Panelists Amy Poehler and Eva Longoria Baston are part of the Sundance Film Festival’s Cinema Cafe series speaking about their documentaries: Lucy and Desi, and La Guerra Civil, respectively.

Via Zoom from Paris, Longoria Baston declares, “This is my first time here as a director with a film!” Poehler is also enjoying her Sundance debut as a director. Glancing at Longoria Baston, she offers, “We’ve both come here in various forms over the years, but it’s very special to be included among all these great documentaries. Speaking for myself, and I’m sure I’m speaking for Eva too when I say that it’s an art form that I so highly respect. To be included is very, very special.”

Poehler talks about her journey to this year’s festival. “I Love Lucy was a show that felt like it came with your TV,” she jokes. “It seems like it never didn’t exist, and it was really interesting to do a documentary about two icons, mavericks, trailblazers, who people feel they know a lot about. We really wanted the story to be about Lucy and Desi because Desi‘s story is often overshadowed by Lucy’s, so we really wanted to highlight them as a team.”

From one comedienne to another, no doubt Lucille Ball made an impact on Poehler during her formative years. “She was a big influence, comedically,” she nods. “And in the research of this film, I also realized how inspired I was by the way she conducted her business, her life, and how she approached her work. And honestly, most importantly, how she and Desi continued their relationship even after its rupture.” The couple was married for twenty years before they divorced in 1960. “If you’re lucky, life is long,” says Poehler. “People change and become different things to you in your life if you allow that to happen. So, I was most impressed by Lucy and Desi’s relationship at the end, to be honest.”

She leans forward. “And actually, Eva’s film is exactly the same way. You can see people reflect back on each other as they bring out the best and worst of each other. It’s always interesting to watch that partnership and that team.”

Longoria Baston’s La Guerra Civil shines a light on the epic rivalry between iconic boxers Oscar De La Hoya, the golden boy from East LA, and Mexican-born Julio César Chávez. Set in the 90s, their matches sparked a cultural divide between Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans. They first squared off in 1996, and then again in a rematch in 1998.

Longoria Baston has known De La Hoya for many years. “He has been my friend for 25 years. He called me and said, ‘Hey, it’s the 25th anniversary of this fight. We really want to make a big deal out of it. Will you direct this documentary?’ And I was like, ‘Oh God, no! A boxing doc? Jabs and punches and stats? No, I don’t want to do that. That’s not interesting to me.’”

But shortly afterward, she realized the tale of these two veterans was about so much more than their expertise in the ring. And like Poehler with I Love Lucy, some of Longoria Baston’s earliest memories were watching these boxing matches. 

“I remember that fight in my household and it actually divided my household, with everyone screaming about it,” she chuckles. “And I was like, ‘What is the big deal?  Aren’t we all rooting for Oscar De La Hoya?’ But my dad was like, ‘No, we are not. We’re rooting for Julio!’

“People chose sides,” she shrugs.  For the fans, watching the matches held more significance than a sporting event. 

“Boxing never shied away from using race to really pit boxers together. Like, the Black guy against the Italian, and the Brit against the American. They use race and nationality to create that tension, but they didn’t realize the nuances in pitting two Mexican boxers against each other. It really split our community,” she recalls. “You see throughout the documentary just how different they are at the beginning. It was the legend versus the up-and-comer, the old guy versus the young guy, and the guy from Mexico against the golden boy from the USA. But by the end of the documentary, you see how similar they are.”

Longoria Baston infused a lot of heart and soul into the story. “I said, the only way I would do it is if I could do it through this lens because I think that’s really interesting. By the end, I was scared to show both Julio and Oscar because I was like, ‘The doc is not really about boxing. Sorry, spoiler alert!’” she laughs. “But they loved the lens through which we did it.

“When you do a documentary, especially a sports doc and especially about a fight that everybody saw, it has to be different. It has to be something you haven’t seen before or heard before or before knew. And I think we really accomplished that.”

Although Poehler’s subjects passed away in the ’80s and she didn’t have the benefit of firsthand information like Longoria Baston, she was given a lot of support from Ball’s estate. “We had incredible support from her daughter, Lucie Arnaz. She provided us with really intimate material,” says Poehler.

“When people become so big and famous, they flatten out. They become very two-dimensional, but Lucy and Desi were people. And people are complicated, and they’re contradictory and they’re not always the most reliable narrator, but you need to hear from them in some way in order to start to understand where they exist in the world. And so that was hugely important. They were the first power couple,” she smiles. “They were branded, they were huge, they were in everyone’s living rooms. And then when they divorced, the country didn’t accept it for a really long time.”

Poehler recognizes a common thread between the two documentaries. “I’m not a boxing fan but I want to see that doc so badly! In the same vein, there are huge I Love Lucy fans, but my goal is for people who know nothing about them but want to watch it,” she says. “What these docs do is connect us as humans and remind us of the human story, no matter the subject. Any subject can be interesting if we feel attached to it somehow emotionally.”

Ball died in 1989 and Arnaz in 1986. If she had the ability to ask them a question, what would it be?

“I really, really wish they were still around,” she laments. “I would just want to be friends with Lucy now that I know about her.” She pauses. “But I would not ask her personal questions, actually, because I think Lucy wasn’t that interested in talking about her life. It was the thing she was the least interested in, so my gift to her would be to not ask her questions. With Desi, I think I’d want to ask him about his music. When you watch him in the film when he’s playing, he’s free.” She smiles. “So, I think I would talk a lot to Desi, and I would just leave Lucy alone.”