A unique talent requires unique maintenance.
That’s what having Dennis Rodman entailed if you wanted to bring the best out of him.
Like when Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson allowed him to go on a short vacation in the middle of the 1997-98 season to come back rejuvenated and hold the fort in the absence of Scottie Pippen on the way to their second three-peat, Rodman was the same when doing interviews.
“The Last Dance” director Jason Hehir recalled how hard it was to not just get the eccentric NBA icon to do an interview for the documentary, but also to stay for the duration of the conversation.
Appearing in a Jalen & Jacoby Aftershow episode, Hehir said it took them months for Rodman to agree to talk to them. And when he finally did, the rebounding machine came two hours late for the afternoon interview with hazy eyes and his attention disorganized, initially thinking he was doing an interview about his connection with North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-Un.
Getting Rodman to come was just half the battle. Getting him to stay was another story.
“He’s like, 'Ten hours (for this documentary), huh?' I was like, 'Yeah.' He’s like, 'Alright, I’ll give you 10 minutes,'” Hehir recalled. “Every page of questions I have (for him to answer) is an hour. I have 11 pages for this guy and he’s saying 10 minutes.”

That’s why Hehir and the rest of the production crew gave in to his strange requests just for him to stay.
“So he sits down. I’m just kind of shooting the s**t with him, and he says, ‘I need a tuna sub from Subway and some chamomile tea,’” Hehir said. “It was like Chappelle sending the guys for a sugar cookie in Queens. Unless you pass this test, you cannot do this interview. So we got him the tuna sub, we got him the chamomile tea.”
“And he sat down for three hours. But that is a difficult guy to interview,” he added.
Sometimes, it’s not bad to keep a loose leash on your toughest dogs.
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