Nick Bollettieri is hard to forget
Remember Nick Bollettieri? After watching the new documentary “Love Means Zero” (9 p.m. today, Showtime), you’ll find him hard to forget.
For decades, Bollettieri ran a sports academy in Southern Florida where young tennis talents were put under his care in the hopes that they would become champions. Starting with Andre Agassi, he coaxed great performances out of extraordinary athletes, many of whom went on to play in Grand Slam tournaments.
In the documentary, shot on the dilapidated courts of his old academy, Bollettieri recalls his glory days without regret or regard for the emotional wreckage he produced as he embraced some young players as a father figure and abandoned and exiled others without explanation.
Tennis player Kathleen Horvath recalls being groomed for greatness at age 13 and treated like Bollettieri’s surrogate daughter only to be suddenly dropped when her coach and “daddy” turned all of his attention to 11-year-old Carling Bassett.
Bollettieri is hardly the first or only coach to have employed tough love. But at his academy, his young players were removed from their parents and placed entirely under his care
and subject to his mercurial emotional whims. One former student likened the atmosphere to that of a minimum-security prison.
Featuring period footage and interviews with former students who are now well into middle age, “Zero” is dominated by its subject, a figure of defiance and, to some extent, delusion. His ability to compartmentalize and willfully forget any unpleasantness quickly takes on an absurd comic dimension. He seems more than ripe for parody or impersonation.
When asked about his rough treatment of Horvath and others, Bollettieri erupts, arguing that he’s moved on and forgotten all about them. At one point he brags that he could not even name every one of his seven ex-wives.
“Love Means Zero” and its bizarre subject are haunted by the pointed absence of Andre Agassi. At 90 minutes, it is at least a half-hour too long.
‘ENDEAVOUR,’ 1968
“Endeavour” (9 p.m. Sunday, PBS, TV-14,), the prequel to the beloved and long-running “Masterpiece” series “Inspector Morse,” now enters its fifth season. The year is 1968 and a series of murders appears to coincide with the discovery of a Faberge egg associated with the execution of the last Russian czar and his family.
WWII IN COLOR
The Smithsonian Channel launches “The Pacific War in Color” (8 p.m. Sunday), an eight-part documentary series offering rare footage of the war with Imperial Japan from the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor to V-J Day in 1945. In the first installment, color footage captures the raid on Pearl Harbor and its aftermath, the rise of patriotic resolve, and growing trepidation — particularly on the West Coast — about sabotage and infiltration by a Japanese “fifth column.”
“War” returns next Sunday with color films of early fighting against the Japanese as they threaten Australia and New Guinea.
Proof that nothing is truly new on television, series like “The Pacific War in Color” hearken back to “Victory at Sea,” one of the first epic documentary series in television history. NBC broadcast the 26-episode “Victory” from 1952-53. It was produced from hundreds of hours of war footage and had an original score by Richard Rodgers and Robert Russell Bennett.
TREASURED POSSESSIONS
Another TV throwback arrives on an unusual venue. The Fox News Channel takes a weekend break from its usual primetime business of Fox Newsifiying to offer season two of “Objectified” (8 p.m. Sunday). Host Harvey Levin, the glib figure behind TMZ’s celebrity surveillance state, interviews famous people about treasured possessions.
Yes, it’s celebrities and their stuff!
Over the course of the season Levin will chat with Magic Johnson, Kris Jenner, Steven Tyler, Pamela Anderson, Pitbull, Willie Nelson and UFC President Dana White.
Back in the early days of television, esteemed CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow took time from serious reporting to host “Person to Person.”
Employing the latest technology, a chain-smoking Murrow sat in his New York studio and conducted interviews with movie stars in their Hollywood homes.
On “Person to Person,” Marlon Brando showed off his bongo drums, Frank Sinatra gushed over his latest “hi-fi” stereo and, in my favorite interview, newlywed Tony Curtis excused himself from bride Janet Leigh to show Murrow his most prized possession, a new train set.
The more television changes, the more it stays the same.