It's a story almost too good to be true.
June 12, 1970, a baseball player with a head full of acid pitches a no-hitter. For those of you unfamiliar with baseball terminology, a no-hitter is a near-mythical occurrence. It means that a pitcher has prevented the opposing team from achieving even a single hit during the course of a game. It's an exceedingly infrequent event in baseball - one that becomes even more improbable when said pitcher happens to be under the influence of a potent psychedelic.
For years, Dock Ellis existed as a bizarre footnote in pop-culture ephemera. The 2009 animated internet short "Dock Ellis & the LSD No No" featured Dock's voice recounting what was going through his head during the outlandish episode. Though the segment did drum up a renewed interest in the former major league baseball player, Dock Ellis was still a guy whose fascinating life story remained untold. That was until filmmaker Jeffrey Radice began work on a full-length documentary on the man.
The most surprising thing about the film is that Ellis' famed no-hitter isn't even close to the most interesting thing about his life. Dock was a complicated man, one who challenged racial inequality in sports and left an indelible mark on the game he played.
A relentless pusher of boundaries, Dock challenged authority even as he struggled with the drug-fueled daze of 1970's counterculture. Years later he would conquer his inner-demons and become a respected elder statesman of baseball, going on to help rehabilitate incarcerated prisoners and drug addicts with intensely personal anecdotes from his life.
We spoke with producer Mike Blizzard about the man Dock Ellis was, how baseball is different today, and what they set out to accomplish with NO NO: A DOCKUMENTARY. Read our conversation below.
By Rory Jones
Do512: How long had the idea for a documentary about Dock Ellis existed?
Blizzard: Director Jeffrey Radice first conceived of the film a long time ago. He had done a short that went to Sundance called "LSD a Go Go". This film was about the CIA's use of LSD and testing it on people as a potential mind control drug. The idea kicked off something in his brain and he started to think "Well, what's the most well-known, legendary LSD story?" It's Dock Ellis throwing a no-hitter on LSD. So he started mapping out what he thought the project should be and our fellow producer Chris Cortez talked to Dock on the phone and Dock's response was "Let's make a movie!".
However, Dock fell ill soon after that so it became impossible to work with him, and he later passed away. So the film had to be re imagined as an elegy to Dock featuring many of the people who knew him best. Teammates, family, competitors. So I met Jeffrey around that time and was fascinated by the story. He showed me the short and I was blown away by how much of Dock's personality came through in just an audio clip.
Photo via: drafthouse.com
Do512: Dock seemed both like a man out of his time and yet strangely a product of it. Do you think Dock could have the same career in baseball today?
Blizzard: It's hard to speculate on what Dock Ellis' career would be like today because things are just so different. The amount of money players make today separates them from the community, the media, and from others in a way that it did not in Dock's era. You know, Dock was good friends with the team photographer. Dock hung out with reporters after the games. These people knew him. Back then, players made only enough money to get into trouble. They weren't making money that would last them the rest of their lives.
Dock Ellis got out of baseball and got a job, as many of the players did except for the superstars in that era. Whether Dock could be Dock today? I don't think so. Number one, he was perfectly suited for his era. The way he acted, the way he spoke very much fit the way he played and the times. Maybe he was ahead of the times. Today, because he was a talented and driven baseball player, he might play professional baseball, but I don't think people would experience Dock Ellis in the same way.
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Do512: In his era, players were experimenting with drugs like amphetamines. How do you think he would have fared in the current age of steroids?
Blizzard: We didn't get into the steroid issue specifically in the film, but I think it kind of takes you there anyway. Because we explore the use of drugs as a performance enhancer. In conversations with some of these former players, and Dock had said in the film "It's one thing going up the ladder, but it's hell staying on top". If they had been in the major leagues in the modern era, they would have of course felt pressure to use performance-enhancing drugs.
As one former player told us "If my competitor shows up at spring training with 20 extra lbs of muscle, now hitting 40 home runs instead of 15 a year, what am I supposed to do?". Psychologically, there's always been a pressure to do whatever it takes. Competitive people are going to be competitive. If there's things out there, especially things others are doing, they're going to want an edge as well.
Do512: Beastie Boys member Ad-Rock (Adam Horowitz) provided the soundtrack for the film. How did he get involved?
Blizzard: For whatever reason, the Dock Ellis story really attracts musicians. Flea gave us a contribution on Kickstarter, Russell Simmons tweeted about it. So we had a number of offers for people to be music supervisors for the film. They were great people with interesting and successful backgrounds, but we were having a hard time choosing. I was over at Richard Linklater's office in Austin. He became a fan of the film as it was being made and helped out however he could. He said "Let me make a call, because my music supervisor is Randy Poster". Randy is not only the music supervisor for Richard Linklater, but also Wes Anderson.
So we did a conference call with Randy and he thought that Adam Horowitz should score the film, because Dock's taste in music lends itself not only to funk and soul, but also hard rock. And the Beastie Boys, when you think about a song like "Sabotage", it rocks. So we did a call with Adam next, and he was very interested and amazingly humble. He's worked a little bit in film, but not too much. So he asked the question "What if I send you guys stuff and you don't like it?" *Laughs*
Do512: How do you hope, in light of the documentary, that Dock Ellis will be remembered today?
Blizzard: There's been a conscious effort throughout the making of the film to present Dock as a full human being, and much more than this one crazy incident that he is known for. He spent as much time in his life as a drug counselor as he did as a major baseball player. I think many of the folks who know him best would say that that's his true legacy. We've interviewed in the film former prisoners that Dock counseled that credit him with the reason they're alive today.
Victor Beecham, the former gang member, prisoner, he now basically holds Dock's same job as a counselor at Operation New Hope. And he's continuing that legacy. That element of the story is rarely told. About Dock getting sober, turning his life around, and turning other's lives around, too. If anything, that's what we want people to know about him. The last thing that people talk about after seeing this film is LSD. That's what they talk about going in to the film, but it's not what they talk about afterward.
For more information on No No: A Dockumentary,
