Dwyane Wade discusses role in creating his documentary and what he hopes people take from it
When the documentary on Dwyane Wade’s life was being made, the retired Heat guard wasn’t just waiting for the finished product.
That’s not Wade’s style, especially when it comes to a documentary on his life story.
“I can’t leave my journey, my story to anybody,” the 38-year-old Wade said earlier this week. “I was very involved and it was good. It was the right amount of being involved. The biggest thing is you have to be a part of telling your story.
“Even though someone else, this is their specialty, we were able to partner with Ron Howard and Imagine Entertainment. Even though their company is very great at it, it’s still my story and there are certain things that they may not see that I see. There are certain stories that may be a little insensitive and I have to be careful with how we talk about it. So, I had to be very involved in it.”
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Wade’s documentary, “D. Wade: Life Unexpected,” will be shown in an exclusive screening on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. at AmericanAirlines Arena as the final event of the three-day “L3GACY Celebration” before the film premieres on ESPN at 9 p.m. that same day. The documentary chronicles Wade’s NBA career and life off the court as he went through various personal and professional challenges, and Wade will be in attendance Sunday for a pre-screening discussion.
The screening will be hosted in the arena’s lower bowl and is open to the public, but capacity is limited. As of Saturday morning, tickets were still available for $3 with proceeds benefiting the Wade Family Foundation.
The 94-minute film is directed and executive produced by Wade’s long-time friend and cinematographer Bob Metelus, and it features scenes from hundreds of hours of never-before-seen home movies, video diaries and all-access content taken over the past decade. But even though Wade started to create his own footage 10 years ago, he said using them to create a documentary wasn’t always the plan.
“It came together last year,” Wade said of the film. “My last year at the beginning of the season. I sat down with Bob, my videographer, and I said: ‘Man, listen. I want to tell a story from the doc standpoint of my career.’ And Bob went to work and came back to me with what he felt would be a good place to land and talk about it. We kind of just went back and forth with what we thought was great.
“Luckily for us, we have a lot of footage that we could use that’s the footage that we own, and we didn’t have to really lean on NBA footage or somebody else’s footage. So, we were able to really give some intimate parts of the story to make it feel real and make it feel a little different than maybe the stories that were heard in the past with stories that I’ve told.”
The documentary touches on every chapter of Wade’s life from an intimate look at his childhood in Chicago, becoming a college star at Marquette and then his legendary NBA career with the Heat. But the details are what set the film apart, with Wade discussing the drug raids on his house he went through as a young child, the fear he felt when he learned he was becoming a father as a college sophomore, his long and painful custody battle for his children years later, his relationship with his wife Gabrielle Union and embracing his child Zaya’s gender identity.
Among the other topics included in the documentary is the summer of 2010, when LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Wade decided to team up and join the Heat. In the film, Wade said the Big Three’s decision to team up in Miami was made July 4, 2010, but revealed he wasn’t certain that James would follow through because he didn’t return Wade’s calls in the immediate aftermath.
Interviews with former Heat teammates Udonis Haslem and Bosh, Heat president Pat Riley, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, Heat general manager Andy Elisburg and Heat managing general partner Micky Arison were all included in the film.
“I don’t know if there’s something in the doc that you won’t know,” Wade said. “I think you will get a little bit more insight on something that you thought you knew. But what I want everyone to take from it when you watch it, I want you to take whatever speaks to you. Because I definitely feel that there’s something that will speak to you. I want you to take that from it. You’ll watch and you’ll see something and you’ll be like, ‘OK, that’s what I can use’ or ‘that’s what I can inspire’ or ‘these are the questions that I have now.’ So, that’s what I want to do. I want it to be a part of a conversation that you have with your friends or your family after watching it.”
Wade said he “watched 115 different takes” while he helped create the film, but he waited until a private screening during All-Star Weekend in Chicago to watch the documentary in its entirety for the first time.
“I was definitely proud of how it came together, but it was a wave of emotions,” Wade said of watching the film for the first time. “I feel like the documentary will take you on a roller coaster of emotions. You’re going to laugh, a few people have teared up, and you’re going to have moments where you’re going to see yourself in the documentary. So, I think for the first thing I’ve done with my production company since I retired, I feel like it’s a good start to the stories that I would love to be able to tell.”
