Misconceptions About Hoosiers | The Hoosiers Archive

Misconception	Fact
The plot of Hoosiers is based on the legendary story of the 1954 Indiana state-champion Milan Indians.	The screenplay was inspired in part by but not based on Milan’s famous victory. The story was inspired by and represented screenwriter Angelo Pizzo’s and director David Anspaugh’s love of Indiana high school basketball. The Milan story has very little in common with Hoosiers. See the FAQ for more details.
Jimmy Chitwood is the movie’s version of Bobby Plump, the Milan player who launched the shot that lifted the Indians to victory.	Although both Chitwood and Plump made a state-championship-winning basket, and Plump is often called “the real-life Jimmy Chitwood,” no character in the movie represents a person from real life.

Bobby Plump and Maris Valainis (Jimmy Chitwood), June 2012

Milan Indians Coach Marvin Wood had his players measure the distance from the basket to the court of Butler Fieldhouse, and also measure the free throw lane, as Coach Dale has the Huskers do in the movie.	Wood and the Indians didn’t do this in real life. Screenwriter Pizzo doesn’t remember exactly where he got the idea for this scene. He said it may have been when he and director Anspaugh scouted Hinkle Fieldhouse as a possible filming location. As Pizzo recalls it, someone there told them about a team who took measurements before playing in Hinkle for the first time.
Hickory’s opponent at the state finals is an all-black team that is supposed to represent 1950s basketball powerhouse Indianapolis Crispus Attucks.	The movie’s South Bend Central Bears are an integrated team who are somewhat reminiscent of the real-life 1954 state runner-up Muncie Central Bearcats.
Thousands of young men auditioned for the roles of the Huskers at the two-day open casting call in Indianapolis.	Although no one knows for certain how many guys showed up at the auditions, a reasonable estimate is about 400.
Jack Nicholson was offered the part of Coach Norman Dale.	Director Anspaugh, who was friends with Nicholson, gave the actor a copy of the Hoosiers screenplay. Anspaugh and screenwriter Pizzo wanted general feedback on the screenplay, as well as advice on how they could raise enough money to make Hoosiers, which would be their first feature film. However, after reading the script, Nicholson told them he wanted to play Coach Dale. Ultimately, Nicholson’s schedule prevented him from doing so. But his early attachment to the film gave Hoosiers a much-needed boost of publicity in Hollywood.
Myra Fleener teaches English and/or is the assistant principal.	Neither the movie nor the script specifies what subject Myra teaches. And schools as small as Hickory didn’t need assistant principals. In fact, a typical small-school principal in the 1950s had enough time during the workday to teach a class or two.
Myra and Jimmy are siblings.	Myra says of Jimmy early in the movie, “I look after him. His mother’s sick, and his father passed away, and we’re neighbors.”
In a deleted scene, Buddy apologizes to Coach Dale for his behavior at the first practice and asks to return to the team.	In a scene that got deleted, Buddy begins to tell Coach Dale that he regrets transferring to neighboring school Terhune after walking out of the first practice. But the coach cuts him off before he can finish. So Buddy never actually apologizes or asks to rejoin the Huskers. See the FAQ for more details on this scene.
Buddy’s father makes him return to practice after Coach Dale kicks him out, and he has his son apologize to the coach for his rude behavior at the first practice.	It is Whit’s father, not Buddy’s, who makes his son apologize for walking out of the first practice along with Buddy.
Whit and Rade’s father is named Paul Butcher.	His name is Rollin Butcher.
Hoosiers is set in a particular part of Indiana, most likely the southeast, and the film is inconsistent in the details of Hickory’s location.	Hickory is a fictional town.
Hoosiers gets the nicknames of some real-life teams wrong, such as calling Linton the Wildcats instead of the Miners.	The screenplay underwent numerous revisions. Some of the alterations involved changing the names of certain Hickory opponents. Originally the script had Hickory playing the Jasper Wildcats at the regional, but the team was changed to Linton.
The filmmakers tentatively selected Waveland as the primary shooting location, only to discover that soon construction would begin on a new school, right in front of the existing one. The moviemakers asked the town board if they could push back the start of construction until filming was complete. But the board refused to do so because they believed Hoosiers would turn out to be insignificant.	The moviemakers’ original plan was to capture all the downtown, gym, and school interior and exterior scenes in only one town. After touring Waveland, they were ready to choose it as their main filming site. But only days later, they learned about the imminent building project. Attorneys for the school corporation advised the moviemakers that the construction couldn’t be delayed to accommodate filming because bonds had been sold, financial arrangements made, and contracts signed. News of the upcoming filming of Hoosiers generated a great deal of excitement across the state; Indiana residents never treated the production as trivial or inconsequential.
The movie received little publicity during filming, and few people knew about the production.	Hoosiers received plenty of media coverage, starting at the end of 1984. The production was written about in dozens of Indiana newspapers, magazines, and other publications and also was covered by TV stations—and it got some national press as well. Hoosiers was mentioned in at least 245 articles in 1984–85 alone and in at least 250 more over the next two years. (See the bibliographies for lists of these articles.) Numerous Indiana residents contacted the Indiana Film Commission, which helped with the location search, to recommend their town as a filming site. Hundreds of young men showed up at the open casting call at which the Huskers and other basketball players were chosen. And hundreds more Indiana residents showed up at the auditions for background extras. Thousands appeared as extras in the crowd at the games.
The filmmakers had trouble attracting enough extras to populate all the scenes shot at the various gyms.	The only game where not enough extras showed up was the state finals. The gyms were full on the other 16 game-filming days.
Some scenes were filmed in Frankfort, Indiana.	Parts of the 1994 college basketball movie Blue Chips were shot in Frankfort. No scenes from Hoosiers were filmed there.
Gene Hackman never asked to change any of his dialog, because he began his career in the theater, where dialog can never be altered.	Hackman did request some adjustments to his lines. He was an experienced movie actor who knew he could suggest changes.
At the filming of the state-finals game, after Jimmy made the final basket, the extras playing Hickory fans spilled onto the floor spontaneously, without having been instructed to do so.	Two Sheridan residents who served as extras at the Hinkle Fieldhouse filming on Friday, December 6, 1985, the night Jimmy’s game-winning basket was shot, recounted their experiences to a reporter the following week. After they were seated in Hickory’s cheer block, they said, the assistant director told the extras, “You are all actors and actresses now. You will cheer, and when the winning basket is shot, you will run out on the floor to congratulate the team.”
When postproduction was complete in mid-1986, distributor Orion Pictures was displeased with how Hoosiers had turned out and decided to give it only a limited release in Indiana.	Orion, which had a distribution deal with Hemdale Film Corporation, was announced as the distributor of Hoosiers a couple months before production began. Producer Carter DeHaven told a reporter halfway through the filming, in late 1985, that Hoosiers would premiere in Indiana. In early February 1986, the Indiana Film Commission began working with Orion to arrange a statewide or regional premiere and rollout ahead of a national release.
Orion didn’t want to release Hoosiers at all.	Writer/producer Pizzo has said Orion executives were unenthusiastic about Hoosiers when it was finished, to the point that they considered sending it straight to video. However, Pizzo also has said that, when shown to a test audience, Hoosiers scored the highest rating in Orion’s history. It seems unlikely that Orion executives would have ignored or disbelieved the fact that the test audience loved the film. Furthermore, during the week of the Indiana premiere, Pizzo told reporters that Orion had hired him to research and write another screenplay. It’s hard to believe that Orion executives would give Pizzo a new writing assignment around the same time they deemed his first film, Hoosiers, unreleasable. Hoosiers’ premiere date was pushed back several times. This probably occurred not because Orion was reluctant to release the movie, but because the movie turned out much better than they expected, so they decided to take more time to come up with an effective marketing plan. Orion did tell director Anspaugh and Pizzo it wouldn’t release the filmmakers’ preferred cut of the movie, which was about 2 hours and 20 minutes long. A movie that ran more than 2 hours could be shown fewer times each day in theaters, significantly reducing profits. So Orion insisted that Anspaugh and Pizzo do more editing to get the film to 2 hours or less.
The movie opened on Thanksgiving.	Hoosiers was shown in sneak previews in several Indiana cities on November 12 and 13, 1986 before opening throughout the state on the 14th—2 weeks before the holiday weekend.
Pizzo’s screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award.	Hoosiers received two Oscar nominations: best supporting actor (Dennis Hopper) and best original score (Jerry Goldsmith).
After repeatedly clashing with director Anspaugh during filming, as well as predicting Hoosiers would be a flop, Hackman in later years admitted he was wrong and/or apologized for his behavior.	Hackman offered Hoosiers a few words of mild praise when it was released and also said he was surprised the movie turned out so well. But he never apologized to Anspaugh or said he was wrong for doubting and criticizing Anspaugh and for saying the film would be a box-office failure.