Rachael Gunn AKA Raygun‘s Instagram profile conveys three things: She’s 1) “not retired” from breakdancing, 2) available on Cameo and 3) “embracing the chaos.”
A key component to that final point is her participation in Untold: Raygun, out Monday on Netflix.
Untold, which to this point is a compilation of 26 feature-length sports documentaries (29 if you count spinoff series Untold UK), hails from Chapman and Maclain Way, the filmmaking brothers also behind Wild Wild Country and The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga. If anybody could convince Gunn to re-live the disastrous 2024 Paris Games’ Breakdancing event while staring directly into their Interrotron, it’s the Way boys.
It helped a bit that the Australian breakdancer had already agreed to participate in a locally produced documentary for Warner Bros. — the Ways’ Stardust Frames Production and Warner Bros. International Television Production Australia ultimately teamed up for this gem, the standout installment of the new Untold season.
When they first spoke, Gunn was still “making sense of the whole thing,” Chapman said. “It was just like right time, right place.”
The time was 18 months post-Paris and the place was Taiwan, where Rachael was making her breakdancing comeback. The guys have no ties to the sport (art form?), but they have a deep tie to their mom.
Mac and Chap’s mother (who happens to be Kurt Russell’s sister, hence the fellas’ Battered Bastards of Baseball film), was a hip-hop dance instructor in her day. Following Gunn’s unfortunately-viral Olympics performance, Mama Way got into the Raygun memes, sharing the best of them with her sons. At first, most were “silly fun,” Chapman recalled. But weeks later, the social media discourse turned to scandal: Gunn and her husband Sammy Free AKA Sammy Sex were accused of rigging the Australian qualifiers, paving Raygun’s way to Olympic Village. (They did not, it turns out.)
“We should really investigate this. This is going to be a deep dive,” Chapman told his brother at the time. “It almost could be like a true-crime investigation — like a very serious documentary.”
So Maclain texted their Netflix executive with a simple, “Raygun?” The response, “Yes!”
“We were off and making it at that point,” he said.
Mac and Chap have only personally directed a handful of the Untold films — this one was just “left-of-center” enough for them to back their bags, Chapman said.
Their “very serious documentary” soon turned into “a Coen Brothers” movie, he said. There was no controversy here — not really — rather, Gunn’s story is of an “ordinary person who had been thrust into these extraordinary circumstances.” Or, if you prefer, a wildly unqualified, OK-at-best breakdancer thrust into being an Olympic athlete.
“It was really a story of this impending train wreck that this person knew was going to happen, and still, in a way, kind of had the courage to go out there and do it,” Chap continued.
Gunn was indeed brave, and her performance was indeed a train wreck. The fallout was not any easier on Rachael and Sammy — the surprisingly heartwarming Untold: Raygun ought to change all of that.
Untold: Raygun is currently streaming on Netflix, as are this season’s prior films, Untold: Vince Young and Untold Mr. T.
English (US) ·