The Biogenesis scandal was not a fun chapter in baseball’s history.
You’ll remember that news broke over weeks and months and years, even. Different big-name players were connected to the anti-aging clinic in Miami — and denials followed from most of those same players — and suspensions were handed out and wild stories emerged from those connected to the story in South Florida. You probably know Manny Ramirez and Bartolo Colon and Alex Rodriguez were involved, but it’s easy to understand if a person missed some of the details or storylines along the whole convoluted way.
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“Screwball” attempts to paint a clear picture of the whole saga. Well, as clear a picture as possible. Because, as you’ll see when you watch — the documentary by director Billy Corben is available on DVD, iTunes and other streaming services on June 4 — this is one bizarre, hard-to-believe story. The documentary features extensive interviews with Anthony Bosch, the fake doctor who ran Biogenesis of America, Porter Moser, the tan-addicted Miamian who ratted out Bosch to a newspaper over an unpaid $4,000 debt, Tim Elfrink, the Miami New Times reporter who broke the story, and several other participants in the events.
You probably remember Corben from his unforgettable, highly rewatchable ESPN "30 for 30" films on the University of Miami football teams — “The U” and “The U, Part 2” — and "Screwball" is another instant classic from the director.
Sporting News spent a half-hour talking with Corben recently about his project, one it's clear he's passionate about.
(Editor's note: The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.)
SPORTING NEWS: I couldn’t help but notice the Pete Rose cover of an issue from The Sporting News — when he was banned from baseball — that you used in the documentary. That was a big plus in my book right away. How’d you choose that one?
CORBEN: We were looking for fun images and looking for things that would be iconic. There wasn't a lot about about Pete in the doc, but there was enough that you wanted to kind of make the point and move on. So I thought that was fun.
SN: Where did the idea come from to use the kid actors? That grabbed me right away, was kind of mesmerizing.
CORBEN: Oh, thanks! I mean, listen, we've done a couple of the ESPN "30 for 30s." We did “The U” and “The U Part 2.” And so when you're doing those, to be candid, there's just a bit of a formula, you know? You talk to athletes who talk to you about sports games and you go get sports game footage and you put it over the athletes talking about sports games with each other. I don't want to say that it's paint-by-numbers, but there is a formula for that. And so this was a little bit different. This wasn't about sports, it was sports-adjacent, but they mentioned, I think, all of three or four baseball games in an hour and 40 minutes. They mentioned the Kansas City game, which was Alex's first game back after he started seeing Tony Bosch, where he hit the three home runs, and then there are the games at the end when they started gunning for Alex.
SN: When Ryan Dempster hit him.
CORBEN: Exactly. That's what I'm working with. So what do you do the other hour and 39 minutes of your movie? We had that challenge, and we knew we were going to have to do some reenactments, which are very complicated and can be very frustrating. Every time we sort of have a challenge like that with a doc, I try to come up with something a little bit outside the box. The real inspiration, the original inspiration, OG, was Spike Jonze's 1997 Biggie video, “Sky's The Limit.” He was doing a posthumous music video and decided to cast 8-year-old kids in a straight-forward, like iconic, Bad Boy-records video. Baby Biggie and Baby Puffy and Baby Busta Rhymes and Lil’ Lil’ Kim. We thought that was such genius and not exactly a device you can use anywhere. For us, Cocaine Cowbabies would not have been appropriate.
And this movie was always called "Screwball." We always knew that we were going to have this sort of Carl Hiaasen/Elmore Leonard/Cohen Brothers-esque take on this story. We knew that, as serious as it was for the people living it contemporaneously, and even dangerous, with the benefit of hindsight, even they could appreciate the absurdity of their own behavior. Because when you start drilling down into it, if you wrote a script about this, you’d get fired on page 15. Nobody would believe that. The notes would be like, “No character would behave this way. No person would make these decisions in real life. This is stupid. You're fired. You can't write s—.”
SN: It seems ridiculous.
CORBEN: But they did all of this stuff. I mean, everybody. And I thought a lot of them, if not all of them, acted like children. And so it struck me that there'd be a good marriage here. We needed footage. We needed to reenact these events that didn't happen on a baseball field ... but rather happened in a fake doctor's clinic in a strip mall or a bar or a nightclub or a hotel room. We needed to figure out how to create those moments for which there was no footage. And then I was listening to Tony Bosch and Porter Fisher, our two main characters, the fake doctor and the whistle blower.
I noticed in watching our radio cut, one of our rough cuts, that they both had this very similar, if not identical, storytelling style. They would tell the story so vividly and so in the moment they would do the dialogue of everybody involved, including themselves. And so they’re doing that, “I said, X, Y, and X” and “He said A, B and C!” Not everybody does that, you know? So I'm watching this and my exact line was, “Oh sh—, we could 'Drunk History' this!”
