arts & culture
‘Hustle’ Director Jeremiah Zagar
Tells Local Love Story
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
I n “Hustle,” the summer feel-good
sports fi lm now streaming on
Netfl ix, a luckless basketball scout
Stanley Sugarman, played by Adam
Sandler, meanders down the streets
of South Philadelphia’s Italian Market
with his wife Teresa Sugarman (Queen
Latifah). Th e neon animal silhouettes in
the window of Cannuli’s Quality Meats
and Poultry gently light their faces.

As Stanley refi nes his scrappy Spanish
protege Bo Cruz (Juancho Hernangomez)
aft er bringing back the amateur sports-
man from Mallorca, they play pick-up
games at the court in the Capitolo
Playground, with Pat’s and Geno’s chees-
esteak shops providing an apt backdrop.

Th e fi lm — loaded with Philadelphia
grit and blink-and-you-miss-it cameos
— is the latest project of locally-born
Jewish director Jeremiah Zagar.

For Sandler and writers Taylor Materne
and Will Fetters, the fi lm is a love letter
to basketball; for Zagar, it’s a love letter to
his home and his childhood.

Zagar’s name carries the weight of a
dynasty. His parents were artists who
shaped the landscape of South Street.

His father, Isaiah Zagar, is the mosaicist
behind Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens.

Raised on John’s Water Ice and his
parents’ hippie values, Zagar developed
his parents’ same loyalties.

“My father writes all over his walls:
‘Philadelphia is the center of the art world,
and art is the center of the real world,’”
Zagar said. “So ... this idea that Philly was
the center of the world was sort of my par-
ents’ ethos, and I subscribed.”
Zagar frequented the Landmark’s Ritz
5 at the Bourse and the Th eatre of the
Living Arts, where he “found refuge”
from the noise of being a teenager.

He also inherited a love of Philadelphia
sports. Sixers player Allen Iverson was
Zagar’s hero; he still remembers the out-
fi t Iverson’s mother wore to a fi nals game
against the Los Angeles Lakers in 2001.

“Th at’s how much I loved Allen
Iverson; I thought about what his mother
was wearing,” Zagar said. “I also loved
him because he loved his mother so
much, and I love my mother so much.”
Juancho Hernangomez and Adam
Sandler, donning a Federal Donuts
sweatshirt, in “Hustle”
Courtesy of Scott Yamano/Netfl ix
Inevitably, Zagar devoured sports fi lms
— “Blue Crush,” “Remember the Titans,”
“Hoosiers” — fi nding that sports stories
and fi lmmaking had a lot in common.

“It seems like an insurmountable
thing, making a fi lm; it seems like an
impossible dream to achieve a career in
sports, but you try anyway,” Zagar said.

“I love that process of willing yourself
to achieve something impossible. Th at
that’s what sports fi lms are about, and
that’s what they instill in the audience.”
Zagar has his Jewish upbringing to
thank in part for the start of his fi lm
career. He met producer Jeremy Yaches
in the seventh grade at what is now Jack
M. Barrack Hebrew Academy. Th e two
were in the lower levels of Hebrew classes
(Zagar was self-admittedly a “poor”
Hebrew speaker) and began making
fi lms together, eventually starting Public
Record, a Brooklyn production company.

Th e duo’s 2008 documentary “In a
Dream” about Isaiah Zagar and his art
was Emmy-nominated. In 2018, Zagar
wrote and directed “We the Animals,”
a coming-of-age story. Sandler found
and viewed the fi lm, even with the fi lm’s
small-audience, indie status.

Sandler approached Zagar about
directing “Hustle,” but Zagar, despite his
love for the script, initially turned the
project down, feeling like it didn’t fi t into
where his fi lm career was heading.

“Th en I couldn’t get the script out of
my mind, and so I called him back,”
Zagar said.

Zagar fi gured he could pair Sandler’s
vision of dropping real-life NBA players
into a Philadelphia fi lm set with his
documentary-style direction. Th e fi lm’s
clean and snappy cuts during intense
scrimmage scenes are evidence of this.

Zagar’s infl uence has a lighter touch in
the fi lm, too. Inspired by his relationship
with his wife, who is Black, Zagar fi lled
the Sugarman household with a mingling
of Judaica and African American history.

Looking closely, audience members can
fi nd a framed photo of Martin Luther King
Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

It’s a detail that encompasses what
Zagar wanted to do with “Hustle” and
what he believes a director has the power
to do with a fi lm: make it one’s own.

“You have to be able to give yourself
over the project, and the project has to be
able to give to you,” Zagar said. “And so
you use what’s familiar and comfortable
and true.” JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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