Hoop Dreams (1994) with Samantha N. Sheppard

Welcome to Field of Scenes, a sport and film podcast. I'm Adam Kempinar.

I'm Travis Fogan.

We are professors in the Sport Media and Culture Program at the University of Iowa, and we're back for episode two. We do plan to drop new episodes the first Sunday of the month here in the Film Spotting Feed. And Travis, after a more obscure movie last month, starting out right with Harold Lloyd's 1925 movie, The Freshman, we were really aiming for our silent comedy fans.

It was a hit when it came out.

It was indeed. I don't know if any of those people are still alive at this point.

I don't think so either.

Probably not.

No.

We are discussing a more well-known title this month. It is the seminal Steve James documentary from 1994, Hoop Dreams. And we've been asking this season, all the guests, we've asked them to pick the movie, the sports film that shaped them. If you were in the hot seat, if you were the guest- Hoop Dreams might just be your pick, right?

It would absolutely be my pick. I think Hoop Dreams kind of changed my life when I saw it. I was a basketball nut. It came out in 94, so I was 13. I don't think I probably saw it until 95 because I had to get it at Blockbuster. It didn't play in the theaters where I was growing up. But it just blew my mind.

And it not only.

Sort of introduced me to this world of basketball, but also this world in Chicago that was very far away culturally from the world I grew up in, in rural eastern Washington. And I just fell in love with it. And it's become kind of part of my own cultural mythology that really influenced what I wound up doing as somebody who studies sports and documentary. There's just really no single film that's been more important to me in that way than Hoop Dreams. So I was thrilled when Samantha Shepard picked it as the film she wanted to talk about.

Yeah, we'll get to more about Samantha here in a second. But you mentioned that different cultural experience, certainly for me as well, growing up in small town Iowa. And we've both had the pleasure of meeting Steve James, me a couple of times through film spotting, but he was on campus just a couple of years ago. And we did a viewing and a conversation with him for a students and faculty about hoop dreams. And I think he talked about this then, but it is part of the lore of this movie. And this was the case for me.

Part of the lore is that there may not be the legacy that hoop dreams has if it wasn't for Siskel and Ebert and the acclaim that they gave this film. And that's how I became aware in small town, Iowa of hoop dreams. And like you, I may not have seen it until more like 96 or 97, but it was definitely on VHS because I watched Siskel and Ebert and saw them raving about this documentary. And I knew I had to see it. I was a sports fan too.

And it looked like something like I'd never seen before at that point. And I had, I had to watch it and see what they felt all the fuss was about.

Didn't Ebert name it as top film of the 1990s?

I think he probably did.

Yeah.

I mean, that goes a long way.

Yeah.

It was, that was amazing.

We are going from football to basketball. And you mentioned Dr. Samantha Shepard, a great guest who has a new book coming out about, actually, you can share the information here. As we get into this month, into the month of November, she has this book coming out about basketball on screen. She's the professor of cinema and media studies, actually the chair in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell.

Tell us a little bit more about Samantha. I know you go way back with Samantha.

Yeah, she's a friend as well as a colleague I really respect. And her research interests include black cultural production, African-American representation in cinema, television studies, sports films and media, feminist media studies, embodiment studies, and critical race theory. And she's published extensively on these topics. in some of the most prestigious venues in media studies and sports studies, including places like Cinema Journal, Journal of Sport History, Black Camera, Film Quarterly, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, and so on.

But her best-known scholarly work is the 2020 book, Sporting Blackness, Race, Embodiment, and Critical Muscle Memory on Screen, which I think it's no exaggeration to say it's a landmark work in the field. And if you look on the back, you see a blurb from yours, Twirly. This fall, she has the new book that you mentioned with Rutgers University Press. It's called The Basketball Film, A Cultural and Transmedia History. And I've read it, and it's great. It's really, really good. So I highly recommend it. And on the cover of that book is a picture of Arthur Agee from Hoop Dreams, which is kind of cool. And so beyond her scholarly work, Shepard's written for and been featured in popular venues like

The Atlantic, The Guardian, New York Times, and Washington Post. And it was real fun to be able to sit down and chat with her about this film that I think we're all very, very familiar with.

Yeah, we cover so much ground in this conversation, including, of course, her history with the movie, the concerns of cultural appropriation around making it and the conversation that is ensued around it. Bell Hooks critique of the film, the movie's exploration of the commodification of black youth and so much more. I will note looking ahead next month, we are going to run the gamut of sports here, of course, on field of scenes, but we're going back to football.

We are very excited that we get to dive into a nostalgic favorite, I think for both of us, from the 1980s with another friend of yours, Vicki Johnson, next month.

Yeah, it's going to be great. And every time you say football and the film Wildcats in the same sentence, all I hear is football.

Absolutely. I have to say, Travis, I didn't imagine when we decided to start this podcast that someday we'd be devoting 45 minutes to an hour to talking about the Goldie Hawn film, Wildcats, and I love it.

I wish we devoted 45 hours to it. Maybe we can. It was great. A whole season. There was lots of stuff to talk about.

A whole season on Wildcats.

It's a good film. I think it's a good, I stand by it.

Absolutely. And if you don't think it's a good film or at least a very interesting film worth dissection, you will after you hear our conversation.

With Victoria Johnson. Yeah, I think so too.

Up now, our conversation about Hoop Dreams with Samantha Shepard. Dr. Samantha Shepard, welcome to Field of Scenes. It is so great to have you on. I know you and Travis go way back, but my first time meeting you. We're talking about Hoop Dreams, and I want you to take us back, if you can, to the first time you saw the film. Do you remember when it was, where you were, and what your reaction to the movie was?

That's such a good question, because I've been reflecting on my experience watching this film, and I said, when did I watch this film? And I watched this in graduate school. So I didn't watch it anywhere near the time it came out. It comes out in 1994. I'm just a wee babe at the age of nine. I obviously don't care about the changing forces in documentary film production. So it was later when I'm like, I'm going to study sports films. I need to watch everything. I need to finally watch Hoop Dreams. Like I had heard obviously a lot about, I've read about it. It's that kind of thing where you read about something so you feel like you've kind of seen it. But then I said, oh no, now I need to sit there and buckle down. I

need to put three hours into this. And it was a film that I first watched and I said, oh. This is interesting. I don't know how I feel about it. And that's something that I have found for most of the sports films that I have then felt a strong connection, a need to write about it, a need to think about it, a need to kind of reckon with it over time. It's been those that have created not ambivalence, but a kind of like, what is this? Do I love this? Do I like it? In fact, I'm so seduced by a good Disney sports film that if I instantly love it, I'm like, oh, well, of course I love it because it's doing all the things and hitting all the keys and these things. But Hoop Dreams was different.

And it's weird because watching the young kids and particularly a young Arthur Agee, he just looked like my brother and my cousins. And that was kind of unnerving, the regularness of the folks. And since then, I've, you know, watched it many times for research, and I've screened it for students. And now I'm just sort of like, this film is probably, and I've had to think about particularly basketball films, like, you know, this is in my top five, this is in my starting five of basketball films. But this film, to me, is the most important of all of the basketball films. So it therefore stands out even from some of the ones that might have gotten me just in their initial run. But it really was in

grad school just being like, there's something here that is really interesting because it's a mix of the basketball, but it's also something else, which makes sense because that's what this film becomes a conduit to be able to discuss all of those something else's.

I want to dig into that, obviously, a little bit more. But before we get to why you chose it, I want to ask something that I actually, I don't think we've asked any of our guests yet, but I'm so curious just because you, you mentioned it. Why did you decide to start studying sports films? When was that epiphany?

That's a great question too. So I studied sports films for two reasons. Number one, I am an ex-athlete. So I have a deep appreciation and affection and hatred of sports. And I want to watch sport films and I never want to watch sports. I don't have the attention span anymore to sit through a game sometimes. And I think that sports are deeply exploitative and harmful sometimes. So I have all of these conflicting feelings. But I really was interested in sports films because it brought me such deep pleasure.

And number one, I think one of the things you should research should be pleasurable to whatever degree that is. And the second part of that is actually not about sports. I'm interested in genres where there is a lot of engagement with sports. Black representation, or for my first book, Sporting Blackness, it was really thinking about Black embodiment. So I was interested in the genre because the genre was one where we saw a lot of Black representation. So outside of, say, race films for the 1940s, 50s, or outside of the hood films that came out in the 1990s or the Blaxploitation film of the 70s, what other kind of aggregate that is in a small film movement or that is an actual genre that has this sort

of large representation of Black people and to be able to work through the ways in which this film or this genre is able to carry questions of race and identity, racial formations, social conflict. And so- me enjoying sports and feeling like I could say something about not just representation, but the way in which the sports themselves get played out, thinking about physicality, thinking about embodiment. Those things really kind of were meaningful to me. And so that kind of stuck with me for a bit. And so I'm really glad that I get to study something that I both love and appreciate, but I also have a good, deep, ambivalent affection for. So it makes me nicely hypercritical in a way that can produce informed expertise.

So you already mentioned how much you love this film in your top five and how important you think it is. I'll try to put a little bit of a spin on then our usual customary second question. We asked you to pick any sports film that was meaningful to you. And in your book, your first chapter is the genre that Hoop Dreams built. And you say that Hoop Dreams stands as arguably the defining work of the basketball film genre.

That pretty much explains why you might have chosen it for this conversation. But if you hadn't written that book, would Hoop Dreams still have been your choice?

So Hoop Dreams was in a real big dogfight with Remember the Titans, Glory Road, and Cool Runnings with an honorable mention to The Cutting Edge. Very, very different.

Love The Cutting Edge.

Oh, my God. No tighter film had been made. I mean, I still think I can do the Pim Cinco. It defies gravity. We can't even get into that. I think, would it still have been my top choice? Yes and no. And I think I have to be honest about that because those other films are inciting something about me as a person and about a period of time or a kind of relationality to sort of the subject matter. But I think the reason why I said this has to be my choice, and not just because I wrote a book on the basketball film, but it was actually in doing this research and watching 300 plus basketball films that I really got to see how singular this film is.

And so now there are obviously copycat iterations of longitudinal storytelling, or we're really interested in young Black boys or you know, get it out the mud poverty narratives or the contrast of that, you know, what the problem is with AAU and this, you know, sport being taken over by rich kids, all of these kinds of things. This film is singular, both in its earnestness, in its ethical, you know, problems, in its kind of ability to facilitate a deep, deep abiding pleasure in the game. You get caught up in winning.

You get caught up in the possibility of going downstate. And you see how small local things like a state championship could mean the world to people. And I think that's something that if you've never played sports, to be able to see how that kind of work, how the kind of local feeling can feel deeply global is And I just think it's had this huge impact, even when people don't realize it's had this huge impact. So many things are in reference or in reverence to it. So it's sort of a Kevin Bacon film. Like, everything to me charts back to it. And so that's what I find really interesting about it.

Just because, Travis, you're both cutting-edge fans, I have to throw in real quick that I think maybe the first— he' s either the first or second actor I ever— got to interview on my podcast and radio show, Film Spotting, because he was in town to promote a film at the Chicago Film Festival, was D.B. Sweeney.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah.

I haven't told you that.

And I loved him. I'd open with that. I don't think I have. I love him, of course, because of The Cutting Edge, but also because of Eight Men Out.

Yeah, for sure.

And he's also in Heaven is a Playground, opposite Bo Kemple.

Mm-hmm.

So you were talking kind of about the Kevin Bacon aspect of Hoop Dreams. And I think that some folks, you argue, I think, very persuasively that Hoop Dreams defines the genre. And I think I agree with that. But other folks would argue that Hoosiers defines the genre or subgenre. How do you think we can put those things in dialogue?

