In the new documentary ‘Rolling Along,’ Bradley charts his progress, from college hoops to pro courts to Congress to stage
By Peter Marks, Washington Post
NEW YORK — You might have seen an affable, 6-foot-5-inch older fellow pacing the paths of Central Park recently, talking to himself. Well, that was no ordinary man. Among his accomplishments: a Rhodes scholarship, a flawless jump shot, even a seat in the Senate. And of late — surprisingly — a moment in the footlights.
Yes, Bill Bradley decided the new world he wanted to conquer, after distinguished careers as a New York Knick and a U.S. senator, was that of a storyteller onstage, like Mark Twain. And that is how “Rolling Along” came to be, and why Bradley made mumbling loops around the park, the way he used to spend hours by himself, practicing layups. Only now, he was practicing his lines.
“Rolling Along” is the show he’d written over the past several years about his extraordinary life, going back to his days as a gangly basketball wunderkind from Missouri, on his way to Princeton and the Olympics. Before the coronavirus pandemic began, he recited it, script in front of him, before small audiences in 20 cities. Last December, he did it again, but this time from memory, for four nights in a theater on West 42nd Street. There, in the room with an audience and five cameras, documentarian Michael Tollin (“The Last Dance,” “Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream”) put it on film.
“Rolling Along” had its premiere on June 16 at the Tribeca Film Festival — a 90-minute movie as unvarnished as a weathered porch on the Mississippi, the river that inspired the film’s title. It’s just Bradley onstage with a chair, table and glass of water, candidly recounting his biography, a guy seemingly at ease and eager to explore this new terrain as a public figure. In an interview, he confesses as much, about why he made the show: part of a lifelong quest, he says, to “belong.”
“It’s me as an only child,” Bradley declares, “wanting to give myself to a larger family.”
All politicians are performers of one sort or another, the lucky ones by dint of natural gifts. Others lean heavily on the skills of speechwriters. Still others just seem to be (too) in love with the sound of their own voices. You can see in “Rolling Along” that Bradley falls into another, rarer category, one defined by a need to pull himself off the pedestal, to express his feelings in lyrical musings, to reveal a vulnerability underlying his achievements.
“My hope was that people will feel a connection because of the humanity of the piece, and in elements of it people will see their own life,” Bradley says in an interview.
One person who felt a connection was filmmaker Spike Lee, a Knicks fan of rabid dimension, who’s been friends with Bradley for years. Running into each other before the pandemic at Clyde Frazier’s Wine and Dine, the now-closed Manhattan restaurant of another ex-Knick, Walt Frazier, Bradley told Lee: “I’d like to do this thing for you to get your opinion.” Lee invited him to his Brooklyn office, where Bradley read to him “Rolling Along.”
“At the end, he has tears in his eyes,” Bradley says. “And I think, ‘Oh, whoa, that’s confident confirmation of something.’”
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