A documentary feature on the incredible life of NYC basketball playground legend, the enigmatic Lloyd “Swee‘ Pea” Daniels is in the works, from director Benjamin May.
Lloyd Daniels’ unlikely rise to the NBA is the stuff that myths are made of: the most sought-after college basketball recruit of his generation, he got busted buying cocaine in a police sting operation, and two years later was almost killed after getting shot three times in the chest while negotiating an $8 drug deal. Yet, in spite of this, he somehow managed to make it to the NBA, without having played a single college game, with remnants of bullets still in his body, and with years of crack addiction behind him. This film delivers a complex portrait not only of a rare talent and his against-the-odds triumph, but also of the unique street culture that made Lloyd Daniels a “playground legend” in New York City.
The film will contain interviews, archival footage, and will use animated sequences to reenact short and interesting stories about Daniels, narrated by interviewees, to depict a human story that also reads like a fairy-tale, given the many improbabilities, answering the question, whether he is legend or myth.
The project was a finalist for the TriBeCa Documentary Fund in 2014, and is 50% complete. To complete the film, the filmmaker has taken to Kickstarter to raise $50,000 via a campaign that ends in just 11 days. Thus far, he’s raised just under 50% of that figure – $21,270 – as of the time of this post.
Watch a 4 1/2-minute preview of the film below, and if you’re sold on the pitch, click HERE (or within the widget at the bottom of this post) to head over to the project’s Kickstarter page, and make a contribution:
