Max Borenstein, Jim Hecht, and Rodney Barnes on HBO's Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty

We had the opportunity to chat with some of the key players in bringing Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty to HBO.

Showrunner and co-creator Max Bornestein, executive producer Rodney Barnes, and co-creator and EVP Jim Hecht, the man who optioned the rights of the book Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s on which the show is based all sad down with us via Zoom for one-on-one interviews.

Having seen the first five episodes at the time of the interviews and not being a sports fan, it was thrilling getting the behind-the-scenes scoop on the show, which, surprisingly, won me over immediately.

Winning Time is an immersive experience with stylistic flourishes that ensures Lakers fans and everyone else will be taken by the production.

The questions that sprang to mind involved how they got involved with the production, how the Lakers organization influenced them, and how their feelings about sports and the Lakers organization changed as a result of their involvement.

If you don't know, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers' Dynasty follows the organization and the team as it changed after Jerry Buss purchased it in 1979.

You can enjoy the interviews with Borenstein and full through their videos, and our chat with Hecht follows.

So, Winning Time is quite different than some of your earlier projects.

I don't know. The only other poster that I have in my room is Ice Age: The Meltdown. There was no precedent for believing that I would be allowed to do a drama series at HBO.

I had only worked with talking animals. I hadn't even worked with animals that weren't extinct yet. I'd never worked with an animal that was currently on the Earth or a person, God forbid, like I had never been able to make anything for human beings.

So yeah, this was a bit of a 180, but this is where I always wanted to be too.

You optioned the book, right?

Yeah. I read the book in 2014. That was a whole journey. I was in a dark place and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and profession and had had a ton of disappointments, both personal and professional, and had these kinds of realizations about the direction, the kind of direction that I needed to go in.

And it was basically like stop making things you want that you think other people want to see. Make the movie that you would want to watch or make the show you would want to watch, stop doing stuff that you just like, only do stuff that you love because it's a completely different feeling as an artist.

It's not fun for me to work on something I don't love. I feel terrible. I feel like I'm bad at it. I get depressed. I'm anxious. I don't think I know how to do it. If I love something, sometimes it doesn't feel like work. It often feels like work. Sometimes it doesn't.

And you have just enough behind it then to get you through eight years of development to get you on the screen, like we've had in this case.

And how did the Lakers organization impact your life before that, leading to this turning point?

It's my childhood. I was six years old when Magic moved to Los Angeles, and I was already, as you know, me and my dad, that was the thing that we bonded over, that we shared was sports fanaticism. My dad likes to say fan is short for fanatic. And he took me to the mall that year, where I stood in line for two hours to get Magic Johnson's autograph.

I was the kid that the best days of my life were my dad driving me up to 405 to go to a game. He would say mystery car rides, sometimes not tell me where we're going. The car's taking us, where's the car going? And you'd see the forum come up. And it was just like, "Ah."

And then I would make him wait outside while I tried to get autographs after the game. So, I rose and fell with this team. I cried when they lost.

And how did you blend your personal experience into this story? Did you add any of those little touches, like little kids waiting for autographs or anything like that? I've watched it, but I wasn't watching it thinking of that.

We have talked about it and tried to do it. And occasionally, there was that sort of stuff, and I don't think it made it into the final cuts of the show.

Max also grew up in LA, in the valley. I guess you could count that. [chuckles] I grew up in Orange County and had the same sort of fanaticism that I had an attachment to the team. And I don't think you repeat that childhood attachment, you know what I mean?

You just don't get that after because these people then become real people. They can disappoint you; you realize they're not just heroes on screen. So, it's the only time you have that in your life. And for both Max and I, this was that team. These were those people.

And the cast is probably filled with other people that have just been sort of mythical in your life. How did you get them to work with you, and what was the casting coup as far as you're concerned?

Yeah. Did we luck out or what?

Yes, it's wonderful.

I think it's twofold. I think the showrunner for our show, Max Borenstein is a genius. He may be the smartest person I've ever met and has taught me so much as a writer that it's made me a completely different writer.

