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"The attack on Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan in 1994 was the first media scandal I ever consumed. I was 10 years old and figure-skating-obsessed (though, for the record, I was far better at name-dropping Katarina Witt and Scott Hamilton than I was at actually, you know, skating). The assault on Kerrigan and subsequent implication of Tonya Harding made a huge impression me&amp;#8212;which makes perfect sense looking back, because the saga was nothing if not tailor-made for young brains to grasp. There was a good girl and a bad girl. The central event&amp;#8212;somebody hitting somebody else&amp;#8212;was a cinch to understand. The showdown on the Olympic stage played out right there in our living rooms.\nPinterestFacebookThis characterization is no kids&amp;#39;-table abridged version either: I think it&amp;#39;s how most adults remember the story of Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding as well. But as I realized watching The Price of Gold, ESPN&amp;#39;s 30 for 30 documentary on the scandal (it airs tonight at 9 P.M.), there was so much more to the story than any of us realized at the time. I spoke with the filmmaker behind Gold, Nanette Burstein (below), about confronting this legendary sports story, talking to Harding for the doc, and why this ugly business still has such a hold on us.\nPinterestFacebookMA: In watching the doc and thinking back on how I reacted to this as a kid, I really was struck by the black-and-white aspects of the way the story was portrayed.\nNB: It really did cater perfectly to a 10-year-old girl&amp;#8212;it was like a Disney fairy tale, the evil witch against the princess. Nancy even looked like Snow White.\nMA: What were you doing when the story broke in &amp;#39;94? What was your first reaction?\nNB: I was in my early 20s, just graduating college and getting my career started in New York City. I remember that I was in a Barnes and Noble, and this was before the age of Twitter and cell phones&amp;#8212;someone there told me about it. I watched the coverage and just thought: What a wacky story. This was a couple months after the Menendez brothers, a couple months before O.J. Simpson&amp;#39;s white Bronco chase&amp;#8212;1994 really was the year our media started covering tabloid stories at the top of the hour.\nPinterestFacebook__MA: Price of Gold gets into Tonya&amp;#39;s background much more sympathetically than the media did in 1994. We hear how poor she was. There&amp;#39;s a scene where she recalls the judges yelling at her for making her own costume. There&amp;#39;s a moment where she&amp;#39;s on the phone with her mom after a routine, and her mom&amp;#39;s telling her &amp;quot;you suck, you know that.&amp;quot; It really breaks your heart for her, which is a new twist on this story. __\nNB: That phone call is so poignant; I put the whole thing in even though it&amp;#39;s so long. And with the scene about her costume&amp;#8212;everything was a class issue. Skating&amp;#39;s scoring system has evolved, but 20 years ago, 50 percent of your score was quote unquote artistry. That&amp;#39;s not only subjective, but it&amp;#39;s about what you&amp;#39;re wearing, and your music, and are you feminine, and do you come from a good background? In what other sport is 50 percent of your score based on someone&amp;#39;s idea of beauty, poise, or grace?\nMA: As someone in the film puts it, &amp;quot;Figure skaters are [considered] the Barbie dolls of sports.&amp;quot;\nNB: Right. But this is not Miss America. It requires tremendous athleticism.\nMA: Let&amp;#39;s talk about Tonya and Nancy today. Tonya is interviewed extensively in the film; Nancy does not appear. How did those negotiations go down?\nNB: Originally, Tonya was not interested. We were able to partner with a producer she had worked with before, Steve Michaels, who once did a piece on her she loved, and that convinced her. Meanwhile, we were talking to Nancy&amp;#39;s husband [and former agent] Jerry Solomon every day for eight months. I had to cut the film not knowing whether Nancy was going to eventually sit down for the interview. They ended up passing because NBC offered Nancy a job doing commentary for the upcoming Olympics, and they decided to make their own piece on Tonya and Nancy, so she was exclusive to that.\nPinterestFacebookMA: Did not having Nancy give you pause about making the doc?\nNB: I told ESPN originally, I&amp;#39;m not gonna do it if I can get Nancy and not Tonya, but I will still do it if I can get Tonya and not Nancy. The reason was: Nancy&amp;#39;s is an amazing story, but it&amp;#39;s simple&amp;#8212;triumph over adversity. Tonya&amp;#39;s story is so complicated, and her voice had been absolutely unheard.\nMA: What was it like sitting down with Tonya?\nNB: We did two interviews. The first was at her sister-in-law&amp;#39;s house in Oregon, a beautiful home outside of Portland. I met Tonya&amp;#39;s husband and son. I wasn&amp;#39;t expecting her warmth&amp;#8212;she greeted us warmly, she laughed warmly. I was expecting her to be tough, which she was&amp;#8212;she had this grit about her, and you never know when she&amp;#39;s going to turn on you.\nMA: What do you mean &amp;quot;turn on you&amp;quot;?\nNB: She got very emotional during the interviews&amp;#8212;she&amp;#39;s so suspicious of media and has been so burned. When it came to talking about 1994, her blood pressure would go through the roof. We would have to take breaks because she would get so angry. She would come back and keep talking about it, but she needed breaks to chill out.\nPinterestFacebookMA: We do see a bit of that anger&amp;#8212;my jaw was on the floor when toward the end, referring to Nancy&amp;#39;s reaction to Oksana Baiul eventually winning the gold that year, Tonya says of Nancy: &amp;quot;She was the crybaby who didn&amp;#39;t win the gold. I&amp;#39;m sorry, but shut up.&amp;quot;\nNB: She went on a whole rant about Nancy, which I don&amp;#39;t think she&amp;#39;s ever done or will ever do again. She regretted it. We took a break and she said, &amp;quot;I can&amp;#39;t believe I said all that stuff. I didn&amp;#39;t mean it.&amp;quot; She revealed the jealousy she has been accused of having all these years.\nMA: Speaking of ugly feelings...the more I watched of the doc, the more I started to feel like the grossest player in this drama really was the public. I never knew before that when Tonya and Nancy showed up for their first Olympic practice session following the incident, the arena was completely full with people who were just there to see them react to each other. It made me a little sick.\nNB: Oh, yeah. They wanted the catfight&amp;#8212;they were looking for Betty and Veronica to scratch each other&amp;#39;s eyes out, for two girls in skintight outfits to start mud wrestling.\nMA: It definitely felt like 70 percent of the bloodlust had to do with them being women.\nNB: I don&amp;#39;t think that it would have played out like this with two football players. It goes back to ice skating as a fairy tale. I mean, I had a Dorothy Hamill haircut as a kid&amp;#8212;we women buy into the fairy tale growing up. It was the fact that this happened in this sport that made it so juicy to people. And for Tonya, the heartbreaking thing was really that she was prodigiously talented in a sport that was never gonna accept her for who she was."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/story/nancy-kerrigan-tonya-harding-3>