Steve James and Full Frame programming director Sadie Tillery at the 2014 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Photograph by Charlotte Claypoole.

The movie is by Steve James, who directed the great documentary 'Hoop Dreams' (1994). For years, people asked him, 'Whatever happened to those kids?' --to the two young basketball players he followed from eighth grade to adulthood. James must often have wondered about the kid nobody ever asked.

“Twenty years ago, a thirty-minute short intended for television evolved into a nearly three-hour-long film, and made documentary history,” wrote programming director Sadie Tillery in the 2014 festival program. Hoop Dreams went on to win every major critics’ prize; the director and producer’s other award-winning films include Stevie, Reel Paradise, At the Death House Door, and The Interruptors, among others. The festival recently honored James with its annual Full Frame Tribute for his significant contribution to the documentary form. “He’s navigated rocky terrain over the last few decades: race and poverty, personal relationships and cycles of abuse, communities consumed by violence. James has proven he’s not one to sweep the untidy bits aside or gloss over complications; he knows intuitively that’s where the crux of a story lies.” In the following interview, which first appeared in the 2014 Full Frame program, James talks with Tory Jeffay, digital arts and publishing intern at the and one of the program’s editors, about gaining trust and access, navigating on- and off-camera relationships, and the origins and impact of his body of work. TJ: The film you’re probably still most known for is your first film,. What was the genesis of that initial film?

How did you find the characters, Arthur and William? SJ: Well, it was serendipitous. I had just moved to Chicago, which has such a rich history of basketball, and I knew I wanted to make a film about what basketball means in African American culture. I grew up playing it, and it dawned on me when I was thinking about the film that something I had observed in my own basketball-playing career was that the game occupies a deeper and more resonant place in African American culture—a more central and important place. So the original idea was to get at what basketball means by looking at it through a single court in the city that had young dreamers like Arthur and William playing on it, and by talking to former players who had had some success but never made it to the NBA, maybe even a player in the NBA who had come off of that playground. We were only going to make a half-hour film—shoot for four weeks at most and have the whole thing done in six months. Clearly that didn’t work out.

We were searching for a playground with this really interesting guy Earl Smith, going around looking at courts. He noticed Arthur, and he was very taken with his potential. And it’s a testament to Earl’s eye that here we were, me and my fellow producer Frederick Marx and producer/cinematographer Peter Gilbert, all of whom had played quite a bit of basketball, and we were like, “Who? Which one?” We did not see what he saw. Earl really zeroed in on Arthur—he said, “He’s young, but I can see his potential.” And there’s that line in the movie when he says, “You know, I’ll bet you a steak dinner that in four years you’ll be hearing about him.” We were fascinated with this process, which was what Earl did, so we latched onto that and thought this is interesting, we should start filming right now. And so almost immediately the idea of just focusing on a single playground was jettisoned in favor of following a kid like Arthur, who was, when we met him, leaving his inner-city playground to try to make his dream come true at a suburban Catholic powerhouse basketball program.

And we were on our way to the kind of epic endeavor that Hoop Dreams became. We filmed for four and a half years, almost five. And it took us seven and a half years, ultimately, to make a film that ended up being almost three hours long. TJ: I’m sure people are glad that it ended up being the three-hour epic it is. You talk about your films, at least films like Hoop Dreams and Stevie, as longitudinal, where you follow the characters for a sustained time. Were there other filmmakers out there making these types of films? Have you seen more filmmakers start making these films after the success of Hoop Dreams?

SJ: An early inspiration for me was Michael Apted’s 28 Up. I was blown away by it, by the sheer ambition of it, by getting to see these people grow up literally before the cameras. I think that was something that came back to me once we started with Hoop Dreams.

In Hoop Dreams, we caught these kids at an age where they were going through remarkable physical changes, and of course, there were all sorts of remarkable changes going on in their lives. While Hoop Dreams didn’t start this idea at all, I do think that it was extremely rare then for people to follow stories over extended periods of time. I think that Hoop Dreams may have inspired some filmmakers who wanted to do something similar, but I also think technology played a big role. Video made it much more practical and possible to even conceive of doing that film. When Hoop Dreams came out much was made in the press about how we had shot 250 hours of material.