And what did it mean in 1994 for something like Hoop Dreams to come out? after we had kind of an established familiarity with this other Midwestern basketball film, Hoosiers, which casts such a large shadow?

Oh, it's such a great, great question. I love that question right now. So the thing about Hoosiers is this. Hoosiers comes out in the 1980s. And so it's after what I say is the first big, big, big boom in the basketball film genre in the 1970s. That's when we get a concerted effort of films that replace, already outpaced a number of basketball films that had been made prior since the start of basketball films being made. So the 1970s is really critical. And also the 1970s is when the sport changes and becomes decidedly Black. And the thing about this is, To me, basketball is at its core, even though it's made by James Naismith, a Canadian, a white Canadian, a part of muscular Christianity. It's a sport

that quickly got taken over and changed the game itself, the rules of the game, changed by the players who play it. And there is no group that has played it in such a way to change the fundamental rules and nature of the game than Black people. And so even though Hoosiers, I think it looms large, it looms large on sports films lists. And look, and I have a bone to pick with Hoosiers. My high school championship soccer game, our coach, an Army guy said, Watch Hoosiers get excited about the game. I don't know who he thought he was going to excite with that. We tied.

Like in high school, they don't let you do PKs. We just tied because they're worried about your mental health. We tied. I was like, and I blame Hoosiers because I was supposed to get hype off of watching this all-white team with no handles sit there and beat this integrated school and be like, oh my God. When I know that the thing about this sport is that... even if it can be a site of nostalgia for whiteness, very championship season, we're listening to the recording, we remember when we were on top. It is a sport for which Black people have changed the literal game of. And so for me, the fictional version, I see why people go to Hoosiers, but the thing is what makes the argument about, um, he, not he again, excuse me, um,

about Hoop Dreams as being the defining film is that every film, to me, is in the wake, or even if it's come before, has fundamentally changed by what this film puts as a conjecture, which is that this sport means something deeply different to African American communities. Number one, that Black people have fundamentally changed this game. They were changing it in the 1970s. They were changing it in the 1980s, right? So we've got the, like the whole look and feel of the game is decidedly black at that time. So despite the white nostalgia, despite the white great hope desires, the game and the sport itself is black, right?

And at the same time, it's so rooted in this kind of verisimilitude, this present to now, not the metaphor or the allegory of the past. So that's the thing about Hoosiers, right? It comes out and it speaks to Ronald Reagan's America and it speaks to the nostalgia for 1950s America. And the thing that is really interesting about Hoop Tunes is it's really about the now, which tells us something, even as you watch it, about the constant now of the present, that we have not escaped now.

These larger social issues that we are not thinking about larger social safety nets. And we haven't thought about, you know, bell hooks as claims at the ways in which not just this film, but the idea that sports is the one and only economic route of social mobility for young Black youth. These things are still so now. There's a presentness to that. And that's the game. The game is played in the now. I mean, we ponder and we think about and we compare past statistics, but the game itself is a game of today. It's a game of now.

What can you do today on the court? And so I just think that this film, even in its non-fictionalization, becomes something even bigger and greater, becomes the mythology of the game. It becomes the mythology of the sport. And so it doesn't need nostalgia to create a whitewashed version of this history. What it needs is the larger myth-making that still makes people think that you can be from Cabrini-Green, you could be You know, once his face was like, you know, I grew up on a generator. You can come from nothing and make it to the NBA. That is the story that we believe in still. And I think that's what makes this film even more movie-like. It makes it cinema in these really defining ways than Hoosiers,

which feels like a relic. It feels like we're watching High School Hero. That's from the 1920s.

It's interesting that you say that because some of those qualities were kind of part of the rationale that Bell Hooks used in her, I think, very famous takedown of Hoop Dreams. I mean, she kind of eviscerated the film that it was sort of, you know, filtering these lives through a kind of Hollywood-inspired narrative while foreclosing other possibilities for upward mobility, self-expression, etc., Can you talk a little bit about your thoughts on the bell hooks argument and kind of how you think that holds up or how you kind of figured that while you were working on this project?

So I don't disagree with bell hooks. I think that the film itself, in part because of its long form storytelling and how once it came down to editing, we see the ways in which we need to talk about documentary as a form of narratization. And so there's all this kind of storytelling that ends up And there's something that she says I think is very true and accurate, which is that the film seduces you into the lure of winning, which is very Americana, which is why this film I think stands as this huge American sports film.

And that's what Roger Ebert thought this was not just a great sports documentary, but the great documentary of the 20th century. This is huge. It's largely because... the film does become obsessed with Arthur Agee, you know, his, and his narrative. And we, as audience members, you know, in this pursuit, and if you know anything, even after the fact, you know, even though he doesn't have a remarkable college career, he, you know, he still was like, you know, what does my prospect, the draft look like? You know, and they're all like, nobody is, nobody's checking for you.

Right.

This is not actually, this is not going to happen. But yeah, So I think that she's right about how the storytelling has to happen, how it becomes a compelling narrative. I think that she's right about the larger social critique. I think that it's not full anthropology. I don't think it goes into... I think that's one of her larger things is that this is an ethno-journalistic account.

And.

There is ways in which the filmmakers don't hold themselves accountable to the kinds of ways in which they peer into Black lives. I also think that there is inclusion, though, of seeds. And she points these out that I don't think she gives much credit to, which is the way in which the filmmakers are invested in direct address, like really invested in direct address. Now, they don't use it then to question themselves or say, you know, why does William Gates never tell us about this baby. Like, they trust me, but they don't trust me. I'm in their home, but I'm not in their lives like that. That's a different thing. Or I'm in their lives, but I'm not in their homes, the intimacy. But there's these moments of

real direct address where they leave this in here because they become aware in looking at the material that this is not just about basketball. This is about a family. And so it becomes this portrait of Arthur Sr., becomes this portrait of Sheila and less so William Gates, his mother. And I think that's really, really important because she's able to say things about, you know, how do you think I'm living? Look how the welfare system works. I really want him to get to 18. You know, I spend some time also just thinking about how this film just also documents life. I have multiple times been like, Google, what happened to Shannon?

