More than a decade ago, Alex Gibney was preparing a documentary on Lance Armstrong when the plot changed. Armstrong was revealed, incontrovertibly, not just as a mendacious, pugnacious cheater, but something worse. When you punch down and sue your masseuse for defamation, all the while knowing she was correct when she accused you of doping, you are not going to earn anyone’s sympathy. Gibney handled the curve masterfully, and his documentary, The Armstrong Lie, gave the subject his due as an athlete, while laying bare Armstrong’s badly dented character.
A few years ago, Gibney, as fine a documentarian as they come, was thrown a similar turn. He was preparing a film on Boris Becker, the charming but flawed tennis star. Midway through filming, a series of criminal charges arose, and Becker was found guilty of various bankruptcy offenses in the U.K. and sentenced to a prison term.
Again, Gibney, whose breakout doc might have been an exposé of Enron, followed the money and followed the story. What emerges is a triumph, a film both empathetic and journalistic, a piece of work that triggers this swirl of emotion. After watching Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker, which drops April 7 on AppleTV+, you like Becker; you pity Becker; you are furious with Becker, specifically that someone so charming and worldly could also be so naive and hubristic and self-sabotaging. Unlike Armstrong, now that Becker has paid his arrears, financial and cosmic—he is out of prison, rebuilding his finances and a man without a country, expelled from the U.K. and supposedly looking to leave the fishbowl of his native Germany—you root for his comeback.
Comeback is a seam that runs through the film. Becker is best known for winning Wimbledon as a freckled, diving, bowl-cut 17-year-old, riding his best-in-class serve to the top of the sport. But Gibney makes a compelling case that Becker’s real gift was something more abstract: an ability to delude himself. Becker would trail in a match, convince himself he could not lose and then storm back with biblical fury. (He would later help impart this skill to Novak Djokovic, who he coached and who plays a strong supporting role in this film.) The ability to mount a comeback and convince yourself it will all work out made for a valuable asset in tennis, but made for a disastrous liability in the real world. It’s how a star in his teens and 20s ends up in prison in his 50s.
The tennis crowd will like Boom! Boom! for what it is. A proper tennis documentary that gives real insight into the sport’s beauty and pitfalls. There’s plenty of Becker nostalgia from the ’80s and ’90s and interviews with many leading lights—McEnroe, Borg, Wilander; Stich; conspicuously not Agassi—of the era. The beguiling Ion Ţiriac, worthy of a doc in his own right, steals scene after scene. (Aside: You can’t help but think that if Becker had stayed with Ţiriac and not exchanged him for yes-men, he would be fabulously wealthy today.) Djokovic figures prominently in Part 2, including one startling bit of titillating insight.
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The non-tennis crowd will appreciate Boom! Boom! for what it is not. Neither fawning nor cruel, it avoids easy tropes. It is not a tidy three-act redemption story. It’s also not a takedown. Becker is 55 now, and his ability to mount the ultimate comeback and repair his life is left as an open question.
For this film to soar, Becker had to play ball. All credit to him for continuing to sit for Gibney’s interviews and bare himself, even as the plot changed and circumstances darkened. But Gibney had to play ball, too. Like a tennis player, his willingness to change his tactics and rhythm mid-match, was, as they say in the sport, ultimately the key to this win. In advance of the release, we spoke with Gibney. Some outtakes edited lightly for brevity and clarity:
Sports Illustrated: You’re a tennis guy—
Alex Gibney: I’m kind of a tennis freak. Some people are like: Where’s the coke and the hookers? With me, it’s like how can I find a tennis game? One of the things that makes the Boris film worth doing: He is kind of a larger-than-life character and he is a good storyteller. Other athletes at the top of their game were not necessarily that interesting as storytellers.
SI: That struck me as well. In another world, that guy could have been a hell of a journalist. He really has a knack for the story and the cadence and delivery. He tells a good story.
AG: He tells a good story. And he understands narrative. In a way that’s good. I mean, sometimes he understands it almost too well. What was that famous Randolph Hearst line? “You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war.”
