Leeann Remiker
11.8 million dollar gross. Winner of the Audience Award at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival. The closing night film at the ‘94 New York Film Festival. Two thumbs up from legendary critic Roger Elbert, who heralded the film as a piece that “takes us, shakes us, and makes us think in new ways about the world”. While this might sound like a stirring, star-studded Academy-friendly dramatic film, it is actually the praise for the nearly 3-hour long 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams, directed by documentarian Steve James. The film follows two unknown inner-city Chicagoan teens Arthur Agee and William Gates as they fight to achieve their dreams of NBA stardom and battle systemic educational problems and the capitalistic exploitation of the college recruitment system.
Hoop Dreams changed the documentary medium, as it spotlighted two unknown, Black subjects throughout their teen years with no false dramatics. The film boasts a lasting legacy as an indictment of the way in which capitalism chews up and spits out young Black people with little care for where they end up after their use in the system is over. How can Hoop Dreams and the journeys of Gates and Agee still teach eternal truths about sports-based exploitation, and how did its treatment by the industry communicate the need for representative documentary work which remains prescient thirty years after its release? Hoop Dreams continues to teach eternal truths about sports-based exploitation, as the exposed treatment that Gates and Agee endured communicates the need for representative documentary filmmaking. Moreover, the structural racism, dehumanizing of Black people by American systems, and the grinding, churning wheels of capitalism continue to turn thirty-years after its release.
Originally intended to be a thirty-minute PBS special following one children’s playground, Oscar-nominated documentarian and producer Steve James realized that he had struck gold upon the discovery of the high-school basketball industrial complex. Upon coming upon two Black twelve-year-old basketball players, William Gates and Arthur Agee, James sought funding to follow them for five years of their high school and recruitment experience. By the end of this journey, the documentary crew had acquired more than two-hundred and fifty hours of footage. The sprawling portrait that is Hoop Dreams represented a leap-forward in documentary filmmaking that was not welcomed by the Academy upon its release.
Despite its groundbreaking success and underrepresented subject matter, Hoop Dreams was snubbed for not only Best Picture, but even Best Documentary feature at the 1995 Academy Awards. It was shockingly, and almost offensively, only nominated for Best Film Editing. The Best Documentary statuette went to Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, a film about the erection of a Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial by a young Chinese-American woman, which, needless to say, does not have the staying power of our present subject matter. Outrage ensued when Hoop Dreams, as well as the controversially deep and intrusive Terry Zwigoff documentary Crumb, were snubbed, leading legendary film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel to spearhead the campaign in criticizing the film’s exclusions. Ebert wrote a scathing article titled Anatomy of a snub, detailing the old-school sensibilities of the Academy, who nominated “documentaries made in of talking heads and stock footage” over the “cinema verite” films like Hoop Dreams. The claim from nominating committee chairman Walter Shenson that “the nominating committee simply found five films it thought were better” was demonstrated by Ebert effortlessly that “they are not”. Ebert notes Hoop Dreams “cut to the bone” and “gave us the sensation of watching lives unfold”. We get to witness “their families, their neighborhoods, and their dreams”, a narrative so simple and frustrating that Ebert says he “he will not soon forget”. Hoop Dreams' lasting legacy, its introspective, humanistic filmmaking, and eternally prescient themes continue to permeate our discussions over college athletics and African-American rights.
The nominating committee for the Academy was not yet official in 1994, and was made up of volunteers who would determine which films made the cut. In his article The great American documentary, Roger Ebert excavates the corrupt practices of the nominating committee 15 years after Hoop Dreams’ initial snub, detailing that the nominating committee carried out “little flashlights” and “when one gave up on a film, he waved a light on the screen. When a majority of the flashlights had voted, the film was shut off”. Shockingly, “Hoop Dreams was stopped after 15 minutes”.
When the volunteer committee saw the opening shots of the film, depicting young black men playing basketball, the first title card placing the audience in the Cabrini-Green Housing Project as the children play in hydrant water, one must ask what biases and assumptions were at play when each member chose to turn on their flashlight. As the audience is introduced to the lower class family members of our subjects watching with aspiration the great Michael Jordan, Gates giving testimonials of his lofty NBA aspirations, did the volunteers see someone hopeless, did they simply perceive just two boys who had little chance of escaping the slums of Chicago, let alone make it to the grand stage of professional basketball? While the Academy in its archaic and frankly laughable nomination practices did not connect with the film, the stunning connection of Hoop Dreams with everyday audiences makes it more than just a forgotten documentary in the annals of cinema’s history.
