In 1995, a group of women made history as the first all-female sailing crew to compete for the coveted America’s Cup – the oldest international sports competition still in operation.
The endeavor started out as a publicity stunt from the mind of billionaire businessman Bill Koch, but very quickly the women – which included sailors like Dawn Riley, Leslie Egnot, Courtenay Becker-Dey, and JJ Fetter – proved they could be just as competitive as the men.
The story of their attempt to win the 1995 America’s Cup has been turned into a documentary called “Mighty Mary,” named for the women’s boat and directed by Mary Mazzio, a filmmaker and former Olympic rower. Narrated by Hugh Jackman and Elizabeth Banks, “Mighty Mary” details the women’s journey from start to finish, from open tryouts and training, to their epic battle with the notorious yachtsman Dennis Connor, to an infamous deal that changed everything.
The movie will be in theaters Sept. 11-18, and there will be a special screening featuring Mazzio and Atlanta Falcon’s owner Arthur Blank, who served as an executive producer on the film, on Sept. 18. A location for this screening has not yet been announced. Grant Hill, former professional basketball player and co-owner of the Atlanta Hawks, also served as a producer.
Ahead of the film’s opening, I spoke with Mazzio about the making of the film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I know you were a rower – obviously, this movie is not about rowing, but it is a water-based sport. What drew you to this project in particular, and is that similar to what continues to draw you to different projects throughout your career?
Mary Mazzio: First of all, just the extraordinary David and Goliath story, right? Overcoming obstacles in ways that you could almost never imagine. The other thing that drew me to the story was I knew six of these cats that came from the Olympic rowing team. I was an Olympic rower, and so I knew them, and they jumped from my team onto Mighty Mary. So I knew the story back then, even before I became a filmmaker. I remember thinking, what an amazing story! Just like a murder mystery – the twists and turns, the unexpected nature of how the campaign would lay out.
How did they talk about it back then? There’s a moment in this documentary – the secret deal that allowed Dennis Connor’s team to participate in the finals even though he lost to the Mighty Mary before that race – that made me very furious. I’m curious back then, obviously they don’t know you’re gonna make a movie about it one day – what was the general tone with which this was all discussed?
Mazzio: Now, you’re going on like, 30 years since this happened, right? Basically, how you see them react in the film is how they reacted back then. In other words, this is still very raw, very present for them, and I think there was surprise, some outrage by some. There were those that claimed to know that something was up, that maybe it had been discussed. Many people were like, [it was] never discussed, never broached.
From a management perspective, if you’re going to give a 360 view – which we do in the film, of course – the management team was thinking, all right – it’s highly likely we don’t win. Or it’s 50/50 at best, and then we’re out. We’re gone. These women have a brand new boat, and they need to get the hang of it, and they’re not getting it, right? It had come so late in the process. So from [management’s] perspective, they were thinking, “Oh, we’ll give a little bit more runway, if you will, for this rookie team to get used to the boat.” If you step back, okay – maybe that makes sense. As … Vincent Moeyersoms [part of Mighty Mary leadership] said, yeah – that was an expensive insurance policy.
I mean, I guess from the women’s perspective – and from mine, certainly – it betrays a lack of confidence. I guess I see the other side, but it’s tough to deal with, at an emotional level.
Mazzio: I know. It’s so interesting, because we’ve had viewers that react exactly as you do, and I think a lot of the women did, right? Like, who could do such a thing? If we’re gonna lose, we’re gonna lose! So be it. That’s sport. On the other hand, it makes for a hell of a documentary [laughs].
Which of the women did you know already?
Mazzio: I knew the grinders. I knew Dawn Riley only because in about 2002, we were working on a documentary for ESPN. This is a little bit after this campaign. I was working on a project about athletes and their mothers for ESPN. I met Grant Hill, who’s become my good producing partner and friend, and we had Shaquille O’Neal and Mia Hamm, etc. And I said, Dawn Riley – she’s one kick*ss [woman]. I mean, eats beer bottles for breakfast – like, literally so hard core.
