field is an open book. It’s really nothing new.”
Scheinfeld will interview Piniella and a core group of players at camp, at the All-Star break and at the end of the season. Interviews also will be done with fans and, naturally, Hollywood types who follow the Cubs.
Scheinfeld hopes to show the film at the Sundance Film Festival next winter. If all goes well, it is tentatively slated for release in the spring or summer of ’09. The Cubs won’t have final say over editing.
“I’ve done several projects with the Sinatras, one of the tougher estates around, and they were great to work with,” Scheinfeld said. “And I’ve done Yoko Ono and John Lennon, never an easy thing.
“My approach generally is celebrating. … I’m not going to shy away from the bad things or the stuff in the past, but this isn’t ‘The 50 Worst Things To Happen to the Cubs.’ This is really a celebration of the city and its team.”
Of course, if the Cubs flop, it could turn from a documentary into a disaster flick.
“I think they’re hoping we win the whole thing,” Lee said. “Then they hit the jackpot.”
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