Love Means Zero
Description
Meet Nick Bollettieri, famed tennis academy owner and coach to some of the game’s greats from Andre Agassi to Monica Seles to Boris Becker. In his quest for success, Bollettieri took extreme measures in his coaching, insisting that his students live with him and treating his top players like family; the drama of his relationships with them often approached Shakespearean status. Perhaps his most publicly disastrous conflict was with former protégé Andre Agassi whose refusal to participate in the film becomes the catalyst for filmmaker Jason Kohn’s good-natured probe into the psyche of this proud and prickly character, prone to referring to himself in the third person and not naturally inclined toward introspection. Champions such as Kathleen Horvath, Jim Courier, Boris Becker, and Carlin Bassett, who more or less survived Bollettieri’s mercurial mentorship, round out the picture while archival footage brings back the drama of fateful matches.
Jason Kohn was born and raised on Long Island and graduated from Brandeis. He spent two years studying under Errol Morris before making his first documentary, Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) (2007). That film portrayed the class system in Brazil through three character portraits and won Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize for Documentary along with three Cinema Eye Honors awards.
Film Details
Language English
Year 2017
Runtime 89
Country USA
Director Jason Kohn
Producer Jason Kohn, Amanda Branson Gill, Anne White, Jill Mazursky, David Styne
Editor Michael X. Flores, Jack Price
Cinematographer Eduardo Enrique Mayén
Music Jonathan Sadoff
Cast Nick Bollettieri
Print Source SHOWTIME