It was like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe you shot... Oh my god, 250 hours!” You know, today that would be...

“Eh, no big deal.” Hoop Dreams might be the first film originated on video that was released in theaters. When we were making it, I never in a million years thought a film like that could be in theaters, if for no other reason than that it wasn’t shot on film. Every documentary, the few that would come out every year, were always on film. That used to be the tradition in documentary filmmaking—it was filmmaking. And it was not cheap. I think the other thing that is so appealing about following stories over time is regardless of what the story is, you get a sweep in the history of someone’s life and opportunities for genuine drama that are impossible to capture if you just go in and shoot for a short period of time, no matter how dramatic the person’s life is. Shooting over time allows for genuine, real, deeper, and I think, more compelling storytelling.

And that’s at the heart of it. You’re not doing an issue-oriented film; what you’re doing is telling someone’s story. TJ: After Hoop Dreams you directed a couple of fiction films. Were you thinking of making the transition into fiction filmmaking? SJ: I started out wanting to be a fiction filmmaker. I really fell in love with movies, with the work of Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Penn and Jean Renoir and Alfred Hitchcock. But I had come to it from more of a journalistic background.

As an undergraduate I had done a communications major and had worked at the public radio station affiliated with the university. I think my DNA just has a more journalistic bent. Documentary combined both those impulses. At least the kind of documentaries I wanted to make and have mostly made, which is documentaries that are stories. After Hoop Dreams I did get opportunities, more realistic opportunities, to pursue narrative filmmaking. It just so happens that the three films that I made after Hoop Dreams were sports biopics.

I enjoyed making them, but I never got the chance to make a movie that was like the movies I fell in love with. I would still like to do a narrative film that I felt really proud of, but I no longer have a burning desire to make them, and that’s in part because I really love documentary. When I was working on narratives, I really missed the intimacy of documentary filmmaking. TJ: Your next film,, provides about as much intimacy as you could ask for.

You narrate Hoop Dreams, we hear your voice, but we don’t ever see you on the screen. In Stevie, you’re frequently in front of the camera. How big a decision was it for you to put yourself in the film, involve yourself in the story? SJ: I didn’t start out wanting to be in the film. Peter Gilbert, who also worked with me on Hoop Dreams, and I were headed to southern Illinois for various functions related to the film. I hadn’t been there in ten years.

When I was in grad school at Southern Illinois University, Stevie was my Little Brother, but I had had very minimal contact with him in those intervening years. A few letters back and forth. So I had this idea that while I was down there, I would go visit him and make a short film about the experience, incorporating my diary entries from when I was his Big Brother. When I left Illinois he was fourteen years old; when I came back, he was twenty-four.

That’s a big difference. I talked to Stevie about making this film, and he was agreeable. And things sounded pretty good for him; I didn’t go down expecting anything particularly dramatic to be happening in his life. I knew I was going to be narrating the film, but I had no intention of being on-screen. So I go down there, and Peter was going to film it.

Peter said, “You haven’t seen Stevie in ten years; I think I should film you seeing him.” I wasn’t sure, but he was like, “Look, let’s just do it. And then you don’t have to use it, but you have it.” I still had it in my mind that I wouldn’t be in the movie, but then things changed. Peter and I had taken a hiatus from shooting Stevie to make the film Prefontaine, and I came back determined to get back to documentary. When I called up, I found out that Stevie had just been arrested and charged with molestation. That was the moment when the decision about whether I would be in the film or not became really important. I felt like I needed to be in it because there was this ethical and moral complexity to the situation: I was both in his life and filming him in the midst of this tragic turn. But I wrestled with that decision.

Ultimately, I felt that there was no other way for the film to take account of that without me being in front of the camera in some fashion, hopefully in a critical fashion. In other words, I had to treat myself—even though I’m the director and control what goes into the movie—with the same honesty with which I treated other people in the film.

And so I succeeded to the point that a lot of people who’ve watched the movie really hate me [laughs]. They think, yes, you did exploit Stevie: You should never have made this movie, and I really dislike you. But up until a couple years ago I also received emails sent to the general Kartemquin address from people who had seen the movie, and they would talk a little bit about the film but then they would talk about their own “Stevie.” I’m proud of having done the film despite all the misgivings I and other people had.

