The ‘Born to Bowl’ Directors Set Out To Make The “Antithesis Of ‘Drive To Survive’”

You’ve probably spent time at a bowling alley, but did you know that there’s an entire professional apparatus around the sport? HBO’s latest docuseries Born to Bowl travels with five of the sport’s most promising (and decorated) stars—E.J. Tackett, Kyle Troup, Anthony Simonsen, Jason Belmonte, and Cameron Crowe—as they traverse America looking to earn glory on the lanes. The five-part series, co-produced by A24 and Ben Stiller, takes audiences behind the scenes of one of America’s pastimes, introducing amateurs to the tournaments hosted by the Professional Bowler’s Association, the rules of the sport, and the colorful personalities that make bowling what it is.

Born to Bowl directors Brian Lazarte and James Lee Hernandez have a history of highlighting financial scams and scandals—the pair previously helmed the hits McMillions and The Big Conn. That makes a series about bowling feel like a bit of a departure, but the sport was actually a natural next step for the directing duo. “When we made McMillions, we were telling a true crime story that was not your typical true crime story,” Lazarte told Decider over Zoom. “Here, we wanted to look at a sports series through a different lens…like the antithesis of Drive to Survive.”

Ahead, Lazarte and Hernandez get into why bowling made for a compelling world, how they approached the tone of the series, and what their high scores on the lane are.

DECIDER: What’s your history with bowling and how did you come to the project? 

JAMES LEE HERNANDEZ (JLH): I grew up playing in bowling leagues when I was younger. Thursday night was family night with my mom and stepdad, and we would always go bowling. Everybody in America has at least been to a birthday party of a friend at a bowling alley, so everyone has some sort of tangential connection to it. On top of that, I’m a sports fanatic. Before this [docuseries], I already knew a good amount about pro bowling. That, combined with the idea of bowling being a professional sport that’s on a major TV station, and yet these guys are all struggling to make ends meet was an exciting thing for us to tackle—to show the multiple sides and facets of this world.

BRIAN LAZARTE (BL): I was a professional bowler in my own mind when I was 13. No, I’m more middle of the road. I grew up in the Midwest. We had four bowling alleys within three miles of my house, so it was a pretty common pastime to go and hang out at the bowling alley. But from a filmmaking perspective, there’s a great deal of curiosity. I think I know something about this, but then you discover that there’s so much you don’t know, and we’re huge fans of being able to pull back the curtain on something you think you know. We didn’t want to approach it thinking everyone who’s going to watch this knows about bowling, but rather, how do you make this really accessible to everyone in the middle of the road? Especially those people who made that strike and thought, like myself at 13, “I can be a professional!”

Photo: HBO

You both directed the docuseries McMillions and The Big Conn, which are centered around financial scams and scandals. So this feels like a bit of a departure. What made Born to Bowl the right next project for you to partner on? Were there any similarities in the subject matter?

BL: The main thing for us when we made McMillions was that we were telling a true crime story that was not your typical true crime story. We wanted to approach that in a way where it’s the antithesis of what a true crime story was. Here, we wanted to look at a sports series through a different lens, and come at it a little more left of center—like the antithesis of Drive to Survive. To be able to have the support of HBO and A24 and all the other partners involved, it was the perfect vehicle for telling a story about sports, but in an unexpected way.

What do you think makes bowling as a sport compelling?

JLH: Brian mentioned F1’s Drive to Survive. It’s an awesome show, but all those guys are millionaires with a very plush life. Whether they win or lose, they’re still doing very well. Same thing with people in the NBA, NFL, major league baseball, tennis, golf… there’s a lot of money to be made. With professional bowling, you live and die by every single tournament. Even guys like E.J. Tackett, who has been the most winning bowler over the last three years. He’s won an insane amount, but he took over his parents’ bowling center because he’s thinking about money. There’s a level of juxtaposition of being on TV on Sunday trying to win $100,000 at a major, but at the same time a lot of these guys have regular jobs. There’s a bowler named Tim Foy Jr, who made the TV show for this year’s US Open, and he’s a prison guard. He works overtime the entire year, and then four months out of the year he goes on tour for this. It’s not like some ultra charmed life, but yet they come out and they grind it out and try to make something happen.

BL: Kyle Troup also talked about how when he won his first major, he was manager at Wendy’s and then he went back to work the next day. That sums up so much of what it’s like when these guys turn pro. It’s like a stand-up comedian who has to commit to the road in order to cross that next threshold. Once these guys commit to it they’re all in, and they have to be willing to fork out money out of their own pocket to pay for hotels, Airbnbs, gas. That’s what’s so exciting—these guys are so all-in and they want it so bad. 

Kyle Troup Photo: HBO

Tell me about finding the subjects of the series. Did you have any issues convincing players to be part of it?

