How it’s New York: Tribeca Film Festival
How it’s Irish: The ‘Mc’ in McEnroe?
The latest documentary about John McEnroe directed by Amy Winehouse director Barney Douglas premiered at 2022’s Tribeca Film Festival at the SVA Theater on 23rd Street.
There have been other movies about the simpatico relationship between him and Bjorn Borg including Fire and Ice, a documentary by HBO sports, and a 2017 feature from Nordisk Films where Shia La Beof played McEnroe, but this documentary explores the personal side of McEnroe – both then and now – and opens audiences up to a man who is of course much more than the infamous hotheaded American tennis champion.
Raised in suburban Queens New York by taskmaster father McEnroe was taught early to be gladiator-like in his pursuits and that winning was the only option. A self-proclaimed perfectionist he had an intensity to him from the get-go.
In addition to the historic footage and current day interviews with McEnroe himself, his family and Borg, scenes of McEnroe walking down a long deserted road Or New York City streets and sometimes going into a telephone booth and picking up the phone are interspersed. These scenes give the film and noir-ish energy but they feel a bit staged.
McEnroe’s second marriage (Tatum O’Neil, a short lived first one), was to Patty Smyth, a rock singer known for the song ‘ Warrior’ in the 80s. Together they created a blended family many of whom were at the Q&A at the SVA Theatre after the movie premiered, and it was fun to hear Smyth humorously interject in the Q&A from time to time. And as she said in the movie, she married a bad boy who became a good man.
The movie fills in many of the gaps of whatever happened to John McEnroe that so might be wondering. The Q&A after for McEnroe spoke with Vanity Fair‘s Radhika Jones and filled in even more and showed McEnroe‘s real self deprecating style and sarcastic sense of humor which the movie didn’t reflect and is missing something for it.
