Tribeca 2017: What if you went to a film festival and a sports radio show broke out?

April 23, 2017 9:55 AM PT

Reporting from NEW YORK — The setting was a flagship venue at the Tribeca Film Festival. But the voices were pure sports radio.

“Hi, it’s Mark from Bellmore‎,” said a man at the very back of the theater to the people on the stage as he stood up after the documentary screening. “I’ve b‎een calling you two guys for years. I appreciate your voices on the radio.” He pronounced words like “your” and “years” as if they lacked an “r” and turned some of them into two-syllable words--’yeee-is.’

“When I come home from a trip and turn on the radio,” he continued, “it sounds like home. I almost drove off the Grand Central when Piazza signed with the Mets--I almost caused a 10-car accident.”

The men on the receiving end of such far-reaching nostalgia--the Mike Piazza trade, from the Dodgers, occurred in 1998--were Mike Francesa and Chris “Mad Dog” Russo. Beginning in the late 1980s and continuing all the way until their breakup in 2008, the two formed a partnership on New York-area sports radio station WFAN that defined the landscape---indeed, with hundreds of such programs popping up in their wake, redefined it.

Every weekday afternoon, they would hold court: Francesa, a baritone, the confident and Olympian voice of authority, and Russo, the more high-pitched, prone to excitability. They would be there, reliably, on AM 660 for more than five hours — breaking news, setting the agenda, presiding over the commons, telling callers why they were wrong.

Francesa and Russo had been reunited onstage Friday for the Tribeca premiere of “Mike and the Mad Dog,” a new documentary, directed by Daniel Forer, that ESPN produced and will air in July.

“When we got it going in the right way,” Francesa said, addressing a question by moderator Andrea Joyce of NBC Sports, “it [was] not only the best we could do—it’s the best anyone could do. There’s a combustible chemistry that we had that I don’t think anyone has come near,” he added.

Indeed, their combustibility on the air--and, at times, their much-scrutinized and tabloid-fueled problems off it--were for years a focus of a certain segment of this media capital.

The documentary goes into those problems (often caused by something as petty as Russo removing Francesa’s name from the jingle when the latter went on vacation) while also tracing their backstory‎. Despite their common roots on nearby Long Island, and their shared love for dissecting every move of the Yankees’ starting rotation like it was Churchill’s group of advisors, they actually come from starkly different backgrounds. Russo hails from a wealthy town and a stable upper-middle-class family that owned a business; he also had many educational opportunities. Francesa grew up comparatively hard off in a more blue-collar area; his father left the family when he was a child.

But after a shotgun marriage by WFAN program directors, they combined to turn those contrasting personalities and styles into must-listen radio that was soon widely replicated.

“The impact they had on the industry, from a couple of stations in America to the point there are now a thousand—from barely a million-dollar business to a billion,” said Forer, who grew up in Encino and lives in Los Angeles, in an interview. “They built this. Anyone who has any part of it should be paying them homage.”

Whether so much sports jabber is to the larger cultural good is an open question. But their effect — and the catharsis such talk regularly brings sports fans (this one will admit to being one of them)—is undeniable.

Certainly those people at the Tribeca screening Friday felt that. The crowd roared at a number of pronouncements, including inside jokes about Francesa’s love of movies, and Russo’s ignorance of same.

A man who identified himself as Greg from Huntington stood up and said he was a “first-time long-time,” using what has become sports radio shorthand for a veteran listener who was making his debut call-in.

‎”That’s a famous one‎,” Russo said.

‎”That’s‎ forever,” Francesa added.

The pair split up nine years ago after the relationship took a final souring, Russo heading to Sirius and Francesa remaining in the prime afternoon slot on the FAN, though he is slated to retire, at 63, at the end of the year. Their relationship appears to be at its convivial best and the two have made several reunion appearances, including at the Super Bowl in February.

Russo has a penchant for evaluating an event by the use of the word job--preceded by a slew of modifiers: “good job,” “terrible job,” “tremendous job” — to describe a host of situations (players, callers, meals). “We did opinionated passionate sports talk. Do not discount the word ‘passionate,’” he says in the movie.

Egos certainly play a role in this narrative. “Here’s the thing,” Francesa said in the film. “Everyone thinks that I’m this crazy, driven, tough ambitious guy. Which I am. But Dog,” he added, which he pronounces like dawg, “is too. I mean people think that he’s not, for some reason, because he’s quirkier and he has the voice. [But] there’s a killer in there.”

Yet there’s also a larger significance. Forer’s movie is in a sense a time capsule, a pre-Internet moment when they could not only break news but be the locus for the discussion about it--the urgency of a Google RSS feed and the outrage of Twitter all rolled into one.

“It was such a different time,” Forer said. “I think they’d be the first to admit their show would not have the same impact if it was on today.”

On stage, Kenny from Staten Island wanted to know why Franseca would be calling it quits on Dec. 15 and not staying for next year’s Super Bowl a month and a half later.

“Because my contract is up and I didn’t want to extend it,” he said.

Joyce asked Russo what he missed most.

‎”I miss the camaraderie,” he said. “I don’t have a guy on the air who can challenge me from a sports perspective...and I miss that. You miss the give and take of the sports fan...Mike still has that. That’s what I miss.”

He said the show offered high points he didn’t think he could ever re-create. “I can cure cancer but never in my career will I be able to top the show. Mary Tyler Moore--what did she do after ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’”?‎

Joyce wondered whether Francesa would consider a reunion. “I think it’s possible,” he said. The crowd screamed its approval.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you say that,” Russo said.

After the screening, some of the audience retired to a gathering at a nearby restaurant. It was a bit of a different scene from the usual film-fest after-party--there was a larger proportion of men, and far more flannel and T-shirts.

Neither of the guests of honor had seen the documentary before that evening, but Russo was vibrating with excitement as he greeted friends and strangers eager for a handshake and a moment of intimacy. Several asked about the reunion.

He repeated several times that there were “various components with Sirius” that could make it tough.

A reporter asked him whether it was really the first time Francesa had opened the door to that reunion.

“Yes. I never heard him say it. Never. Even at the Super Bowl this year. Never said it.”

Was it strange to watch his radio career from 25 years ago unfold on screen? “Yes. A little strange.”

What does he want them to understand about their partnership that they didn’t before? “A lot of fans are nostalgic. I hope they feel the nostalgia; this was the soundtrack to their lives.”

And the filmmakers, what did he think of them?

“They did a tremendous job.”

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