If you are a sports movie fan, then you know about Ron Shelton who is known as Mr. Bull Durham, Mr. White Men Can’t Jump, and Mr. Tin Cup. He is known for his sports movies, and these movies made him popular. Ron Shelton worked in an underrated boxing movie which is called Play It to the Bone and a biographies movie which is based on baseball player Ty Cobb.
And you know what he become popular when he played the role of White Men Can’t Jump, even he has written many movies such as “Best of Times” (American Football), Blue Chips (Basketball), and the Great White Hype (Boxing).
Ron Shelton always rock the floor with his amazing acting which looks real, and no one can cross Ron Shelton in a sports movie, and you know the protagonist will have the game, which plenty of it, and it’s enough for the big time if he keeps his shit together. The cracks will be wise and the smack talk will flow. And as everyone knows, in every human they have some weak point in there too and the movie surf the reason of that weakness which become tension between it and his talent.
Before 30 years ago, when Ron Shelton started shooting as a White Men Can’t Jump on many pieces of asphalt in the neighborhoods along the Blue Line between Long Beach and LA in southern California, even at that time he hired many people as security purposes which were from Fruit of Islam Group, then he sent them in ahead of the cast and crew just to minimize the incident that may be bubble up.
When Shelton white men can’t jump cast, he had got the great amazing ideas for the film around the time, when he turned up his outdoor game in Hollywood just to find the court deserted and a padlock on the gates, and in front of the media he said-
“I didn’t know that ‘Going to your glove compartment’ meant going to get a gun to settle a dispute,”
In 2012, Ron Shelton told about the Grantland Website he said-
“There was an argument about whether something was a block or a charge and he went to his glove compartment and shot a guy dead. I then moved my game indoors to the Hollywood Y.”
Know more about Ron Shelton (white man can’t jump)
In his successful life, Ron Shelton known as a sportsman and film director, become popular when he started making his movie, and the Bull Durham rang so true and amazing movie, in which he earned the best screenplay Oscar Nomination. Even he also played triple-A baseball for a year, and half the time he spends in 5 seasons in the minor leagues that become the top movie on that time.
“I was an athlete,” he said in an interview one time. “I won a college basketball scholarship. I got up at 2.30 every day, and only because it was baseball or basketball practice then. The only reason I majored in English Lit was that it was the only course that fitted that schedule.
“And I make movies from the athletes’ point of view, not the fans’. You see things differently from the dugout. The fringe players in life are frequently more interesting than the winners. Those trying to reach the spotlight are more interesting. It’s a traditional element of American literature.
Idiots Savants-
Ron Shelton said some words “My baseball hero as a child was Eddie Matthews, who was from my hometown of Santa Barbara. But he kept on getting arrested for drunk driving. My dad used to say, ‘Y’know Eddie has a drinking problem.’ But that meant I had to learn those other qualities from other people, which I see as a valuable rite of passage. By the time people become professionals they are like idiot savants. They can only do one thing. And when they can’t do that they’re sunk.”
And the pro scene when Billy Hoyle’s world was in LA net chain scene, but Woody Harrelson played the role of idiots which was a savant role to the max. And when someone challenged Ron Shelton for street-level basketball, and in this Ron came on top. When everyone saw Ron Shelton’s love for sport or basketball, then many people congratulate him for his work.
Keanu Reeves auditioned for Billy but after 3 days of court, the case is clear for that time that he was no Baller.
Harrelson said in 2017 about Keanu- “I Was Lucky” “If Keanu had played any ball as a kid; I think he would have gotten the part.”
Even Harrelson also played very well, and Snipes was no Dr. J, but he was an athlete who had enough charisma and patter just to make it possible for his best performance.
Ron Shelton’s image came out as a basketball sequence, even he missed shots, learned new things, he never lose his strength and motivation level. And many basketball views know that Snipes and Harrelson were amazing top-rank ballplayers.
Marques Johnson played Raymond, he is a guy who goes for the glove compartment, but before the last few days he was 5 times NBA all-star, Freeman Williams and Duane Martin, they both have decent NBA careers. And you know what that Nigel Miguel was hired by the New Jersey, but before ever playing a game, got injured- said-
“It’s all choreographed within an inch of its life to look unchoreographed,” Shelton told NPR in 1992.
“That’s the real trick. We had a four-week basketball camp with real coaches. We had a big playbook that I had worked out with my assistants; there were Xs and Os everywhere. And a wonderful thing about working with athletes and athlete actors is that they’re used to hitting their marks. And they can do it over and over again.
“We ran plays endlessly. We ran them for days. And it was all to make them look as if they were spontaneous. That’s the whole trick of this type of choreography, to make it look spontaneous. Because if you just throw up a ball and let them play, there’s no way the camera can be in focus and there’s no way the camera can follow them.
Basketball Scenes of Ron Shelton (White Men Can’t Jump)
The playbook just a basic pick and rolls and backdoors, it a basic fundamental basketball which player had to learn it from the left-right of the ground and right side of the ground so that time Ron Shelton said-
‘Run play 16 from the left side. Then after I had all that footage so I knew I had precise moments, I would let them play freelance for three magazines of the film so I would have fumbles and things that wouldn’t have looked natural if you staged it. I could then cut that into the staged stuff.”
Beyond the basketball scenes White men can’t jump lived on in popular jokes which are Yo Mama Jokes, and it traded back and forth as the players’ jaw through the games. —- “Yo Mama’s so fat, her blood type is Ragu”, etc, etc.
As we know Ron has written many scripts, even for acting improvement, he gave homework to those actors and said them to come the next day with the best performance. He had a couple of pieces of advice when he is into the movie.
Even Shelton explained that- “The rhythms of the movie are really important,” “Because I wanted the dialogue and the whole drama of the movie to have basketball rhythms. Which are frenetic, kinetic, reverse direction a lot and are not classically dramatic, three-act rhythm?
“So in the Mama Joke sequences, I was more concerned in getting three or four of them in a row that had a rhythm than whether they were all the best Mama jokes I heard. So sometimes the funniest Mama joke was surrounded by three flat Mama Jokes and I would end up taking all of them out. It had to be, I tell a Mama joke, then you top me, then I top you, then you top me and we get out while the rhythm is still alive.”He also said that White men can’t jump cast was ultimately awesome, and much more thank basketball.