Life, love and basketball

The NBA, like Chinese history and Chicago politics, is essentially dynastic. These are the years of LeBron and Kobe—stories from a system that has become almost militaristic in its ability to turn high-school boys into young men carved from stone. Ten years ago, at the apex of the MJ era, this was an exotic notion. Today, the leap into the public spotlight comes increasingly early, but the years before that moment still remain mysterious.

Now that this is commonplace, we're fortunate to have the long-overdue DVD release of the brilliant documentary Hoop Dreams, a decade after its theatrical release. It follows William Gates and Arthur Agee, both inner-city Chicago teens and gifted basketball players, from their freshman year of high school into the beginning of their college days.

But to say that Hoop Dreams is about basketball is, to borrow a line, like saying Moby Dick is about a whale. The filmmakers, themselves Chicago residents and former basketball players, capture scenes of unimaginable heartbreak and joy: the father of a young Agee buying drugs as his son plays pickup ball a few yards away; Gates, described as "the next Isaiah Thomas," traveling from Cabrini Green to one of the finest gyms in Chicago to rehabilitate his knee; Agee triumphing over his father in a playground game, which director Steve James calls the "Great Santini scene."

James, fresh out of film school, began the project in 1987 with a grad-school classmate (Frederick Marx) and a considerably more experienced cameraman (Peter Gilbert), who volunteered his time. They intended to shoot a 30-minute piece for public television, but they felt compelled to stick around for four-and-a-half years and 250 hours of film, which they cut down to a still-epic three.

At a glance, the film looks modest. It was shot on video, with whatever equipment and in whatever format they could best afford at the time. Hoop Dreams is a far cry from James's visually stunning Stevie, but this only emphasizes the film's verite sensibility.

From these beginnings, the movie went on to bring in $7.8 million and was, until Bowling for Columbine, the highest-grossing documentary of all time. It won the Audience Award at Sundance; the Best Documentary award from the New York, Los Angeles and Boston critics' circles; and a Best New Filmmaker award at the MTV Movie Awards, not to mention making more critics' top-10 lists than any other movie in 1995.

What it didn't win was Best Documentary at the Academy Awards. It didn't even get nominated. This serves as grist for a short but entertaining bonus feature, a series of clips from Siskel & Ebert at the Movies. In the first, the two critics sing the movie's praises; in the next, they call it the year's best film in any genre and suggest the Academy do the same; post-Oscar, Ebert goes apoplectic over the snub.

By far, the best extra is the commentary track done by Gates and Agee. The two talk about their lives then and now, occasionally offering a poignant counterpoint to the movie. For instance, when Gates goes down with what looks like a crippling knee injury, he admits he was faking it because the damage already done to the knee caused him to be badly overmatched. "I didn't see it as a lie," he says. "I saw it as an escape."

One extra that didn't make it to the DVD was a follow-up featurette on Gates and Agee, which the three filmmakers reunited to shoot. As was the case with the original, the events that transpired early on—including the December murder of Agee's father—proved too compelling for a short treatment. They're working on extending it to feature length, and James is hopeful that it will debut in theaters.

"We plan on shooting off and on for a year, so it will be some time before we complete it," James says. "We hope we won't be in it for such a long haul, but with us you never know."

Hoop Dreams is available Tuesday 10 from the Criterion Collection for $29.95.