Stevie is without question the most honest film I’ve made, and that may seem funny to say because I make documentaries—you’d probably say, well, I hope they’re all honest. And they are. All of the films are honest, I attest, but there are degrees of honesty in everything. I feel with Stevie I reached for a level of candor in relation to the people I was filming, and in relation to myself, that I have not matched before or since. TJ: Stevie happened because you knew Stevie personally, but in most of your other films, you enter worlds that you most likely wouldn’t have access to if you weren’t there as filmmaker.

How do you think about and negotiate your role as an outsider in these situations? SJ: Let me start with a little preamble about the difference between being an insider filmmaker and an outsider filmmaker, because I think we don’t have enough films being made by insiders, particularly in communities of color. There just are not enough filmmakers of color telling their own stories, telling the stories of their communities. It’s a travesty, frankly. I think it’s better in documentary than it is in any other part of the film business, without question, but we still don’t have enough voices. So I think when you’re an insider in a situation, you bring a history to the telling of a story that an outsider cannot appreciate. And it’s a perspective that, no matter how sensitive he or she is, an outsider cannot fully capture.

Which is why I think Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, for instance, is a great film, because he comes to it from the vantage point of an insider telling the story of a community in Brooklyn like the ones he grew up in. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have outsiders telling stories. I believe that on artistic grounds, meaning I think that a part of what is appealing to many documentary filmmakers, certainly myself, is crossing borders—a desire to step outside of the community that I live in or grew up in and see the world, and try to do more than just be a tourist in that world, to understand something about that world. I think that’s a big part of what drives many documentary filmmakers to push themselves outside the comfort zone of what they know and to make the artistic experience one that’s an act of discovery. I think that’s something we should proclaim loudly and proudly. But then, that also raises questions of how to enter communities in ways that are sensitive to the fact that you are an outsider. My approach has always been to go into a situation and make it very clear that I don’t know anything, or that whatever I think I know is completely shallow and facile compared to what the people who live in that community know.

I’m there to learn, and I think spending the time there is important. If you spend a couple of weeks or a month, or even sometimes many months, you will have one idea of what that community is and who the people you’re filming are. But if you spend more time there, and you do it in an open way, then I think you begin to understand some things.

Being an outsider can actually serve your film because everything is new to you. On the Criterion Collection DVD of Hoop Dreams, when the scene comes up where the lights were turned off in his home, Arthur says something in the commentary track like, “I don’t know that I would have filmed that if it’d been up to me, because it’s not that unusual for that to happen to people in my neighborhood.” And he’s right.

It happens all too frequently. But what makes that scene distinctive, and why it’s so important to the film that we made, is to us it wasn’t normal. It struck us as really awful. Just because you’ve made your peace with something that happens a lot in your community, that doesn’t make it less awful, and it had never happened to them, which made it all the more significant. So we felt that was something that needed to be in the film.

That’s a small example, but it does show how, as an outsider, you might have a tendency to look at things with fresher eyes. And this is important: I always work with a small crew; there’s usually just three of us. My collaborators are incredibly talented, outgoing yet sensitive people. Dana Kupper, who has shot several of my films going back to Stevie, is just someone that people feel at ease with. Same with Peter, and Adam Singer whom I’ve worked with going back to Hoop Dreams, and Zak Piper, who’s been a producer and sound recordist on the last three films. You have to be a crew that your subjects enjoy being with, or believe me, they will find an excuse for not having you around! TJ: Do you typically show your subjects a film before it’s released or involve them in the editing process in any way?

SJ: At, where I’ve done most all my documentaries starting with Hoop Dreams, we feel very strongly that the key subjects of a film should see it before it’s done. It’s a promise I make to them. I don’t make it to everybody because I don’t think everybody deserves that gesture. Either at the beginning or early on in the process I say: Look, you’re going to get a chance to see this movie before it’s done—and I’m not talking about showing it to you right as it’s done and then saying there’s nothing we can do if you don’t like it. You’re going to get to see it before it’s finished, but you have to understand, I’m not giving you editorial control in any form. What I am promising you is that I will listen to what you have to say and take it very seriously. Good, bad, I will address it in some way.

