Imagine this scenario for just a moment. In one city you have two high school basketball teams -- one is 29-1 and the other is 30-0. They have not played any common opponents.
It should be an easy thing to decide which team is better, right? Just have them play one another.Well, not if this is 1965 New Orleans and one team is all-black and the other is all-white. And if de facto Jim Crow and rampant racism stand between them.
That's the fact-based scenario behind "Passing Glory," yet another fine made-for-TV movie on cable's TNT. An outstanding cast (including Andre Braugher of "Homicide," Rip Torn and Ruby Dee), a very good director (Steve James of "Hoop Dreams") and a decent (if unsurprising) script by Harold Sylvester make this television movie very much worth watching.
And Sylvester knows whereof he writes. He was a member of that St. Augustine High basketball team that was refused entry into the all-white Louisiana prep sports association. But St. Augustine did get a shot at the all-white team from Jesuit High School.
It was a contest about more than just basketball -- it was also about fairness and racial equality.
"I think it was a combination of both," Sylvester said in a recent interview with TV critics. "Bottom line is we were . . . a 30-0 team in a basketball town that had another 29-1 team right across town. That 29-1 team was being called the 'Team of the Century' in Louisiana. We knew we were good, but we had no realistic measure. We didn't know how good.
"And so, yes, it was racial. Yes, it was athletic."
And the racial aspects of it certainly put extra pressure on the St. Augustine Purple Knights.
"There was a lot of weight on our shoulders because we knew that, regardless, we had something to prove -- and not only about basketball," Sylvester said. "Because if we couldn't measure up in terms of basketball, then how in the hell were we going to measure up in terms of poetry and philosophy and math? We just had no idea where we stood in the world order.
"First test: this basketball game. So it was extremely important to us. I think maybe more important for us walking into that gym than it was for the guys whose gym we walked into."
"Passing Glory" is definitely about more than just basketball. At the center of the story is Father Joseph Verrett (Braugher), a young, black Catholic priest. He is a teacher who reluctantly becomes the coach of the basketball team when his real goal is to teach his students about what they can become and that they can do something to change the world.
Verrett is not afraid to confront problems head-on, whether it's the racist father of a Jesuit High basketball player or his own mentor, Father Robert Grant (Torn). And his message gets through to his team's star player, Travis Porter (Sean Squire) -- a character Sylvester based on himself.
The game itself becomes a metaphor for what was going on in New Orleans in 1965.
"That game, for all intents and purposes . . . was the first athletic contest between blacks and whites in the history of the state," Sylvester said. "The fact was that there was a world out there where things were changing. We, maybe, had two worlds in the United States -- two separate countries. Probably more than two.
"The South, I think, is a wonderful place. But it was certainly a little bit behind the times."
In an effort at some degree of realism, "Passing Glory" contains a number of racial epithets, including "spook," "jungle bunny" and even the "n" word. But Sylvester -- who became the first black scholarship athlete in Tulane University history and only the second in the history of the Southeastern Conference -- makes no apologies for including them in his script.
"I think that when germs are exposed to sunlight, they die," he said. "Bottom line is everything I do is about telling the truth. . . . I think that the more we're exposed to them, the volatile words become less volatile if you really investigate and understand what they're about. I have no problems demonstrating them."
Not that everything about the movie is entirely historically accurate. For a game played in the mid-1960s, there seem to be far too many acrobatic dunk shots.
"I think that a little bit of poetic license is taken there," said director Steve James. "I think in part because in some ways we wanted the film to reach out to a contemporary young audience."
"And the reality was we had 11 men on that basketball team and we only had one guy who couldn't dunk," Sylvester added. "So he was never prepared to go into the game because we wouldn't let him warm up."
Without giving away who won the game (although chances are you can make a pretty good guess), it was not the close, hard-fought contest portrayed in the movie. As a matter of fact, it ended up being a 22-point blowout.
"It was," Sylvester said. "But drama being what drama is . . . "
"Passing Glory" is a message movie -- but it's not heavy-handed and it's very entertaining along the way. And that message goes beyond just the black-and-white issues it confronts.
"That team of the century who'd been told all their lives that they were the best that they could be, had a slightly rude awakening," Sylvester said. "And I think it was just the beginning of us coming to terms with the fact that sometimes things aren't always the way that people tell you they are. Which was the value for me in doing all this story. . . . Until we have the opportunity to get in the same arena, no matter what the arena is -- who knows?"