![]() One of the fascinating realizations of this was how intertwined Jeanette Lee was in the rise of ESPN 2 because of how prolific women’s pool was on their schedule at the time. After its recent premiere at DOC NYC, the engaging and poignant doc is making its premiere on ESPN as part of the 30 for 30 series on December 13th and Liang spoke about the honor of profiling a rare Asian-American athlete of such renown, reconciling the way she was seen during the ‘90s with how that era is now looked upon today in terms of representation, and how following Lee on her daily routine revealed so much about her. However, Lee faces her greatest challenge to date when Liang finds her, diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer and while she endures physical compromises, her ferocity remains intact as she reflects on an improbable career in which she reached the highest levels of the sport by calling her own shots. While some saw the attention Lee brought as less beneficial to the sport than to herself, “Jeanette Lee Vs.” presents someone who understood how to play the game in more ways than one, not only undaunted in 9-Ball Championships but in navigating the casual sexism and racism that she was going up against as much as any other competitor. ![]() Standing out even among the crowds that had been brought in by the recent popularity of “The Color of Money,” Lee inspired another wave of excitement around the sport once she graduated to nationally televised matches showing her dispatch rivals in style, startling both in terms of her efficiency and her wardrobe, often playing in heels and blouses with plunging necklines that were at odds with how most others approached the pool table. Lee hardly started out as the confident type that became a sensation when ESPN 2 devoted hours of airtime each week to women’s pool in their early days, but Liang traces her toughness back to having difficulty fitting in at school where she was mercilessly mocked as a lone Asian on the playground in Crown Heights, and afflicted with scoliosis that made her retreat even further until finding a safe haven at Chelsea Billiards Hall as a teen. Seeing Lee from another side would come to serve Liang well when she had the opportunity to make a biopic about the woman who had come to be known as “the Black Widow” on the billiards circuit and beyond, dressing the part for her matches when she always appeared as if she was about to attend her opponent’s funeral. “It’s a photo of Jeanette making big muscles in her cocktail dress alongside a WNBA player and a bodybuilder, and I had a same photo from a different angle.” “I actually saw a photo on her wall that I knew was from an event because I had the exact same photo in my photo album at home,” says Liang, who had attended a banquet for the Women’s Sports Foundation, of which Lee had been a prominent board member, when she was a print journalist at the start of her career. When Ursula Liang went to Jeanette Lee’s home in Tampa Bay to interview the professional pool player for the doc “Jeanette Lee Vs.,” the filmmaker was reminded of the last time they had crossed paths two decades earlier.
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