Hoop Dreams is so effective because of its banality, the audience's subconscious knowledge that dozens, if not hundreds of young black boys fail to achieve their dreams of NBA stardom, and consequently fail to snag their “ticket out of the ghetto”. Despite audiences being led to believe that Agee and Gates will achieve their NBA aspirations due to cliché construction of typical Hollywood documentaries, by the end of the three-hour odyssey, Agee and Gates are never drafted into the NBA. Ebert details the real moments “we can barely believe”, such as when Agee was recruited by Saint Joseph’s High School and subsequently “dropped from the squad and from his paid scholarship” because of bureaucratic transcript problems and his family's failure to pay the lofty tuition.
The film is also a timepiece, representing Black fashion culture in the high haircuts of Agee and Gates, and the boys donning the Air Jordans that became the staple shoe of both the NBA and NBA hopefuls in the early 90s. Agee’s Saint Joseph’s coach Gene Pingatore sports coke bottle glasses, three-piece suits on the sideline of every game, and a vanity license plate that reads “PING”, all gloriously specific to 90s America. While reality TV was not yet existent in the early 90s, Hoop Dreams was as close to the reality of Black Americans that audiences could get. The film follows the every-day dramatics of being a Black family in 90s America. Central plot beats followed the water being turned off by the city in the Agee home, to Curtis Gates (WIlliam Gate’s older brother) representing the many lost athletes who fell through the cracks of the education and recruitment systems who live in nostalgia for their high school years.
The identity of Steve James, a white director, can also not be ignored when analyzing Hoop Dreams. The 90s saw a rise in documentaries following Black, often subjugated subjects with white directors at the helm. Social critic bell hooks criticized Hoop Dreams and Paris is Burning, the 1992 documentary chronicling the diverse house culture of late 80s ballroom directed by Jennie Livingston, for she believed they “exploited their black and Latino subjects and turned them into spectacles for the pleasure of white audiences”. Theorist Kimberly Chabot Davis denotes an inherent unbalanced structure of power between filmmaker and documentary subject, and the authoritative narrative voice of James himself acts as almost a “voice of God” over Agee and Gates. And while James adopts a blunt and objective tone through his narration and employs talking head interviews with the subjects and their families, the technical qualities of film, such as editing, narration, and shot framing insinuate an unequal power dynamic. The cinema vérité techniques of Hoop Dreams, which include unvarnished visuals and equipment, true-to-life dialogue, and a reliance on everyday situations for plot moments, can be criticized for their “false objectivity, voyeurism, violations of privacy, and exploitation of the other”. Furthermore, Davis and hooks criticize the reluctance of “the filmmakers to show themselves in front of the camera” as it “suggests a deeper inability to question their own voyeurism in films of these poor black communities”.
I’d argue against many of Davis’s points, however, as I believe Hoop Dreams has achieved a cultural ubiquity and positive influence on documentary filmmaking because of one crucial moment in the film: when the crew pays for the Agee’s water to be turned back on after it is shut off by the city. A truly objective, and therefore removed and voyeuristic filmmaker, would revel in the cinematic moment of poverty and disenfranchisement the family suffers, and use it for false dramatism. However, the film is so successful because of the intimate bond formed between filmmaker and subject. The five-year journey the group traversed crafted lifelong bonds and a mutual understanding of the way in which the systems observed in the film have harmed its subjects. If James would have injected himself into the film on camera could have risked a more definitive and objective view of the film that quells interpretation and close-viewing. James includes scenes of Agee rapping along to the lyrics to a song that says “whites still look down on them” as “basketball-dunking, spear-chucking, fried-chicken eating n*****s”, insinuating that Arthur is more finely attuned to the intricacies of racism than the film crew. A voyeuristic “voice of God” type filmmaker would have no-doubt cut out this segment, as it targets the race he is a part of and puts white people in a negative light, but by staying true to the film’s message and subjects, Hoop Dreams allowed its subjects to speak truths that remain prescient thirty years after its release.
While I am surely unqualified to disagree with bell hooks, her belief that Hoop Dreams is structured like “like a fiction film… a competition in which one wins and one loses”, referring to Gates and Agee, where “William Gates [is] the loser of the film because he eventually decides to reject the basketball dream”, hooks ignores both the thematic content of the film and Gates’ personal testimony in the years following. The film is, at its core, an indictment of the college recruiting system, and anti-Black American institutions at large. The boys’ ability to escape this system and find meaning in their lives after college is a testimony to their strength, and the validation that the documentary has given them has led them to pursue other avenues. Gates, now a pastor, commented “I've had a better life than if I'd gone into the NBA. As a pastor, I can talk to the young people. They see the film, and know I came from where they're coming from. If I'd been an NBA star, they'd need an appointment to see me”. James’ work to frame the boy’s stories as important, worth three hours of the viewer's time, demonstrates his commitment to his subjects and their journeys, and his hope for their lives after the narrative’s conclusion.
