Reflecting on the Filmmaking Experience

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Welcome back for another episode of Reality Life with K Kasey. and I have a superb documentary for you this week. It's called Chris and Martina, the final set And it's on Netflix. This is about Chris Evet and Martina Noavachilova Two women who dominated tennis so completely that for nearly twelve straight years From nineteen seventy five to nineteen eighty seven, one of the two of them held the number one ranking in women's tennis in all about twenty three weeks They played each other eighty times. sixty of those were finals each retired with eighteen Grand sllam singles titles. So they didn't just play tennis at the highest level They were the highest level But what makes this documentary so superb is it's really the story of how two women from completely different worlds endnding up defining each other's lives So first let me tell you about Chris Everard She was born in nineteen fifty four in Fort Lauderdale, Florida Her father, Jimmy Evet, was a tennis pro that would coach all of the kids on the public courts She grew up Catholic, all American, composed, so composed that the press gave her the nickname The Ice Maiden. She made her professional debut at sixteen at the nineteen seventy one US Open And by the mid seventies, she was the number one player in the world Her game was defined by precision, consistency, and what people around her described as this almost unnerving calm She won a record seven French open titles, six US openp titles, and had a career win loss percentage in singles that is the best of any professional player, male or female, in history She was married three times to British tennis player John Lloyd to skier Annie Mill with whom she had three sons And then briefly to golf for Greg Norman She became a tennis commentator forSPN And also the co owner of the Evert Tennis Academy in Bogca Ratton with her brother John She was and is just about as close to American tennis royalty as it gets And then you have Martina Navratalova. herer story could not have been more different She was born in nineteen fifty six in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Her parents divorced when she was three Her mother remarried a man who became Martina's first tennis coach Her biological father struggled with mental health and died by suicide As a child, Martina was outdoors constantly. She skied before, she was even three playing soccer with the boys, hitting a tennis ball against a concrete wall by the time she was four She won the Czechoslovakia National Tennis Championship at fifteen And in September of nineteen seventy five at eighteen years old is losing to Chris Evet in the semifinals of the US Open She walks into the offices of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in New York City and told them that she wanted to defect from communist Czechoslovakia Now she didn't know if she would ever see her family again Her mother told her comeome back no matter what. She received a green card within a month and became a US citizen in nineteen eighty one She came out as gay that same year, making her one of the first prominent professional athletes to do so And her game was the opposite of Chris's, aggressive, athletic, serve and volley She revolutionized women's tennis by building a team around her and committing to a level of physical fitness that no one in the sport had pursued before She won nine Wimbleton singles titles more than any player in the open era So you have these two women, the poised Floridian and the checked defector. baseline strategist and the net rusher, the one who was embraced by the American public from the beginning and the one who had earn her place And they spent fifteen years trying to beat each other They actually played doubles together early on, won the French O Doubles nineteen seventy five And Wimbbleton doubles in nineteen seventy six Chris realizes that playing with your arrival was giving away too much Sometimes they shared food in the locker room before a final. otherwise, they would not even make eye contact And then decades after the tennis ended They both got cancer Martineo was first diagnosed with breast cancer in twenty ten and beat it In late twenty twenty one, Chris learned she carried the same Broca one gene mutation that killed her younger sister, Jeannie from a varin cancer the year before. A preventative hysterectomy revealed stage one ovarian cancer. She underwent chemotherapy, was declared cancer free, and then the cancer came back in late twenty twenty three, caught early again And then in January of twenty twenty three, Martina was diagnosed with both throat and breast cancer simultaneously She described the treatment as the hardest thing that she'd ever been through. And this is a woman who defected from a communist country at eighteen So what the documentary captures and what the director, Rebecca Gitlitz does so beautifully is the way that the illness did something to their relationship that the competition never could On the court, everything was about being number one Your life revolved around what you needed to do to be the best But Cancer removed the scoreboard. There were no winners and losers There was just this shared vulnerability, shared treatment shared uncertainty about the future Chris has said that it's rare for the number one and the number two player in any sport to become genuinely close. And she's right. But she's also said that what happened to them retiring and then getting cancer at the same time changed the nature of the relationship entirely Now this documentary is ninety six minutes. It premiered at Tribecca on june tenth to a lengthy