Oscars: Shaq Enters the Race With Basketball Doc ‘Killer Bees’ (Exclusive)
Oscars: Shaq Enters the Race With Basketball Doc ‘Killer Bees’ (Exclusive)
Rick Kern/Getty Images for American Express
The Lakers legend and fellow producer Larry Gagosian, the noted art dealer/gallerist, will bring the film to Hollywood for a special screening and reception on Oct. 24.
“I’ve been to the Hamptons 20 times,” Los Angeles Lakers legend Shaquille O’Neal told me on Friday when I spoke with him exclusively about his entrance into the Oscar race as a producer of the documentary feature Killer Bees. “But I’ve been on the rich people’s side — the Leonardo DiCaprio, the Puffy, the Beyonce side, with the boats, where people are well off — so when I was told there was another side, I was like, ‘That’s impossible!'” So, at the urging of his friend Glenn Fuhrman, O’Neal screened an early cut of Ben Cummings and Orson Cummings‘ 82-minute documentary feature about the primarily-black Bridehampton High School basketball team — nicknamed the “Killer Bees” — and its coach, Carl Johnson as they defended their 2015 state title while simultaneously confronted with racism, gentrification and income inequality. “I was quite surprised by what I saw,” the 46-year-old said. “I was like, ‘This is a story that needs to be told.'”
Read more here:
