Harley Soltes
Today, Darnellia Russell has completed two successful seasons at North Seattle Community College. She is expected to appear at SIFF. And she hopes to transfer to a larger school for her next two seasons of basketball.
Details
The Heart of the Game Neptune: 7 p.m. Thurs., June 8. Lincoln Square: 4:15 p.m. Sun., June 11. Rated PG-13. 98 minutes.
Seattle International Film Festival
Cinema Sprawl
More titles. More venues. Just plain more. Seattle's annual movie overload is about to begin. An introduction.
SIFF Ticket Info
Thursday, May 25, through Sunday, June 18.
In the SIFF Spotlight
17 must-see titles, surveyed by our critics.
SW Picks for SIFF
Our 36 sight-blind choices for the festival, not otherwise covered in this guide. In addition to a few repertory titles, inclusion here means (a) the film has great buzz, (b) a trusted colleague has seen it, or (c) it has incredible locations or someone incredibly sexy in it.
Lucky Bounce
How a neophyte Seattle director stumbled into making a surefire, lump-in-your-throat sports documentary. But would you give up seven years of your life for a deal with Miramax?
Local Heroes
We meet some of the local figures and explore area connections at SIFF.
Old Master, Fresh Ears
Radio, theater, movies—there's not much difference to America's great cinematic champion of the human voice.
Britons Behind Bars
Whether innocent or guilty, this arresting post-9/11 docudrama shows, one size of orange-jumpsuit justice fits all.
Mr. Franken Goes to Washington?
A Q&A with the comic turned author turned documentary subject ... and now, possible senator?
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It's on the rim! It might go in! It might fall out! There's no time left on the shot clock! It's anyone's ball game!
Because basketball—like all sports—depends on that certain ineffable quality of luck, there is a beautiful cruelty to the game. The best team doesn't always win. The underdog doesn't always prevail against the odds. You can train all your life for a free throw that clangs off unforgiving iron. And your tears, particularly the tears of Roosevelt High School's varsity girls basketball team, don't mean a goddamn thing.
There are plenty of tears in Ward Serrill's The Heart of the Game (see Sheila Benson's short review). And blood. And bruises. And punctured egos. And a felony that made local headlines, sending a man to jail. And another court case that loomed over a state championship game two years ago—one that determined not only the outcome of a school rivalry (Roosevelt versus Garfield) but also the fate of a star athlete and the fortunes of a first-time feature director. (Spoiler alert: If you don't follow high-school sports or girls' basketball, I'm not going to tell you which way that game went. But if any blabbermouth hoops fan starts to mention this must-see movie, which opens after SIFF on June 14, tell them to shut their pie-hole.)
Oh, and another thing—when that final free throw rolls, you may find yourself crying, too. I'm not going to say Roger Ebert— he, mighty champion of Hoop Dreams—got all weepy about it at Toronto last fall, but the big guy clearly loved the movie, and even the most jaded, jock-averse Seattle art-house filmgoer is bound to feel the same way.
THE IRONY IS that Serrill was prepared to quit filming even before he met his leading lady, Darnellia Russell. "I was gonna make a film about just one year, just one season," he explained during a recent sit-down after returning from enthusiastic screenings at the Tribeca Film Festival. He had his movie, he thought, simply by profiling Roosevelt's "court jester" of a head coach: UW tax professor Bill Resler, who'd taken the job almost on impulse in 1998, when the squad was in the cellar of the Metro League. The two men met at a party, Serrill adds, and Resler—divorced with three grown daughters—was such an animated madman that Serrill tagged along, a video crew of one, to document Resler's surprisingly successful first season.
A Seattle native who originally trained as a CPA, Serrill had only then recently returned from 14 years in Alaska, much of it spent in tribal villages. He recalls: "Up in Alaska . . . I got into theater work—writing, directing, acting. I started to do some small video documentaries up there. Just a whole Mad Hatter approach to things. When I came back down here [in 1996] . . . I started to do commercial work. (Today he's also a principal at Seattle's Pyramid Communications, which specializes in nonprofit and progressive-oriented media.)
Quiet and laid-back himself, Serrill enjoyed watching the voluble Resler scream like Cecil B. DeMille on the basketball court. "He really creates scenes," Serrill says of that first year. "He has this ability to get girls to work their asses off and to laugh and have fun. His secret of coaching and teaching is that the kids never know what's coming next. That's how he keeps their attention. Teenagers are tough. They'll size up an adult in 30 seconds and decide they're boring. He has a gift for getting inside the teenage mind. He plans like crazy, but when the moment is there, it seems spontaneous."
Fine for a short profile on public TV, maybe, as Serrill now admits: "I was there at the beginning of season two to get some pickup footage . . . and Darnellia walked into the gym. Darnellia had this presence, where I couldn't stop filming her. You watch her play basketball—this is like God-given talent. She was the best in the gym, and everybody knew it. And it was like, 'I've been waiting for you.' Year two stretched to three to four. . . . " Serrill kept filming.
Unlike the garrulous Resler, however, ninth-grader Darnellia had an aloof, Garbo-like star presence that could put her at odds with coach and teammates (most of them white and more privileged than she, a resident of the Central District). "She had . . . a certain defiance. She didn't talk to me for two years. That intrigued me. She seemed to have a deal where I could film her as long as I didn't talk to her." (Interviews later followed after he spent time with her warm and quotable family.)
GREAT, SO WE havea first-time director filming himself into debt. One character who talks too much, and another who talks too little. But there was plenty of conflict between the two (Darnellia frequently missed class and later dropped out of Roosevelt), and some interesting side stories. Finally, Serrill thought, "I've been here four years. Sorry, [the film] doesn't have a happy ending. I started to wrap it up after season four and actually get it ready to submit it to Sundance. Which I did, and they kicked it back to me, and I'm very happy about it!"
