This time, it was no slam dunk

Back in 1995, fresh from his runaway success directing “Hoop Dreams,” documentary filmmaker Steve James decided to focus his camera on a more personal project. As a college student, James had been a Big Brother to a troubled kid named Stevie in rural Illinois. Ten years had passed since James had been in touch with Stevie, and he wanted to reconnect and make a film about what had happened to his former mentee, now a convicted criminal in his mid-20s living with his step-grandmother.

During the course of filming, Stevie had his most egregious run-in with the law yet -- he was accused of molesting his 8-year old cousin. James became intrinsically involved in Stevie’s case and development, and he became a character in his own movie, “Stevie,” which opened Friday. The outcome is a film that raises questions not only about one boy’s development, but also about the role and craft of an ethical documentarian as well.

You admit that this project began out of guilt -- some sort of atonement for having abandoned Stevie long ago. To many people this sort of liberal guilt is a bad thing, but do you actually see it as a creative and instigating force?

The term “liberal guilt” has certainly taken on a derisive tone, and I think unfortunately what that’s saying is people don’t want to feel a responsibility to people other than themselves. This film in many ways is really about class -- reaching across the class divide. And if people who are better off don’t feel any responsibility to reach out to the Stevies of the world, then who will? The act of making this film for me was not just one of atonement, but of finding that connection, as difficult as it was.

Did you ever consider just putting down the camera? That you could be merely an advocate and friend and not a documentarian?

I absolutely wrestled with the question of whether the film should continue to be made. Once I became a subject within my own film, it was important that I was honest about those misgivings on camera. There are arguments to be made that if I were a better person and less of a filmmaker, I would have stopped and never made this film. But good can come out of this. I believe it’s a film that has the ability to take an audience and touch them and move them.

Were you uncomfortable with your role in the film?

Let’s say it was the first time and the last time I’ll be in front of the camera.

You’ve mentioned that this is a film about class in many ways -- do you think you function as some sort of a class guide, or a way in for the usual documentary-viewing, art-house-going demographic?

Sure, my being in the film as a middle-class white guy provides a passport, in a way, for the viewer. People have said that my presence in that sense puts them in an uncomfortable position where they have to ask what would they do in a situation like this one. Often in documentaries, when a filmmaker isn’t impacted, neither is the viewer. In this case, they can’t watch from a safe remove. It puts them on the spot.

Throughout the film you seem to attempt to answer the question about how a sharp and sweet though troubled kid like Stevie winds up as he does. Do you think you answer those questions?

I think we certainly try to provide some answers and to get you to understand him. I’m hoping that viewers can have enough compassion for him to not excuse what he’s done -- he needs to be accountable -- but to do just that, to understand him. What goes along with all those feelings about liberal guilt is this current notion that when people screw up we have to be tough with them. We don’t want to hear anything between who are the good people and the bad people. And I hope that this film gives people far more to wrestle with than that.

-- Lauren Sandler