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Tennis icon and legend Billie Jean King has had documentaries, articles and even a movie, “Battle of the Sexes,” tell her story.
“Give Me the Ball,” which premieres Monday at the Sundance Film Festival, might be the quintessential Billie Jean King documentary to date.
Directors Liz Garbus and Elizabeth Wolff tell King’s struggles and victories through candid interviews and archival footage, celebrating King, who fought to make an impact and change not just tennis, but culture.
Ahead of its Sundance premiere, King, Garbus and Wolff sat down to talk about getting unlimited access to deliver the ultimate Billie Jean King story.
The documentary is an ESPN 30 for 30 doc with a premiere date set to be announced later this year. “Give Me the Ball” is by Ridley Scott Associates and Story Syndicate, in association with Elton John’s Rocket Sports.
Billie, through various ways, your story has been told many times, but “Give Me the Ball” is incredibly honest and raw. What made you say yes when Liz and Elizabeth approached you?
Billie Jean King: I’ve never had a proper documentary. I thought, “I’ll be gone soon, and this way people can see me, hear me in my own voice,” which I think was really important. Elizabeth thought we should start and have the center of it be 1973 and then go backwards or forwards, or whatever we wanted to do from there. And so it worked out really well. They’re the right ones to do it.
Liz, I know you love tennis, so what was it that made you want to tell the Billie Jean King story?
Liz Garbus: When we think about storytelling, you’re always looking for something that speaks to our moment. There has to be a why? Why are you making this film now? To think about Billie, who as a human being, her career, the generational change that her career spans and where we are today as a nation and a culture, that kind of work and spirit is what this time is calling for. Telling Billie’s story of a selfless warrior who put everything on the line for her community is an incredible story. Whatever community you are lifting up, you do it, and you do it all in, and that’s what Billie did.
Elizabeth, Billie touched on it, but can you talk about the frame you had in mind, given her career?
Elizabeth Wolff: I knew about Billie’s story, but I knew about it from the lens of having studied the women’s movement, and I knew a little bit about the “Battle of the Sexes.” The first thing I did was I bought “All In,” Billie’s memoir, and read it. As filmmakers, to be able to have somebody do the work and write a memoir, and then be able to use that as a guide for how we want to approach the storytelling, it’s the best research tool. The thing that struck me, both in reading the book and also in just getting to know Billie, was that this lesson that you can change the world by changing your world.
There was also just so much archive of Billie, especially in the late ‘60s and ‘70s.
We thought of 1973, and Billie has won so many titles, and is about to go into the Battle of the Sexes. It is the apex of the women’s movement. There is so much coming together. When you do a little research, you realize she’s on every TV show and in every newspaper. And so it just seemed like that this is the moment.
When you spend time with Billie, you feel like you are in the presence of the best life coach there is.
After that first meeting, I remember saying to Liz, “We people need to feel that.” So that was a motivating factor for how we also decided to frame Billie as her main interview, talking to the viewer, so that you could really feel through her story these life lessons.
How are you finding that balance of “we want you to feel Billie,” but we also need to tell this incredible story of one woman’s fight for equality and change?
King: Liz is the one that would come in and ask the questions. She kept asking me good questions. There are a lot of vulnerabilities in there. What do you say? How do you be accurate? How do you reach people? How can you touch their hearts and minds? How can you help them? That’s always been important to me since I was a kid.
Garbus: I think that one of the things that made Billie as successful as she was in creating social change, changing her sport, and affecting so many others and society at large is that she is relentlessly optimistic and she moves forward. She is a fighter. She puts one foot in front of another, and it’s that spirit that has made her this incredible warrior. It’s also was a challenge as filmmakers to ask her to stop and think about how did it feel? Billie had to suppress all kinds of inner turmoil because the entire tour was riding on her shoulders. She couldn’t slip; she couldn’t be human. The reason sometimes we would ask her the same question and push was because it’s in Billie’s nature. I think now, having spent time with her, to move forward, focus on the positive, and we know that that came at a personal cost. So it was asking Billie to pause into those moments of what that weight felt like. But it’s exactly Billie’s forward motion, drive and optimism that made her so incredibly powerful and effective.
King: It’s important to know history. It’s important to know the history of women’s sports. No one really knows about women and women’s sports. There’s a reason these things happened. It was because of Title IX. It was because of what happened in history. And it doesn’t happen overnight. I think sometimes people don’t stop and think about these things. I think they need to understand it’s been a long, hard road. What about the generations before me? I don’t know how they did it, but it took all these different generations for these players to have the dream. A lot of what my generation did was to tee things up, and we had all these dreams, but we knew we weren’t going to be able to do it, but we wanted the future generations to do it. I want players to understand the business, and I hope this will enlighten and help people.
Garbus: I will say that you saw more of the Battle of the Sexes in our doc than you had seen before. Isn’t that right?
King: You found out stuff.
You’re still telling this verite style. Did you know where it was going to end?
Garbus: I think we started there was this idea of the 1973 frame. When you start making a film that has as many chapters and as much impact as Billie’s, you need a frame. You also need to be flexible when you get to the edit room. The great joy of documentary filmmaking is throwing all spaghetti at the wall, rearranging it.
One of the things that was so important was to make you feel like you knew Billie.
When you think about your responsibility as a filmmaker and this piece of American history, or this film will be part of her legacy, it is an enormous responsibility, so we worked incredibly hard to get it right and to also let you feel like you got to know this, this person.
Wolff: We spent a lot of time with Billie in the edit, and we would find ourselves being like, “Wow, this story is so important.” In the documentary space, a lot of the times there are downer stories, and this was an uplifting story and an optimistic story.
When we were thinking about the 1973 frame originally, it was like, “Okay, the Battle of the Sexes, then she wins.” But almost immediately, we realized that there were these other pieces that needed to be told. Her personal journey of meeting (her wife) Ilana, coming to terms with herself and her needs and her sexuality, through facing her eating disorder. There’s a lot to tell.
Going back to what you said, what does it mean to bring Billie’s story to the world?
Garbus: We need heroes. We need people who have fought the hard fights and who have come through the other side, who have made sacrifice but feel enormous pride in that sacrifice. We need people who are going to put the needs of their community before themselves.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
English (US) ·