But kids like Kyle can't help hoping. And both Shep and his mother point out that education, not the NBA ticket, is the real reason to go to school. The movie lives easily on the streets where it is shot, and the performances - especially by Martin, Shakur and Pinkins - are convincing. We get a sense of the daily rhythm of the character's lives, and for a drama, the movie finds room for a surprising amount of humor, especially in the dialogue. My complaint about the movie is that the plot goes on automatic pilot in creating the character of Birdie.
The neighborhood drug dealer is such a standard cliche by now that it's almost as if they plugged him into the movie as a shortcut to a villain. Shakur plays him well, and he makes a satisfactory bad guy, but the subliminal message is that drugs are where the money is. The movie could have come up with more original choices.
Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from until his death in In , he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. Rated R For Language and Violence. Tupac Shakur as Birdie. Leon as Shep. Duane Martin as Kyle. Above the Rim is seeded with true-to-life details that pretty much only New Yorkers and New York basketball junkies would recognize.
They brought Remy from Higher Learning with them! RAFE: He is the doofiest token white in the history of the sport. From his sun-kissed blond bowl cut to the number 52 on his jersey to his khaki-in-the-front, blue-and-red-in-the-back shorts, the Above the Rim filmmakers nailed every detail. He might be the most fully realized character in the movie. Besides Nutso. How does this person not have a Wikipedia page? Who was he? This guy starting for the Bombers is easily the most unrealistic part of the entire movie.
Q: How many flagrant fouls did Avon Barksdale commit in the street tournament — over or under 15? Which was your favorite? He definitely sucker punches Kyle at least five times, and those are just the ones the camera caught. Are we supposed to think Birdie had the refs on payroll? Or is this just how things roll in the Uptown Shootout? It makes me love the whole movie even more. RAFE: This is a trick question, right?
RAFE: Come on! Come on, guys. Birdie is awesome. The boy here says he owes me! Was that finish more or less realistic than the last RAFE: Game 6 was more realistic, because, as so often happens in real life, the bad guys won.
In retrospect, this was the moment the Big East officially started to fall apart. Q: Has Above the Rim aged a poorly, b horrendously, c tremendously, d like a fine wine, or e all of the above? RAFE: I vote for c — tremendously. I vote for e. You know how some dads make their kids watch Hoosiers?
Well, my kids are watching Above the Rim. Look at this picture of him in New Jack City. That man was born to be a sleazy agent. Note: Every other person in that photo would also work great for this role.
And guess what. But right as their romance is about to heat up, Birdie finds out and shoots her times. So long, Aniston. It would make zero sense from a casting perspective, but from the moment Nutso crashes through a backboard and falls to his death at the beginning of the film, Above the Rim makes it clear that making sense is not a priority.
Busey is a bona fide lunatic. Everything he touches becomes 20 percent weirder and more entertaining. Would he have improvised a scene where he joins Shep on the court for some one-on-one with no ball?
The possibilities would have been endless. Plus, it would have given Busey one of the all-time great crappy-entertaining movie hat tricks in , with Surviving the Game , Drop Zone , and Above the Rim. I regretted drinking an entire bottle of Cristal the night before, because the hangover had me in a serious headlock jawn.
It was in the morning. I took me a minute, and then I recognized the nervous, wired, and intense voice connected to the angry, Five-Oh like door knocking and shouting. I told him through the door to calm down, let me throw some clothes on. Am I going to have to choke this dude out? I asked myself. That wouldn't be easy, because Jeff was trained in the martial arts. I only made it to a yellow tip as a year-old practitioner of Shotokan "hard style" karate at Harlem's Minisink Town House.
But I wasn't one to back down, either. From Harlem to Hollywood, the street is defined by how a man crosses it. When I opened the door, I saw Jeff almost in tears. He said to me, "You broke our hearts, Barry. You broke my heart and you broke Benny's heart. Yes, I had a hangover, but dude was talking crazy. He said to me, "That script you wrote about the dirty cops and dirty politicians and drug dealers in Baltimore, Thirsty?
The one you promised to me and Benny? I just looked at this guy. The surrealist nature of the moment had jarred me into stone-cold soberness. We loved your story notes! That was the fall of Of those three, Above The Rim was the only screenplay that I did not create as an original story. Instead, I was brought in as a writer for hire.
Hollywood's Golden Black Epoch, —, was an amazing decade, with African-American filmmakers writers, directors, producers, actors, and actresses of every major and independent studio in Hollywood collaborating on great work. I was blessed to be a part of that. After the success of New Jack City , I was in demand as a hot screenwriter. It was Benny the V. It was a story written by his childhood friend and business partner, Jeff Pollack.
Benny is also a brilliant visionary and forecaster of trends in music and film. I was hanging out with the brilliant Allen Payne. By the time we got to st and 7th, the kid driving pulled over, got out, said something to the two white and beefy cops.
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