As a basketball fan and former high school basketball player, Warrior Strong director Shane Belcourt felt a special connection to his new film. PopCulture.com spoke to the director, who explained how Warrior Strong relates to high school athletes.
“If you played high school basketball or any sort of high school sport, you’ll hopefully see a piece of your history, your remembrance in there,” Belcourt told PopCulture. “It really is just about being a young person, trying to find your way into a team that is a lot of individuals, and how do you give up your individuality as part of the whole team to become a winning team and have a winning season? It’s really just becoming a team. It’s really about that.”
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Warrior Strong, which is out in theatres and on demand now, tells the story of professional basketball star Bilal Irving (Jordan Johnson-Hinds) who is suspended from the Chinese pro basketball league. To repair his image, Bilal goes back to his hometown and becomes a coach for his high school basketball team. However, his old coach, Avery Schmidt (Andrew Dice Clay), has a strong grip on the team despite having a near-fatal heart attack. Bilal and Avery will have to find a way to work together to help the team become winners.
“I always wanted to make a basketball movie, and then a script came to me that was about basketball and high school basketball. I’m like, ‘I’m already in,’” Belcourt added. “I read through it and I loved the two coaches that were going at it, and that really harkens back to Trading Places, Another 48 Hours, Lethal Weapon. The oddball couple forced together, they got to solve this case together, and they just don’t get along, and it’s a generational and a worldview and they’re just battling it out and they got to figure it out. That was something that I was really drawn to.”
Belcourt went on to talk about the dynamic of Johnson-Hinds and Clay display on camera. “They’re both fearless on camera and against each other,” Belcourt said. “They would go at it on camera take after take, and they had a lot of fun, really. Jordan Johnson-Hinds did not stand down, and we all know that Andrew Dice Clay’s not going to stand down to anybody. Both of them were going at it and it was great. They had so much fun. As soon as the take was over, they hugged it out, they laughed it out, they high-fived. They loved pushing each other and pushing each other’s buttons, and it was a real joy to be around.”
