Erin and Greg Whiteley are collaborating on a brand new present. Devin Keebler
Greg Whiteley, middle proper, is pictured filming the second season of the Netflix collection “Cheer” on this undated picture. Greg Whiteley
Greg and Erin Whiteley are pictured collectively on this household picture. Greg Whiteley is the creator, government producer and director of the Netflix documentary collection “Cheer” and “Final Likelihood U.” Greg Whiteley
Documentary filmmaker Greg Whiteley holding an Emmy award. Courtesy of Greg Whiteley
Greg Whiteley is pictured filming Monica Aldama for the Netflix collection “Cheer” on this undated picture. Greg Whiteley
Greg Whiteley, left, is pictured filming Monica Aldama for the Netflix collection “Cheer” on this undated picture. Greg Whiteley
On Christmas Eve in 2006, Greg Whiteley, digicam in hand, knocked on the door of Mitt Romney’s cabin in Park Metropolis. He wasn’t completely positive whether or not he’d be welcomed in or thrown out. That night time Romney gathered together with his household to debate his potential run for president, and Whiteley knew he needed to be there.
“I bear in mind pondering that seems like a very nice starting to a movie,” Whiteley tells me over lunch at a rustic membership close to his Laguna Seashore, California, residence.
However Romney was not thrilled with the thought of a documentary. Months prior, Whiteley pitched the thought of the documentary to Tagg, Romney’s eldest son, who shortly fell in love with Whiteley’s imaginative and prescient.
“I stated, ‘This may be wonderful, however my dad is rarely going to go for it,’” Tagg advised me about that first assembly with Whiteley. However Whiteley pleaded his case: He’d movie the night and if the household didn’t really feel proper about it, they might maintain the footage. So on that morning, Whiteley packed his household of their inexperienced Volkswagen station wagon and drove from Los Angeles to Utah. And Romney reluctantly let Whiteley in.
There was an ease within the room that Whiteley hadn’t anticipated when he started filming the Romneys. “Should you take a look at that footage, everybody was extremely snug from the leap,” Whiteley tells me. (Tagg recalled that after the primary barely awkward quarter-hour, they forgot Whiteley was even there.)
“I can’t clarify it. I believe it’s partly that we have been simply imagined to do it,” Whiteley says, referring to creating the movie.
He can’t fairly pinpoint what, precisely, compels him to give up himself to some tales, with none certainty the place they are going to lead — which, within the case of the “Mitt” documentary, turned out to be six years of filming, taking out a second mortgage and maxing out his bank cards. A promising character, scene or story appears to seize his curiosity with one thing extra to disclose — to himself and the viewers — a hidden and exhilarating world that deserves nearer consideration.
Greg Whiteley, middle proper, is pictured filming the second season of the Netflix collection “Cheer” on this undated picture.
Greg Whiteley
When he realized about aggressive cheerleading after seeing a stunt on the soccer area sidelines, he had a hunch the game would deliver out the humanity and complexity a fantastic documentary wanted. Thus started the docuseries “Cheer.” And the minute he learn the GQ journal story concerning the junior soccer league in Mississippi, he settled on the precise staff to observe, he says, which finally gave delivery to the present “Final Likelihood U.”
It’s an instinct he has realized to belief that has guided his pursuit of the truest model of actuality that he’s capable of glean. “You’re hoping to be shocked and altered by what it's you’re seeing and listening to,” he says.
And he’s had an astounding few years.
“Cheer” was each critically and commercially profitable — a “residence run” by business requirements. It received three Emmys this yr in directing, modifying and “excellent unstructured actuality collection” classes. “Final Likelihood U,”additionally an Emmy winner and the longest-running sports activities documentary collection on Netflix, is occurring its seventh season. The brand new season of “Final Likelihood U: Basketball”shall be launched on Dec. 13. The themes of hope and overcoming within the sports activities docuseries are threaded all through his earlier movies that dive into American colleges and schooling system, “Resolved” and “Most Prone to Succeed.” And Whiteley spent his summer time capturing a brand new mission in Louisville, Kentucky, that he can’t publicly focus on simply but.
Permitting actual life to drive the plot and the narrative in his work, Whiteley has managed to broaden what the documentary will be — not solely one thing audiences watch to be educated, but additionally a style we will flip to for leisure. One thing that presents actuality, but additionally paradoxically permits viewers to flee it.
Greg and Erin Whiteley are pictured collectively on this household picture. Greg Whiteley is the creator, government producer and director of the Netflix documentary collection “Cheer” and “Final Likelihood U.”
Greg Whiteley
On a sunny, crisp November afternoon in Laguna Seashore, Whiteley opts for a desk inside a rustic membership restaurant nestled within the hills of the plush Aliso and Woods Canyon. A gaggle of males in fleece vests congregates outdoors earlier than heading onto the secluded golf course.
