Hoosiers (film)

Hoosiers (released in some countries as Best Shot) is a 1986 American sports drama film written by Angelo Pizzo and directed by David Anspaugh in his feature directorial debut. It tells the story of a small-town Indiana high school basketball team and its journey to the state championship finals. It is inspired in part by the Milan High School team who won the 1954 state championship against Muncie Central High School.

Gene Hackman stars as Norman Dale, a new coach with a spotty past. The film co-stars Barbara Hershey and Dennis Hopper, whose role as the basketball-loving town drunk earned him an Academy Award nomination. Jerry Goldsmith was also nominated for an Academy Award for his score. In 2001, Hoosiers was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Plot

In 1951, Norman Dale arrives in rural Hickory, Indiana. His old friend, high school principal Cletus Summers, has hired him as the civics and history teacher and as head basketball coach.

The townspeople, passionate about basketball, are disappointed that Hickory's best player, Jimmy Chitwood, has left the team following the death of the previous coach, who had been a surrogate father to Jimmy. At a meet-and-greet, Norman tells the townspeople he used to coach college basketball. The next day, fellow teacher Myra Fleener warns Norman not to recruit Jimmy. She is encouraging Jimmy to focus solely on his studies so that he will have a future away from Hickory.

The small school has only seven players. At the first practice, Norman dismisses Buddy Walker for rudeness, causing another player, Whit Butcher, to walk out in protest. Norman begins drilling the others (Rade Butcher, Merle Webb, Everett Flatch, Strap Purl, and equipment manager Ollie McLellan) with fundamentals and conditioning but no scrimmages or shooting, much to the Huskers' dismay. Whit later apologizes to the coach and rejoins the team.

Norman instructs the Huskers to pass four times before shooting. During the season opener, Rade disobeys and repeatedly makes baskets without passing first. The coach benches him for the rest of the game, even when Merle fouls out, leaving only four Huskers on the floor. In a subsequent game, when a rival player jabs Norman in the chest during an on-court argument, Rade jumps to his defense and hits the player. During the altercation, Cletus, acting as assistant coach, suffers a mild heart attack. Norman further erodes community support by employing a slow, defensive style that does not immediately produce results. The coach also loses his temper on court and gets ejected from two games.

With Cletus laid up, Norman asks former Husker Wilbur "Shooter" Flatch, Everett's alcoholic father, to be his assistant coach, with the requirement that Shooter be sober during all games and practices. Shooter agrees, on the condition that Norman not get ejected from any more games. The choice of Shooter confounds the town and embarrasses Everett.

Mid-season, disgruntled townspeople decide to vote on dismissing Norman. Before the meeting, Myra, sensing something amiss regarding Norman's past, uncovers years-old information about his hitting a player and being banned from coaching. At the meeting, Myra goes up to the lectern, intending to read aloud the article she found, but she changes her mind and instead asks the townspeople to give Norman another chance. Nevertheless, they vote to fire the coach. Then Jimmy Chitwood arrives and announces he will rejoin the team, but only if Norman remains as coach. A new vote is taken, and the residents overwhelmingly choose to keep him.

After Jimmy's return, the reinvigorated Huskers rack up a series of wins. To prove to the townspeople (and to Shooter himself) Shooter's value to the team, Norman intentionally gets ejected from a game. This forces Shooter to devise a play that helps Hickory win on a last-second shot. Shooter also regains the respect of his son, Everett.

Despite a setback when Shooter relapses, the team advances through the state tournament with Jimmy's strong performance. Unsung players, such as short Ollie and devoutly religious Strap, also contribute. Hickory reaches the championship game in Indianapolis. At Butler Fieldhouse, and before the largest crowd they have ever seen, the Huskers face long odds to defeat the heavily favored South Bend Central Bears, who have taller and more athletic players. After falling behind, Hickory fights their way back and ties the game with just a few seconds left. Norman calls a timeout and sets up a play where Jimmy will be a decoy for Merle, who will take the last shot. The Huskers look uncomfortable, and when Norman demands to know what's wrong, Jimmy simply says, "I'll make it." Norman nods in approval and sets up a new play for Jimmy. He scores just before the buzzer sounds, securing the victory for Hickory, the smallest school to ever win the Indiana state championship.

Sometime in the future, a boy shoots baskets in Hickory's home gym. A large black-and-white team portrait with their state championship trophy is seen hanging on the wall, and a voiceover from Coach Dale states, "I love you guys."

Cast

Inspiration

thumb|right|[[Milan High School (Indiana)|Milan High School Basketball Team, 1954.]] The film is inspired in part by the story of the 1954 Indiana state champions, Milan High School ( ). The phrase "inspired by a true story" is more appropriate than "based on a true story" because the two teams have little in common.

