Is Novak as Competitive as Michael Jordan? Untold Federer Stories & ATP Bar Fight Draft | EP 206

**Steve Johnson** (0:00)
All right, everyone, welcome back to Nothing Major. I got a Thursday episode.
We're in the middle of Cincinnati, we're getting closer to the end, so we're not gonna really hit on Cincy too much this week, but we have an awesome interview with Jason Hehir, the director of The Last Dance with Jordan and The Wolf of Winter, obviously the new Novak documentary. We've got another Sam segment that we will get into, so you gotta just stay tuned for that, it takes a turn. And plus, we start to preview Roger's induction to the Hall of Fame. No surprise that he was a first-time getting in guy with his resume. So with that, let's get into the show.

**Sam Querrey** (0:35)
Jack, John, Stevie and Sam got close a few times, never won a slam, nothing major.

**Steve Johnson** (0:41)
Everyone, we are back. Thank you to the Suits at SIFT and Charlie Fox, Sam Querrey, John Isner, everybody joining us for this Thursday episode. We are going to kick it off right away. We are going to get to Jason Hehir, the director of the Novak documentary, The Wolf of Winter. I thought it was a phenomenal show. It is out now, I believe, on Amazon. So with that, let's get into this phenomenal interview.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:04)
Take care of your body, take care of yourself, your mind. We were learning about importance of listening to classical music, importance of knowing how to relax, knowing how to breathe.
She said, I should approach tennis in such way that I don't want to have only one shot at Wimbledon, but multiple shots at Wimbledon.

**Sam Querrey** (1:26)
All right, everyone, we have a very special guest today, Jason Hehir. Jason is the director of The Last Dance with Michael Jordan, but more importantly, the director of The Wolf in Winter, the new Novak Djokovic documentary that just came out on Amazon recently. I watched it yesterday on the flight. It's amazing. Jason, thanks for joining Nothing Major.

**Jason Hehir** (1:46)
Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

**Sam Querrey** (1:48)
First question, when a documentary like this comes about, is this something like you had seeked out, wanting to direct this story? Is this something Novak kind of spearheads? Is it something Amazon spearheads? How does it first kind of get some legs?

**Jason Hehir** (2:02)
They came to me. I mean, they came to me in 2023 And when I say they, I think it's a combination of Novak's team and Amazon. And I'm not sure because that team is kind of it's complicated because it started in 2017 this project. And I was only told this when I sat down for lunch with them. But they said we started rolling cameras in 2017 It's now back then it was September 2023 It was during the US Open in 23
And they kind of gave me the sordid tale of the ups and downs and fits and starts and then COVID and everything unraveling there.
The backstory, they had a rough cut assembled already, so I could see what kind of footage they had. And they kind of said like you can use some of the footage that we've been shooting. You could use all of it or maybe you could just start fresh.
But they kind of left it open ended because I think they were looking for a director that they could they could kind of mesh with and saw the story the same way. So I initially was just a little bit gloom warm on it because I knew Novak just the way that any sports fan knows Novak through the news and through the media and through his depiction in the media. And I thought, you know, as fascinating a guy as he seems, if he is a nightmare, I don't want to put myself through that for a year or two or however long it takes to do these things. So I figured, you know what, let's let's give him a chance, give his team a chance and see, how they are and see how we get along. And from the outset, I was really impressed by him and his curiosity and his friendliness and his understanding of the process and his curiosity about the process. Like, he wasn't asking me how we make one of these documentaries because he wanted to control the doc or he wanted to make sure that I was going to put in what he wanted to put in. He was genuinely curious about, how do you go about researching? What research have you done? How do you decide who are you going to interview? How many interviews do you think you'll need with me? Where do you want to shoot and why? He was always game for us shooting with him as long as I could tell him why we're doing this. So it's like, hey, can we be in the car with you after the match? How do you think you want to use it? Like, why do you want to be there? And again, I wasn't to police the content. It was he just wants his very matter of fact, as you can imagine, it has a system for everything he does. But if you gave him a good reason why you wanted to be in his backyard at Melbourne in his rental house with his son playing tennis on an off day, then he would he was on board. So it's with a person like that, you have to build trust brick by brick. And it's it's not until you have that wall of trust that you can actually start to roll cameras and get something that's different than the average crew would get meeting him the first day.