standing ovation You are going to absorb every single minute of it It features never before seen footage, including cameras that followed Chris through the second round of chemotherapy. Chris and Martina sit down together and watch their classic matches for the first time on camera. They're commenting on specific points, explaining how they were feeling And at times getting emotional in a way that neither of them was ever known do so during those plane days. and the interviews include Mary Carillo, John McNroe, Pamp Shriver, and Sally Jenkins Rebecca directed this film. She is a two time Emmy winner who has directed documentaries on everybody from Princess Diana to Pat Summit to Caitn Jenner to LeBron James to the U. S. Women's World Cup team And as you may remember, she also directed The documentary American Prince JFK Junr. for CNN I did the interview with her about that project as well She has a real talent for finding the humanity inside stories that could easily just be sports retrospectives But this film is proof of that She is my guest today Chris and Martina, the final set is on Netflix, and I'm telling you This is a superb documentary Here is my interview ' thrilled to see that you were part of this project Oh, thank you so much for having me. I love being on your show. You always highlight the best stuff. So not only do I love being on your show, I love watching your recommendations. So it's a real pleasure for me. Thank you. Okay, you've got to tell me about this. I'm living in a house where we have the tennis channel on all the time. So this is like right up our alley. How did you get involved in this project? Do you go to Chris and Martina? or do they come to you Well, I'm a women's sports fanatic. This is sort of where I live and breathe. I do other things, but But this is my sweet spot. Um and Sally Jenkins, who is a long time sports writer and just like one of the gurus of women's sports. She wrote this incredible Washington Post article about Chris Martina and their friendship and how cancer had changed them. John Worthheim latched ono that article said to Everwonder, we have to turn this into a documentary. And so They got on board and Everwonder was and Eorphus were just at their inception and they said, let's deficit this because this is something amazing. And thank goodness they did because that scene where Chrissy is in the doctor's office and finds out that she has cancer the second time was like the third shoot. E U So it was sort of amazing that You know, projects never get green lit that quickly where someone says, yes, I will put this amount of money down to get started, but Martino was in treatment at the end of it. and it was one of those things where it had to move very quickly. And so It did and the pieces sort of came together as we we started moving and then Netflix came on board, I came on board, peoplee just started moving And two years later, we realized that this film was was magic, you know, it was like one of those projects where U I've never been a part of something that was so special and I'm not a super sentimental person U there was something that It transcended sports and it transcended Friendship, it had these elements that Um that were magical. It was special. was like What I'm always looking for. I want to tell true stories, but that will will break through. You know, I'm always talking how like I want to take these margins and like move them into the mainstream. And so Chris and Martina are able to do that But you're never able to tell truthful stories with like big people like that, you know? They did it and it was like, it was magic. It was all the things came together in a magical way So you talked a little bit about that moment where she finds out the cancer is back and then Martinea is in treatment Is there a discussion that they have that you're privy to where we're going to have to open ourselves up in a way that maybe we have not done before It's such a of vulnerable point in someone's life when they're going through treatment And of course, Martina, I remember at the time, she ends up adopting two little boys too. So there are a lot of moving parts to both of their lives. What's the conversation like between them and with you about getting access at this very specific and special point of their lives This is something that I really love and admire about them and I tell them a lot. Once they are in, they are all in. And so Chrissy, you know, I assumed that She was going to be who you see in real life in the life that the media has portrayed aby, which is this very stoic sort of shut down person. and when when we had this scene, I was like, o, should we cut cameras, you know, but we were far back and we rolled it and my our job as a documentary crew is to roll, you can never take anything back, right? So So we rolled on it and then U, I thought she would say, you know Let's come back to it in a couple months, but In Chrissy form, she said, this is This is going to change lives, right? This is I sister Jinie saved my life. I would not have known that I had ovarian cancer without Jeannie saving my life and I signed on to do this documentary and I'm going to do it. And so she stayed. and I think Martina also felt this responsibility that We have a platform like we had a platform in tennis to raise awareness about women's sports and about who we are like she did about her sexuality and raising awareness for gay athletes They feel this responsibility deeply that they use their platform Well, about early detection and and sharing their struggles because it humbled them and it stripped them raw. And if Chry Everett, who's known for bloomers and ribbons and looks and being out front