HOOP DREAMS
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Featuring: William Gates, Arthur Agee. A documentary by Steve James, Peter Gilbert and Fred Marx.
It's pretty rare when a documentary gets a theatrical release. It's even more rare, about as frequent as Sonny and Cher reunions, when documentaries end up playing in multiplexes. But sure enough, I checked my local theater listings to discover that HOOP DREAMS was playing not at one of the local "art houses," but at the sixteen screen multiplex. If it means that more people will see this exceptional film, I'm all for it. HOOP DREAMS is not just a film about basketball; it is about as insightful a film about the American inner city experience as you will find, with more drama than a dozen fiction films.
HOOP DREAMS opens in 1987, introducing us to two 14-year-old basketball prospects from the schoolyards of Chicago, William Gates and Arthur Agee. Both are being recruited to play for St. Joseph's, a private Catholic prep school far from their homes in the inner city, by coach Gene Pingatore, and both decide to attend. William, the more talented of the two, plays immediately for the varsity, while Arthur struggles on the freshman team. When a tuition increase the next year threatens both boys' ability to attend St. Joseph's, William receives a scholarship from a school booster, while Arthur is forced to leave St. Joseph's and enroll in a public school. The film then follows William and Arthur through their senior years, examining their fortunes on and off the court as they pursue their dream of making it to the NBA.
Part of the tremendous appeal of HOOP DREAMS comes from the fascinating cast of characters to which we are introduced. There is Coach Pingatore, an intense disciplinarian who reduces his players to cogs in a machine with his comment that "another one walks out the door, another one walks in the door; that's what it's all about." There is William's older brother Curtis, himself a former high school basketball star who didn't make it, and who has transferred all his dreams to William. And there is Bo Agee, Arthur's troubled father, who battles a drug addiction and his tendency towards violence. Along with William and Arthur, we follow these individuals for nearly five years, and develop an intense interest in their lives.
But for all its impressive scope, HOOP DREAMS would not have worked had it only been about kids playing basketball. In a broader sense, HOOP DREAMS is really about a world in which young black males believe that their only chance to get out is to succeed in athletics. A key figure in this theme appears only briefly in person: Isiah Thomas, a former star at St. Joseph's who has gone on to NBA stardom. Thomas is omnipresent, in his retired high school jersey, in press clippings, in the comparisons made between him and William Gates. He becomes the idol for these two boys, but the result of their obsession with basketball is academic troubles for both. It is the same obsession behind Curtis' intense desire to see William succeed as a proxy for him, and similarly for Bo's desire to see Arthur succeed. In one telling scene, William tries to tell his girlfriend that his only chance to go to college is basketball; she responds that she is going to college herself, without any help from basketball, and raising a daughter. But the boys don't seem convinced that academics can be a way out, and so they find themselves part of a money game played by college and high school coaches alike.
HOOP DREAMS is thought-provoking, but it is also entertaining. There are several tense game sequences, and a run towards a possible state championship by one of the boys in his senior year; there is the drama of watching William attempt to recover from a potentially career-threatening knee injury. In one extremely satisfying scene late in the film, a graduating William tells Coach Pingatore that he wants to study communication "so that when someone asks me for money, I'll know the right way to tell them no." And there are wrenching moments like Arthur's mother decorating his 18th birthday cake while explaining that it's reason to celebrate because "he made it to 18, and he's alive."
The Academy Awards have been notorious for overlooking documentaries which garner tremendous public acclaim. Overlooking HOOP DREAMS would be criminal. It is not simply a great documentary; it is one of the best films of any kind you will see this year.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 last-second shots: 10.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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