Lee takes aim at another big target: college ball

By Jack Garner
Staff film critic

(May 1, 1998) -- Spike Lee figures he had more preparation for He Got Game than for any other film he could have made.

"My father introduced me to basketball when I was 4 years old," he says. "So I've been doing research on the game for nearly 40 years."

For Lee, basketball is a passion eclipsed only by his love for his wife and children, and for making movies.

As we talk, in fact, we're in front of a television set, watching Lee's beloved New York Knicks in game two of their playoff series with the Miami Heat.

It's Sunday. The Knicks are in Miami, and Lee is in Rochester, being honored with a career retrospective at the George Eastman House. So he has to settle for a borrowed TV set, not quite as exclusive as his Madison Square Garden courtside seats.

Lee tries to focus on my questions, but clearly it's not easy. At one point, while framing an answer, he points to the screen and yells, "That's a walk!"

Fortunately, halftime arrives, and Lee hits the mute button. Now I have his attention.

After all, he got my attention with He Got Game, a film that targets young athletes as basketball becomes increasingly big business. And like his other works on racism, on the life of Malcolm X, on the Million Man March, he makes his points with gritty conviction.

Lee believes sports deserve scrutiny because they've become such a big part of our culture. "Nowadays, you can't relegate sports just to the playing field," he says. "They're part of entertainment.

"But we have too many young men -- boys -- banking their entire lives on a million-to-one shot, trying to get into professional sports."

Lee says his goal in He Got Game was to explore two aspects of sports -- the pressures on talented young players, and the relationships between fathers and sons.

He depicts colleges, family members, girlfriends and agents all trying to get a piece of a hot prospect named Jesus Shuttlesworth (Ray Allen of the Milwaukee Bucks). And he explores the volatile feelings between the young man and his father, a convict named Jake (Denzel Washington).

"We wanted to show the extreme pressure on an athlete of Jesus' ability; how these guys who are 17 or 18 years old are asked to make decisions that a lot of mature men would have trouble making. Also, we show how these guys are exploited."

Lee adds that the parallel narrative about fathers and sons was a natural.

"Sports are handed down from father to son," he says. "In this age, we can also say father to daughter or mother to son or daughter, but when I was growing up, it was father to son.

"You can't explain away that a father is going to put a ball in a son's crib when he's 2 days old. To me, a father and son throwing a football or baseball back and forth is an act or exchange that can't be topped.

"We felt this father-son relationship would be key. In a lot of cases, guys have made it to a high level because of their fathers."

Lee adds, though, that some fathers are frustrated because they didn't get as far in sports as they would have liked. "With these crushed dreams, they transfer them to their sons," he says.

"That's both good and bad. All children need to be pushed by their parents. But there comes a time you have to hold back. In this film, Jake goes overboard."

Lee wanted the basketball in his film to be as realistic as the emotions.

"We felt we had to cast real ballplayers in the basketball roles. It'd be a bigger risk to try to find an actor to display the skills we needed. It was a more sensible choice to go into the NBA and find guys who could act, but who just don't know it yet."

"We didn't want to film scenes where you'd see the guy shoot, the ball leaves his hand, there's a cut, and then a separate shot at the basket, when the ball goes in. That's terrible."

Lee rounded up several NBA players young enough to look like high school seniors. Allen earned the lead role because he was convincing, on and off the court.

"He had to work," Lee says. "He had eight weeks of coaching by a great acting instructor."

One of the other candidates for the lead role -- Toronto Raptor John Wallace (the former Greece Athena High School and Syracuse University star) -- plays one of Shuttlesworth's high school teammates. Other real-life ballplayers to appear include Boston Celtic Walter McCarty, Los Angeles Laker Rick Fox, and Indiana Pacer Travis Best.

Lee says Wallace and the other ballplayers "took direction really well. I think it's because they've had years of coaching."

Lee's strive for realism extended to frank portrayals of sex in He Got Game. It's depicted as part of high school romance, and by hookers, and also as a cynical college recruiting tool. The result is his raunchiest film to date.

Lee makes no apologies. "It's basketball," he says, laughing. "It's just part of basketball. On campuses, in high school, in the NBA."

He Got Game is Lee's 12th film in 12 years, following his Oscar-nominated HBO documentary, 4 Little Girls, which the Dryden screened on Sunday.

We're talking here because the 42-year-old filmmaker has come to conclude a two-month retrospective of his works at Eastman House. He's also announcing his decision to store all his features in the archive here (where they'll sit alongside Martin Scorsese' films).

"I'm very honored," Lee says. "I think I'm on the right track with what I wanted to do, which is build a body of work."

Up next for Lee is his first feature-length concert film. He's been recruited by Luciano Pavarotti to film the opera superstar's annual gala benefit concert in Italy this fall.

"Yes, I'll be working with my old pal, Stevie (Wonder), my new best friend, Luciano, the Spice Girls, Celine Dion; it's going to be a great night for a great cause." The results will be shown on PBS and the BBC, and sold on video.

Beyond that, Lee isn't sure what's next.

"Right now I'm just crossing my fingers for good box office numbers for He Got Game this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Nowadays, if you don't have good numbers the first weekend, you're out."

Like his beloved Knicks, Spike Lee needs to score.