'Linsanity' Director Speaks Out On Making Jeremy Lin Movie

The story of Jeremy Lin's rise to basketball stardom started out as "bittersweet," according to filmmaker Evan Jackson Leong, who directed the "Linsanity" movie documenting Lin's storied 2011-12 NBA season.

"I think we have to go back and know that we were shooting this when he was at Harvard. I was at MTV; I was using my vacation days to film him. At that point in the documentary, we didn't really have a great ending. We had a bittersweet story. He made it to the NBA, which is amazing in itself, but it wasn't a very good start to his career," Leong, who worked for MTV News before he left while shooting Lin's documentary, told MTV News this week.

And then, something that Leong didn't predict began happening; Lin began turning heads--a lot of them--beginning with a Feb. 4, 2012 New York Knicks win against New Jersey, when he scored 25 points for New York.

It all snowballed from there, Leong remembered.

"That first game, he gave us an ending. And that second game, he gave us an ending, and he just kept going. We were just blown away. We didn't even know what happened. We're like, "Oh yeah, we're shooting a documentary!" And we have all the access before anyone else does," he said.

That access from Lin's college days to his rise to NBA fame culminated with the debut of Leong's highly- anticipated documentary "Linsanity," which played at the renown Sundance Film Festival Sunday.

Lin, who flew in to prepare for Houston's game against Utah in Salt Lake City, was also on-hand to see the film with several of his Houston Rockets teammates.

According to Leong, one of the things that took time cultivating was Lin's trust. Once that was developed, he was able to allow the lens to see Lin more personally.

One of the things he learned was that Lin wasn't as crazy about the name "Linsanity" as most fans were.

"Maybe the second game I heard it, and I texted that to Jeremy and he didn't text me back. And then I realized I don't think he liked it that much. He didn't like the name. He likes Jeremy; he doesn't like using everything as Lin puns," he said.

With Lin being Asian American, racism was one of the things that played heavily into the documentary.

"He's an Asian guy, and there's not a lot of Asian-Americans that high in the media," Leong said. "So when they do reach that level, they are going to be exposed, and there's going to be stuff that comes out. What I really wanted to try and do and show on this documentary was the evolution of how he dealt with that, because it was new to us, but he's been dealing with that his whole life."

"And I think we can learn from how he deals with it now. In the documentary, you see he has a little bit of a chip on his shoulder when he's younger, a little bit of something to prove. He realizes that playing for that - those reasons - those aren't the right reasons to play. By the end, I think we can all learn from how he deals with race. If everyone looked at racism in that sense, by letting it go and focusing that energy, I think what he did outshines any of that stuff by a tremendous amount," Leong added.

Ultimately, though, what Leong will remember most is the journey that the film took--one he hopes will last for years to come.

"We ended it with Linsanity because I wanted to make this a legacy film. Ten years from now, 20 years from now, I want to be able to show my kids, and I hope that he can show his kids, that this is what happened," he said.