By Joe Valdez                                                                                    

Shooting baskets in the yard of Attica State Prison, Jake Shuttlesworth (Denzel Washington) is called for a visit with the warden (Ned Beatty). Jake is notified that the governor is a huge basketball fan and a booster of his alma mater, “Big State University.” The warden verifies that Jake’s son Jesus (Ray Allen) is now the number one high school basketball prospect in the country. The governor has given his word that if Jake can convince his son to sign a letter of intent with Big State, Jake’s sentence will be reduced.

With a week to go until the signing deadline, Jake returns to Coney Island with an ankle bracelet, a menacing chaperone (Jim Brown) from the board of corrections and a letter of intent for his son to sign. While Jake’s 11-year-old daughter (Zelda Harris) is happy to see her father again, Jesus isn’t interested in reconciliation. He refuses to forgive Jake for the death of his mother. Jesus hasn’t decided which college he wants to sign with yet, but nearly everyone in his life appears to have a vested interest in the boy’s plans.

His girlfriend Lala (Rosario Dawson) is scared of being left behind and urges him to speak with a sports agent who’s paid her off. His uncle (Bill Nunn) is suspicious of where Jesus gets his money and demands his piece of the pie. His coach has kept Jesus in money from an anonymous party, hoping for a hint of which school he’s leaning toward. Coaches John Thompson, Dean Smith, John Chaney, Roy Williams, Nolan Richardson and Lute Olson appear on video to remind Jesus, “This will be the most important decision in your life.”

Only a diminutive teammate (Hill Harper) and a neighborhood ganglord (Roger Guenveur Smith) who guarantees Jesus protection seem not to want something from him. Beyond the accident that took his mother’s life, Jesus resents his father for how hard he pushed him as a child on the practice court. Jake does his best to make up for lost time – revealing he named Jesus after Earl Monroe, not Jesus Christ – but with his time up, issues his son a challenge; a game of one-on-one for his signature on the letter of intent.

Writer-director Spike Lee had always thought his first sports film would be a biography of Jackie Robinson, but after struggling for two years to find the financing necessary to tell Robinson’s story, Lee had to put the project on hold. In 1996, his wife told him that he should write an original screenplay, something in his own voice. Jungle Fever had been his last attempt at this and that had been six years previous. Once Lee started writing again, the first thing that came to his mind was basketball.

Lee wanted to avoid sports cliché, “that hokum Hoosiers, Rocky kind of sports movie. No underdogs, no team from the sticks.” Knowing that every NBA player who spotted him courtside at Madison Square Garden would be on his case if he made a bad movie about basketball, Lee also wanted to avoid the inaccuracies of many recent hoops flicks. “Those films, everybody’s dunking. And you can tell they got trampolines off to the side and guys are flying through the air like it’s a karate movie or something.”

Once he finished the script, Lee Fed Exed it to Denzel Washington, who sent word two days later that he would star in the picture. This got Disney to commit $23 million in financing. Washington made the package even more appealing by cutting his fee in order to get the movie made. Lee had been worrying about who he was going to cast as Jesus. “I don’t think there’s an actor today that could’ve exhibited the skills to look like he could be the best high school athlete.” Lee drew up a list of every NBA player who looked like he could still be a high school senior.

Kobe Bryant had off-season commitments. Tracy McGrady auditioned but was found too reserved. Allen Iverson auditioned as well, but his acting chops didn’t impress anyone. Management for Kevin Garnett and Stephon Marbury wanted a guarantee that one or the other would be offered the part. Travis Best, Walter McCarty and Rick Fox auditioned and all won supporting parts. Lee approached Ray Allen during halftime of a Bucks-Knicks game and ultimately offered him the role of Jesus. Allen had never acted before, but went to work with an acting coach eight weeks prior to filming.

