It is an insistent theme of this film that every life--not just Stevie's, but that of every person we see--has value and validity, and that everyone deserves a fair break. Join Facebook to connect with Tonya Gregory and others you may know. “My collaborators said, ‘You haven’t seen him in ten years, you should film yourself a little bit with him. Because, we soon learn, James has known him since Stevie was a troubled 11-year-old and James became his Big Brother while attending Southern Illinois University. But he succeeds as filmmaker because of his even-handedness and devotion to his subjects, his determination to get the story right, even at his own expense. "I just don't know what it is about Stevie, but I love him," says his longtime girlfriend Tonya Gregory. His stepsister Brenda is also a support, a surrogate mother who seems the best-adjusted member of his family, perhaps because, as her husband tells us, "they didn't beat her." James' socially active wife Judy, who works with sex offenders and troubled kids and urged James to get involved in the first place, at one crucial point argues her husband out of lending Stevie money to get out of jail. Since then? He went to tennessee. Stevie thrusts its director in front of the camera, and not in the self-promoting manner we'd expect from, say, Michael Moore.
The process itself is enriching.”James detailed some of the problems he encountered during three productions and explained how he turned them into silver linings.James had a hard time getting anyone to talk on camera about an incident where star basketball player Allen Iverson was arrested after a racial brawl in a bowling alley in Hampton, Virginia, the small town where James grew up. James, like everyone else, believes that Stevie is guilty, and he openly admits that he doesn't want Stevie back on the streets. I don’t know if there is a silver lining in this film, but it made a very different film than what I set out to make.
One of the reasons "Hoop Dreams" is such a great movie, and "Stevie" such a good one, is that, after a while, we implicitly trust his judgement and choices. That archetypal liberal sentiment will probably be rejected by hardcore Darwinists or ultra-conservatives in the audience; they may find some solace in the fact that this is also a film about the weaknesses of modern liberalism as embodied by James himself.James may have failed as a Big Brother. Even though I didn’t get to interview white people who were in the bowling alley, I felt like I was able to represent what went on in the community.”James initially started out thinking of “Stevie” as a short film, which was also how “Hoop Dreams” began. Documentary [USA:R, 2 h 20 min] Steve James, Stephen Fielding, Tonya Gregory, Bernice Hagler Director: Steve James IMDb rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 8.0 /10 (2,220 votes) He began a film, a search, to discover not only what had happened to Stevie over the past ten years but to understand the forces that had shaped his entire life. Audience: I saw this film when it was first released and it really affected me, especially the two women Tanya and Patricia. I was always very skeptical about the whole enterprise. That was in 2010. Tonya, who has a heavy speech impediment, also seems one of the sweetest and most perceptive people in the film. We never feel the movie is holding back on us or trying to manipulate our responses. All rights reserved. “Those kinds of moments were not expected but it came to feel absolutely important.”James ended up being on camera in the film as part of the story, something he had never intended to do.
“I was planning this big massive sit-down interview when he gets out of the hospital,” said James. Not only did Iverson refuse to be interviewed, but “many of the white people in the community especially those who had been in the bowling alley the night of the brawl refused to speak,” according to James.