can be sitting here with her head shaved That is going to reach people. That is going to do something. and she understood that responsibility. And so did Martina and And that really struck me As like a kind of courage that most people don't have Right? Be they could have very easily said Let's just tell it retrospectively, right? Like let's just wait till I feel better and then let's sort of fake it a little bit, right? And they never asked us to do that. They never shied away from the hard parts. and That translated into even talking about tennis and talking about their relationships. They didn't shy away from hard and I gave them so much credit for that. Let me introduce you to your new favorite mode of relaxation, Batch Microomints. My friend Carrie has a very busy life and a high pressure job We've had so many conversations about our pursuit for the perfect microomint She loves batch micro mints because they look just like breath mints, but each one is a real microdose just one milligram of THC. and she says it's the most approachable and controlled experience that she's ever had. It's more like a glass of wine Relaxed makes her feel a little looser, but she still feels like herself And if you've ever had that anxious or weird feeling from other stuff She wants you to know that these ms don't do that to her. 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And I wondered if they took the same approach to training in tennis as they did into their treatment because We see some people around them more so on Chrissie's part than Martina's part What was the reality of their treatment? Did they have a lot of people around them or did they approach it like I had mentioned? like they did in their own training careers Yeah, that's a good question. I think that as we watched them get treatment and as we watched who they were in this section of their lives, it became more and more clear how we needed to make the film and how we needed to interperse them as tennis players to them as people now because It is a solitary sport and even though Martinea was very solitary when she came from Czechoslovakia and she was alone. So was Chris, even though her family was here. And so they know only one way, which is be alone. And even though They are sort of surrounded by people at any one time. they still fight themselves, right? They live in their own brains, they live in their own fight They they struggle alone Right? And and even though Andy is sitting there, Um And even though Chrissy has her children They are very internal. They struggle alone, they fight alone. And I think that's why they understand each other because They are They are solitary creatures There's something about her holding Andy's hand that made me cry but in Despite what they've been through that he's there with her, I thought that was really incredible to see those scenes. Yeah. thinkink f I loved Sally Jenkins line about how Kris and Martin are on these sort of paths and at this point they cross, right? L I think that Chrisy is at this point in her life where cancer has reached her, it has changed her. It is It has done enough her that she understands that her perspective is shifted, that it has humbled her that Um You know Being a child star, is not an easy thing, right? Being enabled, and this is Christy's words,s not mine being driven, being the kind of person where you live in your house at ten years old and Everyone else has to be quiet because the star needs to nap. L when this is ingrained in you for so long I don't know that you are able to become a well rounded person, right? And she knows that and her family knows that. and I think that She's worked on that for a really long time and cancer changes things. It changes you, it changes the people around you. it changes relationships. And I think that's one of the things that We saw and it's delicate and it's subtle. and The hand holding is one of those things, right? It doesn't need to be spelled out. It's the kind of thing that Death is on the table You feel You stop thinking, you just start feeling and that what we wanted to portray It's just it's just You forgive things you let things go because you just want to feel. M Well, this question is a little bit personal, but I think it's relevant. Now your wife, Sam is a former Canadian national team quarterback. She's basically responsible for flag football existing in this country for girls. She sure is and an incredible figure in female sports So I know that you live in a household that understands women's sports at a very deep level. How important is telling these female athletes stories my God, I love talking about my wife. Thank you for bringing her up. She is u She is incredible. We spend our lives talking about women's sports. It's literally what we live and breathe And I cannot tell you, we went to Tribecca last week. And u I was standing on the red carpet And Krist and Martina were around me and there was press everywhere And somebody asked me what it felt like. and I said, I have been working in this business for about twenty five years. and I cannot tell you What it is like to be standing here When I grew up hearing No, all the time. Can we pitch a women's story? Can we tell a women's story? What about this? What about this athlete And all I heard was no, it won't sell, it won't play. It's not big enough And now here we are On the red carpet of Tbeca You know, all of a sudden going to Netflix talking about two greatest athletes of our generation that just so happen to be female athletes. Um It's just It's like a moment in time that feels like a u an inflection point and I'm not naive enough to believe that it is, right? Because we feel like we've been