Hoosiers

Hoosiers is a beautiful film, but I'm from Indiana and I grew up watching Indiana basketball, so I'm biased (and of course I own a copy on DVD).

Sure, I get bothered sometimes because the film is about a fictional high school and a fictional game, based only loosely on historical events. I wish this were really a play-by-play re-enactment of the Muncie Central vs. Milan game on which this film is loosely based, because that's real Indiana basketball history. But that's not this film.

Instead, this is a film that doesn't get too much into specifics — a fictional team from a fictional town with fictional players leaves room for more vicarious viewing, I think, and as such, this is a tribute to anybody who played or dreamed of playing Indiana basketball. I'd say basketball in general, but this film is called Hoosiers for a reason.

The music also bothers me. Jerry Goldsmith's score might be the worst I've ever heard by someone other than James Horner.  Here's a film set in the 1950s, but instead of music that fits the period, we get '80s synth music throughout.

I've long been a fan of stripping bad scores from '80s films and replacing them with music that doesn't sound so horribly dated and awful. Hoosiers tops my list of films that need new scores.

I love this film anyway.

Is the Indiana countryside beautiful? You bet. Even the shots of an overcast autumn day are pretty, because they look like home. Even that shot of Barbara Hershey attempting to hoe her garden is a pretty one, because it looks like a billion back yards around here (even if Hershey appears to be hoeing in the dead of winter, and keeps banging the hoe up and down in the same spot, essentially just digging a hole in the mud — I'm no gardener, but what is she doing?).

A lot of people I know, including my wife, don't understand why I prefer the Big Open Nothing of Indiana so much, with all the quiet, remote towns where you actually can hear yourself think, and people know who you are, and they don't just want your money. I prefer the Big Open Nothing because I'm all that's there, and I can look in all directions and see possibilities instead of people in the way.

Of course, that's an idealized view of small town America, where if you're the wrong color or religion or sexuality, you can get hurt. In many cases, you're not welcome in these parts, like Coach Dale isn't welcome for the first hour of the film. At least they got that part right.

But something beautiful and poetic happens in Indiana small towns to this very day. Dreams are born and often realized in high school gyms and gravel driveways and in living rooms in front of televisions.

This year marks 25 years since the Indiana Hoosiers won their last NCAA title with this shot. I was 12 years old, and it was the greatest game of basketball I've ever seen.

In 1993, Delta High School — my high school — advanced to the sectional title game by beating Muncie Central, the same school that little Milan toppled some 40 years previously to win the state title. (Alas, that next game was a different story, but beating Central is a big deal in my part of Indiana.)

The underdog success stories are special, because what really happens to little teams in Indiana is this. That's my old high school on the losing end of the state championship just four years after I graduated. The following year, Indiana switched to class basketball, so the rare and beautiful underdog stories like Muncie Central vs. Milan, or Central vs. Hickory, can't happen again.

That makes Hoosiers even more special, commemorating all the teams that made it, all at once. "Let's win this one for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here."

Indiana high school basketball hasn't been the same since 1997. They broke it, as far as I'm concerned.

We need underdog stories. I've either been an underdog or been around underdogs my whole life. I like it that way. Victory is sweeter if no one expects it from you.

I was never good at basketball. I wasn't very fast, wasn't very tall, couldn't shoot well, and forget dribbling altogether. Still, because of games like that '87 NCAA title game and films like Hoosiers, I probably spent half my teenage years in my parents' driveway, playing ball until I got sleepy or until the sky got so dark I couldn't see the hoop.

I'd bring the ball inside for the night and go straight to the sink to wash my hands, which were covered in the kind of dirt that I didn't want to wash off, because it made me feel like a part of it all.

Postscript: Tonight, I tried to put the Hoosiers special features disc in my DVD player. As I was taking the disc off the spindle in the case, the disc cracked. In 10 years of collecting DVDs, I've probably handled 2,000 discs, and I've never shattered one taking it out of the case.  I figured I'd grab the Blu-Ray and upgrade, but the HD version doesn't have the bonus features. So I'll be getting another DVD instead, because in my book, if you grew up on Indiana basketball, you ought to have a spot on your shelf for this film.