Whiteley is comparatively new to Laguna. A few yr and a half in the past, he and his spouse Erin purchased a Sixties home in a COVID-19-prompted transfer out of San Diego. “It was completely impulsive. We went to have a look at this home and have breakfast in Laguna, and we purchased it that night time,” Whiteley says. At 52, he has a boyish face, graying curly hair and shiny eyes that are inclined to focus intensely. His outfit is each fashionable and unassuming: a cream-colored Levi’s shirt, relaxed cropped pants and black Converse All Stars.
As we sit, it’s Whiteley the documentarian who begins interviewing me. He asks me a query and with out absolutely realizing it, I begin giving my biographical particulars till I catch myself and bear in mind to reverse roles. Whiteley’s colleagues inform me later that he has a knack for eliciting real responses from his topics by the sorts of disarming questions he asks and at simply the precise time.
Whiteley began faculty at Brigham Younger College with what felt like a strong plan for the longer term: research political science and turn out to be a lawyer like his father. He idolized his dad, he advised me — a sensible, clever and pensive man, who was additionally the primary child in his household to go away their potato farm in Idaho. “I actually needed nothing greater than to be identical to him,” he says, his voice dropping a few of its steadiness. His father handed away in 2004 after a seven-year sickness.
“I actually needed nothing greater than to be identical to him.”
Whiteley completely documented these years on video, greedy for fleeting moments collectively. He hasn’t touched the footage since, other than a brief video he made for the funeral.
Inheriting his father’s profession trajectory now not felt sure when Whiteley caught the filmmaking bug. First, a pal from the dorm invited him to audition for a theater firm that had a gap. Whiteley learn for and received the half. Later, his pal and movie professor Charles Metten requested Whiteley if he had thought of movie for his main. The thought struck him as irresponsible.
“There was nobody I knew that had ever achieved that, so I wasn’t even positive what the template ought to be,” he says.
However Whiteley’s Latter-day Saint mission to New Mexico instilled in him newfound confidence and he caught himself occupied with his future career: “Every day, you’re put in uncomfortable conditions, and also you survive all of them,” he says of his mission and the way it helped him achieve confidence.
However he didn’t fairly know how you can break the information to his dad.
He apprehensively known as his father to admit his nascent ambition to be a filmmaker, anticipating a complete straightening out. However that’s not what he received.
“As I used to be explaining my state of affairs, he stopped me and stated, ‘I all the time knew you’d do one thing like that,’” Whiteley recollects.
That straightforward affirmation grew to become Whiteley’s unwavering supply of resilience all through years of uncertainty when he left Provo after graduating from Brigham Younger College to Los Angeles with out a job or a spot to reside. He carried it with him by the years of ready tables, driving a forklift and dealing at a refrigerated warehouse, all whereas making an attempt to pitch scripted movies or get employed as a director.
“I skilled a few years of doubt and questioning if it was going to work out, however I may all the time lean again on that dialog. The neatest individual I knew in my life, the individual I trusted probably the most, believed that that’s what I ought to do,” Whiteley says. His manufacturing firm is known as One Potato Productions — an homage to his father’s Idaho beginnings.
Documentary filmmaker Greg Whiteley holding an Emmy award.
Courtesy of Greg Whiteley
Turning into a documentarian occurred by chance.
In his Los Angeles congregation, he was assigned to residence train Arthur “Killer” Kane, a former glam-rock bassist, who described his midlife conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an “LSD journey from the Lord.” The pair hit it off. Each nursed desires that appeared out of attain: Kane longed to reunite together with his Nineteen Seventies band New York Dolls, which by then had misplaced a few of its members and was largely forgotten. Whiteley needed to be a movie director. Sooner or later, whereas giving Kane a journey to the pawn store to retrieve his guitar, Whiteley had an inkling to seize the digicam in his again seat and movie Kane’s reunion together with his instrument.
Nonetheless mourning his father’s dying, each second, no matter how small, felt sacred, he explains.
“I simply saved filming and that grew to become ‘New York Doll,’” Whiteley recollects, remembering the day he rushed to the Hollywood Sundance headquarters to submit the burned DVD with the documentary earlier than the deadline. “Impulsively I’m a documentary filmmaker,” he says, dipping a triangle of pita bread in hummus with massive cherry tomatoes.
However someplace in between have been a slew of sacrifices that teetered the road between courageous and reckless. Erin, Whiteley’s spouse and co-producer, advised me it was a giant second for the household when Whiteley was contemplating quitting his full-time job with advantages at Most well-liked Freezer, a refrigerated warehouse in East L.A., to observe Kane on the journey to reunification together with his band in London.
“Possibly that was loopy, nevertheless it felt riskier to be protected.”
Their youngsters have been 1 and three, and giving up medical health insurance was a major threat.
“Now I look again at that and possibly that was loopy,” Erin says. “Nevertheless it felt riskier to be protected, if that is smart.”
The couple sat down, she recollects, and Whiteley laid out two doable paths for the place he could possibly be in 10 years from that second: If he stayed with the corporate versus if he pursued directing his personal movies.
“(The primary possibility) felt boring and predictable, so we thought, let’s simply do this,” she says.
