(I stopped myself from screaming, “ME!”) The script was deemed “too soft,” especially compared to successful-and violent-black films from the early ’90s like Boyz n the Hood (1991) and Menace II Society (1993).
“Who the hell was ever gonna want to see a movie about a black girl who wants to be the first girl in the NBA?” she asks me over the phone last week. Prince-Bythewood finished the script for Love & Basketball almost three years before its release, but she struggled to get any studios to bite. Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan New Line Cinema “Ball better than you,” she replies), but ends in iconic fashion (“I’ve loved you since I was 11, and the shit won’t go away,” Monica tells Q). They have an unspeakable bond that starts a little uneasily (“Man, girls can’t play no ball,” Q tells Monica. Q and Monica’s connection deepens as they grow up. It set a new standard for seeing our love on screen in a pure, unadulterated fashion. Movies like Love Jones (1997), The Wood (1999), The Best Man (1999), and Brown Sugar (2002) were creating a new genre that black audiences weren’t accustomed to seeing. Love & Basketball premiered during a hot streak for black romantic comedies. “The best love stories are the stories that aren’t always focused on the love stories, but that the characters are driving toward something for themselves, and striving for something for themselves,” Prince-Bythewood says. (Her first kiss, like Monica’s, was with a boy from the neighborhood, and he, like Q, counted the seconds on his fingers.) She fused her love for basketball into a story about black love that many cling to as their rom-com bible. She began pulling from her real-life experiences while growing up.
As she kept writing, the story got personal. When she started writing the script, her inspiration was When Harry Met Sally … but with brown faces. Prince-Bythewood tells me that the film, even though it takes place primarily on the hardwood, was always meant to be a love story first. The movie sees basketball as something the characters do as a skill and a living, not as an excuse for audience-pleasing jump shots at the buzzer.” The big game scenes involve behavior and attitude, not scoring. … And here’s the most amazing thing: It considers sports in terms of career, training, motivation and strategy. “It is a sports film seen mostly from the woman’s point of view.
“But these bare bones of the plot don’t convey the movie’s special appeal,” Roger Ebert wrote in his review. The story is told through four quarters, following Monica and Q from when they were childhood frenemies (Monica was a Lakers fan, Q’s dad played for the Clippers) to their respective paths to high school basketball stardom, college freshman year woes, and dreams of going pro. The movie follows Monica Wright (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy McCall (Omar Epps) as they discover their talents and decipher their complex relationships-with basketball, with their families, with each other. Twenty years ago today, first-time writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s semiautobiographical film was released nationwide. “I don’t understand, like, what are we doing if ‘This Woman’s Work’ isn’t playing in the background?” “It’s important to reinforce that we do have love for one another and we love loving one another, contrary to popular belief.” The Insecure actress-comedian says if she can’t have a love like Monica and Q, then she doesn’t want it. To Orji, the movie represents something more than a credible sports story. She even dressed up as Monica, the movie’s main character, for Halloween-gold no. She loved basketball and played for her high school team, and her favorite movie was Love & Basketball. Yvonne Orji was like a lot of teenage girls in 2000.