Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself

Co-founder of The Paris Review, George Plimpton (1927–2003) was a fascinated and fascinating journalist who lived fully, strangely and incredibly. With George Plimpton’s own narration, the film includes extensive archival footage of his sport stunts and participatory journalism gigs, and interviews with friends, family and contemporaries. Premieres nationally Friday, May 16, 9-10:30 p.m. on PBS.

For the April 1, 1985, issue of Sports Illustrated, George Plimpton profiled Sidd Finch, an incredible rookie baseball pitcher for The New York Mets. The story was too good to be true, and Plimpton asked his then personal assistant at The Paris Review, the now famous author Jonathan Dee, to keep the joke alive while Plimpton was traveling. Dee recalls the hoax in this web exclusive from Plimpton!

Writer Peter Matthiessen (May 22, 1927 – April 5, 2014) co-founded the prestigious literary magazine The Paris Review in 1953, along with George Plimpton (whom Matthiessen grew up with and recruited) and Harold L. Humes. In an interview he gave for "Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself," Matthiessen fondly recollects the new writing and established authors featured in The Paris Review.

George Plimpton was famous for shaping one of the country's most prestigious literary magazines, all while keeping it fun. He encouraged his young staff and created an informal community with plenty of apartment parties and sports activities. Robert Silvers of <em>The New York Review of Books</em> calls Plimpton "a ringmaster of a little circus."

Writer and journalist George Plimpton (1927–2003) did not show much early promise when he flunked out of the college preparatory school Exeter (Phillips Exeter Academy), where his family held an esteemed reputation. In a film excerpt, Plimpton's son reads his father's essay: "How Failing at Exeter Made a Success of George Plimpton.” Tune in to PBS on Friday, May 16 at 9 pm for the full film.

In this film excerpt, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recalls his father's admiration for Plimpton. "My father admired George for his courage, he had a curiosity about life and I think that’s the thing that probably attracted my father the most to him," says Kennedy, Jr. "Like my father, he saw life as a great adventure." Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself airs May 16, 2014 at 9 pm on PBS.

"It was like a light on top of the Empire State Building went out when he died," says filmmaker Ric Burns about Plimpton's death in 2003. "You felt like he couldn't die. His indescribably handsome, boyish quality kept on giving the older he got. His eternally adolescent, prep school energy promised to keep on going." A web exclusive outtake from "Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself."

Author Jay McInerney says that George Plimpton "liked to tell people that he had saved me from becoming a pharmacist." It was Plimpton who published McInerney's first story ever in "The Paris Review" in 1982, which formed the basis for the iconic novel, "Bright Lights, Big City." This is a web exclusive outtake from "Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself," airing May 16 at 9 pm on PBS.