He Got Game opened in May 1998 on more screens (1,300) than any Spike Lee film to date, and though it debuted number one at the box office, the movie faded fast from public view, grossing $21.5 million in the U.S. As with most of Lee’s work, critics either loved it or hated it. Roger Ebert wrote that it was Lee’s best since Malcolm X, adding “Spike Lee brings the spirit of a poet to his films about everyday reality.” Bruce Diones at The New Yorker wrote, “Spike Lee offers up more cliché-ridden street angst.”

Appearing on The Charlie Rose Show, Lee’s take on He Got Game was this: “I think this film is about parents and children. It’s not just sports dads. It could be stage mothers, I mean, it could be parents pushing their children to be lawyers or doctors or ballerinas or ice skaters. I think all children need to be pushed by their parents, but, at some point, pushing has to stop or it becomes very harmful to the child.”

Some complained that like several of Lee’s films, its portrayal of women seemed unflattering, while the script featured too many subplots, one focusing on Jake’s relationship with a hooker (Milla Jovovich). While neither of those charges is unfounded, they overlook how masterfully He Got Game flows between satire and father-son story, between a scathing indictment of the recruitment of student athletes and the redemptive power Lee finds in the game of basketball. The result is a real labor of love and one of the finest films of Lee’s career.

As a document on the pressures top high school prospects face from colleges, agents, hangers-on and haters, the movie exhausts every angle and takes absolutely no prisoners. Denzel Washington is in Training Day mode playing a man whose anger has undermined his relationship with his son. His climactic hardcourt duel with Ray Allen is a purely awesome piece of filmmaking. Public Enemy provided two terrific songs, and in an inspired choice, Lee utilizes the music of composer Aaron Copland to stirring effect.

Keith Phipps at The Onion A.V. Club writes, “There’s not a relationship in He Got Game that feels right, especially the one between Washington and Allen, and if that doesn’t work, neither does the film. It doesn’t work, in large part because neither is allowed to develop into a character … He Got Game makes a few feints in the direction of religious allegory, but it’s ultimately just a heavy-handed morality tale, complete with cartoonish stereotypes and streetwise, been-there, done-that types who pop up to deliver lectures.”

“Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing was excellent. Ever since then, his films have captured some of that excellence in part, but never the quality of the whole. He Got Game is great for looking at a sense of time and place and at the web of relationships that describes the community in the film, reasons enough for setting this film above many others. But gaps in other departments keep this Spike Lee Joint from being another masterpiece,” writes Marty Mapes at Movie Habit.

Rob MacDonald at Apollo Movie Guide writes, “He Got Game is a film of highs and lows, from beautiful on-court scenes to pointlessly gratuitous scenes like the one in which a pair of balloon-chested babes offer sex to Jesus. There are moments of great passion that are followed by scenes that are terribly juvenile or over-sentimental. And the use of Aaron Copland’s ‘inspirational’ music sends some scenes over the edge. Spike would have fared better to stick with Public Enemy.”

The music of Aaron Copland set to the images of one of the best documentarians making feature films, Spike Lee. View the opening credits sequence for He Got Game.

By Joe Valdez                                                                                       

In Stockton, California, Billy Tully (Stacy Keach) wakes up in a fleabag hotel next to a fight magazine and a pint of whiskey. With nothing else to do, he grabs a gym bag and heads to the YMCA, where 18-year-old Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges) wails on a punching bag. Tully asks the kid if he wants to spar. Ernie inquires whether Tully’s a pro. “I used to be. I’m all out of shape now.” Despite claiming he’s never been in a boxing ring, the kid impresses Tully with his speed and his legs.

After pulling a muscle, Tully plants himself on a barstool. He meets a devil-tongued lush named Oma (Susan Tyrrell) who’s even more soused than he is. Meanwhile, Ernie follows Tully’s advice and goes to see his former manager Ruben Luna (Nicholas Colasanto). Ruben mentions that Tully was once his best fighter, until he got married to a woman who ruined the boxer’s peace of mind. Ernie’s potential – plus his clean cut looks and the fact that he’s White – convinces Ruben that the kid could be a great heavyweight draw.

