Hockey god Teemu Selänne famously used a video on YouTube to announce recently he was coming back to the Anaheim Ducks for another season.
Next we'll get a glimpse into the entire man in a new documentary Sel8nne from Finnish director JP Siili (Härmä, Ganes).
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Teemu Selänne Uses Golf Club and Funny Video to Announce He's Back with Anaheim Ducks
Interest will be high in the States and Finland because ol' No. 8 is bound for the NHL Hall of Fame and is considered the best Finnish ice hockey player of all time.
OC Weekly's first People Issue! Teemu Selänne: No Flash In the Pan
Siili has promised to go well beyond the highlights, chronicling Selänne's journey from childhood to the latest NHL season, with interviews not just from the subject himself but loved ones and colleagues. Keep in mind that while fans love Selänne here, he's akin to a rock star in his homeland. Selänne had apparently resisted making himself available for such a project until he saw a documentary on Finnish soccer legend Jari Litmanen.
“… I'm interested in the anatomy of the superstar, to go under the skin with the viewer,” Siili recently said in a Sports Illustrated post. “But to show who Teemu really is as a person, how he became what he is today, what experiences he's had with wins and losses, sacrifices and learning experiences and what will he take from all this after his career.”
Here's the trailer:
For now, the film is only set to play in Finland, but given the international appeal of the subject–and the ability to, uh, see stuff everywhere these days–it should not be long before it lands on our shores. 30 for 30, anyone?
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.