Peter Berg has been involved in films about trauma and tragedy before.
Nothing has ever compared, or could have ever prepared the acclaimed and Emmy-nominated director for his latest project, and the journey it has prompted.
The 58-year-old Berg, who is best known for directing “Friday Night Lights” (both the TV series and movie), “Lone Survivor” and “Patriots Day” in addition to multiple acting credits, has his latest film, “Boys in Blue,” premiering on Showtime on Friday. The four-part docuseries, and events he captured, moved him in a way he had never experienced before in his career.
“It was a very intense experience for everyone involved,” Berg told The Post before the series airs.
The documentary focuses on the North Community High School football team in Minneapolis, Minn. in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by former policeman Derek Chauvin. The team is coached and mentored by Minneapolis police officers, many of whom had worked with Chauvin and had to deal with the aftermath. The film documents the players and coaches as they come together while tensions between law enforcement and the community around them reach a boiling point. The fate of Proposition 2 loomed, which would have replaced the Minneapolis Police Department with a Department of Public Safety if voted in. The motion was defeated in Nov., 2021.
Amid all this, the local high school team, and its staff, attempted to find some sense of normalcy.
Embedded with the team for the film, Berg learned normalcy can be tragic, however. In the middle of production, the team’s star 15-year-old quarterback, Deshaun Hill, was shot and killed after bumping into someone on the street. He was memorialized in the same room at the same church as Floyd, and a trial for the killing is set to begin on Jan. 17.
“I’ve done films with people who’ve lost their lives, but I’ve certainly never been part of a documentary where one of the principals of the film loses his life in the middle of shooting in such a violent and really nonsensical way,” Berg said. “It was very real, and very painful and confusing for all of us involved.”
After Floyd’s murder, Berg didn’t recognize the city he had spent so much time in. A New York native, he went to college at Macalester in St. Paul, Minn., close to where Floyd was murdered. Berg saw chaos, violence and suffering, a stark difference from the environment he remembered.
Looking for a creative response to the events, Berg flew out to Minneapolis and observed the North Community High School. When he got there, he found what he thought was unusual was actually much more regular than he realized.
“We were going through the season, as Proposition 2, which was a police proposition, was really hot in Minneapolis when the vote was going down, we knew we were kind of in the middle of a very interesting moment,” Berg said. “That all changed when Deshaun Hill was murdered. We felt wrecked, emotionally wrecked by all that, emotionally confused. We had been documenting a volatile community, and a dangerous community, we’re hearing about kids being shot, we’re hearing about violence in the streets, we’re hearing about the pressures that are facing this community. And we were sort of seeing it, and when Deshaun was murdered, it just blew our minds, in terms of, this is real. And this is what is happening in these cities today.”
The documentary leaves an unfinished story, ending before the trial for Hill’s killing.
The film’s message, however, delivers a permanent reminder regardless of the verdict. A message that Berg wasn’t able to receive from afar.
“[Hill’s] killing made no sense,” Berg said. “It was impossible to understand in a sound byte. Something that I think we all kind of came to realize the more time we spent in that community – nothing is really able to be distilled into a sound byte, in terms of meaningful comprehension of what is going on in a community. It’s very complex. The answers aren’t what you think they are based upon whether you’re watching Fox or CNN. Human reality is much more nuanced, people are much more complex, and I find more intelligent than we give them credit for.
“Our experience with that community as a film making crew just kind of reinforced that. These people defied all stereotypes.”
