Gauntlet seven sorrows bosses. But Juan Catalan said he was at a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game - not a drive-by shooting - at the time of the murder. And he produced.

NYU film grad Jacob LaMendola visited the “” trivia page on IMDB on a lazy day in 2012, expecting to find frivolities like how many f-bombs Susie Essman dropped in her angriest episode. Instead, the top entry explained that outtakes from “The Carpool Lane” — the season-four installment in which creator and star Larry David evaded traffic by inviting a prostitute to a Dodger game — exonerated a murder suspect.Telling that story became “,” which is now streaming on. It took LaMendola five years to make the 40-minute documentary: “I knew that it was worth taking the time to tell it correctly,” he said.This was the backstory: The victim, 16-year-old Martha Puebla, was shot and killed on her Los Angeles doorstep in May 2003. Three months later, police arrested Juan Catalan, a machinist who resembed a sketch artist’s composite. They believed he had a motive: Days before her death, Puebla testified in a murder case in which Catalan’s brother was a co-defendant, with Catalan looking on. But Catalan pled innocence; that night, he said, he was at a Dodger game with his daughter and some friends. Juan Catalan in “Long Shot”Courtesy of NetflixMelnik learned that the cameras belonged to HBO, consulted their timecoded takes, and was astonished to see Catalan and his daughter returning from a snack run to their row, mere feet from where David stood.

Cellphone tower data also placed Catalan near the stadium. After six months in jail, Catalan was freed and later awarded a $320,000 settlement for police misconduct; four other men were found guilty of Puebla’s murder.LaMendola, who previously directed several shorts, was fascinated by the tricky case — but it also proved to be a tricky story to tell. With the support of his partners at New York production company Hayden 5, he began by flying to California to record five days of interviews with Melnik.

The next year, LaMendola filmed side-by-side interviews with Melnik and Catalan, who have become best friends since their days as attorney and client.Said LaMendola, “It took a long time to convince them both, too, that it was something worth doing,” and build trust; there were also safety concerns about Los Angeles gang activity. “Once we shot those interviews, it was one piece of the puzzle that we would use to try to get financing for like the next piece.

So for four years we would just get together as much money as we could to either shoot an interview or get some archival.”. However, the most coveted interview was with David — and it proved nearly impossible to get. “We hounded him for over a year, just trying to get him to answer our calls,” said LaMendola.Finally, David’s secretary relented. This gave LaMendola had five minutes to convince the press-averse “Seinfeld” co-creator to speak with him on camera.“The very first thing he said when he got on the phone was, ‘There’s no way that I would ever be a part of this,’” LaMendola said. “I think I just went into shock We had gone so far, we had every piece, and I just didn’t want it to end.” So LaMendola began citing examples of how much work he’d done, including visiting Catalan’s brother in prison. David interrupted him: “So wait, you just want to interview me?’” LaMendola said yes and David replied, “‘Okay, I’ll do it.’”On the appointed day, David stayed at least three times longer than his promised 20 minutes, even filling out a crossword puzzle as the 15-person crew maneuvered their “giant” lighting set-up (David told LaMendola, “Oh, shit. You’ve really got a lot of stuff.”).

The “Curb Your Enthusiasm” still that placed Juan Catalan at Dodger Stadium on May 12, 2003Courtesy of NetflixWith help from sales agent Preferred Content, Netflix bought the project in 2016 based on the strength of a single completed scene. Prior to the deal, LaMendola said he pitched “Long Shot” “millions of times,” and each company “had a different idea of what the movie should be” — sports saga, “Curb” folklore, prison plight. However, what LaMendola and Netflix found exciting was “how all of these things played with each other.”Netflix screened “Long Shot” at the 2017 Telluride Film Festival — the same rollout that helped earn the streaming platform its first Academy Award this year, for the documentary short “The White Helmets.” And today, Catalan is a new college student, who continues to work in his family’s machine shop while raising three children. Since his false arrest, he has been to countless more Dodger games.“Long Shot,” now streaming on, will also screen this weekend at the Hamptons International Film Festival.Sign Up.

LA Dodgers fan Juan Catalan, subject of the Netflix documentary, 'Long Shot.' Netflix“Justice is the legal or philosophical theory by which fairness is administered.” —Merriam-Webster DictionaryThe question “Does justice exist?” often crosses my mind. I usually find the answer walking the streets of my hometown, St. Louis, and by tuning in to the evening news. The answer is always “No.” Injustice is handed down daily by those we have entrusted to uphold the dictionary’s high-flown moral philosophy. Speaking personally, I won’t trust “law and order”—including baseball umpires—until law and order begin to respect and value humankind.Keeping that in mind, I will admit that there are moments that help restore my faith.This time around it’s thanks to a 40-minute documentary by Netflix: Long Shot.

Its tagline appropriately reads, “One murder. One unbelievably true story with a Hollywood twist.”In May 2003, 16-year-old Martha Puebla was murdered on the doorstep of her Los Angeles home, mere days after testifying in a gangland murder trial. Police arrested 24-year-old Los Angeles Dodgers fan Juan Catalan at gunpoint, pinning him for the murder.

Catalan’s brother Mario was a co-defendant in the case where Martha testified. Police believed that Catalan had carried out the hit for his brother.“I didn’t do nothing, man. You’ve got the wrong guy.

I have a daughter, manwhy would I do something like this, I would never hurt anyone,” said Catalan on the police interview tapes.The softspoken family man and baseball fan was innocent and had an alibi: Watching the Dodgers lose to the Atlanta Braves, 11-4 in extra innings with his six-year-old daughter, cousin and close friend.Showing the game day tickets to prosecuting attorney Beth Silverman, nicknamed “the Sniper” for never losing a death penalty case, to back up the alibi, Catalan and his attorney Todd Melnik thought it would be enough to prove his innocence. She didn’t buy it.Melnik’s only option to prove Catalan’s innocence was to dig through hours of Dodgers game footage in the hopes off finding a clear image of Catalan. It was a “long shot,” but Melnik was determined to find him among the 56,000 sports fans in the crowd.And he did. But there was a catch: The image wasn’t clear enough. Now, this is where Hollywood comes in.Combing through the Dodgers film logs, Melnik found the name of a production company that was filming at the stadium that day.“It was one I didn’t recognize, so I called the number listed and was connected with someone from HBO,” said Melnik.Turned out that Larry David, the creator of Seinfeld, was filming on location for his HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm. The episode—titled “The Car Pool”—shows David picking up a prostitute to help him beat traffic and make it to the Dodgers game.In the documentary, Catalan recalls that his cousin had gone to get a drink and came back talking about there being a film crew in their section.Melnik was able to watch the raw footage—time stamp showing—and found the needle in the haystack: Catalan and Larry David walking right past each other in the stands.My jaw dropped.Everything miraculously came together—a one-in-a-million moment that freed an innocent man. But as LA Dodgers’ Senior Vice President Sam Fernandez said, “All of life is ‘what if?'

”After his release, Catalan received a $320,000 settlement from the City of Los Angeles for his unjust five-month incarceration in a maximum security prison. The arresting detectives were removed from homicide duties after it was found they had mishandled the arrest and tried to coerce a confession from Catalan. Gang members were much later found guilty for the murder and received life sentences for the execution-style killing of Martha Puebla.Directed by Jacob LaMendola, this true-crime drama skillfully blends news, courtroom and police footage with interviews of the major players, and a bit of comedy.I highly recommend the film—even if you’re not a baseball fan. The trailer can be viewed.In the “Red” Zone gives it 3.5 out of 4 stars.