Why do people like "Hoosiers" so much again?

I protest. Peanut butter and chocolate ice cream is sweeter and truer.

i didn't (play or live, well in jr high i played but nevermind) but there was a basketball obsessed town nearby.

we have a class system (not FOUR like indiana now has, but two) so there was no chance of a showdown w/ chicago westinghouse or anything.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6301650425.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

si did an article a couple yers back abt the slow death of midwestern basketball; it was prolly good but i didn't read it.

What, exist? I had no say in that, sorry.

(ha! take that, virginia boy!)

i love the natural!! still haven't actually seen it tho.

and who cares about the nit anyway.

and i hear everyone on the smalltown ball thing -- shit, i played smalltown basketball, albeit jv and not varsity -- but the whole thing just hits me with the same sorta '50s golden era for america bullshit where black people don't exist and all of our problems can be solved by putting our hopes in a 17-year-old phenom and jesus our lord and savior. maybe i'm being too callous and maybe i'm reading too much into it, but by and large i see this movie as being very very reactionary in an unsubtle/subtle way that really rankles. and the fact that is was made just as jordan and magic and 'nique were taking over the nba bears mention as well; is it coincidence that once the nba started becoming more popular as a black sport that hollywood turns out "the peach basket: white boys who play the game right"? i don't think so. and wtf, hopper got an oscar nod for this???

Breaking Away rules, though.

(AK: dude!)

james, talk about pistol!

oh and the mellencamp analogy is very, very apt.

as much I love sports, I just can't get into sports movies. too hackneyed, too corny. all that Rudy, Knute Rockne, Hoosiers little-engine-that-could shit. Maybe I just hate Indiana. I liked the Tin Cup when Costner goes crazy at the end and blows the round. That was kind of cool.

but yeah put me down for Slapshot. or Caddyshack if that counts.

Someone should check & see if Bill Simmons gets any royalty payments for all the press he gave Hoosiers & for every time he answers the "how many points DID Chitwood score?" question. (Yeah, it ain't that hot, but the picket fence play still gets me.) (Some of this might have to do w/ watching this for the first time w/ my dad.)

Often cited as “the best sports movie of all time,” the basketball fairy tale Hoosiers resurfaced last week, just in time for March Madness. This time it shows up in a handsome double-DVD collector’s edition, that includes — among other things — the kinescope of the 1954 Indiana High School State Championship game in which tiny Milan High School, enrollment 161, upset mighty Muncie Central in the contest that inspired the movie’s ultimate showdown.
As rousing a male weepie as has ever been committed to film, it is good to remember Hoosiers was merely inspired by the so-called “Milan Miracle.” In the film, it’s the Hickory Huskies who are the ultimate underdogs. Names are changed, and Dennis Hopper’s character Shooter — the town drunk turned assistant coach — is a complete invention. Similarly, Gene Hackman’s Coach Norman Dale, a fiery, middle-aged former college coach with a vaguely seedy past, bears little resemblance to soft-spoken Milan coach Marvin Wood, who was only 26 years old when Milan shocked the basketball world. Wood was in his second year as head coach of the team, not his first, and though he did initially face some opposition from the townspeople after he replaced a popular coach (who didn’t die, as in the film, but was fired for disobeying the school superintendent’s orders), he was firmly in command throughout the championship season.
While Milan’s victory was shocking, it had reached the semi-finals of the tournament the year before with many of the same players. The school had a considerable basketball tradition; while in the movie there are barely enough would-be players for Hickory to field a team, in real life most of Milan’s male students tried out. Mild-mannered Coach Wood had to cut four boys for every one who earned a jersey.
So Hoosiers isn’t a docudrama — as the team’s star player, Bobby Plump (represented by the character Jimmy Driftwood in the film) told the Saturday Evening Post in 1987, “the final 18 seconds were the only thing factual in the movie.” So what?
Hoosiers features remarkable performances from Hopper and Hackman as damaged men working their way back up to self-respect. Hackman’s Dale has weathered much and has learned to repress a simmering rage. At the beginning he’s embarrassed to be stuck in the sticks with the hicks, but he finds redemption through teaching his kids how to win. He’s able to offer Shooter — who missed the key shot in an important game long ago — another chance at earning the town’s respect.
That’s all so corny, but what’s great about Hoosiers is the way it captures the often claustrophobic, sometimes comforting feeling of living in a small conservative town where everyone’s connections to everyone else are open and obvious. There’s no condescension in the way these folks are portrayed, though Hickory is neither Mayberry nor Disney’s Main Street.
While the cinematography by Fred Murphy is genuinely beautiful, there’s a certain clunkiness in some of the basketball set pieces. David Anspaugh is a capable enough director, but in those choreographed scenes one can sense a whiff of a missed opportunity. Spike Lee might have introduced some jazz into the proceedings. As it is, Jerry Goldsmith’s faux Copland score — ingenious on its own — contributes to a certain slickness of the packaging. Better the squeak of sneakers and the thrum of the dribble than swirling, emotive music.
In retrospect, Hoosiers survives as a classic, albeit one that deserves an asterisk. As the immortal Oscar Robertson and others have pointed out, the Muncie Central team that Milan defeated was not an all-black squad; there were only two black players on the team. Still, the Hickory Huskies defeat an all-black team — an arrogant and obnoxious bunch, coached by blacks, with black faces rooting for them in the stands.
As it was, Milan did defeat a team from an all-black high school in the semi-finals of the tournament: Indianapolis’ Crispus Attucks, for which the great Robertson played. The school was admitted to the state high school tournament only a few years before, and its players had much to overcome on and off the court. Under the circumstances, to have cast an all-black school as a privileged powerhouse in 1950s Indiana seems bizarre.

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