The unadulterated loser of Hoop Dreams is not Agee and Gates, but the American system of capitalism, a system that subjugates, robotizes, and dehumanizes black people for the purpose of capital gain.
The film also does not hold back in depicting the joy that the families experienced during their five year documentation. One of the most memorable and emotional scenes of the film, in which Sheila Agee earned her nursing degree in 1994, demonstrates the film’s three-dimensional commitment to the family, a commitment that ensures the film does not solely revel in their suffering. Sheila, overcome with emotion and pride, is given several minutes of the film’s narrative to bask in her achievements, in a medium that rarely cares to depict the success of Black women pursuing their own career.
Moreover, the most iconic images from the film depict Agee and Gates celebrating basketball victories, arms splayed and mouths agape with joy. An ode to basketball as a sport, Hoop Dreams harnesses the inherent emotionality of the sport Black people cultivated in stunning gameplay sequences, both on official courts and on the cement street courts of Chicago. The juxtaposition of the court, the home, Sheila’s successes, and the day-to-day grind of Gate’s older brother Curtis and Agee’s father Bo serve to interrogate the clogged routes to the American Dream for many black Americans. Moreover, the lengthy screen-time given to practice, games, and injury rehabilitation for the young athletes critiques the overreliance on basketball and the college sport industrial complex that many black teens traverse because of the failure of the American education system.
The film does not hold back in objectively representing the insanity of high school and college recruitment. The audience is introduced to “Big Earl” Smith, a white talent scout who has familiarized himself with the inner-city playground landscape in order to recruit the best children for his own personal gain. Gates is also forced to perform at a recruitment fair, still grappling with his injured knee. The striking image of the sea of white, middle-aged faces, peering down through bottle rimmed glasses or under anonymizing baseball hats at the undulating mass of Black children and teens hoping desperately to stand out from the crowd. The scouts most likely do not understand, or do not care to understand, the way the the children and teen’s physical, educational, and financial sacrifices have not only brought them to the court that day, but will have irrevocable effects on their well being if they are not one of the lucky few to be circled on their clipboards.
As studied by the University of Texas-Arlington, “sports have become a key social institution in American society that are connected to the economy, education, [and] family”, which a theme represented plainly in Hoop Dreams. The report interviewed ex-D1 Black basketball players as they noted feelings of having “an identity based on athletics” and feeling forced into “pursuing athletic achievement in an obsessive manner and doing so to the detriment of educational and occupational aspirations”. As viewers watch white italian high school coach Gene Pingatore “wear his heart on his sleeve” in front of his young, impressionable players, we feel conflicted. Pingatore “loved his players as if they were his own kids”, yet is often seen being verbally abusive to his top players, including Gates. Pingatore will not let his players, or the audience, forget that he was, in fact, NBA superstar Isiah Thomas’s high school basketball coach, and probably had a hand in guiding him to NBA stardom. Similar to the director Steve James, Pingatore’s voice is an omnipotent and controlling presence over the players, often pressuring them into achieving NBA stardom at any cost, presumably for the purpose of propping up his own career as a skilled coach as well as helping his students achieve their lofty dreams. As the UT-Arlington study noted, “revenue-generating sports” like college basketball leads to a “clear emphasis placed on physical capabilities of student-athletes, their academic capacities and role as a student overlooked”.
These sentiments are found in the long-running injury of Gates and the disinterest of Agee in his education. Gates suffered a knee injury, which he repeatedly recovered from and re-injured throughout his final years of high school due the pressure to commit to a high ranking university before his impending graduation. Gene Pingatore’s reliance on grueling physical labor during practice and pressuring Gates to get back on the court in time for the recruitment crunch time is almost too frustrating to watch. We see repeated images of doctors appointments, Gates’ practitioners urging him to stay off his knee and allow it to heal before returning to the court. Gates, both a lover of basketball and acutely aware of his tentative position in the recruitment process, persisted, and this no doubt had an effect not only on his physical health, but his mental feelings of value and performance for his team and his coach.
Agee’s key scene sees the teen in class, his white teacher asking him “what other techniques were used to keep Black Americans from voting” to which Agee “smiles and shakes his head with disinterest”. Agee, who has been forced to commit himself to basketball because of social pressures and conditioning, rejects his education as the compounding stress of school work is too much to handle. Also, Agee might be acutely subconsciously aware that, because he has been pressured to mentally withdraw from his education in favor of sport, he will suffer from one of the leading reasons for Black American voter restrictions, lack of high quality education.
Thirty years after its release, Hoop Dreams and its legacy continue to resonate in both documentary filmmaking and in the hearts of those who saw the film. Viewers remember the pain, the glory, and the journeys of Gates and Agee as they watch NBA games, and as they drive by street courts populated by young, hopeful athletes in their own hometowns.