SI: Did you realize the complexity, some of the inconsistency of Boris? Did you know what you were getting?
AG: I didn’t know exactly what I was getting going in. I figured I was getting a good storyteller and a great player. So that’s why I thought it would make for a really interesting doc. The doc got more interesting as it went along because—sadly for Boris—of his growing financial and then criminal problems. I knew that, by the time I had started, of course the Nobu incident was well known and some of the more scandalous episodes and … problems with finances hanging over him. But nothing that became as overwhelming and oppressive as what ultimately turned out when he finally went on trial.
SI: I was crossing my fingers that I would not see him as an EP [executive producer]. And I didn’t. I inferred from that: He did not have any sort of editorial control or veto power.
AG: He didn’t. He had right of review. That is to say, we would show him something and then he would be free to comment. But he didn’t have editorial control. That was explicitly stated in the deal. And that’s not the way it’s done these days, right? [Gibney is presumably referring to this issue with The Last Dance.] But I think that the film turned out all the better for it. He and I had some disagreements. There were some issues where he gave comment, and I looked into it. We still disagree about some parts of the film. And that’s O.K. He’s free to say he disagrees.
SI: Care to specify?
AG: I think that Boris would feel I portrayed his business affairs in too dire a light. I don’t agree. But that’s what Boris would feel. There were a few times in the film where, you know, we all tell stories that either we misremember because we like stories where we are the heroes, but they’re not necessarily true. I think that goes beyond Boris. But, generally speaking, he likes the film.
As an athlete, you have to tell yourself a story. You can’t get down on yourself. You have to keep it positive. You’re two sets down. You can’t tell yourself that it’s over. You have to tell yourself: I’ve got a shot. And particularly Boris seemed to feed off that. Like he would need to get down in order to motivate himself. That’s why I put in that Houdini bit. That part of athletics? I mean, even as a hacker, that’s one thing I learned that you share with the great athletes. That psychology. At what point do you convince yourself that you’re better than you are? Do you choke because you get too nervous? These are things that everybody goes through. And it was fascinating getting at that with Boris.
SI: Exactly. It struck me when, when Novak tells himself, the fans are saying, Novak, Novak, even though they’re saying Roger, Roger … or Federer convinces himself people want him to retire—and he has to show them wrong— when [in reality] no one wants him to retire. These stories athletes tell themselves. How much of what happened to Boris: Is that storytelling bleeding over into life?
AG: I do think that’s one of the themes of the film. What was good for the tennis court was not necessarily good for real life. Being willing to engage in a high level of risk? That can be good on the tennis court, not necessarily good in real life. Putting yourself in a bad situation in order to motivate yourself? It was good for Boris on the court.
It’s not so good in real life where suddenly you’re like, Well, yeah, I’m in a little bit of debt here, but you know, I can get through it. And, “Yeah, that short term loan is 25%, but I’m sure I’ll pay it back soon.” Pretty soon you put yourself in too deep a hole and you can’t get out.
I do think it carried over. Plus the problem that all these athletes have … at the age of 17, you don’t have a good sense of how to look out for yourself. Sometimes you just think, well, this person will take care of it for me. And sometimes they do, and sometimes they do just the opposite.
SI: Why’d you put yourself in the film?
AG: Sometimes I put myself in the film because it seems honest. If I have an opinion, I’m expressing the opinion, and people can judge it for my opinion rather than the voice of God. It’s the voice of Alex. But also because I wanted to reckon with some of these issues.
SI: This is not Enron. This is not Lance Armstrong—
AG: But things did change, and you discover things that you don’t expect. Like I didn’t know at first in that German tax case that Boris actually pled guilty. … As Boris’s troubles deepened, both his legal and civil and his criminal troubles deepened. It expanded the scope of the film and made me realize that there was something bigger going on here that they need to explore.
SI: To me what was always baffling: Someone who I always thought was a bright, charming, engaging guy could get himself in this trouble. But only after seeing your film did I realize he already kind of had a dress rehearsal, right? He already had his warmup act.
AG: The German tax case?