While trying to keep his teenage girlfriend Faye (Candy Clark) happy, Ernie trains for his first fight. Tully makes ends meet by picking melons at twenty cents a sack. Ruben piles Ernie and three other fighters (“Four sure winners!”) in his Chevy and drives to Monterey for a series of three-rounders. All four kids lose. When Tully runs into Oma at the bar again, she informs him that her loyal boyfriend has been sent to jail. Getting drunk with her, Tully promises, “You can count on me.” They quickly move in together.

When Ernie gets Faye pregnant, he hangs up his boxing gloves and finds work in a walnut orchard. He crosses paths with Tully and the men decide they could do a lot better by climbing back in the ring. Tully makes it as far as a professional fight this time, which he narrowly wins against a Panamanian suffering from gastrointestinitis. But Tully still holds a grudge against Ruben for mismanaging his shot at a belt when he was in his prime, and soon, the lure of the bottle proves too great.

Leonard Gardner was born and raised in Stockton, where he’d toiled as both a boxer and a field laborer before graduating from the creative writing program at San Francisco State College. His first novel wove the tale of a hungry young fighter with the woes of an old pro long past his glory days. Published in 1969, Fat City was nominated for a National Book Award alongside Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. The novel’s success sparked a bidding war in Hollywood, with film rights ultimately going to producer Ray Stark.

Monte Hellman was hired to direct Gardner’s screenplay adaptation. After spending weeks scouting locations and conducting research, Hellman opted for a deal with Cinema Center that promised him more money. 64-year-old John Huston - whose directing career had been, at best, checkered for twenty years - came on board. Asking cinematographer Conrad Hall and production designer Richard Sylbert if they understood what the film was about, Huston informed them, “It’s about your life running down the sink without being able to put the plug in to stop it.”

Hall took up the challenge by lighting scenes as they would be lit in real life, with low visibility inside the bars and the outside world blown out when you emerged into the sun. Ray Stark wanted Hall fired for making the film too dark to play at drive-ins, but Huston stood by his DP. The producer had already vetoed Huston’s choice to play Tully – Marlon Brando – but Stacy Keach’s performance ended up being second only to Brando’s in The Godfather for many critics in 1972. Strong reviews didn’t help the film at the box office, where audiences ignored it.

Fat City has grown in esteem among film noir enthusiasts, sports fans, and lovers of ‘70s movies, but what makes this a minor masterpiece is how beautifully it moves between despair and levity, with a rhythm that honors real life as opposed to melodrama. The script crawls right into the gutter with a man throwing his life away with booze and bad decisions, yet Gardner also demonstrates a genuine spirit for humanity in the rhythm of his dialogue and the vibrant stories his characters share with each other.

The film is rich in character, from the great Nicholas Colasanto (“Coach” on the early seasons of Cheers) as the effusive boxing manager, to Susan Tyrrell, who was nominated for an Academy Award as the loud and lonely barfly. Stacy Keach immortalizes one of the great screen drunks of all time, delivering the strongest performance of his career. The film’s Sunday morning coming down flavor is crowned by the use of Kris Kristofferson’s superlative western tune “Help Me Make It Through the Night” over the opening credits.

Vince Leo at QWipster’s Movie Reviews writes, “Subtle yet rich in so many ways, Fat City is one of the best films to cover the sport of boxing, giving us more of a glimpse into what drives these men to get in the ring and lay everything on the line. Definitely worth a look for those who enjoy the work of Keach and Huston; it resonates in its bleak and pessimistic portrayal of squandered lives and broken dreams.”

“While all this may seem too down and out to be entertaining, it’s a credit to Huston’s long perfected directing and narrative style that the film ends up saying something positive, even as it wallows in the seemingly miserable lives of these characters … we understand that we are in the hands of a brilliant, classic filmmaker. Huston explores the landscape, both inner and outer, in Fat City and creates a spellbinding, exceptional motion picture, and a near timeless classic,” writes Bill Gibron at DVD Verdict.