In the years since, the subjects have endured various levels of success and tragedy.
Gates, who committed to Marquette University where he quit the sport after two seasons, had his attempt to return to basketball in 2001 foiled by a broken foot. Gates has now committed his life to a local Chicago church, and has escaped the violence of his hometown for San Antonio with his four children, made possible by the money made by the film.
Agee, after playing two years of Division I basketball at Arkansas State and having a short semi-professional career, believes the film was both “a blessing and a curse”. While the film provided him with the financial opportunities to move his family out of the projects, it has also led to missed opportunities in his professional basketball aspirations, the watchful peering of the public eye, and exasperated external pressures to succeed. Despite this, Agee now has five children and started the Arthur Agee foundation, with which he works as a motivational speaker for inner-city children. His mother, Shiela, continues to work as a private nurse for wealthy families after tearfully receiving her degree during the duration of the film.
The other members of the boys’ families have, unfortunately, not made it out unscathed.
Deantonio “Pinky” Agee, Arthur Agee’s older half-brother, was gunned down during the duration of the film at the Cabrini-Green housing project. William Gates’ older brother, Curtis, who we see grappling with his unsuccessful basketball career and living vicariously through Gates throughout his journey, was killed in Chicago in 2001 after a love triangle went awry. Moreover, Bo Agee, who’s arc over the film sees him struggle with a crack cocaine addiction and turn to faith for comfort in the final half of the film, met a similar fate. Bo, similar to his own son, who was ignored by American educational systems and treated like a number on a sheet by college recruiters, was ignored and silenced on a larger scale by the American healthcare and mental health system. Bo Agee was unfortunately murdered in a robbery attempt in 2004, leaving behind his sons, daughter, and wife. Agee notes that “Hoop Dreams changed him and had an impact on his life”, as his father was able to resolve his cocaine addiction after the release of the film.
What can audiences continue to learn from the tragedies, the triumph, and the dreams of this incredible 1994 documentary? For one, audiences can appreciate the next ESPN 30/30 special they come across more richly, because Hoop Dreams paved the way for sports-based documentary filmmaking. Moreover, audiences and filmmakers alike can learn about the purpose of documentary filmmaking, which not to exploit, degrade, or make suffer one’s subjects, but to nurture and spread their voices, give them screen time to relish in their successes and failures, and worship their unique lives as they can give insight into wider systems of power at work. Audiences can learn from the crew of the film,for in assisting the Agee family and providing them with a share of the film's profits highlight the importance of ethical filmmaking practices and community support. This example underscores the responsibility of documentary artists to prioritize the well-being of their subjects and address structural injustices when they arise. It serves as a reminder that documentary filmmaking should strive for authenticity, empathy, and solidarity with marginalized communities, rather than perpetuating narratives of saviorism or exploitation.
Finally, audiences can learn from Gates and Agee, their bravery, mental fortitude, and undying aspirations. We can learn that we must nurture, understand, and humanize Black Americans that are so often degraded and used by the state or private interest. Spike Lee, in a brief and electrifying cameo towards the midpoint of the film, says in a speech to the boys attending a Nike scouting clinic, “You have to realize... that nobody cares about you. You're black. You're a young male. All you're supposed to do is deal drugs and mug women. The only reason why you're here... you can make their team win. If their team wins, these schools get a lot of money. This whole thing is revolving around money”. Spike is right, and Hoop Dreams has gifted us with dazzling images of the boys immortalized in film, smiling and suffering, succeeding and crumbling under the weight of expectation. To them, basketball was not just their ticket out of the projects, but a way to express physical freedom, forget about their financial, structural, and academic problems for a brief two hours, bond with their fellow man, and for a moment, imagine themselves on the world’s stage playing the sport they love. We can learn from Agee and Gates, and Sheila and Bo and Curtis, to be forever dreamers. It is these dreams that led Sheila to gain her nursing degree, for Bo to beat his addiction, and for Curtis to support his brother William Gates and feel resolved in his new life post-basketball. It is the dreams we see Agee and Gates follow that led them to clarity about basketball. They discovered that they must play for love, not for recruitment, money, or fame, which are all desires that have been socially and economically conditioned by a greedy machine. The boys, now men, continue to grace the courts of their new homes and use their expertise to preach or teach about the efficacy of sport, of one's physical body, and the importance of education. Gates and Agee struggled, fought, and ultimately survived the recruitment system that has left so many disenfranchised, aimless, and dreamless, and took their love for sport, their family’s, and their own incredible dreams and turned it into positive outcomes for their communities.
The Ebert-certified “great American documentary” Hoop Dreams is available for your viewing pleasure on Max.