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Getting involved with something like Vice's The Grudge was a new venture for sports journalist Mike Wise, who was never a part of something like this before. Wise truly didn't know what to expect going into The Grudge.
“They would ask me things, and I would just say absurd things just to make them laugh,” he recalled. “Well, some of those cuts got in the show.”
One example was during the episode about Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant. In the episode, Wise says, “Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal hated each other with the passion of a thousand white hot suns,” which made the crew laugh.
“The whole crew was laughing, and the director goes, ‘That's perfect.' I'm like, ‘What? You think that sounds okay? Cool,'” he remembered.
From then on, Wise took on a new mindset. “If you want me to be over the top, shoot, I'll be over the top!” he said. This gave Wise a freedom he doesn't usually have as a journalist.
“That was fun because there's a part of me right now where you're covering sports, talking about sports, dealing with sports; obviously, you use it as a prism to do real stories about life,” explained Wise. “[For] a genuine sports writer, somebody covering the games, you have to suspend a lot of belief or suspend a lot of what's going on in the world to actually pretend what you're doing matters — because it doesn't.”
In turn, The Grudge is the perfect “eye candy” for Wise. It is pure entertainment, and he contributed to that.
How he got involved
His journey with the show started with a phone call that happened “out of the blue,” as he remembers it. A producer called Wise, pitching him the episode about the famous feud between Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant while they were on the Los Angeles Lakers.
Of course, Wise previously co-authored O'Neal's bestselling autobiography, Shaq Talks Back. He also covered a lot of the Shaq-Kobe feud, making him the perfect episode for that episode. It helps that at the time, Wise was only working on his next book, a biography of Billy Mills.
So, Wise went to Brooklyn, New York, and shot several hours of content for the series. “Vice [has] got a really good reputation, and the people involved made it slick, and they dressed it up with bells and whistles,” Wise explained.
It didn't stop there, though. After Wise wrapped the Shaq-Kobe episode, he was brought in again for the episode about Mike Piazza and Roger Clemens.
“When I was there, there was another guy that was going to do the Piazza-Clemens story,” he recalled,” and I think he either got COVID or came down with it, and they asked if I could stay an extra day.”
While Wise was not as associated with Piazza-Clemens as he was Shaq-Kobe, he had a unique connection to The Grudge's episode about Pat Riley and the New York Knicks, which Vice brought him in for.
His first “big story” with The New York Times was about Riley and the Knicks: “That's how I made my bones in New York,” said Wise. Doing that episode flooded Wise with “good memories.”
Being the de facto expert
You would think being called on for a series like The Grudge as an expert would be nice, which it is, but it's a “mixed bag,” as Wise phrased it. He joked he was “75-80% flattered,” but then 20% made him feel “old.”
“It's very flattering that you're look at it in that vein,” he conceded. “On the other hand, you're basically doing a series that relies on a lot of '90s and early 2000s themes, and you go back and you go, Wait a minute. Don't you guys want to talk to me about current stuff?
“There's definitely a dinosaur quality to it, but by and large, it's just flattering that they made the call,” he continued.
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What makes The Grudge special to Mike Wise?
The sports documentary scene is overcrowded, to say the least. There are retrospective documentaries like A Football Life, and then you have something like Hard Knocks, which has expanded from chronicling training camp to in-season.
Something like The Grudge relies on notable figures to retell old stories. Feuds like Aaron Rodgers and Brett Farve suddenly have new life, thanks to the experts on hand.
For Wise, having a director like Christie Callan-Jones behind the camera separates The Grudge from the rest. Not only did she interview the subjects, she brought “so much energy” to the project. Clearly, she did her research ahead of each episode, which caught Wise's eye.
“The thing that impressed me more than anything was they had sent me these research packets that were a good 10 pages long on each subject, [and] it refreshed my memory,” Wise said. “I can't remember everything from then, but their research was so thorough.”
One key was that The Grudge's episodes are only about a half-hour long. While Wise could surely talk Shaq-Kobe for hours, the series is very concise, which works to its advantage. That precision comes from Jones again, who was spearheading the editing process, trimming the fat.
“I thought the timeframe worked out perfectly,” he praised. “Whereas if I were directing it, it would've just been bloated thing that people said, ‘Eh, it was good, but it was too long.' They streamlined it into something that was really watchable. For me, it just moved.”
How being short and sweet affects journalists like Wise
That same idea of being concise and to the point affects journalists like Wise. Nowadays, journalists are competing for the attention spans of readers, especially with TikTok and social media platforms becoming most people's sources of news.
Why would people read a 500-word story when they could hear it summed up in 15 seconds? Wise has been around the block a few times, and he struggles with finding the balance.
“One of the things I thought I did really well as a writer was I would set up a story where you'd read two or three paragraphs, and then you get to that cosmic paragraph where you go, ‘Oh crap. He did it,‘” revealed Wise. “Well, people are reading out stories on their phones. They might not get to that. Your premise has to be no longer than two paragraphs, and your argument then has to start out really clear and cogent because you just lose people.”
Luckily for Wise, he is busy writing a book. While there is pressure on book sales and other factors, the stories remain timeless. “Many books aren't read like they used to be,” Wise acknowledged, “but it's like anything — if it's a great story, it's evergreen.”
What would Mike Wise want from another season of The Grudge?
As The Grudge's first season winds down, it's time to look ahead. There are several other rivalries Wise would love to see depicted. I suggested Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen, the modern-day equivalent to Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, which Wise loved.
An interesting idea he had was looking at certain referees and athletes. “Tim Duncan was always fighting with Joey Crawford. Joey Crawford and Tim Duncan hated each other,” Wise pitched. “Clearly, Joey Crawford had a grudge against Tim Duncan, and you could see it from the calls.”
Another one he pitched was Ronnie Nunn and former Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan. “Ronnie Nun would look at Jerry Sloan and point to his eye and point to Jerry like, ‘I'm watching you,'” he recalled.
One that has been chronicled several times before is Roberto Duran and Sugar Ray Leonard. Still, Wise thinks there's a place for it. LeBron James vs. the World is another Wise would want to see. “It seems he's still craving acceptance after all these years,” said Wise. “It's almost like the decision [to sign with the Miami Heat] still crystalizes part of his legacy, even though he was a young kid.”
Wise's magnum opus? Doing an episode about Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless, who used to host First Take together. “It'd be ridiculous and over the top, but people would watch it,” he reasoned.
Vice will release the finale of The Grudge on June 11.
