#55: June 17, 1994 (dir. Brett Morgan)

Where were you about 30 years ago? Brett Morgan's documentary holds up wonderfully, capturing a moment in time that still shakes me to the core.

Well, I’m a little late when I could’ve posted this a couple of weeks ago for a 30th anniversary piece on the exact date. What prompted me to rewatch this particularly stirring documentary was a recent conversation I had with an Uber driver. I don’t always opt for the ride sharing route due to the extra expense especially when the CTA exists here in Chicago, but I had to rush from a doctor’s appointment and go straight to work one morning. Little did I know I would have one of the most talkative drivers I’ve ever had.

Not that it’s a bad thing to experience someone eager to converse and connect. I’m definitely the more quiet, reserved type when it comes to interactions with people I hardly know but this driver was commenting on “a tipping point” of sorts that he feels is going to happen again. He considers 2024 to be a year where “chaos energy” is in full swing. I certainly feel it. We talked about our anxieties surrounding NASCAR racing downtown, the Democratic National Convention, the upcoming election, Lollapalooza - all of this madness happening practically in a short amount of time.

I remember 1994 being a memorable year for a lot of reasons. Obviously, I finally felt less isolated since I began making more friends thanks to a mutual love of the arts shared with certain individuals. The death of Kurt Cobain in 1994 is one of many moments I vividly recall where I was and when I got the news. My friend Scott called the Highland Theater Company phone line specifically to get a hold of me. He was crying and told me, “Kurt Cobain is dead.” Some moments stay with you forever. This is one of them.

I told a couple of other friends near me that I knew would be devastated too. This was before the era before smart phones and instant alerts to relay all tragic news to everyone. We all confided in one another, went for a long walk and a couple of us went to my friend Jason’s house to listen to music and talk out our feelings about this. 1994 was when I made some everlasting friendships as a result of film and music. It happened mostly in part due to tragedy. It’s crazy to think of how some days play out, including 9/11, which was my very first day of a new job at the local library in Indiana for me.

A lot happened as evidenced in a tremendous documentary by filmmaker Brett Morgan. His contribution to the 30 for 30 Series is simply titled, “June 17th, 1994.” Three months after the death of Kurt Cobain, something shocked the nation even more. I was at home with my parents as they were watching live breaking news regarding sports legend OJ Simpson (who I mostly knew from The Naked Gun movies).

Since this wasn’t a movie (though it kind of was), I don’t have a strong memory of me being transfixed by the news. I was a little taken aback by the coverage I’m sure, since this was live in the moment as things were unfolding. Every broadcast was being interrupted. All eyes were on televisions across the country to see what was taking place. Not to mention the fact that my dad was a fan of golf and Arnold Palmer’s very last game was being played, broadcasted on ESPN, if memory serves.

Television is not something I started to think of too negatively until this exact same year: 1994. Granted, a lot of this has to do with seeing a film called Natural Born Killers months later because it was shot like a music video and my ADHD-laden brain responded to what Oliver Stone was saying (ad nauseam) about how we glorify murder and elevate criminals to a celebrity, cult-like status.

I almost wish Brett Morgan could’ve edited this documentary much sooner to where I could’ve seen this before Stone’s fictional take that is clearly hitting the audience over the head with a ball-peen hammer with its message about the ubiquity and toxicity of news media. Especially when it comes to tackling the dark side. Bowling For Columbine would also later present us with a montage or two about American news vs. Canadian news.

As assembled by Morgan and editor Andy Grieve, June 17, 1994, is a grand channel surfing opera that Oliver Stone could never make because he lacks restraint. At times, cutting from, say, the heightening tension of the OJ chase to the first half of the Knicks/Rockets game provides a bit of a dramatic letdown. But as the hour-long film builds to a rousing climax, all of these elements merge into sheer spectacle. So much happened and we are privy to the way the media shamelessly captured it all. Let’s face it, we were all wondering if OJ was going to commit suicide and that we’d see it live on air.

The sporting events are also hypnotizing, and this is coming from someone who has little to no interest in sports. Though I can get into football and baseball once in a while, if the stakes are high. Here we have the NY Rangers’ parade, Palmer walking up to the green on the 18th hole to a tearful standing ovation, the excitement in Madison Square Garden, the World Cup taking place in Chicago and the gathering crowds on the 405 as Simpson is desperately talked out of killing himself in that Bronco. Not to mention how a wide-eyed circus of newscasters were juggling so much at once, wondering about what to do, what to cut to and where to point the camera.

Watching all of this frantic, handheld footage back-to-back, side-to-side, at the exact same time, we are confronted with the true essence of modern America that is still present to this day. We placed these sports figures (like we do politicians) into familiar archetypes: the hero, the villain, black, white, not to mention the police response and even how the average Joe on the street stopped everything just to be a spectator. It’s a fascinating, terrifying series of events, all the more so because it is always, without question, televised on every channel. Relentless coverage of something tragic.

The film is cut seamlessly - there’s no need for talking head interviews, this is just a straightforward showcase of how to present a self-contained story (or stories) and make the viewing powerful and compelling through the magic of editing. The drama unfolds in real time without much outside interference. It really is an extended montage done in a way that is refreshing. It’s never demanding an emotional response, you just feel it organically. You know exactly where you’re at, what you’re watching and realizing it was a tipping point, a moment in time that lives in your hippocampus for the long haul.

It weaves together clips from one day to give you the experience as if you are reliving the day, or for younger viewers, living it for the first time. You may still feel your heart pounding despite knowing the outcome. This documentary is an example to me of the power of great filmmaking. The impact it has as I’m watching it and the lingering effects are hard to shake.