on this precipice for so long, but I do feel like the more we chip, right, the more we put these stories forefront of people's brains and remind them that Women's sports is not new. These women have been battling it out since the eighties, right the more that we're changing minds, the more that we are forcing people to reckon with the fact that they're are athletes that have been fighting it out and I'm not talking about like, leisurely games in the park. I'm talking about epic battles in the nineteen eighties between these two athletes in ways that are like littleittle Chrissy versus the gladiator over here, right? It messes with your brain of like what an athlete looks like, what an athlete feels like, what an athlete is and that That is how you change perceptions. That is how you change the minds of people that are immovable, right? And that was what was so important about them. And that's what's so important about this story because that's how we move the middle, right? Like that's what happens at an inflection point. That's why this film is so important is because it touches so many different aspects of women's lives It's not just about sports and it's not just about women's health and it's not just about friendship, but it draws in so many of those different groups that you're gonna pull in all of these different people and then they get a taste of each one. And that is where I love filmmaking because you end up with people who would never sit down to watch a sports doc, right? said love Chrissy because you know, I saw her on the Today showh talking about cancer and I had breast cancer and I want to watch and then they come out other side and they're like, o my goodness, did you see those women playing tennis? And then all of a sudden they want to watch the US open and we have a new women's sports fan and that makes my heart sing Mhm When you sat down with them for the first time, was there anything that actually surprised you about their dynamics? They are very funny Like they are intensely funny. Um, and I love that I also think that They both say I forget. I forget. You know, it's like, no, I don't remember. But then when you sit down to watch tenennis. Sorry b. I remember every point. like really. single point like, oh, I'm gonna to go down the backhand And I'm like sixteen seventy five.. You played each other eighty times and you went to three sets like Something like sixty something, a ludicrous amount of times. So the amount of tennis they've played is unfathomable, right They remember point What they took. I mean, it is The tennis knowledge between the two of them is so Insane U that surprised me, but then also You know, I said to them, I don't don't want to make a film That is a repeat of films we've seen, right? So Th are the most media trained machines I've ever You've been doing this for fifty years. There are very few things that you haven't been asked that you haven't been that haven't been said. I said so. If I've heard something Three times and'm throwing it out Right? That's why we're not doing sit down interviews like I don't wantan to play this game with you. So if I've heard you say something like about this question three times We're out. We're gonna to ask it again in a different way. That's why you see them in so many different places because I always was trying to keep them on their toes, keepe them out. Machine And I said, Chrissy Margino, like We've never understood number one from a women's perspective because they're so afraid to be honest. They're so afraid to say, I didn't want to be friends with someone. I just wanted to be so competitive. It was the only thing that mattered because Women aren't supposed to say those things. They're afraid of what it seems like to be cutthroat or competitive. and I loved that Now they would that they were able to say that that that we get to see what it feels like to be so lonely and so miserable Proud to be a number one player And I thought it was so important to understand what it costs. because no one else is gonna to tell us that except maybe The greatest tennis players of all time. and at seventy years old after two bouts of cancer where they almost died. Like if that's what it takes to get the truth, like that's what it took But now we have it, you know, and that was the goal goingoing back to how there's such opposite figures I wondered Chrisy is this composed all American golden girl from Florida. and then Martina is thein know, the checked defector comomes out as gay in nineteen eighty one She's got this aggressive style. How much of the rivalriry's intensity came from the tennis and how much of it came from the fact that they were being used as symbols of something bigger Hm U I like that question a lot. I think it's both. I think they they are both intensely competitive Right Um, they both really want to win. So even if Martinez says I can be friends with a competitor and go out for dinner afterwards, right? And Christy says I could never do that. They still both want to win really badly. right? they wanted this so badly. I think at the beginning, It was just about that in the middle. It was deeper than that. It was the media machine pitting them against each other. It was the camps. really pitting against each other. It was just stewing and it was years of things that were brewing. It was the flip flop of winning and losing, it was, you know There was nobody else, right? Like once things cooled later on, it was because Stehie was there, Monica was there. There were things later, right? There was stuff to take the heat off of them. but in those middle years, There was nobody to take the heat off of them. likeike early on, you had the original nine