Former Vermont filmmaker tells pioneering NBA story with 'Sweetwater'

Martin Guigui was living in South Burlington in 1995 when he got the idea for what would be a feature film he would write and direct – a movie that’s about to be released, 28 years later.

He was in the parking lot of the Staples store in South Burlington, listening to a game between the New York Knicks and the Indiana Pacers in the NBA’s Eastern Conference playoffs. A radio announcer noted that a substitute player who entered the game was “the only white guy on the court,” according to Guigui.

“It just hit me – the only white guy – that’s fascinating,” Guigui said In a phone conversation last week from his home near Los Angeles. “When was it that it was the other way around? When was it there was ‘the only Black guy’?”

His research led to Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton, who in 1950 became the first Black player to sign a contract and catch on with a team in the National Basketball Association. The late all-star Knicks player is the subject of “Sweetwater,” Guigui’s film that will be released nationwide Friday, April 14. An advance screening of “Sweetwater” will take place in Guigui’s former home state when Essex Cinemas shows the movie Thursday, April 13.

“Sweetwater” stars Everett Osborne as Clifton and features Oscar-winner Richard Dreyfuss as well as Jeremy Piven, Cary Elwes and Kevin Pollak. The film is about a pioneering Black player, but Clifton brought another change to the game of basketball. He arrived with “street-ball flair,” according to Guigui – the same skills that, 73 years later, lead people pay to watch games in one of the most-popular sports leagues in the world.

From Bernie Sanders to ‘Sweetwater’ Clifton

Guigui lived in Vermont while his father, Efrain Guigui, served as conductor of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra. Martin Guigui attended Middlebury Union High School, where teachers Marshall Eddy and Louis Megyesi helped fostered his interest in film. (“Vermont was so nurturing to me,” according to Guigui.) He left for Long Island to study film at Hofstra University and returned to live in South Burlington until 1997, when he moved to Los Angeles.

Guigui focused on documentary projects in his early days, turning toward feature films in 1997 with “My X-Girlfriend’s Wedding Reception,” now known for its scene featuring U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, as a ranting rabbi. Guigui thought he might do a documentary or write a book on the first Black player in the NBA, but his research led him toward a feature film.

He called the NBA offices and visited the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, learning that three Black players entered the nascent NBA around the same time in 1950, three years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. Guigui tracked down Earl Lloyd, the first Black player in the NBA when he suited up for the short-lived Washington Capitols on Halloween 1950. Lloyd, according to Guigui, downplayed his career, saying the other two pioneering Black players had better skills and more of a love for the game than he did.

Guigui spoke with the widow of Chuck Cooper, who was drafted by the Boston Celtics in 1950 and became the second Black to play in the NBA. She wasn’t interested in talking much, so Guigui continued his research.

He ran across Eloise Saperstein, whose father, Abe Saperstein, founded the Harlem Globetrotters, the all-Black barnstorming professional team Clifton played on before joining the Knicks. Guigui said he and Eloise Saperstein “forged a very nurturing friendship.” She shared information from Clifton’s time with the Globetrotters and connected Guigui with Richard Lapchick, son of the late Basketball Hall of Famer Joe Lapchick, who coached Clifton with the Knicks.

Guigui contacted Clifton’s daughter in Chicago, where Clifton, the third Black player in the NBA, died in 1990. She told him her father’s only regret was that he never really told his story.

“That’s when I started realizing this individual ‘Sweetwater’ Clifton was all about bringing creativity to the game of basketball,” Guigui said.

Debut with the New York Knicks

“Sweetwater,” as seen last week by the Burlington Free Press, tells Clifton’s basketball story starting with his tenure with the Harlem Globetrotters. He shows in an exhibition against the NBA champion Minneapolis Lakers that he was gifted with ballhandling skills not seen in the 1940s.

Joe Lapchick (portrayed by Piven) is intrigued, and wants to sign Clifton to the Knicks. The team’s founder, Ned Irish (Elwes), is dubious. “It’s like a circus. It’s Ringling Brothers,” Irish says of Clifton’s style of play.