Totally.

Like, I am so... concerned what happened to Shannon because, you know, Shannon goes to live with the AGs for a little bit. And as we find out during Arthur's senior year, oh, Shannon's got caught up in some stuff. And I think that as a sort of bigger document in holding these Black lives, I think we have to think about the ways in which Black people work within the conscriptions and sometimes controlling lens of whiteness and, you know, white filmmakers. and are able to peer through with very real truths, very real authenticity, very real expressions of self and real concerns. And so I'm more interested in thinking about all the things that this film holds and less so I think in the full takedown. I think she's

absolutely right. And scholars have talked about this as well. And so I'll kind of wrap up at this point, which is just that there was such a fetishization of this film. And that's the thing. Oh my goodness. And look at these films, look what they've done. And comparing, oh, the financial precarity of the filmmakers to the financial precarity of the subjects. Not the same, not the same at all.

And the ways in which, oh, this is really, this is getting to our social problems. And then we can only talk about social problems through the means and guise of sport, which always has an attendant optimistic trajectory of that. If you still work hard enough, William Gates almost makes it to the NBA, right? So he's injured and then he does get this chance possibly to, to try out for the wizards. Right. But then his knee is messed up.

It always still hinges on this kind of your body's going to carry you. I think that's the, that's the larger problem that I, that I deeply agree with her. And I think you'd see how uncomfortable it would be to watch this film with people who are experiencing black people on screen and not in their lives.

I'm, I'm curious about, and this is something we had Steve James on campus. Travis was responsible for bringing him to campus. What was that?

Maybe I just bugged the hell out of him for like two days. You should, I was peppering him with questions.

Yeah.

And I had the chance to, to moderate a Q and a with him. And I asked him about the legacy of this, because as you talk about in your book, they certainly had no expectation that this movie would become the movie that it became and, and would have the success that it would have. They thought it would just be this this thing that would show on PBS, maybe if they were lucky. And so I, I'm curious to hear you talk about why you think ultimately this movie resonated the way it did and ultimately has the legacy that it has, because at the end of the day, it's still a three hour documentary that is dealing with cultural and social issues that are deeply embedded and troubling.

You talked about the constant now that's, that's very much true. And despite what Hook says, and I very much agree with what you said. It's, it's such an incisive argument. And at the end of the day too, I think so balanced because I think she, she gives the movie a lot of credit for the things it does. It does well. And it, it challenges our, a lot of notions that we may have coming into the film. It isn't a movie. I don't think that stridently reinforces notions of competition and the American dream. And even that last line, when I, when I read that last line, about Arthur and it's saying that he, he still dreams of, of making it to the NBA. You can read that as celebratory that he's still clinging to it. And shouldn't we

applaud him? And it's also in a way, semi-tragic that he's, that he is still clinging to this notion, even though after everything we've just watched, do, do any of us watching at this point still think he's going to make it? And so with all of that, what, why is it that this movie is endured the, the way it has?

I think it's for a couple of reasons. Number one is, you know, before this in 1979, there was the documentary An American Game, which followed a high school, two high school boys, one black, one white, trying to also explore some of these questions of like, what does basketball mean in these larger social and racial contexts? And also to be a kind of a prospective prospect player, you know, and people may or may not have ever heard of that documentary. And so that tells you the kind of timeframe jump that happens in terms of basketball documentaries from 1979 all the way to 1994. What precedes this film in a really important way is not just the educational film that James and Marks made to help the funding

higher goals, which includes footage from Hoop Dreams and some other things that I think are really remarkable, is the film Hardwood Dreams.

Hmm.

Which gets made in 1993. And I say that to say, because that is a one hour film that is about Morningside High and Englewood also following kids who play an ensemble kind of cast sort of situation and what makes this film so different and makes it so resonant is what it's and this is what it ends up starting which is longitudinal storytelling is that people want to see things develop over time. We can understand a season. That's the arc of a film. You're going to train, we're going to watch a training montage, and you get to the championship game. But we also understand the real kind of storytelling is what happens from that freshman year to the sophomore year and the setback to the junior year

and the senior year. And that kind of storytelling, it was at the time really different, and so much so that we actually can't really get out of it. Everybody is now committed to you know, I need to meet a kid at 12 and I need to be in your life till 18. It's all longitudinal storytelling. And that kind of changed the way we relate to the entire story and how the story can be built. And so I think that's so different. That makes it so resonant.

Number two is that it caught something so particular that only in that moment it could. How do you have Spike Lee in a film, right? Spike Lee in a film like critiquing the all-American basketball camp himself, and then making a film about basketball, then putting one of your characters, or even one of your characters, your real actors, Arthur Agee, in the film. So you have this kind of back and forth going on in history. Steve James makes the film Passing Glory right after this. Arthur Agee's in this film.

So the folks are around. They're still thinking about this narrative. And it's still... There's something that you said that kind of, it resonated and then it said, oh, no, I don't think I agree. And that's that this film isn't a feel-good story. And I think you're right that it's, yes, there's something tragic about thinking you're going to keep following this dream. But it also is in this kind of very Black folk hero way. And this is how I've talked about other kind of Black folk hero figures like a Boobie Miles, right, whose story itself is actually a tragedy.

but you watch it and think of how you watch Friday Night Lights. You can watch him in a different kind of way. And I think that there's something about the bravado of Arthur Agee Um, the, the fact that they make it, they don't win the whole thing, but they get pretty doggone close. The one kid they wrote off who was not going to be able to pass his classes, right? The fact that they made it to 18, the fact that Sheila got her nursing degree, like there's so many ways it feels like a win. They are still here. I mean, yes, now a number of them have passed away. William Gates, his brother has passed away.

Arthur H. He senior passed away and was, you know, unfortunately murdered. Um, but these were also like pretty far down after this film came out. it was a win. They got to also financially boon into it. So it feels like a win. The hood loves you. The people know you. So even if it's tragic, it's also amazing.

