Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos had its North American premiere at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, and the film's theatrical run begins in New York tomorrow (and will be expanding across the country in the weeks to come). The film is a magnificent, thrilling documentary -- that just happens to be yours truly's favorite film of the year -- about the rise and fall of the New York Cosmos, a professional soccer team that, for a very brief time in the late 1970s, ruled New York City. With a squad that included such international stars as Pele, Giorgio Chinaglia and Franz Beckenbauer, the team sold out Giants stadium -- that's over 70,000 people -- multiple times, and won several NASL titles.

Producer John Battsek and co-director/editor Paul Crowder sat down with Cinematical shortly before their film's premiere at Tribeca to talk about Once in a Lifetime, Chelsea (the football club, not the part of Manhattan) and international soccer; the movie-related bits of that conversation appear below.

Cinematical: How did you guys come upon this story? How did the movie come about?

John Battsek: I'd just come off Live Forever which is a sort of Britpop feature doc, and I was talking to a guy -- a friend of mind in New York -- just thinking about what one might do next, and he mentioned the New York Cosmos. And it's one of those things where -- because I'm a big big football fan, big sports fan, big soccer fan -- it was one of those things that just immediately stuck in my head. I had a sort of vague, subliminal memory of big players being in New York, and I know that the Cosmos as a team were this incredibly well-regarded club, but I didn't really know the story, and that just intrigued me. A story set in New York, at that time, about football ...

And I've always had this thing about football ... I mean, it's slightly mean of me, but I've always thought the joke is on America, you know, because America does for the most part regard itself as the greatest country in the world, and yet this sport -- that is played on every square millimeter of the entire planet by everyone if they've got half a second to play it -- and [American] people are like "Soccer ... it's boring," you know? And so the idea of a story set in America, dealing with this sport that America's never really got its head 'round, I thought sounded like it could be really interesting.

Cinematical: That's what struck me so powerfully about it -- it's a celebratory film about a sport that's sort of an afterthought here, but it seems to be aimed at American audiences. Is that a huge risk to take?

Paul Crowder: ... The reason it feels tailored for America -- and really, I suppose it essentially was tailored for America more than anyone else -- [is] we wanted to make it acceptable to people who had no idea of soccer, who didn't know the ball was round, didn't know there [were] 11 players ... on the pitch ... Basically, that's who we made it for. And hopefully, they [will] come out of it at the end of the day with a little extra knowledge of soccer but, more importantly, they've watched just a fun story. The story, to me -- I mean, it could be soccer, it could be basketball, it could be [a] record company, it could be really anything ... It's just the rise and fall, and what lengths they went to, and all that stuff. To me, that's the intriguing stuff: How people were sort of  "Let's just keep throwing money at this thing, and get the best guys," and, you know, the fact that they all bicker about these days just added ... to the film we have. But we were just really trying to make a film that would be acceptable to everybody; that would be more than just a soccer film that's just for soccer people.

JB: And I think also, just to add to what Paul said, there's an important point which is that, you know ... more and more every day, the feature doc audience -- it's not a massive audience, but there is a core feature doc audience that high-profile, well-made, good feature docs can play to. And you know, Paul [edited] Dogtown and Z-Boys [and] Riding Giants, and those are two big, big documentaries. And I made One Day in September, Live Forever ... You know, that's a stable of films that played to that audience, and there is a core audience that football has nothing to do with. And hopefully people like you and others are writing to discerning readers "This is a great film, go see it;" the fact that it's about football is actually irrelevant [to those people], they're going because they love to go see documentaries. THEN, we hope, we can cross over and break out of that market ... As Paul says, it's a great strong story, it's a retro story, great music, great setting, great time, great city. You know ... hopefully that means that it can appeal to a wider audience.

Cinematical: How was your approach to the film -- tailoring it for an American audience -- different than it would have been had you been documenting a similarly volatile period of a club in country where soccer is sort of the lifeblood?

PC: To be honest, the one thing I thought about ... I mean, when we did Riding Giants and Dogtown, these were sports [surfing and skateboarding, respectively] that were very core-based, and we set out to make those films accessible ... So it was the same sort of approach with this film: Obviously it can't be just for football [audiences]. I don't know if you could make this kind of film about a team like Man United or Chelsea, you know, I don't think you could take the same approach, because you're looking at it on another level. You're talking about something that's established ... the scale is completely different. Whereas with this, for most people -- even for a lot of New Yorkers -- they're like "We had a soccer team here? Really? When?"

JB: But also I think what Paul does, and what we did was, you know, it's delivered in a way that we think is sort of palatable to American audiences. Because it's super-fast paced, it's quick-cutting --

Cinematical: Because we have short attention spans?

JB: Exactly! It plays into that. It's Wham! Bam!, you know? It's a rock 'em, sock 'em roller coaster ride of, like, stuff going on the whole time, and it's funny ... So, you know, it's cut in that way -- which, frankly, only Paul can do -- to present it in this sort of really funky, really fast, really sexy, sassy way. Whereas ... if you make it for European audiences, it quite possibly would have been -- you know, there was an earlier version that was much more traditionally structured. ([Though] whichever audience that version was tailored for, it didn't work either way.) The fact is, I think Paul's style lends itself well to making film that is, I suppose, easy on the eyes in a way. Because it's a lot of fun, you know. You don't sit with an interviewee for hours as he bangs on about X Y Z, you know, we really ... put the audience through it.

PC: Yeah. We were very lucky in that John Dower, the other director, did an incredible job with the interviews, and quoting everybody to themselves and [one another] and getting reactions, you know, all those quotes. So that gave us the ammunition for them to argue with each other. That was wonderfully done by John ... he did some initial interviews, and then went back and did secondary interviews [based on] what they actually said [the first time around]. So that gave us that side of it. And you don't always get lucky with documentary; you don't always get the characters. I mean, Rafael [de la Sierra]'s a character, Clive Toye's a character, [striker Giorgio] Chinaglia's a character -- they're all characters in their own way. And they're bold, great characters.

Cinematical: And they're also not self-censoring ...

PC: Yeah, and a lot of them are self-effacing, and they sort of understand the ludicrousness of some of it ... So we were just lucky in that a lot of our elements and a lot of our stuff was perfect for what we were trying to do. Because we wanted to make it light-hearted, make it fun. ... You know, you don't want to take yourself too seriously -- that's the problem with people getting bored with documentaries, when [the films] take themselves very very seriously, and it's too important. Whereas, you know, the Cosmos isn't important, the Cosmos is just like a great moment in time, [and] we're trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle, as it were.

JB: And if it has any importance it's that it does appear to be -- that its legacy is football. And I think the other element ... that was a great thing that you get very rarely when you tell stories is that ... the guys involved in this story, not only do they know now how incredibly lucky they were, and how great it was, they knew it then. And it's very rare when you're going through something that you actually, you know, that you appreciate it at the time for what it is, you know, that doesn't ever happen. And I really got the sense that actually they knew that it was great, they knew that they were lucky. You know, you get a grin out of pretty much any of them when they start to talk about this story. I mean, for Franz Beckenbauer -- who's like, you know, as straight-laced, German as they get -- to genuinely, from his heart say "[Joining the Cosmos] was the greatest decision I ever made" with a huge grin on his face, that's an amazing thing.

PC: And he didn't say that, just flippantly, you know, "This'll be good for the film."

JB: No, no. He meant it. ... And I think that is a beautiful moment, when he says "If you keep talking to me about this I'm gonna cry," because it was such a great time. And I just think, for us ... I mean, I'm just so pleased to be part of making a film that captures that.

Cinematical: Paul, how did you get involved in the film, and end up taking on co-directorial duties?

PC: When you make a documentary, there's a lot of sitting around waiting. And you wait and you wait for legal things and all this stuff; trying to get interviews. And basically what happened was John Dower, who cut the initial [rough edit] of the film, he had another film to do that he was already scheduled for, and he couldn't wait. ... So they were kind of stuck without a director for a minute ... And they needed an editor to finish the film, and that's when they came and ... asked me.

Cinematical: So you weren't involved as editor from the beginning?

PC: Not from the beginning, no. I came on about half-way into the project.

JB: Yeah, half-way or so.

Cinematical: And was the other edit you were talking about that was slower and more tradition cut before Paul got involved?

JB: Yes.

Cinematical: It strikes me that the editing is such a big part of the movie's effectiveness.

JB: It's a character in the film.