Maybe I will say I can’t change that, but I will explain why. If I think there’s a way for the film to be changed but still express what I want it to express, and it is more true to what you think or felt, then I will try to find a solution. Sometimes the process goes very smoothly and subjects have little they want to discuss. Other times, it can get pretty testy: say, when the portrayal of a subject has some warts to it. The most extensive vetting I’ve done happened with John and Janet Pierson on. They are both extremely sophisticated film people, and so they looked at the film from both a deeply personal place and a professional one in discussing it with me. That was a unique experience.

But every film I’ve done has become better as a result of these discussions. I think that during filming people are more relaxed about what they say and what they do, because they know that the opportunity to talk about things is going to happen down the road.

Because what I’m saying is, I’m not hiding anything, I don’t have some other agenda. It’s a trust-building thing. Paradoxically, though it’s not really paradoxical at all, I’ve found that the more subjects feel some measure of control in this process, the more they open up and actually share the real thing of their lives. It’s when people don’t at base really trust you that they’re not going to share.

TJ: As you’re working with these subjects—I’m thinking specifically of now—how do you know when to show up? Kanye West Graduation 320 Kbps Mp3 Encoder. I imagine there were things you wanted to film that you didn’t manage to get. SJ: Yeah, you always miss stuff.

The arc of the shooting process across all the films I’ve done, almost without exception, has been to feel like I’m missing all this hugely important stuff early on because I haven’t found the rhythm with the story or the people. With The Interrupters, it was hard because my creative partner and producer Alex Kotlowitz and I were on call. The “interrupters” themselves were on call, and we were next—if they chose to call us. Sometimes they didn’t, and we’d find out about it later, and we’d be like, “That would’ve been fine! Why didn’t you call us?” Or sometimes they would call, and we didn’t have our phones by our beds, and we’d be kicking ourselves. I mean there were all kinds of things that went wrong early on, but I think what happens, as you go along and you develop more of a rapport and a trust, is that things just start to click. With just about every film I’ve done, the best stuff starts happening about halfway through the process because you’re in a different place than you were in the beginning.

Ameena, this dynamo of a person, wasn’t sure she wanted to be in the film, and for a long time she held back. We’d done one interview with her that was great, and we’d captured one mediation in the streets that was great. And then she decided, well, you don’t need anymore; you’ve got it. And we were like, “You don’t understand, no, no. We’re telling your story, and we’re doing this for a year.” She just didn’t get it. She wouldn’t return our calls, and she wouldn’t pick up once she knew it was my phone.

The first time Alex called she picked up, but then she didn’t pick up the next time he called. She wasn’t going to be fooled again. And it was tough. Then at a certain point, because her husband had played basketball and loved Hoop Dreams, she says to me, “Okay, Steve, I need to see Hoop Dreams. And what else you got? Just give me some of your films. I need to see some of this stuff.” And she told Alex to give her one or two of his books.

She called me up on a Monday and said, “Okay, I watched all these films over the weekend.” I said, “All of them?” And she goes, “Yeah, I watched them all. I get it now. I get it, what you guys are trying to do. I see now why you want more, but also I see what it is that you care about, the stories you want to tell.

TJ: So many of your documentaries have been made with Kartemquin Films. What does that collaboration look like? SJ: Gordon Quinn and Kartemquin quite literally took us non-experienced filmmakers under their wing with Hoop Dreams.

We had no track record, and generated no money for several years: We quite simply could not have made the film without them. Gordon didn’t just bring Peter into the project, which led to Peter and I working together on several other films over the years, he also served as a true creative executive producer on Hoop Dreams. He spent many hours conducting a master class on documentary editing when we really needed the help. It’s a role he has continued to play in virtually all my films, along with sometimes acting as cinematographer and producer as well. Kartemquin is a unique cultural institution in Chicago, and it continues to nurture new filmmakers, and help old ones like me, in myriad ways both practical and creative. They’ve been instrumental to my success, so I’ll keep coming back as long as they’ll have me. TJ: In a way there are definite themes in your films—sports, social justice, Chicago—but there’s also a lot of variety.

Is there something specific that attracts you to a story? SJ: I think there are certain things that continue to crop up in each of the films, primarily because I’m very interested in individual lives that ultimately have something larger to say.

