After watching "Hoop Dreams," your first question will no doubt be, "So, what happened to those guys - where are they now?"
"Hoop Dreams," playing at the Tower Theater, is a nearly three-hour documentary that chronicles the lives of a pair of talented high school basketball stars in Chicago's inner-city, both with dreams of reaching NBA-potential. But along the way, reality undercuts those dreams with financial, academic and personal problems, and the film shows it all in compelling dramatic terms.Still, young Arthur Agee and William Gates persevere, and the ending of the film is quite hopeful about their potential for full, rich lives . . . even if the NBA never comes calling.
To get back to the question, however - how are they doing?
Very well, thank you.
That's according to Peter Gilbert, one of the trio of filmmakers (credited as director of photography and co-producer) who followed the boys, their families and friends for five years to make this remarkable picture.
"We talk to them all the time," Gilbert said in a telephone interview from his Chicago offices. "We talk to all the family members and the kids . . . kids? They're adults now.
- "William is a senior at Marquette and playing (basketball) and doing very well. He went back to playing (after being disillusioned with the game toward the end of the film). And his wife is pregnant, with their second baby due in April. And they're real happy.
"He's looking forward to moving on in life and will graduate at the end of the summer. And he's excited at going into the workplace. He's interested in communications, specifically sports communication and community relations, and he'll be great.
"He'd like to see if anyone asks him to come to tryouts for pro basketball, but if happens it happens, and if it doesn't, that's OK, too.
- "Arthur is at Arkansas State University and he's also a senior and will graduate by the end of summer.
"He wants to act or be on camera or be in news or communications.
"As for basketball, his team is sort of struggling, and he's having a sort of OK season. But he still has the big NBA dream.
"But you know, this film - it's a hell of a resume to take out into the job market. And we'd like to help them both as much as we can with that."
Gilbert said that when he and his partners, Steve James (director/co-producer/co-editor) and Frederick Marx (co-producer/co-editor), began work on "Hoop Dreams," they simply came across the Agee and Gates families "exactly the way you see in the film.
"We met Earl Smith, a high school recruiting scout, and one day we were out driving around with him and this sort of recruiting sonar went off when he saw Arthur playing (basketball) on the playground.
"We then went with them out to a recruiting meeting at St. Joe's (St. Joseph High School), and the coach introduced us to William and said he's the next Isiah Thomas." (Thomas, the Detroit Pistons superstar, graduated from St. Joseph.)
The Agee and Gates families were surprisingly receptive to allowing the filmmakers into their lives, but Gilbert says it cut both ways. "They were flattered at first and felt it was good for the kids. Then it went from flattery to, `Will these guys ever leave?'
"These families took an insane good-faith leap with us, and at a certain point we just felt that we were not going to let them down. Also, we've grown extremely close to them, and in a way we made it with them, not about them."
The film's reception, landing on a huge number of top 10 lists and being talked up for an Oscar, is also rather astonishing to Gilbert. And he says it all began at the Sundance Film Festival last year.
"Sundance launched it - there's no question. We came out of Sundance with something that we knew was going to get released theatrically, and for us going in with this 2-hour, 45-minute film and winning the Audience Award - well, it was exactly the award we needed to win.
"Sundance was, in general, an extremely positive experience. I mean, it was like being a part of the Beatles for one week. The three of us would be walking down the street (in Park City) and people would say, `Oh, you're those `Hoops' guys, right?' It was great."