And so I think that's something. I think it also just kind of lingers because again, it sets this kind of convention in code for what we should expect from our basketball films. Like they need to be from the, you know, the kids need to be from the street. It's gotta be, you know, it's gotta be a social mobility story. We're gonna see, you know, personal struggle. You know, for documentaries, we're gonna see long form storytelling. We're gonna people see people with this desire and this prospect for the NBA. I think we have, a strong desire to see genius. And athletic genius is one of the places we can see it without it seeming billionaire unhinged, right?

This is a place we can actually see genius and celebrate it in its physical manifestation. And so I think that's why it's kind of, it lingers. I don't think it lingers completely. I don't think the new kids are going back to watching Hoop Dreams. Whenever I watch the things that say like, what's your favorite basketball film? They're all saying Coach Carter, which is the lean on me.

of basketball films. But I think that the residents of those who make those films are aware of the Hoop Dreams of it all. But I will say it's changing. It really is changing.

There was a long time where I just hadn't watched Hoop Dreams, probably like 10 years. And then I rewatched it actually before I interviewed Steve James for this thing that was part of bringing him out for campus. And it was after I had kids. And it just devastated me. Like, it really did. And I sort of realized, I think, at that point, that so much of the strength of Hoop Dreams as a documentary film is how it focuses on the family members and the communities surrounding these two guys who are compelling in their own right. But the way that it's kind of rounded out by people as diverse as Beau, you know, and Emma.

And really kind of, that kind of seemed to make the film for me, you know, more in this more like fatherly sort of post-parenthood register that I've been reading it in. Can you speak to that?

Oh, I agree completely. I think that's the thing. It ended up not just being a portrait of two young prospect athletes and became this larger Yeah.

Yeah.

And then you still feel the ambivalence off of him. Like when he comes and he's like, you know, talking to the junior college guy, he's like, oh, we can get him there. And he's looking at him like, what are you talking about? You haven't even been here. And you see all of that. You have all of that feeling.

I mean, I know when I, last time I watched it, I, now I don't cry about any of the other things, but when Sheila gets her nursing degree and there's that woman singing in the background, like, I feel like if this, this woman has earned this.

Sheila.

You scored 89 in your exam, and you're going to get the highest grade point average.

Really?

No, no, no, no. Oh, I love you, I love you, I love you. Oh, I'm so happy, I'm so happy.

Oh, thank you, Ms.

White.

Oh, thank you.

Oh, you're so good.

I didn't think I could do it. I knew you could do it.

Yeah, you did.

I gave you that belief in myself.

You really inspired me to go on.

Not just stop right here, but go far.

And people told me I wasn't going to be anything.

Like this, I have watched the true athlete. sit here and build something out of nothing. Something about watching Curtis and then saying, you know, if, you know, if, if they see how he plays in, they'll understand me. I mean, this is really about, this isn't just about like, you know, a brother projecting his wishes and dreams. This is all about the ways in which you feel like you have lost something. I'm nobody. I mean, he talks about himself in such a way that is so hard to hear. Um, especially when he goes from even having the security job to being unemployed. You know, this becomes so difficult and the friend's, And the teachers who try to stick in there and help out, this is all of this. I mean, even,

you know, and he's, you know, he's played as a villain and, you know, there are some villainous things that man has done, it seems. But Coach Pingator, like, you know, it's this whole thing of all of these people wanting something or needing something or trying to make something. And it is difficult to watch as a parent to be able to go back and say, I wish these kids didn't have to be on a bus all day just to have these opportunities, right? I wish he didn't, their rooms, you look at their rooms, they are so small, mattress on the floor. It's a lot to take in. But the thing that makes it so beautiful is that is the film. There isn't enough basketball you can watch. We don't even watch them really train. A little bit of

practices and we hear an update, oh, you know, he thinks he's too wild, good, or, you know, William has, you know, what it takes, like Isaiah Thomas to be able to do this next thing. We are just in the home and in their life because an athlete's life is mostly not on the court. It is all off of it. And those are the things that can make or break their relationship to the court. And so I think that's what this film does so beautifully and why I think it's the most generative of the genre. I think it sets things up. It obviously financially changes the sports documentary in ways that, We now have this huge machine, and I think it changed fundamentally the way people saw basketball as a local cultural practice in a different kind

of way.

So who do you think, if you had to choose of the non-main characters, Arthur and William, who do you think is the most compelling character in Hoop Dreams, aside from those two? Who do you think you would pick?

Oh, it's Sheila.

Yeah. Sheila.

It's Sheila. Without Sheila in this, because Emma is a very particular kind of Black mother. There's a reason why the house, the film favors a particular house. Number one, and I get it, who are these men who are coming in and out? They thought, this is for PBS, so there's not much coming from this, right? In the earlier version, they see higher goals, this stick in school and you can do it. So I see why there's ambivalence, why there's not openness. Let me talk to you about this.

Let me explain more about who I am. Sheila has an openness with them, but also a frankness with them, and she has to carry so much. And the things that Arthur experiences is so less charmed in certain ways. He doesn't get the benefactor support that William gets that keeps him in St. Joe's. And so the ways in which Sheila has to work through, how are we going to get this money? How are we going to do these things? Like they're going to hold back his transcript when they're in that diner and they're talking to that random people and they're like, yeah, we're here for the game.

She's so exuberant. I mean, There's so much there. She's the third co-star to me. Like, Pinkatour's a villain. She's the third co-star. And I think fundamentally, if she wasn't there, I mean, think about it. Bo wouldn't have been able to stay in the scenes. We wouldn't have had access to him. And Emma is the right kind of reserved that said, I still don't know who you are and what this is and what you want.

Yeah, they are interesting foils. Some of the shots of Emma's face, you can just see the kind of concern and they're just amazing, you know, and there's so much happening and just those kinds of looks when you can tell she's looking at William and worrying about, you know, what's going on and what's going to happen and all the balls they have in the air.

