Nigel Miguel | Through the Shattered Lens

In the projects of Chicago, Byron Harper (Michael Warren) runs a nonprofit basketball farming system and helps black kids, many of whom would have no other prospects other than a live of poverty or crime, to find a home in college basketball programs. Byron is passionate about what he does but he’s also a stern taskmaster and not quick to forgive. When one of his best players, Casey (Nigel Miguel), developed a drinking problem, Byron kicked him off his team. Byron’s main concern is his stepson, Truth (Victor Love). Truth is a great basketball player but also has an addiction to cocaine and an attitude problem.

For reasons that are never made clear, white lawyer Zack Telander (D.B. Sweeney) shows up on the court and says he wants to play one-on-one with Byron. Everyone assumes that Zack is a drug dealer and they tell him to get lost. But when one of the players is shot, Zack is the only person at the court who has a car. Zack rushes the player to the hospital and he wins Byron’s trust. Byron needs Zack to look over a professional contract that is being offered to Truth by sleazy sports agent David Racine (Richard Jordan).

For reasons that are again never made clear, Byron tells Zack to coach some of the more troubled players on the court, including Casey. At first, Zack isn’t much of a coach but eventually, he gets the players to trust him and start playing like a team. He also tries to get burned-out Matthew Lockhart (Bo Kimble) to start playing the game again.

Heaven Is A Playground is a mess of a movie that doesn’t really seem to be sure what it wants to say about basketball, the projects, or race relations. The main problem is that a lot of the decisions made by Byron and Zack don’t make any sort of logical sense. Moments of broad comedy are mixed with moments of high drama and it makes for an unconvincing and overly melodramatic sports movie.

Heaven Is A Playground had a long pre-production phase. At one point, a young Michael Jordan agreed to play the role of Matthew Lockhart. By the time the film actually went into production, Jordan was a superstar and had neither the time (nor, probably, the desire) to co-star in a low-budget sports movie. After the movie flopped, director Randall Fried sued Jordan for breach-of-contract, claiming that he caused the film’s box office failure by refusing to appear in it and, as a result, Fried’s directorial career stalled. In the suit, Fried claimed that he was on the verge of being “the next Steven Spielberg” until Jordan refused to do his film. The jury found Jordan not liable and awarded him $50,000.

(Trying to sue Michael Jordan was a terrible idea in 1998 and it’s probably still a terrible idea today. People love Jordan!)

Personally, I have to say that Mike made the right decision.

Blue Chips is a movie that will always make me think of England.

When I was a kid, I would spend every summer over in the UK. When I flew over for the summer of ’94, the in-flight movie was Blue Chips. I can still remember sitting in the back of the plane, trying to watch the movie on that tiny screen. At the time, I did not pay much attention to Blue Chips. It was about basketball, which was not something that I was interested in. It also starred Nick Nolte, who, over the years, starred in a lot of the movies that I saw while flying over the Atlantic Ocean. Try as I might, I could not understand a word that Nolte was saying. It was impossible to separate his gravely voice from the drone of the plane’s engines. I didn’t care much about Blue Chips.

Two months later, I was sitting in the back of my return flight when the flight attendant announced, “Our in-flight movie will be Blue Chips, starring Nick Nolte.” Still not caring about basketball and still unable to understand a word that Nick Nolte was saying, I sat through Blue Chips for a second time. What else was I going to do? Step outside and go for a walk?

Looking back, I can understand why Blue Chips would be shown on a plane. There’s nothing unconventional or controversial about Blue Chips. It’s not going to start any fights or leave anyone offended. Nick Nolte plays Pete Bell, a college basketball coach who, coming off of his first losing season, resorts to unethical measures to recruit three star players. Ricky Roe (Matt Nover) is a farmboy from Indiana and his racist father wants the college to buy him a new tractor. Penny Hardaway plays Butch McRae, whose mother (Alfre Woodard) wants a new house. Neon Bordeaux (Shaq!) doesn’t want anything but still gets a new Lexus. The corrupt head of the school’s booster club is named Happy and is played by J.T. Walsh. Other than Happy Gilmore, has there ever been anyone in a movie named Happy who hasn’t turned out to be bad news?

Blue Chips was directed by William Friedkin, though you’d never guess that this by the numbers movie was from the same director who did The French Connection, The Exorcist, or To Live And Die In L.A. In his autobiography, The Friedkin Connection, he devoted just a few words to Blue Chips, saying, “It’s hard to capture, in a sports film, the excitement of a real game, with its own unpredictable dramatic structure and suspense. I couldn’t overcome that.”

Friedkin’s right but I’m always happy whenever I come across Blue Chips on cable because it reminds me of that long-ago summer in England.

For tomorrow’s movie a day, it’s another sports-related film that always makes me think about Britain: Alan Clarke’s The Firm.