Glenn Erickson at DVD Savant writes, “Fat City shows Huston practically inventing the modern American Independent Film decades before it came to be. It’s a character study, pure and simple, with no claims on great drama or timely relevance, beyond the personal plight of humans surviving on skid row. It’s about personal dreams and ambitions, and what happens to them down in the ‘lower economic depths.’”

Stacy Keach, skid row and a classic Kris Kristofferson tune. See what a perfect opening credits sequence looks like in Fat City.

By Joe Valdez                                                                                       

Celebrating his 7th birthday in a park near Washington Square, Josh Waitzkin (Max Pomeranc) discovers benches full of men playing chess for cash. Though Josh’s father Fred (Joe Mantegna) is a sportswriter, his son loses interest in baseball and fixates on a chess piece he recovered in the park. Josh surprises his mother Bonnie (Joan Allen) by later asking her if they can go back to see “the men in the park.” Then he stuns her by taking a seat at one of the benches and competing with a wizened Russian in a game of chess.

Fred is skeptical that his son knows how to play. He asks for a demonstration, but Josh loses intentionally, not wanting to beat his dad. After realizing what his son is capable of, Fred seeks out a chess player once highly regarded named Bruce Pandolfini (Ben Kingsley) and hires him to tutor Josh. Bruce tries to teach his pupil a regimented, cerebral approach to the game, while Josh’s mentor from the park, Vinnie (Laurence Fishburne) favors a fast paced and aggressive style used by hustlers to intimidate their opponents.

Josh proves so adept at the game that Fred enters his son in a tournament. Bruce advises against this, believing that “winning and losing” has nothing to do with chess. Caught up in his son’s gift and the thrill of competition, Fred pushes Josh to excel. Josh’s weakness as a sportsman is his kindness, which Bonnie fears Fred will beat out of him in his efforts to make his son a winner. When he encounters another prodigy (Michael Nirenberg) who dispatches his opponents with cold-blooded efficiency, Josh has to decide for himself how important winning and losing is.

Published in 1989, Searching For Bobby Fischer: The World of Chess, Observed by the Father of a Child Prodigy was a collection of essays by journalist Fred Waitzkin dealing with the chess world, primarily, Waitzkin’s role as “caddy and coach” to his prodigious son, Josh. Producer Scott Rudin purchased the screen rights, and the book ended up in a stack that the producer sent to screenwriter Steven Zaillian. Rudin felt that Zaillian wrote like a director and had been urging him to get behind the camera for years.

When Zaillian picked up the book for the first time, he recalled, “It was the photograph on the cover that really got my attention, It was of a kid studying a chess position on a board. He was only seven years old, yet he was so adult and intense. This prompted questions in my head. Why was this kid doing an adult job? What kind of pressure does that put on the kid?” Zaillian – who knew little about chess - conducted his own research, hanging out in Washington Square, attending a national scholastic chess championship and meeting characters in both worlds that ended up in his screenplay.

Searching For Bobby Fischer had very little commercial potential, but Rudin enjoyed a relationship with Paramount Pictures, having produced The Addams Family for the studio to great commercial success. Shooting of Zaillian’s directorial debut commenced in June 1992 under the modest budget – for a studio picture – of $17 million. 8-year-old Max Pomeranc had been discovered several months earlier at a chess tournament in New York. According to Zaillian, “He had no acting experience, but we decided to gamble. It turned out that he was so natural that he’s incapable of a false moment.”

By the time the film was finished, the regime at Paramount had shifted from the late Brandon Tartikoff to Sherry Lansing, but executives were so moved by the picture, they threw their support behind it. Released in August 1993, the movie drew rave reviews, but failed to connect with audiences, grossing a mere $7 million in the U.S. Some questioned the studio’s release strategy, but Rudin didn’t fault Paramount for the film’s reception, “It’s just what it is. It doesn’t play down to the audience. The real question is, ‘Can you make a movie for families that’s not dumb, that doesn’t necessarily have to aim low and works for adults as well as children?’”