We were a little bit over time, and I remember ESPN, saying sailing? You’ve got Shaquille O’Neal, you’ve got Drew Bledsoe, you’ve got Grant Hill, you have Mia Hamm … We had these amazing athletes, and they were like Dawn Riley? Sailing? Yeah, hit the cutting room floor. I had to tell Dawn, you’re hitting the cutting room floor. Oh, she’s pissed.
I’m sure.
Mazzio: I was like – I’ll be back. But what’s great about that, is that it would have been a five-minute story that is part of a bigger show. Thank God she hit the cutting room floor, because here we are today now with a full feature film on the entire enterprise.
One other great thing about making this now is that the America’s Cup itself, the very institution so resistant to change, is going to usher in the 38th running of the cup later this year with Mighty Mary, along with a new requirement for inclusion of women. That would not have happened back then – maybe even five years ago, I don’t think that would have happened. So it’s like a beautiful full circle moment that this hidden gem of history – I mean, this has been long forgotten. And how amazing is it? Because unlike almost any other effort in team sport, you have a women’s team going toe-to-toe with the finest men’s team on the planet. No short course, no handicap … This is a historical outlier, but remarkable incident that really demonstrates a very simple principle, which is strength, talent, and intelligence are equally distributed. Men, women, different races, different creeds – you name it. But it’s access and opportunity that is not widely distributed. So here was an opportunity for the women, and rookies to boot – I mean, this was a publicity stunt from the jump. And yet, look what they did.
Take me back to the beginning. When did you officially start working on this? And what does your process look like, as a documentarian?
Mazzio: Great question, because I do this all backwards. I pre-interview everybody, so I know basically where the stories are going. Camera is so expensive, right? The filming process is so prohibitive. We’re shooting on the ALEXA, which is a Hollywood-grade camera. I’m highly anal, meticulous, a pain in the *ss for those that work around me. But then, we film the interview, and I do all the interviews. The reason I don’t delegate that is so that I know where the story is going. If I see a hook here, I can go ask that person this, or another person that. What’s amazing about that is it just leads down these rabbit holes that you never expect. We’ll talk about the men in a minute and what was uncovered during the making of the film. But then I get the transcripts back, and I go through and I highlight the most compelling sound bites, most compelling principles, without regard to narrative, without regard to flow. Then it all goes into a giant four-hour jigsaw puzzle – my God, where are we going to put this soundbite? Whose story does it go with? What does that look like?
That’s the process of how I go about this, and it’s a really hard way to do it. Instead of starting with the narrative, which is a lot of exposition, I start with the most amazing things people say because I’m like, who’s going to hold the attention of a 16 year old? Let me go from there. That’s the starting point. We test drive these films, by the way, with either groups of college students or high school students. And that is brutal … It’s terrifying when you’re walking into a room of people who are so quick to pull out a phone, or fidget. Everything now is served in three-second increments, and I’ve got a 95-minute piece.
We worked with a group of students at Babson College. They were amazing! When you go into something like that, it’s going to expose every flaw of your movie. What’s unclear? What’s slow? What’s inconsistent? What’s confusing? And I knew we were onto something when the group came in – a highly diverse group, not very many athletes … except for two men’s lacrosse players. I was like, “Oh – I am gonna lose the lacrosse bro vote in about five minutes. They’re gonna get up and walk out.” Guess what? Everyone stayed. They had to kick all of us out of the space two and a half hours later. The conversation was great. They stayed glued to it. Not one phone came out.
It didn’t mean, by the way, we didn’t have issues to address in the movie. They gave me so much great feedback around context. Why is the America’s Cup important? We see more of the wealthy white men that comprise the sport, so that you really have a smash when the women show up. Hey, what about the position made JJ Fetter vulnerable in her position? Why her and not anybody else? They asked really practical questions, that I was like, oh – we need to slow down a bit. We need to give just a little bit more context so people can be riding the wave.
Have you always done that, as far as testing with younger groups of people?
