HOOSIERS and a son of a basketball coach!

Posted on November 18, 2024 by Bradley Crain

HOOSIERS is based on the true story of a small high school winning the Indiana state basketball championship in 1954. Gene Hackman plays Coach Norman Dale, the once successful college coach who gets a second chance when he’s hired to coach high school basketball in the tiny town of Hickory, Indiana. It takes some time for Coach Dale to whip the talented, but undisciplined young men into a team, and it also takes a little time for local legend Jimmy Chitwood to decide that he will play basketball again. Chitwood had stopped playing prior to the arrival of Coach Dale, but after watching the way the coach goes about his business, he decides he’ll give it another go. After a rough start, the team starts playing good basketball and starts piling up wins as they make their way towards a potential state championship.

HOOSIERS was released when I was 13 years old, and it has been one of my favorite movies for almost 40 years. Why, you might ask? I’ll start by giving you a little Bradley Crain family history. First, basketball was my life growing up. My dad was a teacher and high school basketball coach. From the earliest days I can remember, my dad was teaching me how to play basketball. He taught me the proper techniques for shooting, and through lots of practice I became very good at it. I’m one of those people who could be referred to as a “gym rat.” The only things I wanted to do growing up were play basketball and go fishing. I have a brother who is one year and 5 days older than me, and he loved basketball too. The competition between the two of us made it difficult at times at home, but it also pushed us to get better. Second, I grew up in a small rural community in Arkansas known as Toad Suck, and I went to school in the small town of Bigelow, Arkansas. Bigelow was classified as a “Class B” school for sports purposes. This was the smallest classification that you could be in, and my class consisted of approximately 40 students. Finally, when HOOSIERS came out I was in junior high and my dream was to win a high school state basketball championship. Our teams were good, and I was still young and naïve enough to believe anything was possible. We even won the district championship my 9th grade year, which was the year after HOOSIERS was released. Alas, the chips didn’t fall our way, and even though we won a lot of basketball games over the next few years, there were no state championships. Now back to the movie!

One of my favorite things about HOOSIERS is the cast of young men hired to play the members of the team. So often in movies, the actors that are supposed to be good at basketball are clearly not. That’s not the case in HOOSIERS. These guys can act and are talented basketball players as well. And what can I say about the cast that includes a marvelous Gene Hackman as the coach, and Dennis Hopper as the friendly, but alcoholic dad of one of the players who “knows everything there is to know about the greatest game ever invented.” Hopper is phenomenal, and his work was recognized with an Oscar nomination. Finally, as the team is making its way towards the championship, each player is given a moment to shine and do their part to help the team. I liked that. It all makes for an exciting and heartwarming true story that pretty much anyone can enjoy. I still love the movie now just thinking about it!

Retro Television Reviews: Miami Vice 1.16 “Rites of Passage”

Posted on January 1, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, Pam Grier and John Turturro show up in Miami!

Episode 1.16 “Rites of Passage”

(Dir by David Anspaugh, originally aired on February 8th, 1985)

This week’s episode of Miami Vice opens with a 5-minute mini-movie. Before we even get to the opening credits, we have watched as young and innocent Diane Gordon (Terry Ferman) arrives in Miami from New York, takes her first walk on a Florida beach, has a “chance” meeting with a smooth-talking guy named Lile (David Thornton), and ends up at a party being held at a mansion belonging to David Traynor (a young John Turturro). Traynor tells Diane that he runs a modeling agency and that he would love to put her under contract.

It’s a stylish and rather brave opening. For five minutes, we don’t see or even hear about any of the regular characters. Instead, we’re introduced to world where image is everything, from the bodies on the beach to Traynor’s art deco mansion to the beautiful women who have been paid for by considerably less attractive men. In those five minutes, Diane wins our sympathy and we also see how she (and so many others) have fallen into the trap set by the David Traynors of the world. For those five minutes, we are reminded that this is a show about more than Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs. It’s about more than even Miami. This is a show about America.

After the opening credits, we watch as the police retrieve the body of one of Traynor’s girls from a lagoon. She committed suicide. In the crowd watching is Diane’s sister, Valerie (played by the legendary Pam Grier). Valerie is a New York cop. When she goes to the Vice Squad to ask for Castillio’s help in searching for her sister, we learn that she is also Tubbs’s former (and soon current) lover.

In many ways, the rest of this episode is traditional Miami Vice. Zito and Switek provide some comic relief when they disguise themselves as exterminators and invade one of Traynor’s parties. Crockett and Tubbs once again go undercover as Burnett and Cooper, infiltrating Traynor’s mansion so that they can rescue Diane. Diane has been so brainwashed by Traynor and Lile that, even after she’s been reunited with her sister, she still can’t bring herself to admit that Traynor was using her. She calls Traynor and tells him that she’s decided to go back to New York City. In a montage that is rather creepily scored to Foreigner’s I Want To Know What Love Is, scenes of Valerie and Tubbs making love are mixed with scenes of Lile giving Diane an intentional drug overdose.

Technically, this is a Tubbs episode. For once, of the two main detectives, Tubbs is the one who has a personal reason for wanting to take Traynor down while it falls to Crockett to deal with Castillo’s withering stare of concern. That said, Rites of Passage is Pam Grier’s show all the way. From the minute that Grier shows up, she controls every scene in which she appears. Just as in Coffy, Grier plays an avenging angel. This episode ends, as Miami Vice often did, with a shoot out but this time, it’s Grier who guns down Lile and Traynor. “Read me my rights,” Valerie says to Crockett as the episode ends.