The uniqueness of this film lies in its ability to reject the notion that the 1970s was the last golden age of Hollywood, that studios have lost the craftsmanship necessary to make great movies. The 1990s belongs in that equation and here’s one movie that demonstrates why. There’s no mistaking Searching For Bobby Fischer for anything other than a Hollywood product, but it’s one in which every major element – writing, directing, casting, photography, music – is perfectly in tune, exploring the nature of competition with humor, intelligence and depth.

Zaillian’s superb script attracted one of the greater casts in recent memory: Joe Mantegna, Joan Allen, Ben Kingsley and Laurence Fishburne are supported in minor roles by David Paymer, William H. Macy, Tony Shalhoub, Dan Hedaya, Laura Linney and Austin Pendleton. Of all those names, 8-year old non-actor Max Pomeranc gives the most mesmerizing performance. Renowned cinematographer Conrad Hall lit the film in what he called “magical naturalism” – conveying a child’s sense of imagination – while James Horner’s music reflects that spirit with equal mastery.

Sheila O’Malley at The Sheila Variations says, “All of these characters are beautifully drawn, and perfectly played. And the story itself … I don’t care if it’s a formula. What - you think there are a gazillion different stories to tell? There aren’t. There are maybe 10 stories - told over and over and over - in different ways. Formulas can WORK if they are imbued with life, humanity, surprise. This film is one of my favorite films ever made. It just works.”

“I realize that I’m in the minority of people who don’t think this isn’t really that good of a movie, although I’ll admit, it did hold my interest enough for me to think it still worthwhile, which for a film about chess means it deserves at least some props.  Still, Zaillian’s film is like the professional class of chess, rather than the game played out in the park — disciplined, but too rigid to allow for much freedom for expression, with every turn pre-determined well in advance,” writes Vince Leo at QWipster’s Movie Reviews.

Sean McGinnis at DVD Verdict writes, “The film is riddled with small moments, which put a HUGE smile on your face … Suffice it to say that director Zaillian nails a lot of moments. Personally, this film falls right next to The Princess Bride on the McGinnis-Richter Scale. Both succeed for reasons you can’t quite comprehend. Both are terrific family fun with a few life lessons to be learned along the way. Both represent, in my view, the best of what moviemaking is all about.”

The following is my contribution to the “Invitation to the Dance Movie Blogathon” being held at Ferdy on Films, Etc. May 4-10. Marilyn Ferdinand has called on the Internets to write about dance and film to commemorate the birthday of Fred Astaire.

By Joe Valdez                                                                                    

Following the death of her mother, high school student Sara Johnson (Julia Stiles) leaves rural Illinois to live with her musician father (Terry Kinney) on the south side of Chicago. Sara gives up her dream to become a ballet dancer and tries to adapt to her new school, which features metal detectors, security guards and is almost entirely black. On her first day, she speaks out in English class, only to have another student, Derek Reynolds (Sean Patrick Thomas) ridicule her comment about Truman Capote.

Sara picks up a survival tip from Chenille (Kerry Washington), who later rescues her from sitting with the geeks in the cafeteria. She brings the new girl into her clique, even after Sara voices disgust over Derek, who she learns is Chenille’s brother. Sara impresses Chenille and her friend Diggy (Elisbeth Oas) with her balance beam skills in the gym and when they find out she used to dance, offer to get her into a club they go to called Stepps. Sara’s wardrobe turns out to be a disaster, but Chenille helps her reaccessorize on the spot.

When her ability to dance hip-hop proves tragic, Derek offers to help Sara with her steps. She finds out he’s studying to be a pediatrician. She agrees to go out with him, and his taken aback when they arrive at the ballet. Sara opens up about why she chose to give up ballet, but Derek encourages her to stop blaming herself for her mother’s death. He supports her dream of getting into Juilliard and helps her practice. The pair becomes a couple, but when Chenille finds out that her white friend is dating her brother, she raises an issue with the relationship.

