What makes someone great? Is there an intrinsic drive to obtain greatness or can it be taught? The documentary “In Search of Greatness” looks at those questions from the perspectives of sports figures. Director and producer Gabe Polsky interviews hockey icon Wayne Gretzky, football legend Jerry Rice and soccer champion Pele to discover that it is often the early implicit childhood learning and individual creativity that led to greatness. Polsky spoke with WAMC’s North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley about the film, which will be screened in Lake Placid this weekend. “I grew up playing competitive sports and I ended up playing college hockey at Yale and these are kind of ideas that I’ve been thinking about my whole life you know really sort of wondering about the essence of greatness. What is it? Why do we go to the stadium? What are we looking for? And for me it was always I loved seeing kind of moments of creativity and sort of something that I’ve never seen before on the ice or football field or soccer field. You know I wanted to see something amazing. And what is that? That’s creativity you know and no one really talks about that. And you know when I was a kid it’s not like coaches were saying you’ve got to be creative, there’s sort of this showmanship aspect to sports. No one talks about that you know. And it was just unbelievable because to me that was the essence of what it’s all about. Everybody wants to see you know these the greatest performers do something amazing. But yet creativity is not you know really not encouraged in youth sports and no one talks about it for some insane reason. And so that was really the genesis of it.”
“In Search of Greatness” will be screened by the Adirondack Film Society at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts February 15-16, 2019 at 7 p.m. Gabe Polsky will appear via Skype for a question and answer session.
