Ahead of preparing for his latest documentary The Dynasty: New England Patriots, director and executive producer Matthew Hamachek didn’t know much about the NFL team other then its ability to win Super Bowls. However, he quickly found a focus once the interview process revved up.
“Whenever I have written or directed a doc before, one of the things I’m always trying to do is to figure out the central theme or central idea is when we go on this journey, whether it’s over 90 minutes or 10 parts like in this one,” Hamachek said on a panel for the Apple TV+ docuseries at Deadline’s Contenders Television: Documentary + Unscripted event.
“I was interviewing the director of football research, Ernie Adams, and he said in our first-ever interview, ‘Every team says they want to go to the Super Bowl every year, but not every team is willing to do what it takes to get there,’ ” Hamachek recalled. “The question of what it takes to get there became the driving principle in everything we did going forward.”
Hamachek noted the incredible access his crew received with everyone he interviewed, saying it came down to “the process of listening” to pull the most out of a team that was not known for saying much once they left the field. When it came to what interviewees revealed, Hamachek says it came from a mix of building up trust while also realizing a lot of these players were ready to unload after years of being quiet.
“Some people were ready to talk out of the gate, and some people you really had to figure out what it was,” Hamachek said. “What I tried to make clear was I don’t really have anything specific I was going for, but what I wanted is for them to tell me what it was like to be there because no one had really heard that story before.”
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As for quarterback Tom Brady, who is calculated as they come when it comes to interviews, Hamachek said it came down to the future Hall of Famer being as vulnerable as he’s ever been during an interview. It led to some revealing answers when they sat down.
“He went to places he really hadn’t gone before even with his own doc series,” Hamachek said. “He was later in the interview process than everyone else. We had collected so much information and our questions could be just more pointed and get to the heart of what we were asking, and he could see we had done the research.”
The same could be said for coach Bill Belichick, “who told us after our first day, ‘I can see you really did your research.’ “
Check back Monday for the panel video.
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