EXCLUSIVE: Filmmaker Alison Klayman Talks Liberty Doc 'Unfinished Business'
Lights, camera ... Liberty!
Barclays Center isn't the only place to take in the endeavors of the New York Liberty this spring: the team, having tipped off its highly-anticipated 2023 season on Friday night, is the subject of "Unfinished Business," a documentary filmed in a seafoam lens.
Directed by Alison Klayman, "Unfinished Business" provides an unprecedented look into the Liberty's first and 25th seasons of operation. Their inaugural campaign was also the maiden voyage for the WNBA in 1997 while the 2021 season was the team's first under new management in Brooklyn. The visits to each dueling timeline also analyze the WNBA's self-insertion into societal issues beyond the court.
Premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2022, the film recently wrapped a theatrical run at BAM Rose Cinemas in Brooklyn. It made its television debut on ESPN in honor of the Mother's Day holiday and is currently available to stream on the Amazon Prime Video streaming service.
"'Unfinished Business' is coming out at a watershed moment for the WNBA,” Klayman said in a release. “It has become a league leading the conversation on equity in women’s sports and social justice in society at large, and the fans and investment are pouring in."
Original Liberty stars Kym Hampton, Rebecca Lobo, Crystal Robinson, Teresa Weatherspoon, and Sue Wicks are among those interviewed, as are current seafoam bearers Sabrina Ionescu, Betnijah Laney, and head coach Sandy Brondello (the head coach in Phoenix at the time of filming). Liberty co-owner Clara Wu Tsai is listed among the executive producers, as are Denver Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson and his wife, recording artist Ciara.
"This film is about a group of women who do not accept the status quo and a long tradition of players who have impacted history far beyond the realm of sport," Klayman said. "I’m so excited to bring audiences into this thrilling and multi-layered story, and show them the WNBA the way I see it: through a lens that holds the past, present and future all at once.”
Klayman, a lauded documentarian whose previous subjects include Abercrombie & Fitch and Alanis Morissette, recently spoke to All Knicks about her latest work, as well as the future of both the Liberty and women's sports as a whole.
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Q: What made the Liberty's endeavors in 1997 and 2021 so worthy of a cinematic treatment?
AK: It was such a great contrast to have one of the founding teams with such a long history with an incredibly exciting first few years alongside the founding of the league and then to look at it 25 years later in this moment of rebuilding with a really young roster, a really new roster, a new team coming together. I think there was something in the contrast that was really useful for the storytelling.
Q: How do the modern Liberty teams best emulate the on-court and off-court success of the inaugural group from '97?
AK: I think that, even though you've got players that are new coming in, there was enough of a brand of New York Liberty basketball on both sides. I think that, in the early years, they made their mark in terms of what the personality of this team was going to be like. I was really pleased to see that it's something that goes through each year's roster. It's something that lives bigger than just the individuals on the team.
I think (the original group) really set the tone and people came to New York and understood that this is a basketball town. This is the Mecca of basketball. This is a place for gritty play. This is a place of showpeople. The 2021 season was their first year at Barclays Center. It was really like a reset in so many ways, but I do think that those players each picked up what they could bring to that New York identity, both on and off the court and it felt like they were part of this legacy and that they were going to find their way to do New York Liberty basketball.
I think that's really cool. I wasn't sure if it was going to be like that, but it was definitely what I found.
Q: Of the 2021 group, which of your interview subjects changed the most from the beginning to the end?
AK: I think, for a lot of people, there weren't necessarily, I would say, any surprises about how they changed or developed, but there was a fulfillment of the potential that was written in for a lot of the players at the beginning. They lived up to it, if that makes sense.
Betnijah Laney came in and, as DiDi Richards says in the film, she felt like a leader from the start. But if you also think about that, there's a lot of work and development that needs to go in to arrive at that kind of a promise. You don't just come in with a new collection of teammates and act like you the mantle is yours. You have to lead by example.
I think the way everyone else really changed was this the way they came together and gelled and I think we know that, on the court, that's so important. I feel like we're all waiting with anticipation for this (2023) season to see how this incredible roster is going to gel because it's a team sport. It's not just about everybody's individual talents. I think one reason why the 2021 team was so great was that a part of the development was them coming together and caring for each other and having each other's back and figuring out that they could come from behind, figure out that they could do to correct the mistakes that they were making on a game-to-game basis.
Q: I think one game that really personified that spirit was the game against the Washington Mystics near Independence Day weekend, complete with Jazmine Jones flipping over the sidelines and a comeback from 20 down.
