THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 8, 1995 TAG: 9502080625
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BOB MOLINARO
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
Siskel and Ebert give it two thumbs up.
Spike Lee calls it the best basketball movie ever made.
Last fall, it became the first documentary ever to close the New York Film Festival.
``Hoop Dreams'' is an unexpected sensation because it touches nerves and tugs at the heart. And because it puts human faces on the raw material being pumped through the pipeline from the ghetto to the college campuses.
The movie, which opens Friday in Norfolk, traces the uncertain journey of Arthur Agee and William Gates from eighth grade to the first year of college.
On the surface, this is a basketball film. But at its core, it tries to be something else.
We get a look at recruiting (on both the high school and college level), summer camps, and coaches. There is plenty of game footage of the young prospects.
But that's only half of what ``Hoop Dreams'' is all about. You can tell from the rave reviews and crossover audiences that the film also appeals to people who prefer Bob DeNiro to Bobby Knight.
Interwoven throughout are off-court scenes of desperation, caring, confusion, cruelty and hope, all set against the backdrop of stark, underclass Chicago.
The story is a familiar one. For Agee and Gates, basketball is the one way out of the ghetto. They carry their own dreams, as well as the dreams of their parents and families. They gladly submit to the ruthless process that turns a kid into a commodity.
How many times has this story been repeated in our popular culture?
Often enough that some of us are numb to it.
But ``Hoop Dreams'' manages to put the process and the people into a fresh light.
We see Curtis Gates, a former prep star trapped in the projects, living vicariously through his younger brother's exploits.
We get a sense for how the media abuses their powers. In a clip from a Chicago TV talk show, a sports writer says of Gates, then only a ninth-grader: ``I may have seen the next Isiah Thomas.''
We cringe at a clip in which Gates' coach at the predominantly white St. Joseph's High, Isiah Thomas' old school, tells him that the team's success or failure is ``all going to be on your head.''
We follow Agee as he overcomes an early tailspin and develops into a fine player, even as his father goes to prison and overcomes a crack addiction.
Meanwhile, Arthur's mother, running a home on $268 a month, finds a way to complete her education as a nursing assistant.
Arthur's grades are a mess, but he shows a little of his mother's toughness by going off to a junior college in a desolate part of Missouri. It's a school with no dorms. Six black basketball players squeeze into a single house in the country. Ah, the glamor of intercollegiate athletics.
Today, Agee and Gates are both college seniors; Agee at Arkansas State, Gates at Marquette.
Even if they never reach the NBA, they are part of the fortunate elite. Of the more than 500,000 high school basketball players, fewer than 1 percent get Division I scholarships.
Summing up his prep basketball experience, Gates says, ``It became more of a job than a game.''
Leaving the theater after watching ``Hoop Dreams,'' a basketball fan may feel the same sort of disillusionment. by CNB