Mazzio: I think almost every film. I fell into it because somebody said, “Hey, I got a bunch of high school students who would love to take an early look.”
When you do that, it’s so great because it gives you instant feedback. Somebody coughs, and I’m like, oh, sh*t – we gotta tighten that up. Every movement, every fidget … that’s a problem for me. And here’s the proof in the pudding. We had a screening, a sneak peek in Annapolis. Joint is filled. A 16-year-old boy comes up to me, and he goes, “Epic! I need to see all your movies!” I’m like, out of the mouth of a 16-year-old boy? How fantastic is that? You’ve seen the film. We edit very quickly, there’s a lot of music. But when I see a young person tapping their foot to the beat, I”m like, ah – they’re in it!
You mentioned earlier things that came up during the interview process that you didn’t expect, or that led off on tangents. What were some of those?
Mazzio: Probably the most surprising was the willingness of the men to participate.
I was going to ask if anyone had to be convinced a little bit to be involved.
Mazzio: Dennis Connor is not a willing subject. Like, most all press, he turns down. And I’m so grateful to him. Listen, he’s an Olympic athlete. He is the savviest of savvy cats out there, just from a sheer competitive basis. If you remember the show “Survivor” –
Oh yeah, I love “Survivor.”
Mazzio: That’s it. There’s a game on the water, there’s a game off the water, and he has mastered both. I think for me, the willingness of the men to be so honest – both those that were overseeing the team, the male management, in terms of the mistakes they made, and then also how the competitors may have treated the women. How did they view the women? How do they feel today about that? When the hair on the back of my head started going up was when Paul Cayard said – you know, if you think about being well-intentioned and evolving, it’s really important that we move away from what our fathers taught us and lean into what our sons are learning.
I mean, this makes the whole film. It elevates it in a way that makes it so relevant to what is happening right now. It’s so relevant as it relates to the box and oppression of social media that women and especially young girls are put in. What do I look like, you know – this sort of really early sexualization of young girls. It’s what you look like and how you present as opposed to what you do. I thought his comment was so thoughtful about moving away from old tropes and old bias. It’s not easy, right? It’s not easy for anyone to A, recognize their own bias, and then B, really work to shed it. Especially with the regression that we’re seeing today with respect to women’s rights. So I think for him and some of the other men in the film to echo that sentiment – these are men who are in a state of privilege saying there’s room for others at the table. What a powerful statement.
Especially considering what a boys’ club it must have been. You mentioned Dawn earlier, and how she was a “beer at breakfast” kind of girl – which like, maybe that’s an indictment of the culture on its own, that you have to be a certain way to fit in.
Mazzio: There were expectations, and even today as you navigate, there’s a political game to success. That’s a fact. And women – I’m going to digress – but women often operate in this meritocracy. I deserve to be there. I worked harder. I’ve learned, especially being in business – I was a lawyer before I was a filmmaker – that’s only half the battle. You can’t just be good. You have to be adept. You have to be your own cheerleader. You have to do it in a way that doesn’t come across as loud, or that difficult woman, or bragging. How are you negotiating where you are in the workplace, especially when you’ve got male management? It’s just a fact. And it continues today.
I think there are really interesting lessons around leadership coming out of this movie, and what happens when you have a male-dominated leadership structure – which we do in Congress, in the workplace, corporate boards. How do we think about equipping well-intentioned leaders who may not fully understand what a diverse team can bring? Certainly, we saw that in Mighty Mary. This was the first time these male coaches, the male management, had ever worked with a team of women.
Yeah. I have a memory of a high school softball coach talking about coaching baseball and softball, and how it took him a minute to figure out he couldn’t talk to us the same way. There’s a different sort of encouragement approach.
Mazzio: One hundred percent. Although, I’d argue that older coaches that think they can yell at boys, you might want to rethink that.
Yeah.
Mazzio: But certainly, I think you have all kinds of dynamics with young girls that you simply don’t have with young boys, in terms of how they’re socialized and how they think and how they relate to one another.
