I’ve been wanting to start up a column on documentary classics for a while now but couldn’t decide what film to start with. Yesterday I watched Steve James’ “Stevie” for the first time, and — oh yeah — this is the one. Less than ten years old, it might seem too new a film to be considered a “classic.” Docs tend to age a lot quicker than fiction films, though, with only a few years needed to determine if they’re permanent must-see works or momentary imperatives that quickly become outdated. A more obvious and easy choice would be James’ “Hoop Dreams,” and certainly it deserves a discussion here in the future. However, I partly wish to recommend lesser known films requiring more attention, either than what they received to begin with or than they have had since.As we await the release of James’ latest nonfiction masterpiece, “The Interrupters” (out in NYC July 29), as well as what is being called retrospective of some of the filmmaker’s work (including this film, which screens at the IFC Center tonight as part of ), it’s a great time to get acquainted with an undervalued documentarian and what’s undoubtedly his most narratively and ethically complex achievement. In fact, “Stevie” is one of the most narratively and ethically complex docs ever. It’s incredibly rich and challenging and emotionally difficult.
In short, it’s absolutely brilliant. “Stevie” presents a first-person story, in which James returns to Southern Illinois to reconnect with the young man he mentored ten years earlier as a Big Brother. Mostly the film is about this eponymous young man, an ex-foster child dealing with a complicated family dynamic and sudden yet unsurprising criminal charges. On the surface it appears to be your usual look at poor white eccentrics and miscreants, typical popular subjects for documentary cinema worldwide.
But it’s a biography inside of an autobiography and in the end it’s really James’ struggle we’re dealing with. At times it feels so personal, particularly on moral and visceral levels, that it’s amazing he was able to compile the doc with a clear head. I presume co-editor William Haugse (with whom James shares an earlier editing Oscar nomination) must have been an enormous help at the steering wheel of this one.In part I see the film as an unintentional condemning of mentoring organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, but for that I also have to see equal issue with foster care and, well, a lot of documentary filmmaking. James had personally recommended his own film to me after a discussion we had about documentarians’ relationships with their subjects after the camera is turned off. “Stevie” deals in this issue somewhat metaphorically because the reunion between Steve and Stevie is similar to what a reunion between filmmaker and film subject is like. As is another sequence in the doc where Stevie reconnects with his first and favorite foster parents after fifteen years out of touch.
“Stevie” is genuinely scary in ways that conventional horror thrillers never are because they seldom deal with the way real people make life miserable for each other. The film may prove a hard sell even in the specialized realm of profoundly depressing yet also stirring and edifying nonfiction movies.There are times when I felt a strong urge to abandon “Stevie,” a chronicle of small town misfortune and abuse in southwestern Illinois. You ask yourself why the filmmaker persists, accentuating his own role as a well-meaning but apologetic and certainly intrusive outsider. Ultimately, there are reasons to be grateful that he does, because the kinfolk who repeatedly fail and yet need each other in “Stevie” say things no fictional account could duplicate or surpass.Mr. James, who is based in Chicago, is best known as the director of the epic sports chronicle “Hoop Dreams.” Released to merited acclaim in 1994, it took an extended look at high-pressure high school basketball in the Chicago area.Mr. James attended graduate school at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, majoring in film studies.
While enrolled in the early 1980s, he agreed to volunteer for the Big Brother program.He mentored for about three years a young man named Stephen Dale Fielding, the Stevie of the current movie.The boy was 11 when they first met. An illegitimate child, he was abandoned by his mother, Bernice Hagler, in curious circumstances.
While pregnant, she became involved with a man she later married, Arvyle Hagler, now deceased. They had a child, Stevie’s younger sister Brenda, now married to a young man named Doug Hickam and expecting her fourth child. A subplot of the movie is her determination to have a first child.Although the Haglers raised Brenda, Stevie had been offloaded in plain sight. For many years he lived with Arvyle Hagler’s mother, Verna, in the same small town, Pomona, where his mother and stepfather also lived.The mutual acrimony that festered between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law is excruciating to witness.After the death of her husband in 1981, Verna found herself unable to cope with the responsibility of raising the boy alone.The identity of Stevie’s real dad has remained Bernice’s deep, dark secret. For a time, Stevie was happy in a foster home managed by a couple named Dorinda and Hal. When they left, his situation deteriorated. James was distantly aware of this decline in letters sporadically exchanged after he moved to Chicago in 1985, but he let the connection lapse, resuming it only 10 years later, when he paid a visit to Carbondale after acquiring some fame for “Hoop Dreams.”The movie chronicle begins at that point.
Originally, it was meant to be only a short documentary portrait of a young man who had had a rough time and faced a dodgy future, in part because he was well on his way to being incorrigible.Stevie had acquired a precocious rap sheet for hometown brawling and petty crime, a weakness for pot and booze and a scuzzy appearance pretty certain to arouse aversion in the stable and law-abiding.Returning more than a year later, after he completed the biopic “Prefontaine,” Mr. James discovered a Stevie in greater jeopardy, facing a child molestation charge. The remainder of the film covers a subsequent period of two or three years, concluding with Stevie’s departure to prison to serve a 10-year sentence for that crime.Besides the principal subject and members of his family, the cast of characters expands to include Stevie’s remarkable girlfriend, Tonya Gregory.