Yeah, it's been a little while since I've seen it, but there's even one scene, I think, where you finally see Emma smile. because I think there's some mail or something that's come from Marquette. She finally lets herself be happy about something, and there's Curtis in the background on the couch. There's always this specter of failure or worry about– or worry is just what the specter is, and you see it in Emma's face all the time. And Sheila always finds– finds a way. And I'm with you that Sheila is the character that I, I just always think about when I'm not thinking about William or Arthur. And that, that scene you mentioned with the graduation is my favorite scene in the entire movie actually. And, and part of

it just because it's so incredibly moving, but I also think it's a very pointed scene from a filmmaking standpoint. And, and I, where I want to go, I think is I'm curious for both of you, what, What you might point to is just a favorite scene in the film, because that one for me, it hits so hard, but it's one of those two I'll use as an example sometimes when we think of are traditionally doc documentaries, you know, it's just capturing life. And sometimes filmmakers will talk about not, uh, embellishing the truth, right? But this is an example of a film and there's many in this film, but a filmmaker employing a discursive technique, because at the end, at the end of that scene, the, the very last shot

is that shot from the back of, of that small, or it's not that small, but that space and nobody's there. There's all these rows of seats. This is, this is such an incredible achievement that Sheila has pulled this off, has not only graduated, but she's, she's tops in her class, everything that she has overcome and nobody's there to celebrate it.

There's like five people and it's, it's her family effectively. And the next cut is to the gym and it's, everybody's there packed to cheer for and, and loudly cheering. For a basketball game and that basketball game, I don't know that that one even had particular importance, right? Nobody's there to cheer her on. Everybody's there to cheer on this basketball game. And James's voiceover, the first thing he says after the cut is the gym is packed. You know, he really wants to emphasize that no one's there. Maybe our priorities aren't exactly in order.

Oh no, I was hoping you were going to describe that scene because I was like, he's got to say, and then the camera reveals that there is no one else there. And so this momentous moment that had mostly been in a median shot, we've seen her tears, we hear the singing, we see Arthur, and then you realize, yeah, no one else is there to witness this really important moment is beautiful and devastating all at the same time.

And then to have to have that, not a version of cut on action, but the acceleration of action through that gym is really something. I mean, I really like the shot of them taking that, and I don't know how many times they probably have shot that, and they just picked one, when Arthur is going to St. Joe's, but seems like for the first time, and he's on the bus. And as a person who got bused when I lived in you know, Decatur, Georgia to an all white school in Dunwoody, Georgia. That is an interesting ride, right?

And so there's all, and I think it's also because the sun is really, really behind him and this interesting form of both momentum. And there's all this feeling of momentum in this movie. There's trains, you know, bringing you into space is all this kind of creation of movement of going into the city. And he's being pulled out and it's like so flush behind him and he's alone.

And you're like, What is this? He's like framed in isolation and that kind of isolation. And I don't think we think about that psychological weight on children, right? To have to be bused to an entire school with people you will not, you do not live around, who you do not know. And the ways in which it's that scene, that interesting kind of on the bus captures that movement and that loneliness. That is kind of, you know, he's like, well, I've never really been around white people like that. And then he starts looking around, it's like these houses. right, with the lawns, right? And so it's just such an interesting kind of period of contrast, especially since we had spent, you know, the first, you know, 20, 30 minutes getting situated,

quote unquote, in the hood, right? So to see him move out there and to see him do it basically by himself unaccompanied, an unaccompanied minor situation, trying to do something to be able to have a major life change is really remarkable.

Sort of related to that, one of the things that always impresses me about this film is how smart and self-aware both Arthur and William are. They seem to know exactly what's going on, you know, and they seem to know exactly who's trying to get what out of their play and who's trying to extract value out of them.

And I wonder how we kind of can put that into dialogue with just kind of the broader sort of exploitation of athletes, not just on screen, but more generally, and how these folks are learning to kind of navigate those circumstances.

I really actually appreciate how you frame that, because I think, and it's something, I think this even goes back to that bell hooks point, that I think she doesn't fully hit on, which is Not just that, you know, William becomes more skeptical of sports and the various folks who might want to profit off of him and the disposability possibility of him. There's a ways in which we infantile infantilized children. Yes, of course. And at the same time, this movie reminds us how smart these young kids are, how hip to the game these kids are. in terms of what's happening. And part of that awareness happens because Arthur's aware that this is also about his own mismaking and legend. Yes, follow me. Come with me. Yes, I

want this. Help convince his parents. All of those things. And I think that when it gets to the sort of larger question of exploitation, you know, it shows the two paths of the kind of criticality that can come with it. So for William, it's about a recognition of, oh, I'm only good to them as long as I am working, as long as I'm giving them exactly what they need.

And I see that. I see the way in which adults will try to extract from me or make me go against some of my core values when it came to particularly his own parenthood and his desires to be more active in his child's life and later his wife's life, Catherine. And at the same time, you see Arthur fully aware of the way in which Picator thinks this way about me, thinks I'm this, you know, and is, you know, okay, I see what you're doing. I see what's going on here.

Basketball has to be second to your academics. If you don't get your grades, you're not going to play. If you work hard at the grades and if you work hard at basketball, then I would be able to help you as far as going to college. And I guarantee this. I can't promise you where you're going to go and if you're going to be a star or but I guarantee that I would help you to get into the school that would be best for you. I'm making a commitment to you if you make a commitment to being part of this kind of a program.

And I think that kind of awareness adds a layer of nuance to the concept of exploitation. It is not that these young kids are not being exploited. It is not that this film that was supposed to be about a basketball court in Chicago is ends up being this larger portrait, that these kids are not being turned into content, into story, is happening. It's that they're aware of it sometimes in a way to see, well, how might this be helpful to me? And I think that relationship between exploitation, between these narratives, is really, really critical. I think that's why the longer lives of this film, the way in which this film ends up speaking to its unofficial sequel, hoop reality, is still this narrative of having these kind

of NBA aspirations through vis-a-vis the character of Patrick Beverly, is still very resonant and very important because we can even see more explicitly Like, these systems exist. These camps exist for these reasons. These coaches, their value, their finances depend on whether you win. Like, they could care less how, like, you're going to get a scholarship. They're going to figure out a way. If you can play, somebody's going to pay.

