Johnnie Cochran and O.J. Simpson in “Unfinished Business”

Johnnie Cochran

[to O.J.] Have you forgotten who you are? These walls around you don’t change that. You know what you mean to people? [O.J. does not answer] Okay. Well, then let me tell you what you were once to me. 1978, I just left private practice, gone back to the LA D.A. Gonna be the first black assistant attorney in office. Gonna change things from the inside. Shit… That wasn’t happening. Same old shit, same rigged system. Feeling powerless for the first time in my life. And then my first marriage blows up in my face. My children won’t talk to me. I’m a failure at work. I’m a failure at home. I was down, brother. I was way down. Sunday, sitting on my bed, surrounded by dead-end paperwork and divorce lawyer bills, drinking beer – all right, maybe a little too much beer – feeling sorry for myself, watching a football game, all alone. Crappy TV. 49ers vs the Falcons. What I saw you do on that field, that day, somehow, as I was watching, it became as if you were running for me. Driving up that field, crowded with adversity and obstacles, getting knocked on your ass, and then popping right back up again! See, that’s what I wanted to do out there on them streets, back home with my troubles there but couldn’t. But you, you, you… You willed what you needed to do into being, with nothing but grace.

O.J. Simpson

I scored a touchdown that day.

Johnnie Cochran

You did. And when they cut away to the commercial, there you were again, leaping through the airport for Hertz, breaking another barrier with charisma, humor, intelligence. A black man as the public face for one of the world’s biggest corporations.

O.J. Simpson

We lost that game.

Johnnie Cochran

I don’t remember that. I remember everything about that game, but not that, because it didn’t have nothing to do with what touched me. And when the game was over, I got the hell up off that bed, and jogged the six blocks back to my office, and got right back to work, and haven’t stopped and wallowed in self-pity since that day. You did that for me. Just like you’ve done for so many others. Because you are O.J. Simpson. You are O.J. Simpson, and you are an inspiration.