still stillill brewing, you had Billy like in the middle There was nobody but them, right? It was all on their shoulders And I think that bore down on them intensely offtten of the Federer Nadal friendship And I thought about it a lot as I watched this and you know, story of two rivals that became close to. Chrisy in Martinez's case, it feels different to me. Feder and Nal were always gracious with each other. Like there was that mutual respect was public, you, from the beginning Whereas Chris and Martine would go through periods where they didn't speak and where coaches were telling Martina to visualize her as the enemy The friendship wasn't inevitable. What made it posossible So Feder and Nal played forty times and they met in twenty four finals. Yeah that Kristin Martina played in, right? Federin Nadal also had Djokovich. Right? Rightle U and they were such different specialties, right? And obviously so and Chris Martina were as well. But Fedr had his his own fiefdom at Wimbledon, right? Like he was his own world and Nadal had his Spanish kingdom on play, right? I think the big difference There On top of the fact that it was half, on top of the fact that there was Djokovitch and all of that is that . hated federer to love Nadal Right They never They never you loved one or the other, but no one ever hated the other in spite of, right? And that's the big difference is that People hated Martina to love Chrisy, right?. When they walked on the court People didn't think like, o, there's David and Goliath. It was like, this is gonna to be a bad R? Like when you walked ono when you saw them Nadal and Federer, you were like, yes, let's sit down for a five set epic battle, right? Like you were excited. That is not how people felt about those two. And I think that that create such resentment, right? And not until U they could get all the way out of that. Did it create a place for acceptance, right? because When Roger was winning so much or Nadal was winning so much, people loved them for it When Martina won for two years straight, people hated her for it, right? The unfairness of it is is so grating. Right? Like the more federal won, the more sponsorships that came in Right The more Martina won, the more sponsorships came in for Chrissy 'ause it was like whole sorry that you're not winning. like let me throw you roolex. L the dichotomy of it is like almost impossible to compare, but I think that when it all settled out, And Prissy could see after that French open win when Martina was sitting there and lost, right And she was back on the other side of this win loss. She could see that it hurts as much as And is euphoric And I think that that Change opened up a level of empathy that they both felt and needed and were desperate for that I'm not sure Fedter and Aal I think they always felt respect And it didn't exist always from the outside world in God Bobble of Chrisin Martina Martina's backstory is extraordinary. How aware were Chris and Martina of what was going on in each other's life through personally during those years. Actually, this also surprised me because not a lot Right? And I think that I thought U I maybe gave them a harder time about not having more empathy for each other And then I kind of realized that Part of being a number one or chasing a number one is being completely Slfish and in your bubble, right And and I don't know that they did. I don't know that they did realize they had theirir own careers that they were chasing, they had their own relationships that were falling apart Um I don't know that they did and I think that there were a lot of thingsings that maybe were never said that were said and felt Um During this that maybe were cathartic. for them in a level of understanding that maybe had never been felt. Like sitting in the stands in Indian Wells was like Very interesting for everybody involved that I'm not sure would have happened had this film never been made. And so Um I think that was important. It was important for both of them Now I wanted to ask you about the making of this. because I'm just imagining you in these moments where you're with them and with their doctor or with their family member, especially with their doctor How do you remain outside of yourself. I mean, I could imagine this becomes quite personal and emotional To be witness to someone's meeting with their doctor about a very precious topic and moment in their life. how what is that like for you as a filmmak Youude Don't you don't say I think that Um, On a personal level, My mother in law was actually very sick. She had leuhmia throughout this and actually lost her fight in the middle of filming And the day of her funeral I texted Christa Martina And I said, I want you guys to know that throughout all of this, you too have been a source of inspiration for all of us And you fought hard And I watched you guys fight hard and we fought hard also and I watch you guys Reach out for community and I am someone who would never ask for help and I am struggling and I and going to ask for help. And I thank you. And I wrote them that text. with with sobbing in my bathroom and then I walked out and I went to the funeral And I only texted the two of them that whole day. And and I meant it because I think that they were exactly what I needed at that time. and I think that They are going to change People's lives, right on When I was struggling They were something that I reached for. And so when I was in the hospital rooms with them and watching them That's what I felt like, right? I detached from it and I said This is going to help people. And if they're going to do it, I'm going to do it. And so we all did our to know that We were going to help People