I’m interested in looking at people’s lives closely and intimately, but I find that the lives that fascinate me the most, or rather the stories that fascinate me the most, have real resonance on a larger level. With Hoop Dreams these two boys want to chase the dream of basketball, but it’s ultimately a story about the elusiveness of the American Dream if you’re poor and black. Stevie started out as a portrait of the kid to whom I was once a Big Brother, but it ended up being, for me, a film that at its heart is about what we do with the people who are thrown away by society. What is our responsibility to them? I’m not a polemical person, and I try not to make films that are polemical because I don’t think that’s who I am, or how the world works—I don’t believe it’s the way to reach people. I’ve been thrilled by the tremendous impact that The Interrupters has had beyond anything I would have imagined, and I think that’s in part because we don’t pull any punches about what it’s like to live in a besieged community. But it’s not a polemic about violence.

In fact some people watch the film and want that. They’ll stand up at a Q&A and ask, where’s the trenchant analysis? In a film like The Interrupters, you hear what Eddy has to say, and what Cobe has to say, and especially what Ameena has to say. You get the analysis, but it may not be delivered in a way people are used to seeing and sometimes want to see it. But it’s there. TJ: I can’t end without asking about the Roger Ebert film []. You organized a crowdfunding campaign to make it, and CNN is on board.

When the film premiered at Sundance, you streamed it live to your supporters. You’ve done a lot of community outreach and programming for your other films. Do you see this as an evolution in how documentaries make it out into the world? SJ: I think increasingly crowdsourcing will be a component, and in some cases it’ll be the only way that some films get made. It’s not a practical way to fund most films, certainly not films that can’t be done really inexpensively, because it’s hard work. But while it is hard work, I think what it does is two things: It gives filmmakers more autonomy in terms of making the films they want to make because they’re not as beholden to private funders or broadcasters who may have demands.

And it is also a great way to build a community for your film because you’re getting people to invest, not just financially, in what you’re doing. They have a stake in seeing what becomes of a film, and they have the sense of having helped.

In that regard, that’s what we’re doing with the Ebert film. We see it as a way to build community, which is so totally in keeping with who Roger Ebert was. He really was proud of being in Chicago, but he wasn’t just Chicago’s critic. He was a national critic and had a very populist view of film. When he could no longer speak, when the Internet became his voice, he reinvented himself there, and we’re all the better for it. So this idea of streaming the film and doing a crowdsourced funding campaign seems in keeping with the way Roger engaged with the public and with film.

TJ: Does it feel like you’ve come full circle to be making a film about someone who was such a champion of your first film, Hoop Dreams? SJ: Yes, I mean it’s such a sort of poetic turn of events for me. Stickmuster Download Bernina. Like you said, there was no greater champion of Hoop Dreams than Roger.

So when the opportunity came along to make this film, I leaped at it. The idea that this is the twentieth anniversary of Hoop Dreams coming out and to have this film about Roger... Well, it couldn’t be better. I just wish he were here with us still, for everyone who followed him and read him and cared about him—and selfishly, so he could see the film.

Last updated: Jan 06, 2018 Want to behold the glory that is ' in the comfort of your own home? Hunting down a streaming service to buy, rent, download, or view the Steve James-directed movie via subscription can be difficult, so we here at Moviefone want to take the pressure off. We've listed a number of streaming and cable services - including rental, purchase, and subscription choices - along with the availability of 'Stevie' on each platform. Now, before we get into the nitty-gritty of how you can watch 'Stevie' right now, here are some details about the documentary flick. Released 2002, 'Stevie' stars,,,. The R movie has a runtime of about 2 hr 25 min, and received a score of (out of 100) on Metacritic, which compiled reviews from respected critics. Interested in knowing what the movie's about?

Here's the plot: 'After not seeing his younger friend for several years, documentary director Steve James decides to catch up with the Illinois boy he once mentored. No longer the nerdy preteen James once knew, Stephen Fielding is now a damaged adult who has had repeated problems with the law. While reproaching himself for not maintaining a closer relationship with his old friend, James tries to understand Fielding's evolution from abused child to a man convicted of serious crimes.'