Pop-Culture Archeology: White Men Can't Jump
Billy Hoyle deserved better
The Pip took a spill on Monday and ended up with a nasty cut on his knee that required nine stitches at the urgent care (the PA who did the stitches called one part of it “gnarly,” which I choose to believe is a medical term). This has made walking uncomfortable for him, so he stayed home from his regular day camp for the last two days. To pass the time, I offered a bonus Movie Afternoon, and talked him into the classic basketball movie White Men Can’t Jump. Which holds up pretty well— some of the pop-culture references in the trash talk are now obscure, and the clothes are extremely 1992 (The Pip asked at one point “What’s the deal with [Wesley Snipes’s] hat?” and I just has to shrug and say “It was a Thing, briefly…”), but it’s still a ton of fun. There’s a bit about the ending that’s always bugged me, though, and I’m going to babble about that a little.
In the unlikely event that you’re worried about spoilers for a 30-year-old movie, I’ll put them all below this title screen shot (in which you can see the Little Dude’s bandaged leg):
So, a quick summary of the plot: Billy Hoyle (Woody Harrelson) is a hoops hustler who’s on the run from some low-level mobsters with his girlfriend Gloria Clementa (Rosie Perez). In the opening scenes, he hustles Sidney Deane (Wesley Snipes) by playing off the stereotype that a goofy-looking white guy must be bad at basketball, and then Sidney teams up with him to run the same hustle on other people, which turns out to also be a scam, which Gloria figures out. She and Sidney’s wife Rhonda work out a deal where Billy and Sidney team up to play in a 2-on-2 tournament with a $5,000 prize, which they win.
Billy is a hothead— their problem with the mobsters is because he got pissed off and didn’t throw a game he was supposed to (“He said I couldn’t score, and called me a honky motherfucker.” “Billy, you are a honky motherfucker.” “Yeah, but I can score!”). At the end of the game, he has an opening to dunk, but doesn’t take it, and after Sidney ribs him about it, he bets his half of the prize money that he can dunk, which he fails to do (during which Sidney says the title of the movie). Gloria walks out on him, and shortly after that the mobsters catch up with him and give him one week to pay up.
And this is where we get to the tone problem that has been bugging me for thirty years. Billy gets Gloria back by helping get her on Jeopardy!, which has been her life goal; she wins 14 grand in her first game (which they apparently give her immediately in cash; there’s a lot here that doesn’t really make sense). She gives Billy $2,000 to bankroll an effort to reform his life, but just then Sidney shows up with news of a big game downtown against two legendary players, with a $2500 buy-in. Billy immediately agrees to play, and Gloria says that if she gambles the money she gave him, she’ll leave him. He plays, they win (Billy dunks for game point), and when he comes back to the hotel she’s gone. But the mobsters are there, and take all his money. Sidney agrees to take him on to his string of various hustles, and as the credits roll, they’re about to play one-on-one.
Which, you know, is a little odd, tonally, but it gets worse: Sidney is enlisting Billy for the final game because his family has just been robbed, losing everything they had, and he needs cash to get out of their terrible living situation. Which neither of them tell Gloria, despite the fact that she’s right there. There’s a shot of Sidney looking a little pained as Billy and Gloria have their big fight, but he never offers any explanation, leaving her to think it’s just a problem-gambler man-code thing, which would fully justify dumping Billy. And then, on top of that, she leaves Billy to settle up with the mobsters, in spite of the fact that she’s got more money than he does.
The whole thing is played as if it’s completely Billy’s fault for being a dumbass with poor impulse control, which he unquestionably is. But the final game that triggers the climactic fight is the one loss he takes that’s really not a matter of poor impulse control on Billy’s part— he genuinely owed a debt to Sidney, who called it in and then left him hanging during the fight with Gloria. When, really, the sensible solution is to explain the full context to Gloria, who could likely loan Sidney the money to save his family (she and Rhonda had some rapport) completely independent of the game. (Also, she should pay at least part of their mob debt…)
Now, admittedly, this probably just kicks the can down the road a bit— Billy is still a dumbass, and would undoubtedly do something stupid in a few months or years that would really justify dumping him. But the way the movie plays out gives the ending a weird discordant tone— Billy doesn’t get the girl, he loses all his money, and he hasn’t even learned any real lesson since he’s still goading Sidney into stupid bets as the movie ends. Meanwhile, Sidney is portrayed very sympathetically throughout— much more so than Billy— despite the fact that he just fucked over his friend.
So, that’s my one big gripe with the movie: Billy Hoyle deserved a better ending.
It’s not like this is the biggest logical hole in the movie, mind— the whole Jeopardy! piece is completely absurd— but it’s bothered me from the first time I saw it (in a theater when it opened back in 1992. It’s still a great flick, though— the basketball scenes are mostly good— very good for movie basketball— and the trash talking is epic (which is why I pushed The Pip to watch it).
This is extremely niche content, I realize, but in the event that you’re really inspired by analysis of tone problems in 90’s movies, here’s a button:
And if you’d like to take issue with my read of this, your mother’s an astronaut, but the comments will be open anyway:
Why should Gloria save Billy and Sidney?