Erin has collaborated with Whiteley as area producer, assistant editor and adviser on nearly all the pieces. The Whiteleys are presently collaborating on their confidential mission. Whiteley spent the summer time in Louisville and Erin labored in Mississippi whereas they have been concurrently engaged on one other mission in Texas.
They create complementary abilities to their work, she explains: His energy is story, whereas she is going to typically decide up on particulars in that story that want fleshing out. They’re dangerous planners, she says, and that’s nearly been an asset. “If there’s a loopy or attention-grabbing thought, we attempt to observe that,” she says. “I actually strive to not base our selections out of worry.” The 2 simply celebrated their twenty third anniversary, and Whiteley’s relentless optimism nonetheless astounds her. “He doesn’t take no for a solution, he all the time thinks there's a workaround,” she explains.
On the time when Netflix purchased “Mitt,” the documentary division on the firm consisted of two newly employed individuals. “Home of Playing cards” was the one different authentic programming on Netflix. However Whiteley may see his future with Netflix and the platform needed to ramp up its authentic documentary choices. After “Mitt’s” smashing success, Whiteley pitched to the Netflix executives an thought they’d by no means achieved earlier than, a serialized high-intensity sports activities documentary that grew to become “Final Likelihood U.” His imaginative and prescient concerned capturing it as a story indie movie, utilizing prime lenses that might give the documentary a uncooked, cinematic high quality. “I may inform they didn't need to do it, however I believe they trusted me to strive it,” Whiteley says.
To make the present, he insisted on assembling his personal staff of parents from various backgrounds — together with a comedy present editor and a cinematographer who had by no means even seen a soccer recreation. “It wasn’t a traditional forged of characters to rent on a present like that,” says Adam Leibowitz, a supervising producer at One Potato Productions, who met Whiteley as a manufacturing assistant in 2006. “He was method nicer than every other director can be to a PA,” Leibowitz recollects.
“Should you’re making an attempt to wash away somebody’s warts, you’re additionally going to lose the factor that makes them lovely and human.”
Within the early days of “Cheer,” Whiteley introduced on long-time collaborator Chelsea Yarnell, additionally a supervising producer together with his firm, to develop the collection. “He gave me area and the boldness to develop the collection, though I didn’t have the expertise,” Yarnell says. “And that’s actually uncommon, actually.” The identical impulse that permeated his sports activities docuseries — to raise the underdog — appeared to be behind Whiteley’s hiring selections. “Greg’s very involved in discovering new individuals who have good concepts and he doesn’t care in the event that they don’t have probably the most spectacular resume. He very a lot goes on what he thinks: Do their concepts ring true? Do they sound attention-grabbing? Does he like them?” Leibowitz says.
A typical day of capturing, whether or not it’s soccer, basketball or cheer, follows a very tough plan, Leibowitz says. The crew shoots all day, as a lot as they'll, which ends up in an extended modifying course of. “Nevertheless it permits you choices,” he says. “Greg’s M.O. of being actually open-minded and making an attempt a lot of issues suits very well with capturing a lot of stuff and seeing the place you go along with it.”
Greg Whiteley is pictured filming Monica Aldama for the Netflix collection “Cheer” on this undated picture.
Greg Whiteley
Within the final episode of the second season of “Cheer,” coach Monica Aldama and one of many former Navarro cheerleaders La’Darius Marshall meet in a resort room in Daytona, Florida, earlier than the long-awaited championship. Their relationship had been on the rocks since Marshall left the Navarro staff with a grudge in opposition to Aldama, claiming accusations of psychological and bodily abuse and being unsupportive.
“Are you OK with them filming this? We don’t have to speak in entrance of the cameras,” Aldama asks, and Marshall doesn’t appear to object. Whiteley was within the room with two different crew members, and it was vital for him to maintain Aldama’s apart, the acknowledgment that the cameras have been there and rolling. The 2 cry, hug and forgive one another in a strong second of cathartic closure. “I believe it’s wholesome for the viewers to do not forget that they’re getting my perspective of that scene,” Whiteley says.
You may shoot with a chilly coronary heart and edit with a heat coronary heart, Whiteley likes to say. “I simply really feel like my job is to movie all the pieces and I’m going to maintain filming till any individual tells me to cease. And even then, I really feel prefer it’s type of negotiable.” Whiteley generally explains to his topics why filming the uncomfortable, weak moments is critical. “Should you’re making an attempt to wash away somebody’s warts, you’re additionally going to lose the factor that makes them lovely and human.”
I ask Whiteley how he in the end gained Romney’s belief — and the belief of Kane, Aldama and others — to let him into probably the most personal, weak moments. Whiteley himself couldn’t consider the sorts of scenes he received to movie.
“I don’t assume there may be something that I do to engender that belief,” he says. I actually really feel like there are just a few movies that should be made, and there are individuals which are able to have their story advised, they usually really feel it and I really feel it.”
Greg Whiteley, left, is pictured filming Monica Aldama for the Netflix collection “Cheer” on this undated picture.
Greg Whiteley