you’ve got the option to observe a lot by watching.
Enter filmmakerSean Mullin, whose canon has consisted primarily of fiction features.
Soboloff then introduced Mullin to the Berra family.
Yogi BerraGetty Images/Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics
He was never taken seriously, but he was someone to be taken seriously.
(She is also executive producer.)
My initial goal was not to have Lindsay narrate the film, Mullin admits.
Yogi BerraPhoto by NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images
But then he saw the value of her impassioned advocacy.
I turned to my producers and said, Lindsay is our narrator.
This is our way in.
It Aint Overopens with that All-Star Game slight of Yogi and Lindsay voicing her disappointment.
And it established the collaborative dynamic between Lindsay and Mullin.
The collaboration was great for me from a craft standpoint, says Mullin.
I come from the narrative feature world, so I write an awful lot.
In working with Lindsay, I didnt necessarily want to put words in her mouth.
I wanted to confirm everything that was said was something that she really said.
Id never done voiceover work before, Berra admits.
To do it under such bizarre circumstances, it was difficult.
I thank Sean for his patience.
If I didnt like something, he was like, Okay, cool.
How would you say it?
It was a really good experience.
The leadership qualities I got at West Point actually really helped, Mullin explains.
With documentary, the crews are smaller; you have to be nimble.
The similarities between the military and filmmaking are much more than most people think.
With stand-up comedy, he continues, people have a hard time being both funny and good.
Youre either the joker or youre the king.
But Yogi was both.
People are very uncomfortable with allowing people to be funny and good.
Being the funny guy at West Point was definitely a strange contradiction to a lot of people.
So I think youll have a tough time labeling people that have such disparate qualities to their character.
I thought that making a movie was a great way to do it.
My journalism brain just went into, Who are these interviews?
How do we get them?
How do we set them up?
And how do we do it as soon as possible?
I just tried to be logistically helpful and then stay out of Seans way.
Id spent years thinking about my grandpa in certain options, and crafting stories in other options.
So I had arcs that I wanted to push that thankfully Sean was open to.
That was very important to me, he explains.
Im not trying to compare my experience to Normandy, by any means.
And when you know that about Yogi Berra, it puts his career into a much different perspective.
Thats not pressure to guide him through a real life-or-death situation.
That really just lends another depth to my grandfather that folks clearly didnt know about.
It wasnt something that he talked about, Lindsay admits.
He always did the right thing without really having to think about it.
Its a real gift, but it also goes back to World War II.
So I just think that he treated people the way he would want to be treated.
