It’s been nearly 27 years since Atlanta hosted the 1996 Summer Olympic Games — an occasion that changed the city forever.
Soon the story of the Atlanta Games will be told in a documentary film: “The Games in Black & White.”
The documentary, the first by Atlanta Story Partners, will highlight the unique partnership and friendship between Ambassador Andrew Young and Olympic CEO Billy Payne, who successfully brought the Centennial Games to Atlanta by harnessing the city’s civil rights history.
The movie is the brainchild of two Atlanta creative leaders — George Hirthler and Bob Judson — who were present every step of the way as the city ventured on an improbable global quest to attract the Centennial Games to Atlanta. They formed the film production company — Atlanta Story Partners — in 2020 to tell the story of the 1996 Games by highlighting Young and Payne.
“It’s really a story to cement how the Games coming to Atlanta helped frame the Civil Rights story of Atlanta,” said Hirthler, who wrote the Atlanta bid for the 1996 Games – turning that into a 30-year career helping other aspiring Olympic cities to tell their stories. “We want the takeaway of this film to be another triumph for Atlanta.”
Atlanta can be a model for other cities, Judson said in a recent joint interview with Hirthler. Judson is a veteran filmmaker, producer and director who has worked off-and-on with Hirthler for more than 35 years.
The two got together in August of 2019 for one of their regular visits. “Within two minutes, we concluded we should do a documentary about the 1996 Olympics,” Hirthler said.
They quickly began production, bringing Young and Payne in for interviews on Jan. 7, 2020.
“We finished 14 to 15 interviews by the time COVID shut us down,” Hirthler said. “We ran out of money. But we kept developing the stories.
Then, last summer, they secured enough corporate support to complete the project. They resumed production in October 2022, and they now have 35 interviews with key players in the can.
“Billy and Andy have been immensely supportive the whole time,” Hirthler said. “We are casting this partnership as the most successful Black and White partnership in Atlanta’s history. Martin Luther King’s dream and the Olympics dream are basically the same.”
The 90-minute documentary, which will be released next spring before the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris, will be told in three acts: the bid, the Games and the legacy.
As a journalist who covered Atlanta during those three acts, the 1996 Summer Olympics made a profound mark on our city. Between 1988 and 1996, Atlanta’s place in the world catapulted to new heights. There was the 1988 Democratic National Convention, the 1991 “Worst to First” Atlanta Braves — winning the 1995 World Series, the 1994 Super Bowl and then the biggest prize of all — the 1996 Games.
“In many ways, it was Atlanta’s golden age,” Young said in an interview on June 24. “The Olympics gave Atlanta an instant global identity.”
Young, however, said race was not the driving story. Instead, he saw Atlanta getting the Olympics almost as a religious quest he shared Payne shared — combined with a network of global contacts that emanated from Atlanta.
“We were more in tune with the world,” Young said of why Atlanta was awarded the Games on Sept. 18, 1990, during the International Olympic Committee’s meeting in Tokyo.
Plus, there was his friendship with Payne. “We were very close.”
Young recalled being in Tokyo, where he was a guest on The Today Show, anxiously waiting for the announcement. “There was so much hanging on that vote; I literally started crying in the back of the limousine.”
Then, he met up with Payne, who also was overcome with nervous emotion.
“There was so much anxiety,” Young said. “We had a good cry together. It was almost like we had pulled together a miracle. It was as if we were part of providence and destiny. I saw it as a religious thing.”
Ed Hula, founder of “Around the Rings” — a global publication that covered the Olympics for decades, said the Games transformed Atlanta.
“I associate the Olympics with internationalization of Atlanta — how it has become more of a world city. We proved ourselves,” Hula said. “I attribute that to the success of the Olympics.”
But Hula also reflected that the story needs to be told because many people alive today weren’t even born at the time of the Olympics. And many Atlantans have moved here since the Olympics.
“It was an exciting time in Atlanta,” Hula said. “There was a constant flow of people and test events. There were the construction projects. Atlanta just had a buzz and electricity in the air as we got ready for 1996.”
One of the greatest legacies of the Games was the creation of Centennial Olympic Park.
“It was Billy’s idea to create a park,” Young said.
“No other central city park has been created as a result of the Olympics,” said Hula, who was in Lausanne, Switzerland last week to receive the Barron Pierre de Coubertin Medal from the IOC.
The only other Medal recipient with Atlanta ties is Hirthler, who got the honor in 2022 for his devotion to telling the story of the de Coubertin, the French educator and historian who founded the modern Olympic movement in the late 1800s.
Hirthler wrote a novel — “The Idealist” — based on de Coubertin.
By the way, Atlanta Story Partners is working on two other film projects, including “Genius of Sport” detailing de Coubertin’s life, and “Shu — the Story of Florence Knoll.” Additional details for both those projects, which are seeking funding, will be released later this year.
Meanwhile, Hula reflected on the prestige Atlanta received for hosting the Olympics — a feat that will be hard to match.
“There will be another chance for Atlanta to reach for the stars. I’m not sure what it will be,” said Hula, not discounting the idea the city could host the Olympics again. “Why not? Paris and London have done it.”
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