JLH: Nobody said no, but the concept of this started with a photographer named Jared Polin, who photographed Kyle Troup (they both have afros) and he said there’s a really interesting world here. You have to have the best players in the world, so you go after E.J. Tackett, Jason Belmonte, and Anthony Simonsen, who is absolutely phenomenal but he’s also known as a hothead. As you see in the series, he loses his shit all the time. Kyle Troup, who’s known as the most entertaining bowler picks up that mantle from his dad who bowled in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, and understands that this is a sport for viewing. 

All of those guys are established. They’ve all won majors. But what is the grind like for a rookie? That’s where Cameron Crowe came about. We really wanted to show the idea of getting your feet wet for the first time. Cameron is huge. People knew that he would eventually become some sort of superstar. But as in every league, you can come in highly touted, and then you get hit in the face with the whole different universe of being a pro. To experience that through his eyes, it just felt like it was the right mixture. With these being five 30-minute episodes, we didn’t want character overload, so we really stuck with those five. But there are other people like Tim Foy, Chris and Ryan Barnes. Women can also partake and there actually is a woman who won a major event. It’s kind of the equivalent of Serena Williams winning the men’s US Open. There’s a whole world that can be expanded out of all this that is absolutely fascinating.

The series is informative but playful, poking fun at bowling while also taking it seriously. How did you guys land on the tone and decide on using narration? 

JLH: We wanted to make it really easily digestible for anybody. The idea of oil patterns…we had to have all the bowlers explain it to us and we didn’t want to do that to anybody else. It took a long time to dial in on the minimal amount of vernacular that people needed to understand. When Kyle misses the cut in episode one, he says, “I missed it by two pins.” That’s really easy to understand, but if we told you the full breakdown of how that happened, it would be too much swimming in your mind. The other side of that was, how do we make this a great show about amazing people, and it just so happens to be about bowling too. That was our way of going about it and making it a very atypical sports documentary. We didn’t want it to feel like normal sports stuff. It was like we’re living with these guys, and they just so happen to be professional bowlers.

BL: When you think about a movie or a TV show about bowling, there’s kind of an expectation  that it’s going to be a comedy because that’s all that’s ever been made. A critical component to this for us was that we wanted to make sure that there are natural things that are humorous, not only about the characters that we follow, and perhaps even about the sport. There are ball jokes and things like that that you can’t get around. You just can’t. But we were never going to approach this where we’re going to punch down and poke fun. These guys are really proud of being bowlers and that’s important to highlight. Some of these guys are encouraging young kids, and showing people that there is a livelihood here. We wanted to highlight how uniquely entertaining the world and the sport of bowling could be. The unexpected voiceover for a sports documentary was about looking at this in a way that is unexpected and and hopefully that makes it exciting. 

(L-R) Brian Lazarte, Ben Stiller and James Lee Hernandez. Photo: Getty Images

Ben Stiller is a producer. Was there any specific feedback or input that he provided that changed the course of the story?

JLH: We’ve been friends with Ben for a long time…and by that I mean I’ve seen every one of his movies and can recite them all. Ben always plays characters that are a slight outcasts or oddballs in the world. That felt perfect for the world of bowling. Working with someone like him gives that cachet that bowling is bigger than you think it is. The same thing goes with having Liev Schreiber do the voiceover. Having people like that lend their art to this really makes you stop and think, “well, okay, this is definitely going to be something that’s different than I normally would think.” A great note that we got from Ben, right from the beginning, was to make sure that we’re never making fun of anybody. That was always our goal, and that was a thing all of us were aligned on—even though it’s fun, funny, and exciting, we’re never making fun of people or making fun of moments. We’re allowing funny people and funny moments to be funny.

But these guys take what they do deathly seriously, and so will we. 

It’s awards season and Marty Supreme is about a highly ambitious table tennis player—kind of a similar sport to bowling. Do you see your docuseries in conversation with that film at all?

BL: We expect the same ratings and I would love that same awards push. Timothee, if you want to give us a shout-out…we could get a blimp that looks like a bowling ball instead of the orange and blue. Jokes aside, his character in that movie takes what he does so seriously, and table tennis is not a joke to him. He is going to make that happen by hook or by crook, no matter what. It’s the same thing with all of these men and women. They’ve dedicated their lives to something. Earlier today, we talked to Kelly Kulick, who’s the first and only woman to win a major and she said, “maybe I should have picked up a golf club or a tennis racket earlier instead of bowling.” The road to bowling isn’t millions of dollars, but it’s what spoke to her. So there are definitely similarities in that realm.

What’s your high score?

JLH: Mine is 224.

BL: In my head, as the 13-year-old professional bowler, I was hitting 300s back-to-back. In reality, I think it’s a 220.

Radhika Menon (@menonrad) is a film and TV writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared on Vulture, Teen Vogue, ELLE, and more. She is the co-host of the podcast PromRad with fellow Decider contributor Proma Khosla. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.