PaulCrowder Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos had its North American premiere at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, and the film's theatrical run begins in New York tomorrow (and will be expanding across the country in the weeks to come). The film is a magnificent, thrilling documentary -- that just happens to be yours truly's favorite film of the year -- about the rise and fall of the New York Cosmos, a professional soccer team that, for a very brief time in the late 1970s, ruled New York City. With a squad that included such international stars as Pele, Giorgio Chinaglia and Franz Beckenbauer, the team sold out Giants stadium -- that's over 70,000 people -- multiple times, and won several NASL titles.

Producer John Battsek and co-director/editor Paul Crowder sat down with Cinematical shortly before their film's premiere at Tribeca to talk about Once in a Lifetime, Chelsea (the football club, not the part of Manhattan) and international soccer; the movie-related bits of that conversation appear below.

Cinematical: How did you guys come upon this story? How did the movie come about?

John Battsek: I'd just come off Live Forever which is a sort of Britpop feature doc, and I was talking to a guy -- a friend of mind in New York -- just thinking about what one might do next, and he mentioned the New York Cosmos. And it's one of those things where -- because I'm a big big football fan, big sports fan, big soccer fan -- it was one of those things that just immediately stuck in my head. I had a sort of vague, subliminal memory of big players being in New York, and I know that the Cosmos as a team were this incredibly well-regarded club, but I didn't really know the story, and that just intrigued me. A story set in New York, at that time, about football ...

And I've always had this thing about football ... I mean, it's slightly mean of me, but I've always thought the joke is on America, you know, because America does for the most part regard itself as the greatest country in the world, and yet this sport -- that is played on every square millimeter of the entire planet by everyone if they've got half a second to play it -- and [American] people are like "Soccer ... it's boring," you know? And so the idea of a story set in America, dealing with this sport that America's never really got its head 'round, I thought sounded like it could be really interesting.

Editor's note: The review was originally published on April 14, shortly before the film's Tribeca screenings.

Hundreds of soccer documentaries have been made, but for Americans who love the sport, they generally lead only to further frustration. The domestic efforts to address the sport we love tend to be either defensive (insisting over and over again that soccer is as worthy of adoration as baseball or football) or academic (trying to reason strangers to the game, hoping that, through education, they will come to understand and appreciate it). The European and Latin ones, though more enjoyable, ultimately serve only to reminds us of what we can never have. For the American soccer fan, then, Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos is like a bolt of lightning on a sunny day: an explosion of sudden, blinding power that comes utterly out of nowhere, so unexpected that it leaves you breathless. It's a wide-eyed, delirious celebration of American soccer, the likes of which we've never seen. And it's indescribably wonderful, the kind of film that brings a smile to your face the moment it begins and doesn't let go. Directors Paul Crowder and John Dower clearly love soccer, and they revel in the insanity that was the New York Cosmos, the team that dominated the North American Soccer League (NASL) during its glory days of the late 1970's. Their passion and energy is in every frame of the film, and in combination with sharp editing (Crowder is an editor by trade), an irresistible soundtrack, and a clever, 70's inspired sensibility that touches everything from the movie's fonts to its music, they serve to make the film and its story irresistible.