SN: That’s amazing.
CORBEN: We would have actors on-set reenacting these scenes, lip syncing the original dialogue from the interviews and the actors will all be 8 years old. And that was just … I’m not gonna lie, there was whiskey involved in that decision-making process. A little bit of creative juice involved in the process, a little bit of creative lubrication.
SN: So I’ve got to know. The people involved, especially Tony and Porter, what did they think of the kids playing them? Did they know this is how you were doing it?
CORBEN: (Laughing hard) They had no idea. So this is a really, really good question. They had no idea. This is how ridiculous Miami is: We shot the whole thing on location in like 10 days. We’ve got kids in wigs with beards and lab coats and police uniforms and pinstripes, running around with electric Tampa orange fake tans, and we’re all over town, in sports bars and nightclubs, on the street and hotels. And nobody looked twice at us. Nobody thought this was the least bit unusual. We did this and basically we hid out in the open, you know? Nobody knew about it. So we put it together and then I'm like, “OK, we're going to have to show it to these guys, right? We can't just let it come out.”
So we call Tony Bosch. We could not, obviously, put these guys in the same room together, so we call Tony Bosch and we invited him to our office to watch the movie in advance of the Toronto Film Festival, where it premiered last year. He shows up with a friend and with his son, who was like 15 years old. And we're like, “OK, this is …” I mean, he doesn’t know what this is. He brought his son! So we sit them in conference room and we don't just press play. I tell him what we did. I say, “Listen, I had this problem, we needed a solution and this was my idea. And you have to admit, you did not act like a responsible adult.” And his son nodded all the way through my pitch. And so we press play and we stepped out of the room and he just laughed for an hour and 40 minutes straight.
SN: And Porter?
CORBEN: Porter is a little more sensitive, as you may have noticed, with a little less self awareness.
SN: Sure.
CORBEN: So we called up Tim Elfrink, who was the journalist formerly of the Miami New Times now at The Washington Post, who broke the story, who's also interviewed, who I think has one of the funniest baby doppelgängers. I think the Baby Elfrink is pretty hilarious with that red beard. So we had him come and sort of prime the pump a bit for us. And I’ve gotta say this: Porter had a fantastic sense of humor about it.
Part of his reason for wanting to get involved with something like this was to amplify his message and create a platform to get the story out, and to really ensure that people understood that kids were the victims in this, that Tony had treated high school kids, and that kids perhaps should not idolize these guys. Perhaps they’re not the ideal role models, these men who cheated baseball. And so that was sort of his thing. So I said that I think this concept helps to amplify that message. That's where we tried to land it in the end.
SN: With the kid actors playing baseball on the field.
CORBEN: Exactly. Just so you get it, this is what this sort of is about. And, look, not all steroid documentaries, not all doping documentaries are created equal. They're not all dark and serious Russian conspiracies. They have that doc and it was amazing. This is a different story. My pitch was that this was the best way to amplify the story and your message. And he had a beer, and he might've had two beers, and we started the movie. He was a tougher sell, but he got it and ultimately liked it, and he's now been part of screenings and Q&As all over the world with it.
SN: That's cool. So with the kid who played A-Rod, was your only goal to find someone who had a perfect follow-through on his swing to mimic A-Rod? Because that was spot on.
CORBEN: Dude, I got to tell you. First, honestly, it was the light eyes. That's what got him the part. The light eyes are such a distinct part of A-Rod and his face. So it was the light eyes that really landed him the gig.
SN: Gotcha. OK.
CORBEN: But then we show up to the baseball field, and he was like, “I've been studying Alex’s swing.” That's what he said. He wasn't actually hitting a ball on camera. There's one shot where we added a ball later, in post, but when he's swinging, everybody was like, “Oh s—, this is weird.” Listen, there's only so much I felt like I could demand from these kids, and I was juggling a lot of things at the same time. We’re doc filmmakers. We roll up to some place, and on a big day, we have six to eight people. That's a huge day for us. But to give you some perspective, on the day that we shot the Ritz Carlton and the MLB conference room and the nightclub at Liv, we fed a hundred people at lunch those days. So this was a very large footprint for us, as doc filmmakers. So I was juggling a lot, and I didn't want to demand too much from the kids, but this kid took it upon himself to sit and watch YouTube for days and practice Alex's swing, knowing that we were going to do this series of baseball shots, and he nailed it.
