For a man whose career was in limbo, NBA player Robin Lopez looked beatific: engrossed in a book, with a soda pop and a box of popcorn close at hand. Adding to the incongruity of the scene, Robin was not lounging on a sofa in his living room; rather, he was sitting courtside at a Bucks game, the team that had traded him away earlier that day, Feb. 9. Next to the 7-foot-1, 35-year-old center was his mother, who was intensely focused on watching her other son, Brook, play.
So what does one read on a portentous evening like this? Given his current state of flux, perhaps he dusted off that classic guide to career changes, What Color is Your Parachute?
The answer was much more bewildering. The title was Backstory 2 by Milwaukee’s own Patrick McGilligan.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
How did this come to be? Why would Robin be so highly interested in a 30-year-old, out-of-print book that consists of interviews with screenwriters from the Golden Age of Hollywood? Was he thinking of entering show business? Or perhaps Lopez and McGilligan were friends, and McGilligan gave him a copy?
That was not the case. McGilligan, who has written about two dozen books, many of them about Hollywood and actors, knew nothing of Lopez. He heard about this public display of reading, which has since gone viral, from his son.
“My youngest son had flown in from New Jersey to go to a Bucks game with friends of his from youth. So he came home from the game, and he said, ‘Dad, a Bucks player was reading your book at the game.’ And I said, ‘That’s highly unlikely.’ And then he told me which book, and I was doubly skeptical.”
— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) February 9, 2024
In the realm of screenwriting, the term backstory refers to what happened before the story kicks off; all of the elements that led the characters to this particular point in time. For Robin Lopez, the backstory was a little bleak: He’d been ousted by the Bucks, traded for next to nothing. His new team, Sacramento, didn’t want him. So far this season, he averaged 4.1 minutes on the floor per game and only 1.1 points. At the age of 35, was his NBA career over? Meanwhile, his twin brother, Brook, was playing 31.5 minutes per game, averaging 13 points and continuing his dominant defensive presence in the paint. Just a few days prior, Brook and his model-beautiful wife, Hailee, welcomed their first child. And as our story begins, we see Brook on the court, playing his heart out, while Robin sits on the sidelines, with an Alfred E. Neuman, “What, Me Worry??” grin.
I asked McGilligan what his best guess was, in terms of why Robin chose that particular book on that particular night. He pondered the question. While the Backstory series (there are five volumes) was very successful in its genre, primarily among academics and serious film buffs. “It shows either a real aficionado or a guy who was browsing the used bookstores and said, hey, this looks interesting. But either way, this is a guy who is interested in either writing, because it’s all about how writers write, or film, or film and writing.”
The plot thickens: A report in the Journal Sentinel stated that last fall, Robin was seen reading Bogie & Bacall by William J. Mann.
When I’m editing #Bucks media day photos and Robin Lopez sits down near me and starts reading a book. The book? “Bogie & Bacall” about the romance between Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. He said it was “pretty good.” pic.twitter.com/RgfmIwlcaF
— Mike De Sisti (@mdesisti) October 3, 2023
“William Mann, he’s a gold medal biographer of Hollywood, he’s as good as it gets,” says McGilligan. “And that shows not just interest in the subject, but that shows taste and sophistication.” Two points for Robin!
Having hit a dead end in getting to the why of Robin’s book choice, my curiosity turned to McGilligan’s backstory. How did a kid from Madison end up making a career out of writing about Hollywood?
“I was a young boy in about 1956, and Annette Funicello’s mom knocked on our door asking for directions,” McGilligan recalls. “[Annette] was shooting a TV serial at a farm outside of Madison. My father gave her lemonade and took her in the backyard and showed her how nice Lake Mendota looked.” That led to Mama Funicello, Annette and her co-stars returning a few days later for a backyard picnic and some waterskiing. It left an impression on the young McGilligan. “That was the seed of, oh, there’s another world out there somewhere.”
McGilligan writes about this incident in his recently finished memoir. His latest bio, of Woody Allen, is slated to be published by HarperCollins later in 2024.
And as for Robin, he is still sidelined, awaiting his next move. And the mystery behind his choice of reading material remains unresolved.