Granted, the far more expansive OJ: Made in America, does this for an even longer running time and comments on so much more particularly views on race relations, police brutality and capitalism. Morgan’s documentary really just shows the actual events in a way that presents the media as being heartless, self-congratulatory and power-hungry. The police have their moments too of lacking empathy. But this is more about cameras and what they capture. Some of the best moments come from raw footage of sportscasters like Chris Berman and Bob Costas talking to their producers about how to deal with the OJ story within the context of the events they were covering. Costas, on set for Knicks/Rockets, complains, “There’s no transition. It sounds callous.”

Morgan’s film provides a bracing reminder of how Simpson’s disappearance that morning and the subsequent chase, in which he huddled in the Bronco’s backseat and spoke on the phone to law enforcement officials while holding a loaded gun to his head, made it 100% clear that OJ Simpson had in fact murdered these two people. Everybody realized that. The trial that followed, certainly the verdict also made waves for a lot of reasons. But you just know there’s a reason why OJ has a gun to his head (which we don’t see up close), he cannot live with what he’s done. Even his attorney Robert Shapiro’s late-inning request that we not pass judgment and instead wait for the court trial when all the facts would be presented rang insensitive and unnecessary.

Arnold Palmer’s final round at the 1994 U.S. Open. Baseball legend’s Ken Griffey Jr. tying Babe Ruth’s most home runs record, as well as the MLB’s 65th game for the year being played. The United States was, for the first time, hosting the commencement of the 1994 FIFA World Cup. A ticker tape parade for the newly crowned champion New York Rangers took place on Broadway. It goes to show how much can happen in the span of 24 hours and how we all respond - this time instead of being glued to our phones, we’re glued to a TV.

Whether you are compelled by the commentary on mass media or the sensory overload of watching six stories unfold at once—and remembering how it felt to see them in real-time—June 17, 1994, is worth your time at another pivotal moment in this country. Maybe not a tipping point but certainly a shocking series of events worth looking at. It’s troubling to relive but allows for a lot of reflection on just how messed up we are as a country.

OJ Simpson died of cancer at age 76 on April 11, 2024, about 30 years after the infamous chase. His legacy was corrupted, his image as a sports icon destroyed all because he committed murder. It was unprecedented and this documentary really does provide insight without a modicum of preachiness. The events unfold and speak for themselves. It’s up to us to shape a context out of the images. There’s a moment late in the film where we see nearby neighbors of OJ Simpson excitedly waving to a news camera. All the while, there was a murderer desperately hoping to take his own life in his own home.

Part of the allure of the Simpson scandal was due to our belief that he was just like Arnold Palmer that he was a great man and a great sportsman, until all of a sudden, he wasn’t. In fact, quite the opposite. Our humanity then goes out the window entirely because our televisions told us all, “hey watch this! maybe you’ll see him get shot, either by his own hand or by the police!” This was the time when a show like COPS was something so many had embraced.

I can’t deny the fact that my dad was a fan of that, and I would watch too. I almost feel like the final moments of Natural Born Killers are among the best because it’s just channel flipping, without the narrative drive. In fact, the opening night audience had a visceral reaction to seeing how Oliver Stone snuck in an image of OJ in the film so soon after the events back in June.

Not all human beings are cruel, callous and lack compassion. But I think we all have moments where we disassociate and not truly think things through. Those people saw a camera and weren’t thinking that something really sad and horrible was taking place. Their instinct was to smile and wave. Can you blame them? We’re fixated on what’s happening in front of our eyes, we’re lost in a sea of static and the only way out is to swim through the images in hopes of making sense of them. A documentary like this is vital to show the past and to illustrate how we really haven’t changed all that much. Watching the recent debate, I couldn’t help but think of this as being a low point in this country. I know a lot of people felt the same way. It was a train wreck or a car chase. Many of us couldn’t turn away or would watch clips the next day in disbelief.

We still remain a nation of ambulance chasers and rubberneckers. There’s a violent history inside of us. We remain a society drawn to sensationalism and portraits of self-destruction. We want to watch rich, privileged celebrities crumble into ash. We take sports (and the arts) very seriously. We take life and death too lightly. This is more than another film, it’s a reality check. It’s a representation of this country as being inherently flawed and inconsiderate of others at times especially when they’re in the spotlight. If it bleeds, it leads.

We love good controversy - a rise and fall, rags to riches story will always keep us coming back for more. The film’s most inspired touch is a juxtaposition of Simpson’s skedaddle with Arnold Palmer’s final competitive U.S. Open round – each event depicting an American icon coming to grips with life-altering circumstances in different ways. My own life was altered in 1994 for different reasons. I managed to turn a celebrity tragedy into something positive: I made friends that I still know to this day. A lot of good came out of the year 1994. Thirty years later, there are things to be happy about but the state of the world, especially this country is not one of them. We are losing sight of what makes us human if we don’t care for others.

In 1994, OJ, not only lost friends, he lost his life even if he didn’t take it that day with a gun. The media on the other hand, held up a mirror to us as a very flawed nation. Sometimes when I see Donald Trump talk, I can’t fathom how someone like that continues to have a platform. But then again, look at the history of this country. Look at all the terrible things we’ve done and look at those we put in power. Maybe not you, dear reader, but a large faction of ignorant, shallow individuals have lacked awareness of the damage they cause. Yes, the media, but OJ too. 30 years later, we may be at a tipping point. It may be time for a change, in hopes of not repeating patterns like the ones captured in Brett Morgan’s documentary on that day back in June of 1994.