Got a chance recently to sit down and talk to Mike Nicoll, the director of “At All Costs”, a documentary exploring the journey that AAU players travel on the grassroots circuit. Nicoll is originally from Los Angeles and grew up playing AAU ball - one of the many reasons he is doing this film. He attended undergrad at Michigan and went to USC’s Graduate Film School.
My vision was – and is – to make a film that accurately captures the culture of basketball in America in 2013…going into 2014. The ‘business’ of basketball is a multi-billion dollar operation that extends beyond most people’s understanding. I want to wake everybody up.
MN: Some of my best memories as a kid were playing AAU basketball - it really shaped me as a man and taught me a great work ethic. I consider myself a storyteller…and I want to own the sports documentary lane, like when people hear a “Spike Lee joint”, they know what kind of movie they’re in for. I wanted to make a film that was strongly ‘my voice’ but also said something that was important to the basketball world. I played basketball my whole life and now I’m a filmmaker, so it only made sense for me to blend those two passions. This film is like my debut album, so to speak – the project that will establish my style. As a filmmaker, I was taught that you can only do what’s personal to you. I know this culture and I don’t feel like anyone can tell this story better than me. Some people don’t know how important AAU is to the basketball world and I wanted to make a film about how it all really goes down.
MN: We’ve been in production for two years, but the first seed of the idea crept into my head back in early 2010. I wanted to spend a lot of time with my subjects because I don’t like it when documentaries just drop in on peoples’ lives for like a week or a month and then churn out a film…its like, you didn’t really spend that much time with them. You didn’t get the real story. I feel the longevity of our production speaks to the authenticity of the story and I feel like when people watch it they will be able to see the characters grow because I’ve been with them for so long.
MN: We tried to do our homework and research classic basketball documentaries to see what they did well, diagnose what worked for them and identify what we could improve upon. Obviously “Hoop Dreams” is the classic (and there a few others), but for the most part, there has been nothing AAU specific. This was disappointing because you wish there was a template or a reference we had for the kind of movie we wanted to make. But, on the other side of the coin, we are free to create our own, original film. To answer your question, we wanted to have experts in the basketball world narrate the journey we see my characters go on. We have NBA players, coaches, executives, journalists, sociologists…the people who know it the best. The hardest part is convincing college coaches to talk because they feel like they have the most to lose - due to the NCAA rules and scrutiny. But we’re not trying to jam anybody up…I just want to put reality on the screen.
MN: Plain and simple, I want to change the way people look at professional basketball in America. That’s the mission statement. I was encouraged two weeks ago…I was driving around LA listening to the radio and heard Coach Krzyzewski doing a interview with Jim Rome. Rome asked him why he decided to coach the 2016 Olympic team (after originally saying he’d only coach until 2012). Coach K said, “well, when I took the job I wanted to win gold medals - as USA was losing its reputation as the dominant country in basketball. Now, our goal has changed. We’re the only country that has different rules at every level of basketball, and we want to standardize all of it.” But after Coach K talked about all of that he also spoke on how he wanted to reevaluate the way we develop our young talent. To me, that meant that even Coach K recognizes the flaws in the way that upper echelon basketball is being run. I hope this movie changes the way people view basketball in America. I feel like the movie is a metaphor for success in America – and I hope that non-hoop fans will be just as interested in this movie as hardcore basketball fans.
MN: The biggest misconception is that it’s ALL sleazy, I think there are definitely sleazy parts of the AAU culture - but its not all bad. That being said, this movie is about how AAU really works…and people can decide for themselves whether it’s good or bad. More than anything, the movie is about where (and how) professional basketball really begins.
MN: The movie will come out right between March Madness and the NBA playoffs in Spring 2014. Right now we’re exploring all our distribution options and we’ll choose the route that enables us to reach the widest audience possible. I believe this is an important film that people need to see.
What’s next for me? I would love to tell you about that but I cant just yet. I’ve got a couple things in the works, but contractually I’m not allowed to talk about it. Don’t worry, though -everyone will know soon enough.
Article by: Jarrell Strong
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