Doyle Brunson aka Texas Dolly is getting his own documentary film, but this one seems a little bit extra special because it will be helmed by Jason Heir, the director from Michael Jordan's "The Last Dance", which was a huge hit for ESPN and Netflix last year. Heir is producing and directing the untitled documentary about the legendary Doyle Brunson, which also does not have a release date.
It was only a matter of time before someone took the plunge. Love him or hate him, Doyle Brunson has been a part of the poker world for more than a half of a century and the legendary Texas road gambler banked millions in winnings along with ten World Series of Poker bracelets during an iconic career.
Texas Dolly himself broke the news on Twitter and the entire poker community lost their mind.
"They are making a documentary about my life now," tweeted @TexDolly. "It has been going on for a month and is going to be a lot longer. Same group that did The Last Dance is doing it."
The Last Dance was directed by Jason Heir, who had done numerous other documentaries for ESPN. His resume includes a 30 for 30 documentary film about Michigan's quintet of freshman superstars known as the Fab Five from the 1990s. Heir also directed short doc films for ESPN over the years. "The Last Dance" was a ten-part miniseries that appeared on ESPN last year during the apex of the pandemic. Even if you didn't like basketball, it seems like so many non-sports fans watched "The Last Dance" to learn about the crazy life and times around the world's greatest NBA player and one of the most iconic American athletes in Michael Jordan.
And now, the same crew behind The Last Dance focus their efforts on a legendary poker pro who was larger than live for over five decades in Texas and Sin City.
Brunson played poker against the premier players in the world since the 1960s. He won the WSOP main Event twice and shipped ten total WSOP bracelets over his career. If he didn't have a feud with the Binion family, he could've won more. And as Brunson often said, if he knew bracelets would be so damn important, he would've played a lot more events back in the day.
These days, Brunson is retired but he is very active on Twitter with an extreme right-wing slant, which makes him a controversial figure on social media.
Brunson's life would make a great film, let alone a documentary, as the former star athlete turned to poker after a serious injury. Like many of us that go into poker, Brunson struggled with living a square life and holding down a 9-to-5 job. He started playing poker in his time off but quickly realized he could make more money at the tables than hustling a normie life and job. Brunson played the rough and tumble Texas road circuit and chased high stakes games against wealthy oilmen and other country club types all over the southwest before poker blew up in Las Vegas as a legal entity. Brunson moved to Sin City and the rest is history.
The new doc film about Tex Dolly should hit all the highlights in his career including the Main Event wins, ten bracelets, nosebleed stakes in Vegas, beating billionaire Andy Beal, becoming a pitchman of his own online poker room, surviving cancer, and finally accepting that his son, Todd, wanted to follow in his footsteps in the family business.
Stay tuned for more details on the release date. In the meantime, it might be time to dust off that Tex Dolly screenplay I penned like 15 years ago.