Developing ideas for a new project, producers Robert W. Cort and David Madden started by thinking about genres that hadn’t been seen in a while. The one to really jump out at them was the dance movie. While the late ‘70s and early ‘80s had seen one dance themed blockbuster after another - Saturday Night Fever, Flashdance, Footloose – the last successful one had been Dirty Dancing in 1987. The producers were also intrigued by the idea of an interracial romance, how a mixed race couple in high school would deal with the social restraints of their relationship.

The producers hired Duane Adler, whose script Chasing the Game – about Adler’s experience as the only white player on a black high school basketball team – had been a semifinalist in the 1994 Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship. After revisions by Toni-Ann Johnson, the producers sent the script to Thomas Carter, who’d gotten his start as an actor on the NBC series The White Shadow and had gone on to direct Swing Kids. Carter didn’t like the script, but liked its context; white girl comes to a predominantly black school. He’d also been looking to direct an interracial love story.

Cort and Madden had purchased a spec script called Against the Ropes by Cheryl Edwards and asked her to rewrite something for them. Edwards found Save the Last Dance the most appealing, but explained what needed to be fixed when she met with Carter. “The main problem that I found in the original script is that it was over the top in the way that it handled the racial issues … Rather than have the whole school react to this white girl coming, I brought it down to her relationships with the black kids with whom she was hanging out, didn’t bang people over the head with it.”

Before shooting commenced in November 1999 in Lemont, Illinois, choreographers Fatima Robinson and Richmond Talauega spent a month working with Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas. Even after production shifted to Chicago, the actors spent eight hours each weekend in the dance studio. When released over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend in January 2001, Save the Last Dance was a sleeper hit, ultimately grossing $91 million in the U.S. and another $40 million overseas. Critics largely dismissed it as another cliché ridden teen exploitation flick.

What sets Save the Last Dance apart from the fraternity of dance movies that have come along in its wake are its rich performances and its remarkable sophistication dealing with race and interracial romance. While the script does occasionally cozy up to clichés, overall, this is a film that actually has something on its mind, addressing the concerns of real teens in the real world with the ambition of a good novel, as opposed to a teen flick with breakdancers flying through the air on trampolines.

In addition to Stiles and Thomas - who have terrific chemistry - Kerry Washington was a find as a teen mother split between love for her friend and her racial insecurities. Very few movies acknowledge the feelings black women have for black men dating white women, but Save the Last Dance doesn’t run from the subject. The dance sequences are choreographed with a tasteful sensuality, while the melodic soundtrack – featuring Donell Jones’ “U Know What’s Up” and “Get It On Tonite” by Montell Jordan – ultimately lends the film a joyous and upbeat vibe.

J. Robert Parks at The Phantom TollBooth writes, “This earnest movie, which feels like an after-school special, only with swearing and extended dance sequences, takes on the usual themes of modern-day teen movies: tolerance for other races, violence and drugs, and the importance of following your dreams. That the movie deals with any of these credibly seems a testament to Stiles’s integrity and acting chops rather than the pedestrian script, though I fully admit my own bias on the matter.”

“We’ve seen plenty of movies about young women adjusting to life in the big city. And we’ve certainly had enough teen romances to last a lifetime. Not to mention dance films … On the surface, at least, it’s difficult to understand why director Thomas Carter would try to do it all again. But if you dig beneath the surface – and give Save the Last Dance a chance – you’ll learn that there’s something slightly different here, and at least modestly good reason to take it in,” writes Brian Webster at Apollo Movie Guide.

Nathan Rabin at The Onion A.V. Club writes, “Save The Last Dance is particularly perceptive about the ways people in difficult situations create mental body armor just to survive, how they suppress their vulnerability to avoid being swallowed up by their surroundings … Though far from perfect - the dance aspects are far clumsier and more predictable than the central romance - a fine cast and Carter’s perceptive direction make Save The Last Dance the rare teen film in which substance far outstrips style.”