The movie Love & Basketball turned 25 this year.
The L.A.-set romance starring Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan was a hit when it came out in April 2000. It’s now included in the National Film Registry and in the Criterion Collection. And this Saturday, the Academy Museum is hosting a special screening of the film to celebrate its 25th anniversary.
But the film almost didn’t get made.
The film’s writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood says not only did every studio turn the film down, but, “ Every production company turned it down on top of that. So I didn't even have a company to maybe believe in it and fight for it.”
“ I was getting feedback like, ‘It's too soft,’ [and,] ‘Nobody wants to see this,’” Prince-Bythewood says. “It was tough.”
The “too soft” criticism came with some unhelpful suggestions. Like, “Can you add scenes in it, like [in] Soul Food where the woman is chasing her husband with a knife?” Prince-Bythewood says, “It's like, ‘No, that's not this film.’”
At a time when Boys n the Hood and Menace II Society were in the zeitgeist, Prince-Bythewood says, ”Hollywood is so myopic, and that's all they see of Black life. [...] This was not recognizable to too many in the industry. And so for them, this is ‘soft’ as opposed to, 'No, this is our lives. This is real life.'”
As the rejections continued to come in, Prince-Bythewood kept a list on her refrigerator of all the studios, crossing each one out with every new “no.” Two days after she’d made it through the entire list came “a miracle” — the Sundance Directors Lab called with an invite. After a table read of her script at the lab caught the attention of filmmaker Spike Lee’s company, “They were like, ‘We wanna do this.’”
But despite that green light, the challenges kept coming.
The basketball of it all
When it came to the search for the lead character, Monica, “ I knew that I had to find an actor who could ball,” Prince-Bythewood says. “I knew the ball couldn't be whack [because] I didn't wanna set women's sports back years. So actors came in and they did the acting audition, and then if they got past that, then they had to meet me on the court.”
Sanaa Lathan came in, “knocked out the audition, [had] great, amazing chemistry with Omar,” but had “never picked up a ball in her life, and I was like, ‘I can't do this.’”
After a search for another actor who could match Lathan’s performance and play basketball came up short, Prince-Bythewood had to make a decision.
“ I really thought about it and said finally, it's a love story set in the basketball world and realized you can fake a jump shot, but you can't fake a closeup, so go with the actor.”
Lathan trained with a coach for three months, and throughout the production as well, and ultimately, she only needed a double for two shots of the entire film.
Setting the film in L.A. and making it feel authentic
Prince-Bythewood had played track at UCLA, where she also went to film school, and first wanted to set Love & Basketball at her alma mater, but UCLA said no.
“So I went to my big rival” — USC — and “they just welcomed us with open arms, which was amazing because I knew I didn't want to make up a college. That's when films feel fake.”
When it came to the final scene, where Monica is playing in the WNBA, that was all real too — with the Los Angeles Sparks playing at The Forum, the legendary Lisa Leslie on the court and Magic Johnson in the stands.
The ratings board
Another hurdle was achieving a PG-13 rating, which was Prince-Bythewood’s agreement with the studio, New Line Cinema.
There is one sex scene in the film, which has been lauded for portraying a request for consent and the use of a condom, but it almost earned the film an R rating.
“I had to go back to the ratings board three times to get a PG-13 because of that scene,” Prince-Bythewood says. “Their feedback on why they were giving me an R is because they said it felt too real.
“I was like, ‘I mean, that's what filmmaking is.’ I think it's good filmmaking if you feel that it's real.”
So Prince-Bythewood stood her ground: “There was no nudity, no grinding. It's just a love scene, and it’s a young woman's first time, and I wanted to play the reality of that and show how it could be done the right way."
Could the movie be made today?
As difficult as it was to get Love & Basketball made in the late '90s, would trying to get it made in today’s Hollywood — with the greater value placed on films based on existing intellectual property and big-budget sequels — be even harder?
“I think about that,” Prince-Bythewood says. “ It scares me to death that I don't know that it would get made today.”
While it might get made by a streaming service, ”a theatrical [release]? No. I don't think it'd get made today, though I'd like to think I'd fight in the same way I did to finally get it made. But the industry has shifted dramatically.”
Add to that the fact that “ the makeup of those in power has not changed over my 30 year career,” Prince-Bythewood says. “You greenlight what's familiar to you. You greenlight what you believe the industry wants. That silences a whole lot of voices and unfortunately a lot of voices like mine.”