I want to talk about Dennis Connor a little more. You mentioned he doesn’t do a lot of press, and the interview with him is not actually in the movie that much. I’ve read some stories about him since I watched the movie, and he seems like kind of a tough character, in terms of how he handled this particular situation. What was it like talking to him, and how did he reflect on it?
Mazzio: First of all, I have to say this again. I really appreciate the fact that he came and sat for an interview. He knew the subject matter at hand. I’m sure he knew I was going to ask some challenging questions, and he rolled with the punches. There was a perception out there – he’s big, bad Dennis. He’s got this reputation. Is there misogyny? And yet, he was one of the few skippers to have women aboard his big boats before the Mighty Mary campaign. Well, that flies in the face [of the narrative]. That’s contrarian. What?
The other thing I think that’s really important from a competitor standpoint is that I think, yes, of course you had that overlay of gender, and what happens if you lose to the women – there’s a profound loss of face. But from what I understand, he was equally as ferocious off the water with his male competitors. You hear him in the movie say, “You’re not going to the candy store with these people.” Translation, if you’re not with me, you’re against me. I think that was his strategic mentality, because all of the guys that raced with him were shocked to find that he did not act like big bad Dennis. He’d hold cookouts for them. It was like rainbows and teddy bears! I’m like, what? Come on! That was fascinating to hear. And you hear one of his long, long, long time lieutenants and tacticians, Tom Whidden say, if he’s with you, he’s fantastic! If he’s not with you, not so fantastic.
Was there anything in the film that you left on the cutting room floor, or something you wish you could have included but there wasn’t room for?
Mazzio: A couple of things. This story is so fast-paced and compelling. We could have gone into the future with Dawn Riley and what she did in 2000. She was the first woman ever to be the CEO of her own [team]. She went and raised money to her own America’s Cup syndicate, and she had a team that was comprised of men and women, and they were very competitive. That would have been really interesting to spend more time on. We simply didn’t have the real estate, and it wasn’t really the story of ‘95. The story of ‘95 is insane, and the fact that Dawn could, four years later, think about what she had learned is pretty cool.
Here’s the other thing I’ll say. Have you been on athletic teams, Sammie?
Yeah, I played softball growing up.
Mazzio: So, you know. There’s a lot that happens in the locker room, there’s a lot that happens when athletes are under stress. I competed at the Olympic level. You see the best in people, you see the worst in people. From my vantage, it serves nobody to put the worst or sh*t people might say about somebody else in a movie, because film is forever. So, an off-hand comment that I know will be hurtful to somebody else – it just kind of has no place, for me.
I learned that lesson early on. I did this film about athletes and their mothers … I remember a mother with a very famous son, she said something, and she laughed. I was like, “Oh, it’s not funny enough. Her son might be offended, and I know she didn’t mean it.” You can create toxic relationships by including something that somebody didn’t mean. I personally take on that responsibility very seriously. You will never have a “gotcha” moment with me … As far as I’m concerned, anybody that takes the time to step in front of the camera and engage in a conversation, they deserve integrity and respect. For me, I feel like it’s really important to treat what they say and understand that a film is forever. So, there are a few things on the cutting room floor.
I was appreciative of – and there wasn’t anything specific – but you got the sense, and the women in particular were not shy about being like, we didn’t always get along. This was a tough route.
Mazzio: I mean, this was a brutal campaign. The women were up at 6 a.m. and went to bed at 11 p.m.
No one’s gonna be happy doing that.
Mazzio: When you think about the physicality they had to endure, and then they come home and they’ve got to do media appearances. There was almost no time off. The America’s Cup is a grind, right? Racing begins in January and doesn’t end until the end of April. Holy Jesus – and that’s only the racing! There’s the preparation, which is equally as demanding. You are going to find people under stress often don’t make good decisions, or don’t act well. And as an athlete, you know that. And you just have to say, what’s my responsibility here? Walk away. Let the person breathe. Do I need to say something to pump them up? That kind of comes back to leadership, right? How do you rally a team and get them prepared for battle?
