Three lengthy, popular, highly regarded documentaries have come out in recent years that have as a goal nothing less than changing how we think about the past.
“O.J.: Made in America” — the five-part, seven-hour and 47-minute documentary released by ESPN in 2016 — is a staggering journalistic achievement with a 100% positive ranking on Rotten Tomatoes and an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Director Ezra Edelman’s starting point is, of course, the June 12, 1994, stabbing deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman outside her house in Brentwood, California. Her former husband — former football superstar, Hertz TV ad rep and actor O.J Simpson — was immediately identified as a suspect and taken into custody after a nationally televised slow-speed chase. He was tried the next year and acquitted by a mostly Black jury after a lengthy trial.
