90 from the 90s: Hoop Dreams (1994)

In honor of March Madness, a look back at one of the best documentaries ever made.

This is the second post in the 90 from the 90s series, exploring underrated flicks from the great movie decade. To be eligible for this series, movies must have been released January 1, 1990 – December 31, 1999, and earned less than $20 million at the U.S. box office.

Hoop Dreams follows William Gates and Arthur Agee Jr., two talented inner-city Chicago teenagers, over multiple years after they are recruited by St. Joseph’s, a private and predominantly white Illinois high school, to play basketball.

Reception

Hoop Dreams was released in theaters on October 14, 1994. Championed by critics like Siskel and Ebert—who both named Hoop Dreams their number-one movie of the year (ahead of Pulp Fiction and Forest Gump)—the movie would go on to make nearly $8 million at the U.S. box office (lights out numbers for a documentary at the time).

Key Moment

When Arthur stands outside on a local basketball court, watching from a distance as his father buys crack.

Killer Line

“I don’t even think about it—if he don’t make it. Because I’m so focused in on him making it. I just know he’ll make it.”

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Why This Movie Still Matters

You don’t need to know or care about basketball to get caught up in Hoop Dreams. Director Steve James uses sports to tell a larger story: about class and opportunity, about who gets what and how. While the subject matter is the two kids at its core, the movie creates a full tapestry of the world around them and the people who float in and out of their orbit. Parents, siblings, coaches, sponsors, significant others, friends. Through that, we get a bigger picture of the American Dream… and why it’s a fallacy for most people because of hoops they need to jump through to actually achieve it.

Perhaps no character is more memorable in Hoop Dreams than Arthur Agee’s father—Arthur “Bo” Agee. A former athlete himself whose dreams did not come to fruition, Bo sees in his son another chance. When we first meet Bo, he is confident and bright-eyed talking about Arthur’s future. And we are too as Arthur is recruited to St. Joe’s and earns the starting point guard spot on the freshman team. But we quickly learn dreams for kids like Arthur don’t come easy.

In William Gates’ story, we see these kids don’t just need opportunity, they also need the right people looking out for their interests and a handful of luck (not getting injured, a basket falling in a big game). In Gates’ brother Curtis, we meet another former athlete whose dream didn’t materialize—passing down his hopes to the next in line. Hoop Dreams is filled with men trying to build a legacy and dealing with the disappointment of failing. Meanwhile, it’s the women (the moms) who are left to carry the weight and who end up leaving a more lasting legacy as a result.

This is ultimately what makes Hoop Dreams so resonant and relevant three decades later. It’s less about a Arthur and William’s ability to get the ball through the net as it is about their ability to keep on playing when the game’s clearly rigged against them.

Quick Takes

• Hoop Dreams was originally meant to be a 30-minute special for PBS. But as the filmmakers amassed hundreds of hours of film over years, it grew into something larger.

• Controversy erupted when the movie, which won the Audience Award for Documentaries at the Sundance Film Festival, did not receive an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary. What’s even weirder is that it did receive a nomination for Best Editing. This resulted in a change in the documentary voting process by the Academy.

• Two significant Hoop Dreams figures mentioned above, Bo Agee and Curtis Gates, met tragic ends in the decade after the film’s release. In September 2001, Curtis was murdered at age 36. In December 2004, Bo was shot and killed at age 52.

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