The kids were so great. It was such a joy working with them. They were so responsible and professional and prepared. As uncanny as that swing was, when he stepped into the MLB conference room for the arbitration in that tan suit and we started to do the scenes where he kicks over the briefcase, starts yelling at Baby Manfred, I remember going up to him like, “Blake, it’s creepy. Today, it’s creepy.” It was like he was channeling Alex. Just the pouting and the belligerence and the lying, I just thought it was amazing. There's a lot of amazing performances, the young actors in it, and I thought as far as the impersonation goes, I thought Blake just nailed Alex.
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SN: It was amazing. So let me ask you this: How did you get Tony to be so open? Was he just ready? How did you get him, so this documentary really took shape?
CORBEN: We were in touch with him before he even went to prison. We had met a few times, we talked about doing this documentary and then he went off to prison for several years. It wasn't like we were just meeting him cold. We had the advantage of some familiarity. We were not friends and we didn't hang out or anything, but at least we didn't just kind of come off the street and just say, “Hey, let's do an interview.” So he was comfortable with us. We went to an environment that he was comfortable in to conduct the interview. But I gotta say, I don't know if it's because he's off drugs now, for like four years or whatever it is, so I don't know if it's sort of part of his process of coming clean he was working his program or whatever, but he was just staggeringly candid. ... For as absurd as this movie is, it is the most meticulously researched documentary we had ever done.
We were hyper aware that we were dealing with super litigious, very deep pockets with Alex and MLB, and we wanted to make sure we got the facts straight. And so we were able to access materials that were never released publicly, transcripts of under-oath testimony to corroborate some of the crazy sh— that we were hearing. And then we talked to at least another dozen people, some of whom are mentioned in the doc, are characters in the doc, even though we didn't interview them on camera, but another dozen-plus people who independently verified all the information. These are not necessarily people who are friends, let's say, with Porter and/or Tony. These were other people who were on the other side of things who verified, who help to verify, a ton of the anecdotes and the facts. I was told stories from the other side of some of Porter's scenes that were identical to the dialogue that Porter told us. People who were not any kind of allies of his recalled them identical to the way he recalled them, without having seen the movie. We were just trying to verify as much of this as we could. I'm a documentary filmmaker. People lie to me for a living, that’s what I say. I basically get lied to for a living. So I'm never surprised if people are less than totally truthful. I was pretty surprised … well, not surprised, but impressed and delighted with how forthcoming Tony was with us.
SN: There were times that I was a little stunned watching it. You talked about how if you had written this as a script, they would have returned it to you and said, “Get outta here.” But is there one element of insanity that sticks out to you? To me it's all of this happening because Bosch didn’t repay him the $4,000 — that’s mind boggling. What’s the one that stands out to you as, “I can't believe that really happened.”
CORBEN: To zoom out for a second, I remember when Alfred (Spellman, the producer) was like, “What would be the log line for this? Like, if this were a "30 for 30," what would be the, ‘What if I told you …’ commercial for it?” And I was like, well, “The career of the highest-paid baseball player of all time effectively ended over a $4,000 debt between a cocaine-addicted fake doctor and his fake tan-addicted steroid patient, because Florida.” That would be it. So, you’re right. The whole thing is, it's absurd. Specifically, I’ll give you a deleted scene, actually. How about that?
SN: Great. Definitely.
CORBEN: We needed to tweak the running time, and in order to make it work we needed to do a re-cre for it, a reenactment, but we couldn't afford it. It was an actual car chase. I swear to God it was an actual car chase that I wouldn't have believed unless we pulled the police records on it. And we did. And so Porter Fisher was in the South Miami area, not far from his home and spotted these two dudes in a car following him, and he started to act paranoid, as he does. ... He would pull into a Winn-Dixie supermarket, they were there, he’d pull around the corner, they were there. He calls up Pete Carbone, who was a few blocks away at the tanning salon and said, “Pete, I think I'm being followed.” And he goes, “Where are you?” He goes, “I'm over the Winn-Dixie.” Pete, who is like a giant dude, for some reason was driving like a SmartCar or a Mini Cooper, a tiny car to where you could almost picture his arms out either window and his head through a sun roof, you know what I mean? Almost wearing his car like an accessory, like a belt buckle around him. It turns into a f—ing full-fledged, balls-out car chase, with Porter, these dudes and then Pete Carbone behind them!
SN: Chasing the chasers?
CORBEN: Chasing them! And it’s a relatively affluent suburb of Miami, through Pinecrest, which is really a lovely community. A car chase! And the next thing you know, the Pinecrest police were called to the scene. It turns out these guys were private investigators. I don't know that we were able to narrow it down if they were on A-Rod’s payroll or if they were part of MLB.
SN: That's crazy. The song near the end, when Bosch is getting arrested and everything’s going down, is that a version of “Layla” as a reference to "Goodfellas?" I know Tony mentioned earlier in the documentary he felt a little like he was in "Goodfellas" at times.
