A doc about how Atlanta won the ’96 Olympics debuting at Atlanta Film Festival

In 1988, a contingent of hopeful Atlantans traveled to the Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, to pitch Atlanta to the executive committee of the International Olympic Committee.

But the group was late to its meeting and faced a wary, disinterested committee. Then civil rights legend Andrew Young turned things around when he mentioned that Atlanta was the only major American city that had been burned down and rose from the ashes.

The committee was intrigued and seeds were sown.

Two years later, Atlanta was named the host city for the 1996 Summer Olympics, a shocking upset at a time when Athens, Greece, was the preemptive favorite since it hosted the first modern Olympics a century earlier.

ExploreAndrew Young's daughter has died

“The Games in Black & White” is a new documentary chronicling Atlanta’s unlikely bid, the Games themselves and the legacy it left behind. The film will debut at the Atlanta Film Festival on April 26 at the Rialto Center for the Arts in downtown Atlanta. Tickets will be available starting March 26 at atlantafilmfestival.com.

Credit: ATLANTA STORY PARTNERS

Credit: ATLANTA STORY PARTNERS

The documentarians focused the 100-minute movie around the two men who created an unlikely power duo: Atlanta real estate attorney Billy Payne, who came up with the idea of bidding for the Games, and Mayor Young, the former U.S. congressman and United Nations ambassador who embraced Payne’s dream.

“This is really the story of Billy and Andy and the state of race relations,” said George Hirthler, script writer for the film and a part of Atlanta Story Partners, the production company. “It’s an amazing story.”

Hirthler was involved in successful 1996 Olympic bid as its lead writer. He teamed up with his friend and veteran producer, Bob Judson, to start the documentary project in 2019 as what he described as a “labor of love.” The pandemic delayed the completion of the film until this year.

In the end, they not only interviewed Payne and Young together, but also 40 other people connected to the Olympics — including athletes Dan O’Brien, Janet Evans and Johann Olav Koss and several key members of what were termed the “Atlanta Nine” who lobbied the IOC and gave the city the edge over Athens.

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Two of the documentarians’ favorite interview subjects were former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and Martin Luther King III.

“Shirley Franklin was sitting in the office when Billy met with Andy the first time,” Hirthler said. “She tells it beautifully. MLK III talks about the intersection between the Olympic movement and the Civil Rights Movement.”

For Hirthler, the Olympic movement has never been a Pollyanna concept.

“The Olympics really contributes to the development of a better world,” he said. “You see people from all over the world walking into a stadium. The rituals contribute to something powerful. Billy and Andy embodied that in every way. Billy would constantly use the word ‘goodness’ as his primary explanation for what the Olympic movement was.”

One of Payne’s most inspired ideas was the creation of Centennial Olympic Park, a communal space for Olympic attendees that became a permanent downtown park. They tore down 21 acres of mostly blighted warehouses, buildings and parking lots to crate an area that would eventually draw multiple hotels and tourist attractions like the Georgia Aquarium and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.

“Everybody’s impression of Billy was revolutionized when he thought of the idea of the park,” said Jim Auchmutey, a former reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution who helped cover the Games. “It’s hard to imagine the 1996 Olympics without Centennial Olympic Park,” he said in the film.

Judson and Hirthler initially sought Samuel L. Jackson to narrate the film. Instead, they hired Atlanta actor Gregory Alan Williams, who has appeared in Atlanta productions such as “Drop Dead Diva,” “Greenleaf” and “Saints & Sinners.” In the documentary, Williams speaks from inside Centennial Olympic Park.

“We wanted that human connectivity with the viewer,” Judson said.

“He (Williams) was a really big find for us,” Hirthler said. “He lifted the quality of the film. He has a warmth in him that will sway the viewer by what he’s saying.”

Credit: ATLANTA STORY PART

And while the doc covers the Olympic Park bombing, it doesn’t skimp on other aspects of the Games — such as the organizers’ commitment to hiring minority businesses and the development of an aid program that helped immunize kids and reduce conflict in countries all over the world.

“Sports is powerful and is one of the many pathways to peace,” Young said in the film. “That is one of the proudest parts of our legacy.”

The filmmakers do not yet have a distribution deal but plan to shop the film to different film festivals after the Atlanta Film Festival next month. They are also in talks with PBS, with Georgia Public Broadcasting as the sponsoring station.

“We have no financial offers on the table,” Judson said. “We’re holding out hopes for a streamer.”