Before the Blue Jays, There Were the Expos: Why Major League Baseball Left Montreal

I gotta say, shout out to Netflix. They did such a good job marketing this movie. They got a Canadian team into the World Series just to promote your movie!

It's amazing! I can't believe it. I had to get to bed last night, so I didn’t see the end of the game. I thought they had lost, and that was it. When I woke up this morning, I told myself, "Oh my god, this is so good for us."

I thought for sure, when Vladdy Jr. walked into the stadium wearing a Maple Leafs jersey, that it was over.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I’ve seen your last film, Who Killed Marie-Josée?, and it seems like you've kind of implemented that structure and style and taken it into a sports documentary. For me, it's kind of like murder mystery-meets-30 for 30.

Yeah. And I love a good sports documentary also, but for this particular story, as soon as I read the whole stuff, it was so complex. I didn’t understand all of it; everybody was telling something different.

I told myself we have to investigate this because I didn’t even know the truth, what is true or not, and what is conspiracy or just rumors. So it was a no-brainer. I think it would be a good way to tell the story, also to appeal to non-baseball fans and maybe other sports fans, and to bring the Expos’ stories elsewhere, because there have been a lot of documentaries about them with a lot of nostalgia.

I love nostalgia, and I think there is some in it. I'm not too cheesy; I wanted it to be profound. I wanted to ask the good questions and have everyone in the story face the mirror and own their part. I knew that it was not a risk, but it is a hard topic to expose in Montreal. You touch it, and everybody has an opinion, and they’re allowed. But I think it's going well right now. I think everybody thinks that it's fair.

I think there was that one line in the movie with former Expos executive vice president David Samson where he says, "Oh, you look like you're ready to pounce on me." Talk a little bit about your Expos fandom growing up. How old were you when they left?

I was born in 1981, so I’m 44. I wasn’t a huge fan; I didn’t know the statistics and didn’t follow daily, but I followed the team. When they were good, I knew it. My father was a big fan, so it became a pop culture thing. It was more than sports. When I started checking all that stuff, the first thing I did was watch footage from the last game at the Olympic Stadium.

My collaborators in other countries were asking why people were crying so much for baseball. I had to understand that because there was a reason, and I wanted to pass it on to viewers who would have the same question.

Yeah.

Baseball in Montreal was really special. It started way before the Expos—the Royals [with Jackie Robinson], all that stuff. It was special because Quebec always felt like underdogs, and having the first Major League team outside the U.S. in Canada made us proud. When you lose it, it's really hard. It's part of your identity, and professional sport can take a big part of someone’s life. You talk about it daily. So if it goes away, it can be really painful.

I think you did a great job keeping the facts with the emotion. You go through Canada’s biggest sport for years until it wasn’t, and it was stable in Montreal until the ’80s. You also balance the facts of each person—the culprits, if you want to call them that.

Everybody has their own interest. That was the big challenge, to find the balance between all those stories that were sometimes different. The points of view were different. I had to fact check and also give the public, the non-baseball fans, enough context, even for those who knew the economic situation between the U.S. and Canada at that time. There was a lot to explain in an entertaining way so people could follow the story. It's complicated, it's more than someone dying. You have to understand the business of baseball. That can represent professional sports in general. It works almost the same.

Do you have any favorite interviews that stand out?

David Samson. That was crazy because in Quebec, people are soft. They're not used to him. He calls himself arrogant and egotistic, but he believes those are skills that helped him in business. The first question I asked him, not in the movie, was if he would answer all of my questions. He said yes. I asked difficult [questions.] Sometimes it was a little playing for the camera—he gets mad, shouts, I shout back. It became a ping-pong game.

But I had to be careful. Too much space for him in the movie would have been too entertaining. I kept it fair. I see the reaction when he appears—even though he’s not saying much bad: Baseball didn’t work in Montreal. But what he says is valuable and pertinent.

Yeah. Any interviews you would have liked to have but didn’t get?

[Former owner] Jeffrey Loria would have been nice, but he is getting older, and I think he wasn’t ready for the hot seat. He helped us with archive footage and photos, the photo of him and Salvador Dali. I asked, “Can I use this?” He said yes and signed the paper. Lucien Bouchard, the Quebec premier at the time, was part of the story. I would have loved one more limited partner, but they all said no or didn’t answer. Mark Routtenberg became the spokesperson for the bunch—good for the show. I didn’t want too many businessmen, either. 

I loved that you guys had the original person who was Youppi, the mascot.

I would have loved him in his costume, but they said no. It’s like Santa Claus; you’d ruin children’s lives.

Talk to me a bit about producing with Netflix. It’s amazing to get the story on an international platform.

This was a dream come true. I love sports, music, and true crime—that’s my specialty. Netflix does it well. They wanted a Quebec documentary, and they asked me to put myself in it. The whole shoot was like that. They’re so good at storytelling, know what works, and can step back because they’re not in Quebec. We could look at the film, try new things, and it was amazing. Here in Quebec, you don’t get that time. You do it once, the first time, it’s good. With Netflix, it was refined, more profound. It’s more than baseball; it’s about identity and resonates globally.

You’ll still see someone wearing Expos merch at any given MLB game. Do you think the team could return, or would basketball have a better chance in Montreal?

We can see the excitement right now. The fans are still there; you still can feel the DNA of the team in the city. But baseball has billions at stake. We’d need someone really rich or a company like the Blue Jays have with Rogers. I wouldn’t bet on it. But I’m happy I can showcase this story globally. A bilingual Montreal movie at that.

What was the most shocking thing you found that didn’t make it into the movie? For the Jeffrey Loria hate, the stadium he proposed looked beautiful. I think it had a lot of potential.

Nothing shocking. Jeffrey Loria’s stadium proposal looked beautiful with potential. The whole thing: newspapers, rumors, politics—I didn’t include the boring stuff, but everything is documented.

There are some things that aren't clear. In the whole fight between the investors in Quebec, the Quebec Inc., it’s not really clear to me what happened or why. Did they speak to Premier Lucien Bouchard? I heard rumors. Is it just about ego, backstabbing their president? I don’t know. There’s something there that’s unclear.

I was shocked that the people in Quebec would fight each other like that, that’s not good press. If you put this in the media, [key stakeholders] fighting over money and backstabbing everyone, people won’t go to the games. The only thing the fans can do is buy a ticket or not to show their disagreement. But shocking? Not really. Everybody knew part of the story. 

If you had to pin it on someone, who would you say “killed” the Expos?

What’s interesting is the different points of view, and to realize that maybe what we thought isn’t entirely right. I was kind of shocked because if I had just listened to people talking to me, I would have thought it was only Jeffrey Loria’s fault. Everybody thought it was him. But is it? It’s not that simple. It would have been easy to say so, but it’s not [only him].