it's 2:41am on september 29th, 1964, and marty and ellen stern have just given birth to one of the most influential talents in film and tele…oops..hang on…change that. It's 2:42am on September 29th, 1964, and marty and ellen stern have just given birth to two of the most influential talents in film and television.
So reads the introduction to the website of Lookalike Productions, a petit page of text resting in front of a fuchsia background, a newborn's nursery in HTML. There are no capital letters −− those would only draw unnecessary attention to the cyberspace residence of two of the entertainment industry's biggest production stars. Bold text, and any other extraneous font for that matter, was swapped for all things pink. Lisa Lax and Nancy Stern Winters, producers of "Unmatched" −− the latest documentary in ESPN's critically acclaimed 30−for−30 series −− and 1986 Tufts graduates, didn't used to like pink; it was too girly for them. They're more into sports instead.
Beneath the minute−by−minute hospital account listed on the website, atop a flowing list of achievements, framed on the left by a scrapbook−like ribbon, reads the most important distinction, the embodiment of Lookalike: identical twin sisters
For you see, dozens of producers have won Emmy Awards and Cine Golden Eagles. Trophies are weightless when compared to the immeasurable power of blood. Monetary value can be placed on statues and plaques, but family stays priceless, the ideal end to a MasterCard commercial.
The active staple of any set of twins are "twin moments" −− frequent instances of seemingly magic cognitive links between the two, manifested in identical actions beyond the typical dress−alike theme created by parents obsessed with creating a real−life house of mirrors.
Lisa and Nancy finish each other's sentences, sure, but even best friends do that on occasion. No, these twin moments seem intertwined in the cosmos, a divine −− and sometimes inexplicable −− connection. Case in point: When Nancy was working with ABC, on her way to becoming the first woman to produce the Tour de France, she was called into the president of ABC Sports to be informed of a promotion. When she returned to her office, five sticky notes blanketed her phone, all saying "call your sister." Turns out, at the exact instance that Nancy was offered her new position, Lisa, over at NBC, was called into her boss' office as well, and given the exact same promotion.
It was no twin moment that led Nancy and Lisa to open Lookalike Productions in 2003; rather, it was the desire to work together for the first time since the twins teamed up on the tennis courts and the lacrosse fields at Tufts in the ‘80s that led to the joint creation of their company and, ultimately, the decision to make "Unmatched," which will air Tuesday night at 8 p.m. on ESPN, with SportsCenter anchor Hannah Storm.
The "work" subsection on the Lookalike website looks more like a sports fan's bucket list than actual labor: Six Olympics. College football. 1994 Goodwill Games. Monday Night Football. The Little League World Series. The mind boggles at the history documented under the direction of Lisa and Nancy. Noticeably absent from the list, however, is a documentary about tennis −− a collaborative effort about the sport the twins loved so dearly while growing up and played during their years at Tufts.
That all changed when ESPN, in the middle of lining up producers for 30−for−30, approached Lisa and Nancy with the possibility of producing a story. Any story, really. It was up to the twins to decide the subject and the direction.
The brilliance of 30−for−30, named as such because of the 30 films to be produced in honor of ESPN's 30−year anniversary, lies in the filmmakers and their desires to see their passion project through from an open canvas all the way to the screen. Lisa and Nancy batted around different female sports stories, ultimately returning with a pitch that would feature Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, two of the most dominant tennis players in history −− male or female −−, subjects of one of the greatest rivalries in sports and childhood idols of Lisa and Nancy.
No two athletes have met in as many matches or world championships as Evert and Navratilova. Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier met three times. Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe squared off on 14 occasions. Chrissie and Martina, as the twins affectionately call them, met 80 times. Eighty. From 1975 to 1986, one of the two was ranked No. 1 in the world at the end of each professional season, each totaling 18 Grand Slams over their careers.
Aside from the personal impact the rivalry had on their tennis games and love for athletics −− Lisa's application essay to Tufts in the early ‘80s focused on her idolization of Evert −− the matchup's effect on the sports world is hardly lost on the film's producers.
"At the very beginning, [the rivalry] wasn't televised," Lisa said. "But I think Martina and Chrissie put women's sports on the map … the rivalry between the two of them made it universal. They made men interested."
It's a tricky thing, getting men involved in women's sports. Eighty-three percent of ESPN's viewers are male. Especially in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, athletics belonged to men. The Battle of the Sexes between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, widely held as the impetus for gender inclusion, occurred in 1973, one year after the implementation of Title IX. But Evert−Navratilova became the staple for a sport and, more importantly, for a gender, creating a transcendent rivalry that appealed to all fans, male or female.
"I was watching the U.S. Open, and the announcer was interviewing Frank Robinson and Hank Aaron," Amanda Postel, a 2007 Tufts graduate who worked with Lookalike to produce the film. "They were talking about how Kim [Clijsters] was their favorite athlete to watch. I think that's incredible in itself, that these two amazing baseball athletes loved to watch her play."
Behind the polarized relationship on the court −− realistically, they never shared the same emotions throughout the rivalry; tennis has no ties, one always emerged victorious and one always lost −− remains an unconquerable friendship between Navratilova and Evert, a near−impossible feat in today's sports world. But Chrissie and Martina had an unmatched rivalry; it's only natural that their friendship follows the same path.
"I don't know if I could be as close friends as that with someone from Williams. All I wanted to do was kick their butts," said a laughing Nancy, eventually pausing to collect her thoughts. "Actually, it was probably Trinity."
Throughout their "rivalship" −− a combination of rivalry and friendship, as dubbed by the New York Times' Greg Bishop −− the two stars always held up a promise: When the rackets were finally put away, Martina, 53, and Chrissie, 55, would sit down over a glass of wine and reflect on the experience. So Lisa and Nancy −− the twins with the indestructible relationship of best friends −− took Navratilova and Evert −− the best friends with the cerebral connection of twins −− onto Long Island, N.Y., for five days of uninterrupted, candid discussion.
"A lot of documentaries use journalists, but we wanted to tell their story from their mouths only," Nancy said. "The concept was to get them together for an extended period of time, and talk about the way it was and the way it is. Their rivalry is amazing, but what's even more amazing is their friendship."
Not to be outdone by the zealous queens of the court, particularly while getting chummy with them at the luscious beach house in Amagansett, Lisa and Nancy brought tremendous passion and intensity to creating the documentary, an approach that harkens back to their playing days at Tufts. As captains of the lacrosse and tennis teams, the twins frequently led painting expeditions, a demonstration of spirit displayed in motivational phrases brushed onto the roofs of buildings.
"In anything you have in life, and when you're trying to lead a team," Lisa explained, "you have to make everyone else around you feel passionate about what you're doing, whether it's the film or the sport or the team or the TV show. Like any good leader, you have to share that passion. And I think that was something we were successful at at Tufts, and I think that's something that comes across on the screen."
"We don't take projects anymore that are just random," Nancy said. "Everything we take, we have to feel extremely passionate about, in order to take us away from our kids and our lives. We feel strongly about this one; it doesn't really compare."
The twins are currently editing a film for the United States Figure Skating Association about the 1961 Sabena Flight 548 plane crash over Belgium that killed the entire U.S. figure skating team en route to the World Championships in Prague, while simultaneously awaiting the worldwide release of "Unmatched."
Films like these are often deemed successful based on ratings, the mere placement of a decimal on a sheet of paper sandwiched between two arbitrary numbers. All that matters now for Lisa Lax and Nancy Stern Winters, however, is that they're still together producing groundbreaking films and telling important stories.
For to tell the tale of an unmatched rivalry and friendship, only an equally unmatched sisterly bond will do.