“Sweetwater” shows the racism Clifton and his Globetrotter teammates faced at gas stations, restaurants and hotels, while Abe Saperstein (Pollak) does what he can to intervene. In a meeting of NBA executives, one calls Clifton’s style of play “razzle-dazzle, hotdogging bull crap.” Another says, “This is not a negro league and never will be.” The league commissioner, Maurice Podoloff (Dreyfuss), remains uncomfortably neutral.

“Any one of you wants to go draft a negro player,” he tells team owners, “be my guest.”

Blacks remained barred from the NBA. “Ain’t no negroes play in your league. That ain’t no secret,” Clifton tells Lapchick.

“It’s not going to be like that forever,” Lapchick says to Clifton. “I think that you can help make that change.”

Lapchick, with help from Irish, finally convinces the league to allow Clifton and other Black players to join. The film concludes with dramatized scenes from Clifton’s debut with the Knicks, in early November 1950 against the now-defunct Indianapolis Olympians.

NBA stamp of approval

Vermont resident Tim Kavanagh has a role in “Sweetwater” as a reporter at a news conference with Clifton, Lloyd and Cooper. Guigui said other Vermonters involved with “Sweetwater” include Paul Burroughs, who portrays Celtics owner Walter Brown; Jerry Rafoul, who ran the Lake Champlain Maritime Festival and served as an associate producer on the film; and David Goryl, a University of Vermont graduate who plays a security guard who appears frequently in the movie.

“It was definitely a friends-and-family production,” according to Guigui.

“Sweetwater” took so long from concept to film, Guigui said, partly because there was “fear” among movie producers in tackling a movie about race. It helped that he was able to get the NBA to sign on to provide licensing for the film, which allowed the filmmaker to use specific team names and glean information about team-owner meetings and games from the era but also gave the project a high-profile stamp of approval.

“I’m glad it happened now, because it feels like the timing is perfect,” Guigui said, as the inspiring story of “Sweetwater” Clifton shows that people can come together to do the right thing.

With the possible exception of Joe Lapchick, none of the white men in  “Sweetwater” come off as altruistic heroes trying to open the NBA for Black players; Saperstein and Irish may have their hearts in the right place, but they’re also opportunists. The film shows that Clifton would not have helped change the game of basketball had he not been as good a player and as strong a person as he was.

“It wasn’t about a group of white saviors. Sweetwater, his values, his character – that’s what I think paved the road for him,” Guigui said. “That’s what attracted me to this more than anything.”

A good run for Vermont-related films

With “Sweetwater” joining the list, early 2023 has seen several films with Vermont connections hit screens big and small:

• “Paint,” starring Owen Wilson as a fictional artist with a show on Vermont public television, was released in theaters April 7.

• “Champions,” a comedy starring Woody Harrelson that’s about basketball players with developmental disabilities, includes in its cast Burlington actor Casey Metcalfe. “Champions” is directed by Bobby Farrelly, who with his brother, Peter, filmed “Me, Myself & Irene” in and around Burlington in 1999.

• “Condor’s Nest,” produced and directed by former Burlington resident Phil Blattenberger, stars actors including Michael Ironside and Bruce Davison in what Blattenberger called in an email to the Free Press “a fun, ‘80s-style thriller set in South America during a search for Nazi war criminals.”

• “The Butterfly Queen,” a Vermont-made film by Ryegate director Liam O’Connor-Genereaux that’s been on a Vermont tour in 2023, is, according to an email from the director, “a feature-length, LGBTQ+, adventure-fairytale about choosing between your home, friends, and childhood dreams.”

If you go

WHAT: Advance screening of “Sweetwater,” a film written and directed by former Vermont resident Martin Guigui

WHEN: 7:15 p.m. Thursday, April 13

WHERE: Essex Cinemas, Essex

INFORMATION: www.essexcinemas.com

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com. Follow Brent on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BrentHallenbeck.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: 'Sweetwater' movie by ex-Vermont director tells story of NBA pioneer