just saw this movie and it was amazing.
i was confused by something though, sorry if its stupid of me, but the opening scene where he falls down on the street having the heart failure. chronologically, when is that supposed to happen?
i know in the movie it doesnt happen after he's clean, but did it happen when he was a junkie?
thanks,
brian
i wondered about that myself. i thought it would happen when he was on drugs but apparently not. you know earl did pass away a couple of years ago. sad, he was in his early fifties. gp.
shareWant to start by saying, this movie is informative,true, entertaining, and saddening all in one film. I really like this movie. Not too many people have heard of it, and not too many movie stores even carry it. But anyways...the opening scene definitely takes place when he was a junkie. However, what i am not 100% sure on, though it seems to make sense as it is not clear in the movie, but the time period when he returned to Harlem, between leaving his college basketball team and his imprisonment, when he was deep in the vicious cycle of a junkie, he had lost track of time. After he was arrested, to his mom and girlfriend he claimed he had only been home from school a couple of months, when in reality, approximately 2 years had passed. And what I've concluded, is that when he went to jail he went through a natural cold turkey detox from heroin. And while he was overcoming his addiction, he probably started to recall many memories while he was a junkie that he could never remember before when he was using. And I think the opening scene, is one of the memories that he recalled in which he realized what a loser he had become, and what made him want to change. In that opening scene, in the background you can hear someone saying something like "thats The Goat, look at him, what a loser he is now". And as he waking up from his daze in jail, that's when the jail guard comes up to him and asks him to sign his book.
I think it is one of those scenes where initially, the viewer doesn't understand the scene's complete significance. They might pick up the general idea, of what drug addiction can cause to someone, even a basketball star. It isn't until after the movie ends that the viewer may question what the scene actually depicted. And even then, one would have to really read into the movie to even just scratch the surface of the scene's significance. And only then, can somebody appreciate the fim for its eye-opening, full-circle depiction of drug addiction.
fantastic movie, a must see for ANY basketball fan, possibly THE best basketball movie ever made because of it's ability to stay true to whatever time it is viewed in. the beginning scene where earl is walking down the street having a heart-attack is lesalle's way of "taking the legend out of the myth" lesalles character, fresh from nam, has the exact same posture and appearance and he comes in when we see our character in limbo, half-way between being the clean, amazing ball player that he was and the dirty drug-addict he'll become, kind of like how they give us a little bit of hint that lesalle's character, "in his day" was a ladies man, could ball and had a life but further into the movie is a broken man and looking for a prop from his little man the goat. i just think it's lesalle's little way of showing the similaritites between his character and cheadle's, almost as if he's trying to justify his character even being in the movie by making the declines of both their characters similar.
shareI think I was when he dying of a heart attack at the moment, sad though...
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