If you can play, you will have that. With that line with Luther Bedford where he said, economics wouldn't have anything to do with it. Somebody would have made some kind of arrangement and he'd still be at St. Joe's.

Exactly yeah so that's like you see you see how all of these things work um and you see in the ways in which we also derive pleasure from that system we derive pleasure from that story we love the the bootstrap story we love the kid from nothing story and so we too also want that we want to to buy into that um and so and then the filmmakers themselves and this again this ethical question mark world you know and they've talked about the ways in which you know they've you know broke their own kind of documentary rules, you know, providing money to help get lights on for Sheila, things like that. But there's access to this family, to the story, but then also having their own, you know, backend ethic, which is, you know, this is

before NIL, they put money aside for both the players and then put money aside for the families because they knew that the families would want to be in the player's money. So there's all of these levels of not just exploitation or grifts or even avarice, but like, there is a burden and a hinging of debt that we're watching.

So much is being owed. So much is needed from these figures. And I think that's what makes, again, this story very compelling, but also show us the larger issues and problems is that what happens when an entire sport is predicated on whether you win games, right? Then you've got people, the worst of people yelling the worst of things to people bouncing a ball. It's wild, wild behavior.

You know what scene drives me the most crazy in the movie is when William, and I can't remember what scene it is exactly. Maybe it's been a little while since I've seen it. Maybe he's talking to that clerk or whatever about his transcript. And this guy at the school throws in that little joke, that jab about, how he didn't make his free throw or something. And you just realize that you can't, you can't believe that in that moment, even that guy at that school in that position can't wait to get in an insult at William because William let the school down in that moment. You know, that, that, that's, that's how important apparently to this school that is. And that's how unimportant ultimately to, to William. He is, that's

all he sees. William is, is a conduit, right. To winning basketball games. And he let the school down and he can make a little joke at his expense, right to his face. And, and William just takes it. Unfortunately, in that moment, it kills me every time.

I mean, cause Pingator also does it even at the final senior, you know, he's like, you know, he had a distinguished career. We didn't get to the state. Like we want, like we didn't, we didn't do this thing.

Yeah.

You've got an, you know, a full scholarship to Marquette. And we don't have the larger conversation is that that's the only way he's financially going to Marquette. That's the only way. So it's hard to see those things. I mean, you can think about the comparison scenes, if you want to go back to the striking scenes, when William gets the summer job, right? And then we see Arthur and Shannon are working at Pizza Hut.

Right.

And it's like for like two dollars an hour, like something. But they get to take home like a pizza and drink. And I'm always like, well, that's kind of at least a nice little add in. But back when they had like real toppings and, you know, killing it, the pizza honestly looked good. But but just the comparison of the lies and the experiences and the opportunities and that itself is even the advantages is is part of the exploitation.

We forget that because their advantages and their opportunities. So we couch them and these are great fringe benefits. But that's also part of it, too.

Can you tell us somewhat quickly about the book, the basketball book? And also tell me why you guys all stole my subtitle.

So I was forced to take on this subtitle. So the book is called The Basketball Film, A Cultural and Transmedia History. That was not the title I had planned, which I thought would be some sort of pun, some basketball pun would come to me. And what happened was the second book in a series, we're part of a series at Rutgers University Press called Screening Sports. The second book reproduce the exact same title, but with a different sport of Travis's book, a boxing film. And I said, oh, I guess we're triplets. Like, I guess we all have to be. I didn't realize we were all going to have the same title. But honestly, I'm not going to lie.

Your title is very good. It is a cultural and transmedia story.

It's accurate, I guess.

So I felt like, I'm so glad you started something off really good. And then it becomes like, you know, what did you write? I wrote the definitive book. I wrote the basketball film book. So that's actually very helpful, and thank you for that. This book is the first of its kind, groundbreaking, and a refreshing read, honestly, that explores the cultural history of the sport of basketball from its creation. It's one of those interesting sports that has very, very clear, definitive origin stories. but also looks at in relationship to its representation on screen, particularly film, but not just film. It charts that. It doesn't chart it just only chronologically. It charts it thinking about what I call

sort of a starting five, thinking about really important moments and figures and films in the genre. So I explore in the first chapter, the genre that Hoop Dreams built is the centrality of Hoop Dreams to the basketball film genre. The second chapter is called Buzzer Beater Histories, which is really about the ways in which sport films often hinge on this idea of history as something that can be fabricated even when we know it's verifiable. So we can change and change and move history. And we do it very particularly around things that involve kind of local sporting context, but also around civil rights narratives. So basketball is a really interesting civil rights narrative because unlike baseball, it doesn't

have one figure in one moment. It has a bunch across amateur professional leagues. And so I really try to explore how we've tried to tell the integration story via basketball through the narrative of the buzzer beater. Because most of those things never happen. When we beat history as Black people, and I'm Black if you didn't know from my voice, is that we do it solidly very well.

We just like whoop ass. And so if you see us win by two, no, we won by 22. But that's just Hollywood for you. So I want to explore that. Chapter three is about changing the game. So really following three major decades, 70s, 80s, and 90s, and the ways in which the sport changed and how changes in the film industry changed. ended up shaping the ways in which we see basketball's representation on screen. And of course, we couldn't have a chapter that didn't explore gender because if you did not know, and you should know this, the basketball film, what's the first basketball film, is about young sweaty men on the court? Absolutely not. No, not at all.

