AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
A new movie dramatizes the struggles and triumphs of a high school boys basketball team from the Navajo nation in New Mexico. The Chuska Warriors are good, but when the film begins, they almost give a game away. And boy, do they ever get a talking to from their coach.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "REZ BALL")
JESSICA MATTEN: (As Heather Hobbs) What is our No. 1 rule?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) Rez ball wins championships.
MATTEN: (As Heather) Exactly. And what is Rez ball?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) Run fast. Shoot fast. We don't ever stop.
MATTEN: (As Heather) We run fast. We shoot fast. We don't ever stop. Now, I don't know about you all, but I'm here to win a championship.
RASCOE: "Rez Ball" is out now on Netflix. It's directed by Sydney Freeland, who also co-wrote the movie with Sterlin Harjo, the creator of the hit show "Reservation Dogs." And note, "Rez Ball" does address difficult issues off the court, like suicide. Freeland told me, she and Harjo drew from their own experiences when deciding whether to include the topic in the film.
SYDNEY FREELAND: I grew up in New Mexico. I played basketball in high school. I was not very good, but I played. And Sterlin grew up in Oklahoma. He didn't play basketball but was very familiar with rez ball. And in crafting the story and everything, we both had these instances of loss in our community, the - specifically to suicide.
And initially, we were very, like, hesitant to approach the subject. Like, it felt, like, a little bit taboo. It felt like a little bit of a - is this something that we should be talking about? And the more we started talking, the more I was like, well, actually, yeah, if we're kind of scared to talk about this, maybe this is something to bring to the forefront. But at the same time, if you're going to dramatize this, you don't want to glamorize it or sensationalize it. And so it was really about finding that balance to tell a story in a respectful manner.
RASCOE: Can you talk about, like, how entwined a basketball team, like the one you depict in "Rez Ball," is with the community?
FREELAND: Yeah. There's a huge following for the sport on reservations. I think a lot of that - you know, just speaking about my own reservation, for example - we don't have professional sports teams. You know, we don't even have college teams necessarily, and so a lot of that falls on high school athletics. And one of the sports that people particularly excel at is basketball. The closest comparison to the following that a sport gets is that kind of West Texas high school football, you know, "Friday Night Lights." The whole town shuts down.
I recently saw a map of the largest high school gymnasiums in the country, and it's basically - they're all in Indiana, and then two of them are actually on the Navajo Nation. The largest gymnasium on the Navajo Nation is in a town of about 6,000 people, Chinle, Ariz. And the gymnasium, I believe, holds about 7,500 people, and they will routinely sell out. So it's a big deal back home on the reservation.
RASCOE: Were there aspects of this story that you absolutely wanted to tell in a certain way or maybe some sports movies cliches that you wanted to play with or avoid all together?
FREELAND: Oh, yeah. So many things - these kids had to be able to play basketball. So we took a little bit of a unique approach in our casting process. We did, like, a traditional casting call for actors to, you know, audition for the roles. But in addition to taping themselves, they also had to do three basketball drills. They had to shoot a layup, shoot a free throw, and shoot a 3-pointer and then film themselves doing that. We thought that would weed people out. Long story short, we got 5,000 submissions...
RASCOE: Oh, wow.
FREELAND: ...For basically 10 roles. Yeah, it required a lot of legwork up front. But what you see in the film are these kids - they're actually playing. They're actually ballers. They're actually actors. That was particularly exciting. I think another big thing for us early on in talking with my co-writer Sterlin and myself - like, we talked a lot about the idea of the white savior in films. And so one of the things we were really adamant about was, we didn't want an outsider coming in to, like, teach these kids how to play basketball the right way. We really wanted to have a coach who was from the reservation, who actually went to that high school and was able to lead the kids.
You know, I think in addition to that, we both come from matriarchal communities, and so the prospect of having a woman coach leading them just made sense. When we put those two things together, there were all of these sort of great positive consequences that came from that. When the team faces adversity, she's not going to take them to, like, the big city and take them to a fine dining establishment. No, she's going to take them to sheep camp where she grew up herding sheep with her grandma and use it as a team-building exercise.
RASCOE: Speaking of the team's coach in the movie, Coach Hobbs, played by Jessica Matten - she is from the reservation, but she played in the WNBA, and she wants this bigger coaching job out in the world. That push and pull - is that something that you really wanted to portray?
FREELAND: When I turned 18, I couldn't wait to get off the reservation. You know, I couldn't wait to put it in my rearview mirror, and so my goal was to get as far away from the reservation as I could, and that kind of landed me in the film industry. As I've gotten a little bit older, I've come to a place where I've really started to miss it, and there's this sort of longing to return. But at the same time, it's that push and pull of your career versus where you come from. A lot of that was drawn from my own personal experiences, really.
RASCOE: It seems like, you know, from the outside, at least, that there is more authentic storytelling of the need of experience onscreen now, thinking about a series that you also worked on, "Reservation Dogs." But that's probably easy to say from the outside. Does it feel that way to you?
FREELAND: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It definitely feels like a brave new world. When I first moved to LA and was trying to just work in the film industry in, like, the kind of late 2000s, the goal was just to get something made. You know, there was certainly interest, but goodwill and interest can only get you so far. You also need the financial backing. And so in the past few years with shows like "Rutherford Falls" and, of course, "Reservation Dogs," you have need of talent both in front of and behind the camera. We've sort of been, you know, longing for our chance and our shot. And it's like, if you give us a shot, we can show you what we can do, and, you know, I think, like, "Reservation Dogs" is a great example. You know, I think Sterlin has almost single-handedly raised the bar. The bar has now gone from solely trying to get something made to Oscar nominations. The new standard has been set, so it's a very exciting time.
RASCOE: That's Sydney Freeland. She is the co-writer and director of the new movie "Rez Ball." Thanks so much for joining us.
FREELAND: Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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