What do you think of when you think of “Indiana”? For most, Indiana means small towns, nice people, family farms and above all, high school basketball. No film captures the true essence of rural Indiana life quite like “Hoosiers,” written by Angelo Pizzo, who visited campus last Thursday, November 9 to deliver remarks in conjunction with a screening of his iconic film in Ball Theater.
Pizzo credits a large part of why “Hoosiers” feels so homegrown to his Bloomington, IN upbringing, but jokingly emphasizes his love of basketball over any knowledge of high school basketball.
“I grew up in Bloomington and fell in love with IU sports,” said Pizzo. “Being right off campus, I used to go to practice every day. I hardly went to any high school basketball games, but I never missed an IU basketball game.”
When an attempt at working in world politics during the Vietnam War and a brief stint as a ski instructor in Aspen both spun out, Pizzo moved to Southern California, learning the ropes of filmmaking in a hodgepodge of industry jobs.
“It was at that point where I decided I wanted to develop this idea I always had of taking this relationship of the people in Indiana with basketball and [telling] the story,” said Pizzo.
Of course, that story would come to be known as “Hoosiers,” the movie we all know and love today: but it didn’t come about without its fair share of obstacles. Just when his project had been greenlit, his production company disbanded, and Pizzo set out to pursue his script independently.
“I worked in the business for seven years,” Pizzo said. “It never crossed my mind to be a writer. It never crossed my mind to even try it myself.”
After going through draft after draft to complete the original script, the project was ready to get started, but Pizzo needed someone to direct it. He turned to none other than David Anspaugh, his Sigma Nu fraternity brother at Indiana University.
“We had always talked about it,” Pizzo said. “We decided to be an Indiana team and try to raise the money and make it ourselves.”
As the great film critic Roger Ebert wrote following the film’s initial release, “What makes ‘Hoosiers’ special is not its story, however, but its details and characters.”
Viewers around the world can relate to the heart and the true, emotional storytelling, and there are all sorts of niche references that true Hoosiers will pick up on, adding to its authenticity. In one scene, George tells Coach Dale, “You start screwin’ up this team, I’ll… send you up the Monon Line!” Not to mention the line that all Wallys go crazy for, “I think if he (Jimmy Chitwood) works really hard, he can get an academic scholarship to Wabash College.”
“When I came up with the idea of doing the film about Hoosiers, I wanted the state of Indiana to be a part of it, like a character. We wanted to hire as many people from Indiana as possible. People that just knew it intuitively, how people behaved, how they walked, how they talked, how they chewed gum. Probably 98% of the cast and crew were Indiana people,” said Pizzo.
If the film feels close to home, that’s because it is. Much of the filming took place in New Richmond, approximately 10 miles northwest of Crawfordsville. The whole heart of “Hoosiers” lies in its name, the story of Hoosiers, as told by Hoosiers, filmed in Indiana.
“I lived in Southern California longer than I lived in Indiana,” said Pizzo, “and yet I came back here, because Indiana is where I belong. These are my people. This is my tribe.”