It\u2019s hard to imagine TV sports before Stuart Scott. The iconic sportscaster helped define a decade of ESPN\u2019s coverage, and introduce catchphrases like \u201cBoo-Yah!\u201c\u2019\u201c to the mainstream. Boo-Yah: A Portrait of Stuart Scott, the latest installment of ESPN\u2019s 30 For 30 series, is a loving look back at Scott\u2019s life, career and legacy.<\/p>\n
The Gist:\u00a0 From 1993 until shortly before his death in 2015, Stuart Scott was a mainstay of ESPN\u2019s programming\u2013a central figure in the world of televised sports. Boo-Yah: A Portrait of Stuart Scott gives a retrospective look at Scott\u2019s life and career, from his youth in North Carolina to his spot at the Sportscenter desk\u2013and the proud legacy he left behind. Filled with interviews with his loved ones and contemporaries, it\u2019s a loving look at a man who worked hard, inspired countless people, and yet always seemed to stay cooler than the other side of the pillow.<\/p>\n
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Even though they\u2019re produced and directed independent of one another, there\u2019s a certain tone that we\u2019ve come to expect from 30 For 30 documentaries over the decade and a half that ESPN\u2019s been putting them out. They\u2019re serious, well-crafted, loaded with interviews, and treat their subject with gravitas. When the subject is one of ESPN\u2019s most beloved figures? They\u2019re certainly not going to deviate from that; this is a loving retrospective, and Scott\u2019s style was so distinctive that if this is going to remind you of anything, it\u2019s Stuart Scott.<\/p>\n
Photo: ESPN<\/p>\n
Performance Worth Watching: A wide range of people from Scott\u2019s life show up here\u2013family, friends, former colleagues, the athletes he covered\u2013but the filmmakers are careful to leave Scott himself front and center. This approach doesn\u2019t work with some subjects, but Scott\u2019s career left behind a vast library of archival footage to work with, and it leaves us feeling as though he had an integral hand in crafting the documentary.<\/p>\n
Sex And Skin: None.<\/p>\n
Our Take: \u201cThe hardest thing for an aspiring sportscaster to do is to find their voice,\u201d former colleague Gus Ramsey reflects. \u201cStuart was exactly like you saw him on-camera, off-camera, he just dialed it up 10 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a generation of sports fans\u2013one I firmly belong to\u2013it\u2019s hard to imagine a world before Stuart Scott. Starting in 1993, Scott was a mainstay of ESPN\u2019s sports desk, where his fresh, boisterous and infectiously-charming take on delivering the day\u2019s highlights helped set the tone for a decade of sports coverage\u2013and bring catchphrases like \u2018Boo-yah!\u2019 and \u2018cooler than the other side of the pillow\u2019 to the mainstream.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Boo-Yah: A Portrait of Stuart Scott, the latest installment in ESPN\u2019s long-running 30 For 30 documentary series, is a loving ode to one of the network\u2019s biggest-ever personalities. Filled with fond remembrances from Scott\u2019s family, friends, colleagues and contemporaries, it tracks his life and career from his North Carolina youth to the University of North Carolina, his first television job in Orlando and his quick rise to The Worldwide Leader in Bristol, Connecticut.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not all meteoric rise, of course; we learn about the eye problems that kept him off the football field as a young man and were exacerbated by an on-field injury later in his career, the resistance his status as a Black man with an unapologetically Black style encountered both from viewers and from figures within ESPN\u2013and, of course, the cancer that took him from the world at the age of 49.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, Boo-Yah: A Portrait of Stuart Scott isn\u2019t presented as tragedy; the overarching theme here is joy\u2013the joy that Stuart Scott had for sports, for life, and the joy that he brought to millions through his work (and those wonderful Sportscenter commercials, an enduring testament to his theatrical chops).<\/p>\n
In a poignant moment early in the film, Scott\u2019s daughter recalls a lesson he imparted to her when she was young. \u201cI was always scared to play sports. One time, my Dad took me to a field to learn how to throw a ball\u2026 and, I wasn\u2019t great. He said, \u2018it\u2019s not about you being good. It\u2019s about you getting better, it\u2019s about you saying \u2018I can\u2019t do this\u2019, and me proving to you that you can. I\u2019m going to show you that you\u2019re capable of so much more than you think you are.\u2019\u201d It\u2019s this attitude that showed through in his work, and made him beloved to so many.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there was ever any doubt,\u201d his ESPN colleague Suzy Kolber recalls with fondness, \u201call you had to do was go to a sporting event with him and see the reaction from the fans\u2013and the athletes as well. This guy was a superstar.\u201d<\/p>\n
Our Call: STREAM IT. If you\u2019re of a certain age, Stuart Scott was an indelible part of your experience as a sports fan\u2013and Boo-Yah: A Portrait of Stuart Scott is a loving tribute to his life and work.<\/p>\n
Scott Hines is an architect, writer and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky, and author of the universally-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard to imagine TV sports before Stuart Scott. The iconic sportscaster helped define a decade of ESPN\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[2534,156,111,139,69,213,113555,437],"class_list":["post-179694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-cancer","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports","tag-stuart-scott","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}