It's My Fair Coed starring Marion Davies, the Marion Davies about women's collegiate sports. Hello. So how did we go from starters to the sidelines and then back on the court? That chapter explores that. And chapter five, name, image, likeness. Oh, my goodness. How can we think about this major moment in the changing landscape, player compensation, to think about player agency, an actor as athlete, and branding through the most particular and the most important, of course, figures of basketball branding, Michael Jordan and LeBron James. And don't think that basketball is just a local thing just here in the U.S.

Because when you get to that conclusion, we're going to talk about growing the game and globalizing the genre. So this is what we call the definitive work about basketball by someone who has a semi-okay jump shot and mostly played soccer.

So that's what it is. Holy mackerel. Great description, Sam. So you are the world's leading expert in the basketball film. The expert. There's no one else.

One of one.

No one else.

And we got her.

Yeah, we got her.

And also, it's a woman.

Yeah.

I also want to point that out. Because also, what I wanted to have a little bit of a bone to pick for a second. Because the first time I watched 700 basketball documentaries... Women play the game within a month of its creation, adopted a version of it. Granted, blah, blah, things, rules change, fear of women moving. But women have been long attached to the sport. Can we stop with the basketball documentary that do not include any women as talking heads or pundits? That's nonsense. Women have been affected and changed by the game in watching also men play the game, just as much as men have been affected by watching women play the game. We need to actually be called on as experts and not just for the WNBA. Okay, Travis,

what were you saying?

Well, I'm guessing you're going to get a lot more calls after this book comes out.

I hope so.

I really do.

Well, it's interesting, too, because, you know, just to kind of get in the scholarly weeds a little bit, but I think two of the top scholars on basketball that I know are both women, you and Teresa Rundstetler at American University. And so in the scholarly register, you know, we're getting some really good work from women. So I wanted to ask you, Sam, since you are the world's leading expert in the basketball film, we wanted to play a quick, fun game. I think it'll be kind of fun.

That way I ripped off from all the smoke and my stack, my favorite pacer of all time. I'm going to leave out Hoop Dreams because I think it just shouldn't be a part of this conversation because it's too good. And I'm going to give you two basketball films, and you tell me which one you think is better, which one you take, right? And then we're going to go down.

You ready? Are you ready?

I'm ready for that. You know what's happening?

Yes.

All right.

Absolutely.

Center yourself.

All right.

Feeling good.

Fast Break starring Gabe Kaplan or The Fish Who Saved Pittsburgh?

The Fish Who Saved Pittsburgh.

The Fish Who Saved Pittsburgh or Sunset Park?

Time to get loud. Time to represent Sunset Park.

Sunset Park or Eddie?

Eddie.

Oh, my God. Of course, Eddie.

Yes. What are you doing? Eddie. Okay. Eddie. Eddie or Hoosiers.

Oh, Eddie.

Eddie or Uncle Drew.

I really love rewatching Uncle Drew. Eddie.

Eddie or Blue Chips.

Oh, my God. Penny Hardaway. Eddie.

Eddie or White Man Can't Jump.

Oh, my goodness. You rather look pretty.

Yes, Eddie. Eddie or the air up there?

Oh, my goodness. You've got to love a Kevin Bacon Africa story. I will still go with Eddie.

Eddie or Hustle? The Sandman.

Oh, because I know.

Yes.

I love the fact that they put Adam Sandler and Queen Latifah together as a couple.

Yeah.

I enjoyed that immensely, the way I loved to watch The Last Holiday over and over again, and Queen Latifah and LL Cool J.

Eddie.

Eddie or Above the Room?

Eddie, because I actually don't like Dwayne Martin. I love everything that Leon is doing in this film. Yeah.

Eddie or He Got Game?

He Got Game.

He Got Game or Coach Carter?

He Got Game.

He Got Game or Glory Road?

Glory Road.

Glory Road or Love and Basketball?

Glory Road.

Glory Road or Space Jam?

Glory Road.

All right. Thank you for participating.

No problem.

I think Glory's fun.

Yeah.

I have to say real quick, I'm going to admit to something, which is I've never seen Eddie. So after that, I know that I have to see it. It made it very far in that game.

It's so fun. It's so fun. Oh, my goodness.

You know, that does bring me to maybe one last question for you, which is in the process of maybe a two-parter here, in the process of writing the book, what was the biggest discovery, a movie that you had never seen before, maybe never even heard of before your research that you really loved? And what was maybe the biggest surprise or rediscovery?

Oh, great question. Biggest discovery, Laker Girls. Laker Girls, a made-for-television movie starring Tina Yeathers about the Laker Girls, which I think is, that was almost also, that was like a sub-honorable mention in my head. I was foundationally changed by that film.

Really?

That needs to be. Number one, because it's about women on the sidelines, right? So we don't take cheerleading very seriously in their relationship to the sport. And it's also about the business of sport. It's like a low-key Jenny Buss kind of running point, like she wants to be involved. There's an opening montage sequence comparing Magic Johnson's moves to the girls getting ready for cheerleading. It's a great, great film.

It's quality all around. So Laker Girls, you can catch it on YouTube. Semi-pro. Semi-pro, I wish I could have written more about it. Like I just mentioned in this history chapter of doing films that kind of play with history and It's dealing with the merger, you know. That is such a good, funny movie. And I needed that palate cleanse. I watched Simipro right after watching Sweetwater, which was by far the worst film I have ever had to see. All that modern day money to make the worst film I feel bad for Nat Clifton. I feel bad for his family. I hate that film with the core of my body. But Semi-Pro was his palate cleanser.

And it's so good. It really does kind of capture this moment in a beautiful, funny parody. It is a Talladega Nights of basketball films. I actually was surprised.

Sold.

This is a quality, quality work. It really is good.

Yeah.

Nice. So semi-pro, Laker Girls, Sweetwater, take it back.

Got it. Got it. Eddie is on the list and Laker Girls on my watch list. So I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

No problem, women. We're back on top. There we go. I love that. Thank you all.

Thank you.

This was a blast. Thank you. Best of luck with the book.

Yeah, you're the best, Sam.

Hoop Dreams (1994) with Samantha N. Sheppard | Field of Scenes

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