‘I’m Carl Lewis!’ Review: Engaging, if Limited, Doc Gives an Athlete and Iconoclast His Due

Back in 2012, 9.79* aired as part of ESPN’s 30 for 30 franchise. Daniel Gordon’s film focused on the 100-meter final at the Seoul Olympics, a race that was dominated by Ben Johnson, who then abdicated the crown after a positive steroid test, leaving Carl Lewis as the desultory victor.

In an era oversaturated with sports documentaries, the closest we came to a doc focused on Lewis, among the greatest track and field stars ever, was one that was really about The Other Guy.

Even after his career-ending long-jump victory at the Atlanta Olympics offered an opportunity for people to embrace Lewis fully, he was still seen as somewhere between unlikable and unknowable.

That contention is finally put to the test in Julie Anderson and Chris Hay‘s new feature documentary I’m Carl Lewis! 

Premiering at SXSW, I’m Carl Lewis! gives Lewis his due as an athlete. But more than that, it paints a portrait of a man who was decades ahead of his time as an advocate against the arbitrarily enforced “amateurism” of Olympic sports; who was criticized as brash and arrogant just years before those attitudes would be recoded as “confident”; who defied gender norms and paid the price in public perception. 

Regarding Lewis’ knowability, he still comes across as only as forthcoming as he wants to be, and you can sense Anderson and Hay nudging up against the limitations of Lewis’ warmth. But it’s easy to see the double standards — most of them racially coded — that harmed his image.

It’s easiest to chronicle Lewis’ athletic success and I’m Carl Lewis! takes a strictly, slightly blandly, chronological approach stretching across his four Olympiads, starting with the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, in which Lewis equalled Jesse Owens with four marquee golds.

The doc follows his two decades of unprecedented dominance with spotlights on the 1988 showdown with Johnson (who doesn’t appear in the film) and his legendary 1991 World Championships long-jumping battle with Mike Powell (interviewed enthusiastically), which saw both men threaten Bob Beamon’s long-held record.

There’s ample tremendous footage of Lewis at work, emphasizing his grace and dominance. There’s also ample footage of Lewis meeting with reporters, allowing us to see the combative attitude (on both sides, since plenty of journalists come off every bit as poorly) that denied Lewis some of the public-facing opportunities a performer of his profile should have received.

With distant hindsight and the 63-year-old Lewis’ current candor, the directors reposition what was presented as “confrontational” back in the ’80s. 

Was Lewis primarily obsessed with money or was he pushing back against a system that carved the pie up to benefit organizers and sponsors? It’s easiest to see what a threat Lewis was to the status quo through sniveling archival interviews with dismissive Madison Avenue types from back in the ’80s, along with current interviews from Lewis’ contemporaries crediting him with opening doors. Is the documentary able to make direct connections between Lewis’ outspoken support of getting paid and eventual changes to the infrastructure of the sport? Probably not.

It’s much easier to see Lewis’ impact on keeping the sport drug-free, as he was hardly coy in accusing Johnson of doping long before there was evidence, and the doc isn’t shy about admitting to and clearing up Lewis’ own pre-Olympics positive drug test from 1988 (not that anything he clears up wasn’t in the public record 30+ years ago).

You can see how carefully Anderson and Hay want to handle Lewis’ sexuality, which was the subject of speculation and slurs in his prime.

“Carl didn’t act in the traditional, hyper-masculine way that Black men were expected to, and that’s part of what made him threatening to some people and empowering to other people,” commentator Keith Boykin says of his friend.

I don’t think the documentary is successful at illustrating that last part — how Lewis really empowered anybody. Yes, he opened up the door for today’s athletes proudly serving lewks on the red carpets that have become a key facet of 21st century sports. But where was the empowerment in Lewis’ aggressive denials at the time that he was gay? He isn’t much more candid today, nor is he introspective about the way he handled those claims. Nor is the documentary able to illustrate if Lewis’ penchant for eye-liner, homoerotic pop videos and flamboyant bodysuits gave him support in a gay community of the ’80s starved for public representation that he didn’t embrace.

In his current interviews, he’s more playfully evasive, speaking proudly of his famous Pirelli ad in red stilettos and critiquing nude portraits he commissioned at the time. He seems happy today, as he relaxes in his hot tub or walks the filmmakers around his small orchard or enjoys a birthday party with friends and family. Whether there were situations he could have handled differently or slurs he could have addressed in different ways apparently doesn’t matter here. The documentary is more about what society owed Carl Lewis than what Carl Lewis owes society at this point.

I’m Carl Lewis! reminded me most of Alex Stapleton’s Reggie, an Amazon documentary that made me entirely reexamine my perspective on Reggie Jackson — especially the ways the narratives about him were crafted at the time and who was allowed to craft those narratives. This doesn’t offer as full an overhaul for Lewis, but it’s effective in underlining his athletic greatness.