Soul In The Hole (1997)
Dir. Danielle Gardner
Starring: Kenny Jones – Ronnet Jones – Ed (Booger) Smith
Super Bowl Sunday has brought out many a post about sports and sports movies. One of my favorite political blogs posted some of their favorites, including “Hoop Dreams”, which tells the compelling story of two inner city kids who are basketball phenoms. The film remarkably follows these kid’s lives through adolescence, their teenage years and finally college, trying to make it in NCAA basketball. But there’s another film about the same subject, young black men trying to survive and using sports to make it, that came out a few years later. It’s called “Soul In The Hole”. As good as “Hoop Dreams” is, “Soul in the Hole” is better.
I’m from Portland Oregon the home of the Trail Blazers. Back in the late nineties and early ‘00s they were known as the “Jail Blazers”. They had characters like J.R. Rider, Rasheed Wallace and Damon Stoudamire, young black men, who were constantly in trouble for all kinds of crap: traffic violations, drug possession, domestic violence, weapons possession and on court shenanigans. These guys became a national joke. They couldn’t keep out of trouble. I remember when J.R. Rider got busted for shooting craps on a street corner. The local papers couldn’t figure it out. How come a multi million dollar basketball player, a player with amazing talent, would stoop to something so low as to be caught gambling on the streets of NE Portland? If they took the time to watch “Soul In The Hole” many of their naïve questions about guys like Rider would be answered.
“Soul In The Hole” is a documentary about Kenny Jones and his street ball team called “Kenny’s Kings”. Kenny lives in Brooklyn New York, runs a liquor store, and is married with no kids. But he’s taken one of his players under his wing, an amazing baller, and street legend by the name of Ed “Booger” Jones. Watching Booger play ball is a thing of beauty. Like Magic Johnson, he can control the play of the game without scoring a single point. Like Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, he’s fast and smooth, seemingly effortless in his ability to get to the hoop, or set up a wing man for a score. The competition in the tournaments is fierce, and at times downright dangerous. In one scene, Kenny contemplates pulling his team out in fear that someone might get shot. It’s the kind of environment the critics of guys like Booger wouldn’t last a day in.
There are only two places Booger feels truly comfortable, and that’s on the basketball court or on the streets. He desperately needs an education, but doesn’t have the discipline to concentrate on academics. He gets all the love a child could want from Kenny and his wife, but doesn’t take their guidance seriously and resents their attempts at parenting. Despite the opportunities his basketball talent can bring him, Booger cannot resist the call of the streets, the feeling he gets among the hustlers, the pushers, the bangers. The more opportunity comes his way, the more love and support Kenny lavishes on him, the more Booger pulls away.
There is a huge racial divide in professional and academic sports. All you have to do is check out the players on the basketball court or football field and the spectators in the stands. Most of the players are black, and most of the spectators are white. Many in the established media hate the players that come from Booger’s world. They don’t believe that they are a part of the hell that Booger lives in. They don’t believe they should have to think about it. They don’t believe Booger’s world should infiltrate theirs in any way. They don’t understand that they’ve created a vicious, brutal, farming system that benefits the NCAA and NBA to the tune of billions of dollars a year. They don’t understand that young men like Booger literally risk their lives playing street ball. They feel as long as the players that “make it” are getting paid millions, they should conform, behave, shut the fuck up and play ball.
“Soul In The Hole” is about Booger, but it’s also about all the young men that come from his world and try to make it in college and the NBA and find the transition from the world of the streets to the world of academia almost impossible.
