ESPN Films does Todd Marinovich story

The producers of a documentary on the troubled life of USC football phenom Todd Marinovich premiering tonight on ESPN write that "for six months we tried to track him down and were greeted with radio silence. Then one day the phone rang. 'Don't you know I'm a recluse...' Thus began our own crazy journey." More from Andrew Stephan and John Dorsey:

Since he was a boy, Todd Marinovich has been pushed toward the spotlight -- first by a father looking to build him up, then by the media eager to tear them both down. Our job was to convince sports most infamous recluse to turn the spotlight on himself and reveal the real person behind his own notorious persona.

Todd's initial hesitation was understandable. He had been branded a failure and his father, a monster.

Even as we started filming, we looked at this story through the lens of the myth we had been sold for decades: part Frankenstein, part Icarus, totally messed up.

What we found was a real life love story between a father and a son.

It's a story that has never been told. We are honored that Todd and his father Marv entrusted us to tell it.

Longtime local journalist Erik Himmelsbach Weinstein was a supervising producer on "The Todd Marinovich Project."