In most U.S. states, high school athletic teams are divided into different classes, usually based on the number of enrolled students, with separate state championship tournaments held for each classification. In 1954, Indiana conducted a single state basketball tournament for all its high schools. This practice continued until 1997.

The home court of Hickory is located in Knightstown and is now known as the "Hoosier Gym."

Pizzo and Anspaugh shopped the script for two years before they finally found investment for the project. Despite this seeming approval, the financiers approved a production budget of only $6 million, forcing the crew to hire most of the cast playing the Hickory basketball team and many of the extras from the local community around New Richmond. Gene Hackman also predicted that the film would be a "career killer." Despite the small budget, dire predictions, and little help from distributor Orion Pictures, Hoosiers grossed over $28 million and received two Oscar nominations (Dennis Hopper for Best Supporting Actor and Jerry Goldsmith for Best Original Score).

Shortly after the film's release, five of the actors who portrayed basketball players in the film were suspended by the NCAA from their real-life college basketball teams for three games. The NCAA determined that they had been paid to play basketball, making them ineligible.

Soundtrack

The music to Hoosiers was written by veteran composer Jerry Goldsmith. Goldsmith used a hybrid of orchestral and electronic elements in juxtaposition to the 1950s setting to score the film. He also helped tie the music to the film by using recorded hits of basketballs on a gymnasium floor to serve as additional percussion sounds. Washington Post film critic Paul Attanasio praised the soundtrack, writing, "And it's marvelously (and innovatively) scored (by composer Jerry Goldsmith), who weaves together electronics with symphonic effects to create a sense of the rhythmic energy of basketball within a traditional setting."

Reception

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 90% based on 49 reviews. The website's critics consensus reads: "It may adhere to the sports underdog formula, but Hoosiers has been made with such loving craft, and features such excellent performances, that it's hard to resist." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 76 out of 100, based on 13 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on A+ to F scale.

Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert praised the film, writing: "What makes Hoosiers special is not its story but its details and its characters. Angelo Pizzo, who wrote the original screenplay, knows small-town sports. He knows all about high school politics and how the school board and the parents' groups always think they know more about basketball than the coach does. He knows about gossip, scandal and vengeance. And he knows a lot about human nature. All of his knowledge, however, would be pointless without Hackman's great performance at the center of this movie. Hackman is gifted at combining likability with complexity — two qualities that usually don't go together in the movies. He projects all of the single-mindedness of any good coach, but then he contains other dimensions, and we learn about the scandal in his past that led him to this one-horse town. David Anspaugh's direction is good at suggesting Hackman's complexity without belaboring it." The New York Times<nowiki>'</nowiki> Janet Maslin echoed Ebert's sentiments, writing, "This film's very lack of surprise and sophistication accounts for a lot of its considerable charm."

Washington Post critics Rita Kempley and Paul Attanasio both enjoyed the film, despite its perceived sentimentalism and lack of originality. Kempley wrote, "Even though we've seen it all before, Hoosiers scores big by staying small." Attanasio pointed out some problems with the film: "[It contains] some klutzy glitches in continuity, and a love story (between Hackman and a sterile, one-note Barbara Hershey) that goes nowhere. The action photography flattens the visual excitement of basketball (you can imagine what a Scorsese would do with it);" but he noted the film's "enormous craftsmanship accumulates till you're actually seduced into believing all its Pepperidge Farm buncombe. That's quite an achievement."

Time magazine's Richard Schickel praised the performance of Gene Hackman, writing that he was Variety wrote that the

Pat Graham of the Chicago Reader was a rare dissenter, writing of the film that

Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel also criticized the film, calling it sentimental and predictable.

Accolades

Hoosiers has been named by many publications as the best or one of the best sports movies ever made. The film was the choice of the readers of USA Today as the best sports movie of all time. In 2001, Hoosiers was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" due in part to an especially large number of nominations from Indiana citizens.

A museum to commemorate the real-life achievements of the 1954 Milan team has been established.

In 2015, MGM partnered with the Indiana Pacers to create Hickory uniforms inspired by the film. The Pacers first wore the tribute uniforms during select games in the 2015–16 NBA regular season in honor of the film's 30th anniversary.

In April 2017, Vice President (and former governor of Indiana) Mike Pence said that Hoosiers is the "greatest sports movie ever made" while traveling on a flight from Indonesia to Australia with a pool of journalists.

American Film Institute Lists

2006: AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers - #13
2008: AFI's 10 Top 10 – #5 Sports Film

References

External links

Hoosiers at AllMovie
The Hoosiers Archive
Hoosiers essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 , pages 791-792 [https://books.google.com/books?id=deq3xI8OmCkC]