More than once during the making of Hoosiers, Gene Hackman denounced the production as a debacle and wondered about the wisdom of signing on for a hokey high school basketball flick.
Apart from Dennis Hopper and Barbara Hershey, he was surrounded by a cast largely consisting of non-actors drafted in because they could play the game, working in the wilds of rural Indiana with a director and a writer struggling to make their first feature.
When not showcasing the more ornery aspects of his character daily on set, he did find time to offer tips to the youthful rookies in his midst making their cinematic debuts.
“Gene gave us acting lessons, but we got bored and would play pranks to kill time,” said Brad Long, one of the neophytes who played Buddy.
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“Once I got Kent Poole to tell Gene to ask me about my mother’s dance lessons. When he did, I got all teary and said, ‘That’s not funny. My mother lost her legs in an accident!’ Gene turned white. It was the best acting job I ever did.”
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Following the bizarre deaths of himself and his wife in New Mexico last week, Hackman’s Oscar-winning turns as Popeye Doyle in The French Connection and Sheriff Bill Dagget in Unforgiven featured prominently in obituaries.
There were honourable mentions too for his cartoonish villainy in the Superman movies, and so many other memorable roles over an epic career spanning half a century. But, when most Americans considered Hackman’s career this past few days, they thought immediately of his role as Coach Norman Dale in Hoosiers, a 1986 box office hit that never reached Irish cinemas. He made better films, but none quite as revered.
A disgraced college basketball coach seeking a way back, Dale fetches up in Hickory, a sliver of small-town Americana so slight it doesn’t feature on maps, and somehow leads the high school to an improbable victory in the 1952 state championship. A redemption story crossed with a traditional David downing Goliath narrative. Classic sports movie fodder. Navigating clashes with suspicious locals, and squabbles with the vice-principal (Hershey) who becomes his love interest, his unorthodox methods as much as the team’s ultimate triumph turned it into one of America’s most cherished films.
Loosely based on the true story of tiny Milan High, the smallest school ever to win the Indiana State Championship, Hoosiers has remained relevant and is still watched because so many coaches at all levels subsequently aped Hackman/Dale techniques.
Firm but fair, unapologetically old-school, even for the 1950s, he warns his moaning charges “my practices are not designed for your enjoyment” as he makes them dribble around chairs and refuses to allow them to shoot. To the ref’s bemusement, he finishes one game with four players on the court to better teach a recalcitrant teenager a valuable lesson.
“The power of Hackman’s performance was that he became, in a secular sense, the patron saint of last chances − a coach with a shattered past who drives into the town knowing that within its borders lies his sole opportunity to salvage his life,” wrote Bob Greene in the Wall Street Journal.
“There are many of us who know every line from that film, and every square foot of that town, and understand its lesson that a shot at glory and redemption can reside in the most unlikely and overlooked places. In becoming Coach Norman Dale, he enriched the lives of people he would never meet.”
Growing up in Danville, Illinois, Hackman knew well the contours of small-town life. At 16, he lied to enrol in the Marines to fight in The Korean War. Later working as a camera operator on local television, he eventually chased acting dreams to California, where he was voted one of the least likely to succeed in his class at the Pasadena Playhouse.
At the height of his Hollywood fame, he dabbled in motor racing, competing in the Rolex 24 at Daytona and once winning the celebrity race at the Grand Prix of Long Beach. In the final decades of a very full life, he turned to writing historical novels.
When Hickory reach the decider at Finkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Dale assuages the players’ nerves by reassuring them that, although the gargantuan venue looks more intimidating, the court is the same dimensions as their home gym, the basket the exact height too. A standard play in every American coach’s lexicon before any big game since.
To prepare for the role, Hackman attended high school games to study tactics and closely observed the sideline theatrics of the notorious Bobby Knight, the red-sweatered volcanic eruption then in his pomp at Indiana University.
For all his diligence, nobody involved ever thought they were making something of such enduring cultural import.
Indeed, at the end of the shoot, Hackman rather mean-spiritedly assured director David Anspaugh, and Angelo Pizzo, the writer, that their production was destined for the cinematic dustbin. Months later they nervously showed him a rough cut of what the finished movie was going to look like.
“He walked into the room,” said Anspaugh, “took his glasses off, looked me in the eyes and said: how the f**k did you do that?”
Almost four decades on, his performance comes up in an episode of Ted Lasso when gruff Roy Kent offers assistant coach Frank Beard a surprisingly positive review of the film, declaring, “Gene Hackman was good”.
He was. Always.