PC: It is. And my whole point, when I was given the chance -- they said "You know if you want, Paul, you can start again, you don't have to just finish this one ... Whatever you want to do ...". So I got Mark Monroe who is a good friend of mine [and] a writer, he read the transcript and started writing a script for me to work with -- because we had a limited time [to finish the edit]. ... [But then] I just went, "let's start again." Instead of trying to fix somebody else's work, maybe just start again.

We kept a lot of the plot points that John had been working on, but we just went through it one more time. And ... I went and watched Woodstock and [when I saw] the split screen thing, I went "That's it! The split screen! That's so 70s!"

JB: [laughing] ... And he proceeded to split every screen for 96 minutes ...

PB: You can tell, in the film, where I'm running out of time, because the split screens get less and less, and then there's a little bit [more] at the end. ... I was like "I don't have time to do all the split screens!"

JB: And of course ... it's ironic that in the end, the film is the film we wanted to make -- that John [Crowder] wanted to make -- when we set out three years ago. We did want to make a funky, fast-paced, cool [movie]. We really did -- we wanted to make a cool film, and I think it is now a really cool film. But John's cut was just his first pass, getting the story [together]. So we hadn't had a chance to really finesse all that. I mean, we would never have got to where Paul did, [though] it was definitely our intention. ... But we now have the film we wanted to make which, really, doesn't happen all that often. ... There were points [during the three-year creation process] when we could have gone "You know, this is pretty good -- let's leave it at that." But when you spend that much time ... Every film I make, I try to make a film that is really gonna have an impact, and in a way, having reviewers ... react incredibly positively to your film, that's the best we can do. If it then does business, well that's wonderful, but just to get people really appreciating what you've done is very gratifying. And that's what we wanted to do, so we just kept at it.

Cinematical: When you've worked on the same thing for so long, are you sick to death of seeing the same footage for months and months and months on end?

PC: No, I don't get sick of it. To me, it's always exciting. It's always "Oh, I can make that better!" or [laughing] "Let me split-screen this!" or I'll watch a clip again, and I'll go "Oh, I never saw that shot before --- where can I put that?" So for me it's a process that's always on-going. And it's really good to have deadlines and run out of money, because then you have to stop.

Cinematical: There's so much archival footage in the film. Is it difficult to incorporate that effectively, or to go through it and figure out what you're going to use?

PC: It's difficult to get it. Then at the end of the day, it's a matter of having the shots you need to cut the stuff [together]. ... I just try and get as much footage as I can possibly get, so you've got, like, a massive pallet to start creating with. The smaller the pallet, the harder it is.

JB: I think also being passionate about the subject you're [addressing] enables you to keep going for three years. And ... for me, what I love about this film is that there are always moments ... -- and they're largely football moments -- that I just love to watch. I love to watch that Brazilian guy go down on his knees and pray to God having scored a goal in the World Cup final, it's just such a brilliant shot. And then I just love Maradona, weaving through the Brazilians ... I just remember it so well, you know? And I never got bored of that. There are shots that just give me chills...

And also the shots of crowd, especially when you're playing to an audience that don't get it. I love for Americans to see the euphoria. ... That feeling you get, when you need to score a goal, and you score a goal -- well, we all know what it's a bit like. It's just the most ... fantastic thing. And ... just presenting that to people who don't understand football, I expect them to be like "Holy shit!"

 ... It's so incredible that this country, which sort of gorges itself on so many things, just can't understand how fabulous this one game is. And I love ALL sport, but it's so much better than pretty much all the others. There's such drama ...

PC: And they call it boring. I just can't understand how a game that is relentless, that's constant, that never stops, that only takes 90 minutes and it's over (compared to all the other sports here) can be labeled boring!

Cinematical; Well, it's impossible to understand the feeling unless you're there, for sure, but I still think those shot of 70,000 people watching soccer in the US will just blow people's minds.

JB: Yeah.

PC: They'll be shocked -- that that many people went, and that they sold out Giants Stadium before the Giants sold it out.

Cinematical: It seems to me that most films that American audiences see about soccer are sort of explaining why they should like it. With Once in a Lifetime, though, you start with the assumption that it's wonderful and fantastic, and go on from there --

JB: But also it's your story, as well. You know, for Americans, this is an American story. This not our story -- this is your story. And in a way I think that's kind of a good thing as well, because [American audiences] can sort of own it.