AK: That, ironically enough, was a day where we asked if we could film with Jaz that morning. DiDi comes by, they go get their bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich at the bodega. Then we go, and DiDi gets hurt, fortunately, it wasn't too serious, and then Jaz electrifies it.
That's one of those moments where, I guess you never know, but sometimes you know, when you're filming something, you're like, "This is going to be in the movie."
Photo: David Becker
Q: Did any certain individual live up to that hype more than others?
AK: DiDi came in and she was a big personality. She was someone that had overcome already something, tremendous having this tremendous comeback from injury story from college at Baylor.
But it's not like she came in and then she had a totally different narrative. In some ways, you could say these were the things that she carried out throughout the year, but the way that she came into them reflected maturity, reflected coming together with a team, and how she fit in with a team. By the end of the year, that summer, she posed for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, she was like starting to get sponsorships. She was doing things that really no one thought she would have hoped to do the year before.
I think everything is such a whirlwind for the rookies, especially for the new draftees. (2021 first-round pick) Michaela Onyenwere talked about missing her graduation. Suddenly, she's on a plane, she's in New York. I feel like, for a lot of them, it's not like they came developed in a way that you maybe couldn't have predicted but they all did the thing. They all did the thing that felt like it could have been their storyline.
Q: What does the title "Unfinished Business" mean to you?
AK: "Unfinished Business," to me, means that there's a potential that has yet to be fulfilled for this league and its place in the culture. It stands for progress for women, trans, gay, black athletes, and so many things. But, fundamentally, I do think the biggest thing that this film talks about is the WNBA's trajectory.
I think you can see from the beginning that there have been a lot of structural reasons that the WNBA hasn't gotten to where deserves to be and it can be. I just wanted the film to show that through its entertainment value and its great characters and its really fun, dramatic basketball, that there's an argument for why there's higher to go.
Then, of course, New York needs a championship. Maybe that'll happen this year. That'd be great.
Q: Why was New York the perfect backdrop for your film?
AK: I like a lot of different sports. But, for me, basketball has the prime spot. I feel like I don't have to question that when I'm in New York.
I feel like you can see the love of basketball in other places too, I lived in Beijing for four years and the Dongdan courts are a great place for pickup basketball and people love basketball there too. But New York does it better than anyone, for sure. It's much more than just the pro teams. I think it's it's there's something bigger about the basketball here.
Q: Obviously, you're very busy with your film work. But if the WNBA offered you a front office position of power tomorrow, what would your first move be?
AK: I'd be focusing all in on the broadcast deal and the issue of how fans can watch the games. When you put out a film now, the dream is the lowest barrier to entry possible. The dream is a wide release, the dream is availability. Having now spent a few years trying to watch my local team every time they play, it shouldn't be that hard. I feel like it'd be a great thing to solve.
There's such a great product and I think all the spending on marketing and word of mouth will be worth every dollar every year. That attention will go that much further if someone knows right away how to watch and how easy it is to see all the games.
Q: What's the biggest obstacle facing the WNBA right now from an internal standpoint?
AK: I'm hesitant to call anything like the one biggest because I think my brain is just bad at working that way. I'm hesitant to call anything like the one biggest issue because I think my brain is just bad at working that way. I think I see too much of the gray area and the complexity and the multiple forces that are acting on everything.
I think that the conversation around fan experience that's a really, really big one. I think expansion is also something worth discussing. I feel a little guilty, maybe I should have said bring a team to Philadelphia, my hometown (laughs). But, I mean, expansion is high up there too. I also think expansion is another one just because of the excitement and energy that comes off of March Madness ... since now we're allowed to say that when we're talking about all the players.
There are only a few spots for these people, these players who have a fanbase and have the country's attention. Often they get brought in and they get waived. We all understand why that's happening, but it shouldn't.
But, while I don't like to backseat drive, I do think that easily watching games and expansion aren't just pipe dreams that fans talk about. I think those are real things that would ultimately improve the league even though there are challenges to figuring them all out.
Sometimes less is more but sometimes more is more. I think we're just at this really exciting moment where you have owners clam clamoring to spend more money on this league. They do it because they see an upside because they're energized and because they think it's the right thing to do, not from a moral standpoint alone but from a business standpoint. I think that's one of the main changes that we're seeing from the early years and I think that that's a really positive indicator. I think the valuation of the soccer broadcast rights is another really good indicator.
There are a lot of good indicators that this is only going up. That's why I think it's not crazy to be asking for expansion.
Geoff Magliocchetti is on Twitter @GeoffJMags
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