Full disclosure: while running an Olympic-themed movie competition in 2024, your humble FOG! correspondent was pleased (and a bit confused) to discover the surprisingly affordable Cameo rate charged by a celebrity as famous and — based on the crowd’s excited reaction to his onscreen appearance at the aforementioned event — as beloved as nine-time gold medal winning Olympic legend Carl Lewis.
Yet for many Americans of a certain age and temperament, the track star is not held in the same high regard as similarly accomplished icons from Jesse Owens to Simone Biles for reasons related more to perception than reality.
Or, as the titular star of this consistently entertaining sports doc by Julie Anderson and Chris Hay explains in the film’s opening minutes, “The biggest preconception is that I’m an asshole.”
The origins of that belief are explored over the course of 98 fast-paced, history-spanning, globe-trotting minutes during which Lewis attempts to follow in the footsteps of Owens — his idol — while chafing under the constraints of social expectations for black males and athletes.
For instance, sports journalists of the era considered Lewis a diva because he neither showed them what they considered the proper deference nor played the customary role of a humble amateur who was simply happy for the opportunity to compete on the world stage.
Instead, Lewis, the once bullied son of civil rights activists, was unapologetic in his desire for fame and fortune commensurate with his abilities, ruffling feathers and becoming the target of pop culture parodies by starring in a Boogie Nights-esque music video (“Going for the Gold”), appearing on the cover of GQ (thus becoming the first black athlete to do so), designing his own uniforms, and railing against the Olympics for enriching everyone but the Olympians themselves.
And then there were the red stilettos.
Posing naked in the size eleven-and-a-half shoes for a European Perilli ad photographed by Annie Leibovitz was just another one of the ways Lewis courted controversy throughout the ’80s and ’90s, bringing the flashy androgynous style of Prince and Michael Jackson into a traditionally conservative American sports ecosphere saturated with gay panic and homophobic epithets.
Nevertheless, though Lewis was aware of the haters and paid a price for the doors that he opened, Anderson and Hay give their subject the final say in a necessary reevaluation of an undervalued trailblazer who reset the expectations and possibilities for those who followed in his (stylish) footsteps: “I won, I’m happy…The more I think about it, the prouder I am that I didn’t give a fuck.”
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Produced by Carl Lewis, Torquil Jones, Chris Hay
Written by Chris Hay
Directed Julie Anderson, Chris Hay
Featuring Carl Lewis, Leroy Burrell, Zina Garrison,
Brad Hunt, Phil Knight, Cleve Lewis, Carol Lewis,
Mike Powell, Tom Tellez, Narada Michael Walden
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