It’s been interesting to see Peter Berg come into his own as a director. I first interviewed him for The Rundown when he was still an actor turned director. Now he makes Will Smith blockbusters. His next project is a film for ESPN’s 30 for 30 series. He will provide a documentary on Wayne Gretzky (King's Ransom) as the sports network looks back on their first 30 years on the air.

Q: What was your interest in hockey?

Peter Berg: I played hockey as a kid.  I was a better hockey player than I was a football player, and I enjoyed the sport more, so I've always had a personal interest and been a big fan of the sport.  And I developed a relationship of friendship with Wayne about 20 years ago when he invited me to play in a softballgame in Brantford, Ontario, and the friendship stayed. And I was very fortunate enough to be able to get to know someone that existed at that level of athlete, that very rare level of athlete who is just so incredibly talented that it was very inspiring to me, and I wanted to pay my respects to Wayne in his greatness.

Q: How much involvement has Gretzky had in the film?

Peter Berg: I don't know what the other guys' experiences were, but Wayne is a very humble, and in many ways, a very shy person who initially was interested but was certainly not chomping at the bit for this to happen, and there's a little coaxing, a little talking.  And first he really was sort of into it, but then as he started kind of really reliving that experience and we were really dusting off the memories and dusting off the emotions, realized it was such a key moment of his life, such a formative and pivotal moment of his life.  He's become more interested and calling a little bit and checking up and wanting to know what's going on and if there's anything else we need, and it's just interesting to see him get more enthusiastic about it as he got closer to it.

Q: You’ve been quoted in favor of Gretzky’s trade. Are you aware how the Canadians feel differently?

Peter Berg: For me, I was in Paris when my friend called me and woke me up in the middle of the night. We had been huge Los Angeles Kings fans.  The Kings, prior to Gretzky, I think the average attendance was somewhere between 3500 and 3600 a game, and that would be at the beginning of the game and it would probably go down to, like, half of that at the end of the game. And so we would buy tickets for cheap and then sit at the glass at the end of the game.  We were big hockey fans and very sort of frustrated because the Kings were so horrible, and the market was just so nonexistent. So my friend called me kind of screaming, "We got Gretzky.  We got Gretzky."  And I thought he was joking, and I immediately realized. I think the thing that was so dramatic for me was realizing that, as much as it was going to mean to changing the dynamics of a sport in one city, it was an equal blow to a city like Edmonton.  I mean, that's what I thought of more, that how this community, which, really, its identity was, in so many ways, not just hockey but specifically an identity that was very much wrapped around one individual.  To have that individual ripped from that community in the height of his talent, I was aware that there were larger issues.  And then, it felt like a national issue for not only Edmonton, but for Canada, and that was one of the aspects of the story that made me want to do a documentary about it.

Q: Has your directing career gone according to plan? You do a low budget comedy, jump to an action vehicle, then an acclaimed drama, a political film and ultimately a superhero blockbuster.

Peter Berg: Only in that I’ve been fortunate and been able to do things that I like and work and do work that inspires me. This is a perfect example of that. To have someone like Bill Simmons approach me and say, “Pick anything, anything in sports.” I love sports. “Pick anything, any aspect of sports you’re at all interested in and we’ll let you go make a doc about it.” That, to me, ties into a pattern of a career where I’m just fortunate to be able to do things that really inspire me.

Q: But that happens now that you’ve earned the clout?

Peter Berg: I guess. It helps but I’ve worked hard. I guess if you do consistently work hard and follow your real creative instincts, good things can happen.

Q: Are they clamoring for a Hancock 2?

Peter Berg: Yeah, they are. They are. We’re writing it now. As we speak, it’s being written.

Q: Does the studio want to fast track it?

Peter Berg: They probably do more than we do.

Q: Would it pick up where the last one left off with Hancock staying away so they can keep their strength?

Peter Berg: Yes, yes.

Q: Is documentary another new territory for you? How do you feel about this genre?

Peter Berg: Well, good. I worked on one documentary a long time ago about a UFC fighter that developed a heroine addiction. I loved doing it. Davis Guggenheim’s a good friend of mine. He’s a very well known director, won the Oscar for Inconvenient Truth. I love a challenge so the idea of doing something new and different and working in a doc format was very appealing to me because it was something different.

Q: You were an early adopter of a documentary style in narrative films. Does this pay it off?

Peter Berg: I don't know, I don't think so. I don't think they came to me for that. I do like realism. I think you’ll actually see, my documentary’s probably more stylized than most of the other ones, than a lot of the other work I’ve done.

Q: Did you create a monster with handheld style?

Peter Berg: Sometimes. I’m over it. I’m a little over it but I understand why people do it. It’s very freeing and liberating. There’s pros to it. Sometimes I feel like it’s getting a little overused.

Q: Friday Night Lights must be such a blessing to get four seasons and counting.

Peter Berg: I don't know, I don't know. We’re lucky. Bill Simmons was giving me a hard time about that today. He said, “No high school show’s ever gotten more than three seasons.” He’s giving me a whole lecture on all the white shadow pitfalls as he calls them. We cast five new football players yesterday, five new young actors yesterday. Hopefully we’ll be able to really infuse the show with some new student energy.

Q: And you’re back on NBC?

Peter Berg: Yes.

Q: Were you happy or disappointed with Virtuality?

Peter Berg: You know, frustrated that it didn’t go further but I think Ron Moore and Michael Taylor were trying to do something really unique. Whenever you’re trying to do something really unique in television, you’ve got to pretty much resign yourself to the fact you’re probably not going to succeed. I think creatively I was really happy with the critical response and I’m surprised how many people have come up now and said, “You know, I saw that show on Hulu” or “I finally got…” It really was an interesting experience and sci-fi was something I’d never done. I was honored to work with Ron Moore who I think is very talented.