Tag Archives: Documentary

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 233 – Hoop Dreams

Listen on the players above, on Apple Podcasts, or on Spotify.

From a central focus on two aspiring young basketball hopefuls from Chicago, Hoop Dreams weaves an incredible tapestry of race and class in America, without once explaining itself to the audience, without once winking and imploring us to notice something. William Gates and Arthur Agee, two black boys of about 14 or 15 years old, are plucked from their neighbourhoods by a scout for St. Joseph’s High School in Westchester, a white suburban private school that dips into the inner city looking for talent to boost its basketball team, chucking back any kid that doesn’t show enough promise. Over the course of several years, we follow William and Arthur’s development.

William and Arthur don’t start in the same place – William is touted as the next Isiah Thomas, a former St. Joseph’s alumnus who reached the NBA, and receives as an individual gift a personally guaranteed scholarship to St. Joseph’s from a wealthy benefactor. Arthur is labelled with no particular expectation beyond that he shows the potential to go pro, and whose partial scholarship becomes a financial burden once the school decides they’ve had enough of him – they want tuition fees from him now. The stresses put on these boys come from all angles – their school demands they perform for the team while keeping their grades up, their parents and communities put all their hopes into their success, and achieving stardom, a vanishingly unlikely prospect, feels like the only hope for a life free of minimum wage jobs and the power being cut off because of unpaid bills. Over the course of three hours, we understand intimately who William and Arthur are, the familial and socioeconomic circumstances that shape them, and follow them as they grow, learn, and encounter hurdles throughout their time at St. Joseph’s.

Hoop Dreams is an all-time great documentary, a portrait of life in early Nineties America that is both a state-of-the-nation declaration for its time and effortlessly legible and relevant today.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

A quick note on Circus of Books

circusof books

 

A straight couple take over a gay book shop/sex shop as a business. They become the biggest distributors of gay porn in the country — Blueboy, Honcho, Mandate.They start distributing Matt Sterling films and hosting Jeff Stryker sign-ins. The shop becomes a community hub. They´re at the center of the 80s obscenity wars and get charged by the FBI. They´re also there offering support during the pandemic. And with all of that, the mother still has trouble accepting her gay son. Circus of Books is social history, very moving …. but …it certainly gives one a lot to think about. It´s on Netflix.

José Arroyo