And, in that regard, Rodney Barnes, too, has been amazing and pushed me and challenged me and inspired me and amazed me. And so, I think the scripts that we came up with are top-notch. I think they're really, really, really great scripts. They're better than even than I thought they could be.

So, I think when people read them, they probably had their own attachments to the idea and the team where they could see this is going to be cool. And then you add onto that Adam McKay, who in my mind is the coolest and best director in the world right now.

And we were surprised, even though I thought all that stuff together, an HBO series about the Lakers in the eighties with all these great characters and Max and Rodney, the scripts, Adam McKay.

Still, Francine Maisler took this to a level that I would not have predicted. What I'd seen that we were going to get Sally Field for the part of Dr. Buss's mom mind blew me away. I would not have shot that high.

Could I have seen that Jason Segel was going to play a character like that? That's where I was like, this is ridiculous. We got Jason Segel. Like, that's incredible.

And so, it was an embarrassment of riches. And I know, in some other context, that cannot work because people compete for space, or it seems like it's too much, or there's too many stars and becomes distracting.

And you'll be the judge, like, watch it for yourself. I think, fortunately, and maybe because we have the space of 10 hours, it doesn't come out that way.

There's a little bit of time that you spend with all of them, and I hope it does leave you wanting more. I think that you, I believe, like me as a writer on the show, you're going to leave this going like, "I want to know more about each of these people, about Claire Rothman and Linda Ramis and Jeanie Buss" and on and on and on.

I think there's so much more that we get to explore as the series goes on. I'm super excited about it. It's not going to be one of those shows where you're like, "how are we going to pull season two out of our butts?"

You have plenty of material.

Yeah. It's like, how are we going just to do the stuff that fits into that season?

You use a lot of different filming techniques as well, making it a really exciting show to watch. It never gets boring. And I'm wondering, which of those techniques do you really think fits the story you're trying to tell?

Well, I went to film school, first of all. I know that I have this talking animal movie thing that came after that, but like I shot film.

In fact, the A camera on our show, Sarah Levy and I were in the same film school class at USC together. So, I'm not completely coming into it from nowhere. Then again, I failed some photography. So, I guess I don't have that much right to boast.

And she didn't, clearly, but like I love the image that Todd Banhazl has crafted for our show.

I think it speaks to '70s' Hollywood in particular. I think, like one of the things I've talked about in other contexts, is, I don't know if you could see this, but I have a poster here for the thing that I'm working on with the dudes that did Easy Rider, the story about the producers of Easy Rider.

Oh, wow.

And so I'm really interested in that period of cinema. And I think that what's happening in Hollywood right now is akin to what was happening in the early seventies Hollywood -- the revolution in independent filmmaking that was happening with movies like Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider and stuff like that.

I think those stories today would be told in limited series. Studios wouldn't make those as movies.

And that's the kind of like the explosion of great stories that came from the French New Wave into American cinema in the late '60s and early '70s. You're experiencing something like that again with the limited series and the HBOS and the Showtimes and Apples, but especially HBO. Thank you very much.

And to me, the best stories now [are on television]. In film school, if you would've said television, I would've been really disappointed, but now to me and not to just the studios, the best stories are being told in drama series on streamers and pay cable.

And I'm really excited for everybody else to see it since I get to see so much of it upfront. And thank you so much for taking your time to talk with me today, Jim. Appreciate it.

Oh, thank you. I appreciate you having me.

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Will you be watching Winning Time: The Rise and Fall of the Lakers Dynasty on HBO?

Take it from me; you don't want to miss this.

Winning Time premieres on HBO on Sunday, March 6, 2022, at 9/8c only on HBO.

Carissa Pavlica is the managing editor and a staff writer and critic for TV Fanatic. She's a member of the Critic's Choice Association, enjoys mentoring writers, conversing with cats, and passionately discussing the nuances of television and film with anyone who will listen. Follow her on X and email her here at TV Fanatic.