Screwball

A small clinic opens in Florida: anti ageing treatments, hormone programmes and vitamin injections. Anthony Bosch, who runs it, is not a doctor. Baseball players are among his clients and what he supplies is performance enhancing drugs. Over the years some of the best known athletes go there. Then a dispute over money arises; an employee gives the books to a newspaper and the file breaks open. Billy Corben directs. The documentary was released in 2019. Its formal decision is unusual: the events are reenacted by children in costume. Children play the scenes over the voices of the adults, which makes the absurdity of it directly visible. The subject is not doping but who informed on whom, who was squeezing money out of whom, and how the institutions managed it. The baseball league used unusual methods in conducting its investigation, and the documentary treats that too. Bosch speaks to camera and denies nothing. Billy Corben is known for crime documentaries centred on Florida, and his manner is fast, sardonic and dense. Who it is for: viewers who follow true crime documentary and scandals in sport. Who it is not for: the reenactment device is too much for some, the subject is scattered, and the names are confusing for anyone who does not know baseball.