Steve James Documentary Stevie Updated
Documentary director Steve James (Hoop Dreams) returned to rural Illinois to reconnect with Stevie Fielding, a troubled young boy he had been an Advocate Big Brother to ten years earlier. He began a film to discover the forces that had shaped Stevie's 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. Stevie D; Steve James; Stevie Nicks; Stevie Wonder; Eli Gabay; Chantal Strand; Danny McKinnon; Ty Olsson; See more. Movie & TV Show Release Decade. 2010 & Newer; 2000 - 2009; 1990 - 1999; 1980 - 1989. IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities: IMDbPro Get Info Entertainment Professionals Need.
'Stevie,' the latest documentary by one of the modern masters of the form, Steve James of Chicago's Kartemquin Films, is a film so troubling and unflinchingly honest, that watching it becomes a test of empathy and compassion.
James' 'Hoop Dreams' has a subject easy to get behind--the story of two likable inner-city African-American kids trying to achieve dreams of basketball stardom and, in some ways, getting rooked by the system. But 'Stevie' is harder stuff. It is the disquieting tale of a dysfunctional family in rural Southern Illinois, and the 'monster' they seemingly produce: a gap-toothed, balding, long-haired, tattooed, profane, chronically unemployed troublemaker named Stevie Fielding, who has lived a life of institutionalized rebellion and petty crime. During the course of this film, Stevie was arrested and prosecuted for sexually molesting his own 8-year-old cousin. Most probably, the film concludes--and so do we--Stevie is guilty of that and much else.
For some, Stevie will be the ultimate loser and maybe the ultimate nightmare: poor white trailer trash living in a nondescript rural town (Pomona, Ill.), with a physically challenged girlfriend and a feuding family (a mother who beat him and the elderly step-grandmother who brought him up). He is an outcast with no special aspirations and few enjoyments beyond booze, sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll--and a little fishing with his buddy.
Why is Stevie so interesting to James and why does he consider him a good subject for a probing 2 1/2 hour documentary? 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. And because he is torn with guilt at having abandoned Stevie twice: first, by leaving Carbondale when Stevie was in his early teens to emigrate to Chicago and a filmmaking career, and second, by having lost touch with him again after starting this film in 1995--the two year interlude during which James made 'Prefontaine' and Stevie was arrested.
It is James' remorse at having been in close contact with a human being whose life is now unraveling but who trusted him--first as a role model and second as a filmmaker--that makes this film so riveting and poignant. The child Stevie, we learn, was constantly beaten by his mother and then raped and beaten during his tours of state orphanages and foster homes. While that hardly excuses his life of crime, it goes far toward explaining it.The movie, we see, is not just about Stevie's failure and loss, but about James' as well--and also that of Stevie's family and the larger society around them all. 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. We can understand Judy's attitude--she is a mother with three small children and in her eyes, Stevie must seem a potential threat to them all--but that's part of the film's core of sadness. By the end, we understand almost everybody and everything and still feel a certain powerlessness to address or change things.
This sense of impotence is never stronger than in the scenes when Stevie makes the second mistake (after his crime) that will damage his whole life: turning down a plea bargain arranged by his lawyer, who got his confession thrown out, a deal under which he would have submitted to psychiatric counseling instead of serving jail time. When Stevie, with adolescent macho disdain, dismisses the female lawyer who saved him and scornfully refuses the counseling ('I don't need no damn shrink talkin' to me') he puts himself back on a road to institutionalization--which accelerates when his confession is reinstated by another judge.
'I just don't know what it is about Stevie, but I love him,' says his longtime girlfriend Tonya Gregory. And Tonya becomes the film's beacon; it is through her that we catch a glimpse of the lost boy whose charm affected many around him, including James. Tonya, who has a heavy speech impediment, also seems one of the sweetest and most perceptive people in the film. 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. 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.
Steve James Documentary Stevie Updated Youtube
James may have failed as a Big Brother. 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. 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. We never feel the movie is holding back on us or trying to manipulate our responses. 'Stevie' like 'Hoop Dreams,' is deeply human, consummate reportage.
`Stevie'
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Stevie Documentary Free
Directed and written by Steve James; photographed by Dana Kupper, Gordon Quinn, Peter Gilbert; edited by James, William Haugse; music by Dirk Powell; produced by James, Adam Singer, Quinn. A Lions Gate Films release of a Kartemquin Films/SenArt Films production; opens Friday. Running time: 2:25. No MPAA rating. Adult. (for language and frank discussions of sexuality, sex crimes, violence and drug use).