CORBEN: Well, several things. First of all, it was definitely sort of the end-of-an-era kind of an indicator, but the song is actually "Guantanamera." We sort of satire’d that arrangement.
SN: Ah. I knew it was a little different.
CORBEN: But, yeah, you got it. You understood it. OK. Not everybody gets it. So you got it. So it was actually "Guantanamera," which we use several times throughout the movie to kind of depict, almost as a theme for Tony. It’s an anthem among Miami Cuban exiles. And so we use it, I think, three or four times throughout the movie. That last arrangement is deliberately evocative of its sister scene in "Goodfellas," which is definitely something that Tony mentioned, the end of the "Goodfellas" with Ray Liota running around and the chopper chase.
SN: So having done this documentary, knowing all the stuff you know about A-Rod and baseball, what goes through your mind when you see that A-Rod is not only back in baseball’s good graces, but he’s becoming a featured part of baseball, representing the sport for the London Series and working with ESPN and everything? That has to seem as improbable as anything that happened in Miami.
CORBEN: I think this: I think that life in America has turned into the WWE. I think that it's true of our politics. For sports now, it's all about storylines. You know, it's not just the sport, it’s the storylines. What are the storylines? What makes these characters colorful and interesting? Is there trauma? Is there conflict? And so the storyline was when Bud Selig was the Vince McMahon of the operation and this story broke in 2013, the story was Selig needs to retire looking like he did something about steroids in baseball. Which, I mean, in my opinion, he's the steroid commissioner. I don't believe that there is anyone who profited more from exploiting, knowingly exploiting, steroids in baseball, than Bud Selig. And that arguably saved this sport, depending on who you ask.
And so the storyline was clear. This was going to be a battle of the legacies between Vince McMahon, I'm sorry, Bud Selig against the highest-paid player. Who could've been a bigger scalp, you know what I mean? And who was a bigger heel in the history of the game than Alex? He was the villain. So it all just played out perfectly. And then when Selig retired, having mounted the biggest scalp in the history of the game to his wall, Rob Manfred, who was in fact in charge of this insane, botched, allegedly illegal investigation into Biogenesis, he ascends to the throne. He’s now Vince McMahon. Everybody knows the best storylines in wrestling are when the heels become the baby face, when the heels become the heroes. So what better storyline could you ask for then than Rob Manfred, the guy who really single-handedly “brought A-Rod down,” he now embraces him and brings him into the fold. That’s why we use that picture at the end, with J-Lo and Manfred and Alex. That says it all. And to be honest, Alex is pretty good at that job (with ESPN). You know? He's good at it.
SN: Without a doubt.
CORBEN: It's not just like he got it because of who he is. He happens to be good at it. And so I think that this is going to be an image resuscitation the likes of which will be studied in PR courses for centuries to come. I think if Lance Armstrong could drink some of that A-Rod juice, he would do it gladly. Like, “What do I have to do?” It's wild. But nothing surprises me in this country anymore. Nothing surprises me anymore. I don't think it sends a very good message to kids, you know, “Lie, cheat and steal and that's how you get ahead.”
SN: No, it doesn’t.
CORBEN: That actually happened. I was at a Q&A, and Bryan Blanco, the young actor who plays Tony in the documentary, we’re at a Q&A and someone asked in the audience, “What is the moral of the story? What is the message, the takeaway, that you want the audience to have from this?” And Bryan raises his hand, “Pick me, pick me!” And I’m like, “Bryan, it’s a Q&A. You can answer. It’s your Q&A, too. Just go ahead. You don’t have to raise your hand. We’re not in class.” So he was like, “The moral of the story is lie, cheat and steal, and that's how you become successful.”
SN: Wow.
CORBEN: And when you hear it coming from a 9-year-old kid or a 10-year-old kid, it's a lot different than it is coming from me. And it kind of sucks the air out of the room, you know what I mean? All these adults for the audience were just kind of like, “Holy crap. Like, what have we done? What are we teaching our children?” To me, I feel like "Screwball" is the story of, I call them, the new American values. And that’s what we're teaching our children, these toxic, toxic lessons. We used to at least pretend to teach our children honesty, integrity, the golden rule. Do unto others, treat others the way you'd want to be treated in return. But now the message is lie, cheat and steal, and you can become the highest-paid baseball player in history. Lie, cheat and steal, kids, and you, too, can be the president of the United States. We’re poisoning generations of children that way. We have no idea what the lasting damage is going to be from this. I just know that I want a MAGA. I want to Make A-Rod Great Again, that's all I want to do (laughs).