She and a good friend named Patricia enlarge your idea of what hopefulness can mean, especially in the face of discouraging odds.The developments include a tentative reconciliation between mother and son, commencing with Bernice’s embrace of a local evangelical church.As he returns for updates, the filmmaker is not all that successful in concealing a burdensome sense of inadequacy. James feels rotten for having failed to remain a Big Brother indefinitely.On the other hand, he has a family of his own. A comparable commitment to Stevie would be asking a lot, and it might not have precluded the sort of pathologies that led to the penitentiary.Who could do enough?
The boy was saddled with an ominous heritage from birth.Fundamentally, it’s that phantom father and estranged mother he needed for protection. A sad history of neglect, abuse and ignorance may have made it impossible for the young man we encounter to save himself, but taking its cue from Tonya, the movie declines to abandon hope.TITLE: “Stevie”RATING: No MPAA rating (adult subject matter consistent with the R category — a documentary concerned with family conflict and criminal jeopardy; frequent profanity and occasional sexual candor; discussion of a child molestation case; accounts of domestic violence and child abuse)CREDITS: Directed by Steve James.
Produced by Mr. James, Gordon Quinn and Adam Singer. Photography by Dana Kupper, Mr. Quinn and Peter Gilbert. Editing by Mr. James and William Haugse. Music by Dirk PowellRUNNING TIME: 140 minutesMAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS.
(2002) by director/producer (, ) is now available to stream onChallenging and ethically complex, James describes Stevie as 'The hardest film I've made. Also the most honest. And the saddest.' A modern documentary masterpiece, lauded as 'Brave.courageous and powerful.deeply sorrowful and impossible to forget,' by Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, Stevie was named as one of the in a list by popular online critic Marilyn Ferdinand. NewCity Film critic Ray Pride listed Stevie as #19 in his ranking of the, with only one other documentary placing higher. Filmsweep listed Stevie as.Watch the trailer:In 1995, filmmaker Steve James returns to Pomona, a beautiful rural hamlet in Southern Illinois to reconnect with Stevie Fielding, for whom James once served as an advocated Big Brother. He finds that the once difficult, awkward child has become––ten years later––an angry and troubled young man.
Stephen Fielding
Part way through filming, Stevie is arrested and charged with a serious crime. He confesses to the crime and then later recants.
The filmmaker himself is drawn into the film as he tries to sort out his own feelings, past and present, about Stevie and how to deal with him in the wake of his arrest. What was to be a modest profile of Stevie, turns into an intimate four and a half year chronicle of a dysfunctional family's struggle to heal.Stevie was awarded the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary at the 2002 IDFA, the Mayor's prize at the 2003 Yamagata Film Festival, and the Excellence in Cinematography Award at Sundance 2003. The film was distributed in theaters by Lionsgate and gained critical acclaim.Steve James was interviewed by Thom Powers in 2011, after a screening at IFC Center in New York, and reveals many details about the making of the film, the response of Stevie's family to watching it, and Stevie's life after the film.Stevie is also available for purchase on DVD.
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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. Part way through the filming, Stevie is arrested and charged with a serious crime that tears his family apart.
What was to be a modest profile turns into a intimate four and half year chronicle of Stevie, his broken family, the criminal justice system and the filmmaker himself, as they all struggle with what Stevie has done and who he has become. I strongly suggest you see the documentary 'Stevie' when it hits theaters. I saw a free special advance screening and it one blew me away. This one was long, over 2 hours. I expected to laugh at the messed up hicks when I heard it was a film about trailer trash.
How unforgivably judgmental of me. Instead of a shallow, exploitive Jerry Springer episode, I found myself wrapped up in the reality of their personal pain, regret, and hopelessness. I wish I could thank them all for shedding light on all the dark corners of their lives for us to see and gain insight. I was moved to tears several times (although I did have to laugh just as often). I felt a tremendous amount of shame for the internal suffering of those difficult people and situations we look down on, talk down to, ridicule, and ignore.
I walked out of the movie with a better understanding than ever about what unconditional love and acceptance means. You have to see it.
Learning how to make a documentary is no easy task.To engage in documentary filmmaking you must brave the unknown, and capture a story that unfolds in its own unpredictable way.Although, if you are a filmmaker, then you know controlling chaos is your job.All you need is an idea that you believe in. Along with a solid grasp of the filmmaking process, your path will soon emerge.You’re here to learn how to make a documentary: from the selection of a compelling subject to getting it acquired by Netflix.So let’s get into it. Now it’s time to think about the tools you’ll need to capture your vision, and the people to operate them.Worry about the sound just as much as the visuals.On a narrative film, you have the luxury of re-recording audio. But in documentaries, what you get is what you get.So hire both a cinematographer and a sound recordist.This way you’ll be free to concentrate on interviewees and the field events you need to capture.Every shoot has its own technical demands. PBS POV assembled a wonderful list of, to give you a good start. Now that your story’s solid, and you’re armed with the gear you need, you’re ready to set up the visuals you plan to shoot.There’s no one way to shoot a documentary.But, generally, the footage you shoot will fall into three categories. Interviews with relevant subject.
Live footage you capture in the field spontaneously. Recreated events (also known as “recreations” or “recres”)Preparing for how to make a documentary is about laying out what you need, and being open to the natural changes that emerge. Armed with the best footage you have, it’s time to work on writing a script.Relate your footage to the beginning-middle-end structure you laid out in your treatment. Did you get everything you need?If your budget allows, go out and grab any last shots you didn’t get.If not, what you’ve got is what you’ve got.There’s no single way to make a documentary script. But generally you want to break down your narration, sound and visuals into a two or three column A/V script.Use this to plan your edit with the sights and sounds of your footage.