In 1985, two novice moviemakers, director David Anspaugh and writer/producer Angelo Pizzo, began filming Hoosiers. They and their cast and crew faced the pressures of a short schedule, a small budget, and other challenges. Yet buoyed by the support of countless Indiana residents, they overcame their own self-doubt and the skepticism of outsiders to create a classic. This website showcases rare images from and not-widely-known facts about this much-loved movie.

Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Hoosiers’ Production

A dejected David Anspaugh sits in Hinkle Fieldhouse on the first night of state-finals filming. Approximately 200 people showed up to portray fans in the stands, when several thousand were needed.

As director David Anspaugh and writer/producer Angelo Pizzo embarked upon filming Hoosiers, the enormous responsibility of trying to accurately portray Hoosier Hysteria on a modest $6 million budget during a 39-day shooting schedule threatened to overwhelm them. They joked that, if they messed up this movie, they might not be allowed back into the state of Indiana. They couldn’t have anticipated all the challenges they would face over the next two months. Pizzo’s screenplay contained more scenes than they had time to shoot, and the deletion of some of them ultimately would cause continuity problems in the story. Lead actor Gene Hackman, who initially seemed agreeable, would turn out to be grumpy and prone to fits of anger. Lead actress Barbara Hershey likewise would be unhappy throughout the production. Only a couple hundred extras would show up to be fans for the climactic state-finals game. Executives at Orion Pictures would press Anspaugh and Pizzo to delete scenes from what they considered their perfect final cut in order to achieve a 2-hour runtime.

The two friends also couldn’t have predicted everything that would go right. The production received a huge amount of local media coverage. Thousands of people from all over the state enthusiastically served as unpaid extras. Indiana residents turned out in droves for the film’s premiere throughout the state. Nationally prominent movie critics such as Roger Ebert raved about Hoosiers. Audiences across the country, starting with a West Coast rollout, embraced the film as well.

If the director and writer/producer had had time to reflect as the first shooting day approached, they might have thought back to their time as students at Indiana University, where they met as fraternity brothers. They became good friends and discovered they both loved motion pictures. Anspaugh began shooting his own 16mm short films, some of which featured Pizzo and his other pals as the actors. The two young men tossed around the idea of someday making a feature film about how much basketball meant to Indiana residents—even though they couldn’t imagine ever becoming filmmakers.

When cameras rolled on Hoosiers in the autumn of 1985, the possibility that it would become an Oscar-nominated classic, or even a moderate success, was not remotely in their minds. The movie’s chief architects were focused on getting through the production of the movie they had dreamed about making since their undergraduate days. For now, they would take each day of filming one step at a time.

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Don’t Mess with Imperfection

Releasing a “director’s cut” of Hoosiers is a bad idea

For several years, Hoosiers writer/producer Angelo Pizzo has been hoping for, and then pressing for, and now teasing the release of what he calls a director’s cut of the film. He recently said MGM is working on a version of Hoosiers that includes the 14 deleted scenes offered as a bonus feature on the two-disc 2005 Collector’s Edition DVD and the 2012 Blu-ray DVD.

The film’s editor found these scenes, which were part of the next-to-last cut of the movie assembled during the editing process, while cleaning out his garage sometime after Hoosiers’ release. Because they were not from the original film negative, but had been part of a working print, their visual and aural quality wasn’t great. And at least one scene had a music cue that abruptly cut out. Therefore, it was decided in 2005 that these scenes couldn’t be used to fashion a new, longer version of the movie. But the technology has now advanced enough, Pizzo said, that these scenes can be fixed and reinserted into the movie—creating a director’s cut.

Angelo Pizzo reviews his screenplay in the Brownsburg gymnasium, site of sectional game filming. He cut scenes from the script both before and during filming.

It’s debatable whether Pizzo should even use this term. Releasing a director’s cut generally means that a film was subject to creative interference from studio executives during production or editing and that the theatrical version doesn’t reflect the director’s vision. But Hoosiers is not Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, or Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, or Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate. Hoosiers is imperfect, but all motion pictures are. Its original screenplay was much too long, and Pizzo initially refused to make any cuts. He finally relented and began deleting some scenes. The late start on this process, which was still going on halfway through filming, began a cascade of problems with the storyline and subplots that ended with reviewers and fans noticing the “choppy” editing and continuity problems. The most common issue viewers comment on is how Hickory Husker Buddy, after being kicked out of the first basketball practice, later appears back on the team without explanation.

Pizzo has long regretted that distributor Orion forced him and director David Anspaugh to delete those 14 scenes to achieve a movie that ran just under 2 hours. But despite what Pizzo has stated, putting those scenes back into the movie won’t answer all the questions, tie up the loose ends, and result in a much better film. Many of those scenes refer to actions, dialog, and plot points from another batch of scenes that were deleted before the 14 and that have never been found. Therefore, re-inserting the 14 would only introduce new questions in viewers’ minds, rather than clearing things up, resulting in a still-imperfect film.

A still from the deleted scene in which Buddy goes to see Coach Dale the day after the season opener, which Buddy missed.

Perhaps the best example is the deleted scene that has been described as Buddy’s asking Coach Dale if he can rejoin the Huskers. As the scene unfolds, clearly Buddy is troubled or embarrassed about something, but the humbled Husker doesn’t say “I’m sorry,” “I messed up,” “I hope you’ll let me back on the team,” or anything similar. Neither Buddy nor Norman refers to Buddy’s ejection from the first practice. And the coach doesn’t ask his player to apologize for having been disrespectful. The dialog begins with Norman inquiring, “How was the game?” Buddy responds, “I don’t know.” Norman asks, “Didn’t you play?” Buddy answers, “I couldn’t. … It just don’t seem right in my gut to be a Tiger in my last year.” This scene was the last one in a subplot that was all but eliminated in earlier editing passes. Without the previous scenes in the subplot, the dialog in this scene, a mere five lines long, is rendered indecipherable.

Another problem is that most of the rest of the 14 deleted scenes, while mildly interesting in and of themselves, are of questionable value to the story.

In a 2002 interview with IGN Entertainment, Gary Kurtz, Oscar-nominated producer of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, weighed in on the issue of tinkering with a movie years after its debut in theaters. He was critical of the additions and alterations director George Lucas made to the Star Wars 20th anniversary Special Edition and the 2004 DVD release—“fixes” that Star Wars superfans also decried. “I just don’t like changing whatever a film is like when it’s finished,” Kurtz stated. “Good, bad, or indifferent, that’s the way it was when it was released and the way the audience perceives it.” He recalled a quote from French filmmaker Jean Renoir, son of painter Auguste Renoir. The junior Renoir learned from his father that “for an artist, the most important thing is to know when you’re done, and leave it,” Kurtz said. “With a filmmaker … the principle is the same—to know when you’re done, and when it’s over, and when it’s finished—and you walk away.” You can keep fiddling with your movie long after the fact, Kurtz said, but it won’t get any better.

(This page lists and describes the deleted scenes included on the DVDs. You’ll find out where each scene fits into the story and read additional details on what some of the scenes are about, which can be hard to figure out.)

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For more stories like these, read the updated and expanded The Making of Hoosiers, Second Edition. Also available for Kindle. New to this edition are photos and images, as well as additional stories, quotations, details, and information on the production of this classic motion picture. The most complete account of the creation of the movie, it’s a must-have for anyone who loves Hoosiers. Paperback; 312 pages; $16.50; published August 2016. Kindle edition $9.99. Available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

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