 o story about directing the Olympics would be complete without a nod to Bud Greenspan, who has produced and directed numerous Olympic-related projects, films for five Summer and Winter Games and the Emmy Award-winning 22-part series The Olympiad. The recipient of the DGA Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award for Sports Direction in 1995, Greenspan, like his on-the-spot Olympic colleagues, counts storytelling and the emotions it evokes as key–but with a twist.
“The films we do are done after the fact in editing,” he says. “Everyone already knows the results, and I may not decide who to include until six months later.”
Greenspan has certain competitors in mind before he arrives at the Games. “I may have read a line in an article–so-and-so was operated on, and he’s testing to see how his leg will hold up. That’s something I can hang my hat on,” he explains. “I research very, very well, and what I don’t research, my people do.”
While Greenspan prefers film because of its warmth, color and depth, he has switched to tape. He lauds the improvements in close-up and hand-held cameras. “I’ve gone out with one camera,” he says, “and it’s looked like four cameras in different places.”
To get his stories, Greenspan keeps those cameras rolling well past the finish line or routine end. “I follow the athlete into the restroom. You have to, because nine times out of ten they won’t cry before then. You’re showing somebody who’s just lost in the prime of their existence, by an eighth of a second.
“I don’t understand why others don’t do that,” he adds. It’s probably because they know Greenspan’s got it covered.
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