This is the fourth entry in my recollection of my favorite scenes in my favorite sports movies, following, Bull Durham, Hoosiers and Rocky. Today we’re just gonna leave it up there as we visit the playgrounds of Southern California.
White Men Can’t Jump (1992)
The Choice: Everybody likes to talk about chemistry on a basketball court, and it’s clear right away that Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes, who play two pickup hoops hustlers in this one, have on-screen chemistry worthy of Stockton and Malone.
This is another film directed by Ron Shelton, and while it is not quite the movie “Bull Durham” is, it’s damn good. It’s good because Shelton gets the feel right, and because of that mesh between Harrelson and Snipes, who play Billy Hoyle and Sidney Deane, respectively.
“It is hard goddamn work being this good,” Sidney says after sinking a jumper while engaged in a shooting contest against Billy — a contest that has money riding on it — early in the film.
Billy, cradling a ball on a court in Venice Beach, Calif., is nonplussed. He tells Sidney to put a sock in it, in so many words, and explains to the other players gathered around the court that if he loses to Sidney, so be it. They just regard him as a chump anyway, so it’s not like he has anything to lose.
Then he swishes his shot.
Sidney’s turn.
“Don’t worry, Sidney,” Billy whispers in his ear. “I’ve hustled a helluva lot better players than you before.”
Sidney, suddenly unsure of himself, laughs nervously. Then he misses.
The thing that puts this scene over the top in my mind is what happens after Billy gets his money and walks off the court.
“Hey man, you said we was going to Sizzler,” one of Sidney’s friends says to him.
“Man, shut your anorexic, malnutrition, tapeworm-having, overdose on Dick Gregory Bahamian Diet-drinking ass up,” Sidney says. “Leave me alone.”
Dick Gregory Bahamian Diet-drinking ass? That, kids, is writing.
For the record Harrelson was ”a solid basketball player who passes well and has an accurate enough jump shot,” Shelton told the Chicago Tribune the year the film came out. And while others who auditioned for the role were better players, none was a better actor than Harrelson, according to the director.
Snipes, on the other hand, “is not a great basketball player, but he is a great athlete,” as Shelton told Entertainment Weekly in 2017. Snipes, interviewed for that same piece, did not disagree with that assessment, while adding that he made up for it by talking a good game. And never stopping.
Worked for him. So too did his chemistry with his sidekick, as they hustled players throughout Los Angeles. Highly entertaining movie.
Runner-Up: That would be the Jeopardy scene involving Billy’s girlfriend, Gloria Clemente, played by Rosie Perez. Throughout the movie she is angling to get on the show, and finally manages to do so, after Billy wins a bet with one of the show’s security guards by hitting a halfcourt hook shot. The scene, which begins with her introduction as “a former disco queen,” was shot on the actual Jeopardy set, and presided over by the late Alex Trebek. His presence so unnerved Perez that she mispronounced “Mount Vesuvius” — it came out “Suvius” — but Trebek, ever the pro, ad-libbed and made it work. And rather than reshooting the scene, Shelton left it in as it was originally filmed.
Nitpicks: Among the players Billy and Sidney hustle are a guy named Raymond, played by former UCLA and Milwaukee Bucks star Marques Johnson. Marques stands 6-8, but we’re to believe that two guys who go 5-10 (Harrelson/Hoyle) and 5-9 (Snipes/Deane) beat him in pickup? Tough sell. (Side note: Raymond’s liquor-store robbery scene is a keeper, too.)
Aimless Fact: Hall of Famer Gary Payton makes an uncredited appearance as a playground baller in this one.