Again, the storyline may have been typical Vice but the performance of Pam Grier and the stylish direction of David Anspaugh elevated the episode. This episode presents Miami as being beautiful but heartless, a place where innocents come to pursue the American dream but instead find themselves being used and abused by sleazy but wealthy men. (At one point, it is mentioned that Traynor specializes in finding women for diplomats, meaning that most of his clients have diplomatic immunity.) Traynor’s mansion is a brilliant combination of the sleek and the tacky and Turturro plays Traynor as being a not particularly clever man who has gotten rich because he understands that everyone ultimately driven by the same desire for power and pleasure without consequences.

Next week …. it’s another Tubbs episode! Can Tubbs defuse a hostage situation, despite not having an ex-lover around to help him? We’ll find out!

Retro Television Reviews: Miami Vice 1.15 “Golden Triangle: Part Two”

Posted on December 18, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week’s episode is all about Castillo!

Episode 1.15 “Golden Triangle: Part Two”

(Dir by David Anspaugh, originally aired on January 18th, 1985)

Last week’s episode revealed a little bit about Castillo’s past and what actually goes on underneath his stoic facade. This week’s episode exposed even more of Castillo …. literally!

Part two of Golden Triangle opens with Castillo very much out of uniform as he strips down to a black speedo and swims in the ocean. To be honest, it was a bit strange to see because …. well, he’s Castillo. Castillo shows no emotion. Castillo never smiles. Castillo, up until last week, had no life outside of his work. Now, suddenly, the viewer learns that Castillo has kept himself in pretty good shape. It’s weird to see someone with that good of a body and that strange of a mustache.

After his swim, Castillo meets with Crockett and Tubbs. They tell him that they are searching Miami for both Lao Li and May Ying. Castillo tells them not to, saying that “This department is not my private detective agency,” but Crockett and Tubbs insist on being allowed to help. As they explain it, Lao Li is a heroin dealer so they’re actually doing their job by searching for him.

It turns out to be much easier to track down Dale Menton (John Santucci), a former CIA agent who knew Castillo in Thailand and who was Lao Li’s handler. Menton reveals that Lao Li and his entire family is in Miami and they’re all hiding in plain sight. He even gives Lao Li’s phone number to Castillo. Menton also mentions that he was the one who, years ago, informed Lao Li that Castillo was planning on raiding one of his drug shipments. As a result, most of Castillo’s men were killed and, after his house was blown up, Castillo wrongly believed that May Ying had been killed.

Castillo meets with Lao Li (Keye Luke), who explains that he is only in Miami because he is retired and that he’s no longer in the drug business. (Needless to say, Castillo sees right through him.) Castillo also meets May Ying (Joan Chen) and discovers that she is now remarried and has a son. Somewhat touchingly, Castillo is happy for her. However, Castillio also knows that May Ying and her husband have been brought to Miami to serve as hostages. If he goes after Lao Li (or Menton), May Ying will be killed.

Lao Li is very clever but his dumbass grandsons (played by Peter Kwong and Kevin Gray) are not. They ignore Lao Li’s order to lay low and instead, they start dressing like Sonny Crockett and driving around town in a White Lamborghini. When they’re arrested while in the middle of a drug deal, Castillo realizes that he finally has the leverage to take Lao Li down.

This episode was pretty much a showcase for Edward James Olmos, who played Castillo has being the one man in Miami who was not willing to compromise his values. At the end of the show, Lao Li suggested that there might be a mutual respect between him and Castillo just for Castillo to inform him that no, Castillo had absolutely no respect for Lao Li. The episode ended with Castillo watching as May Ying and her husband returned to Thailand, happy to know that she was alive and doing well but also resigned to the fact that she could no longer be with him. It was an emotionally powerful moment.

Next week, Crockett and Tubbs head to Colombia!

A Movie A Day #68: Hoosiers (1986, directed by David Anspaugh)

Posted on March 16, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

I’m back!

Even though it has only been a week since I last did a movie a day, I feel like I’ve been gone forever. Thank you to everyone who commented or messaged me while I was gone. It turned out that I just had a bad sinus infection. It was painful as Hell but, with the help of antibiotics and the greatest care in the world, I’m recovering.

Last week, I asked if anyone had any suggestions for what the 68th movie a day should be. Case suggested Hoosiers and so it shall be.

In 1951, Norman Dale (Gene Hackman) arrives in the small Indiana town of Hickory. He is a former college basketball coach who has been hired to coach the high school’s perennially struggling basketball team. Emphasizing the fundamentals and demanding discipline from his players, Dale struggles at first with both the team and the townspeople. When he makes an alcoholic former basketball star named Shooter (Dennis Hopper) an assistant coach, he nearly loses his job. Eventually, though, the Hickory team starts winning and soon, this small town high school is playing for the state championship against highly favored South Bend High School.

For many people, Hoosiers is not just “a basketball movie.” Instead, it is the basketball movie, the movie by which all other sport films are judged. Hoosiers is inspired by a true story. In 1954, small town Milan High School did defeat Muncie for the Indiana State Championship and they did it by two points. Otherwise, Hoosiers is heavily fictionalized and manages to include almost every sports film cliché that has ever existed. How good a coach is Norman Dale, really? Almost every game that Hickory wins is won by only one basket.

Why, then, is Hoosiers a classic? Much of it is due to director David Anspaugh’s attention to period and detail. Some of it is due to Gene Hackman, who gives a tough and unsentimental performance. Whenever Hoosiers starts to cross the line from sentimental to maudlin, Hackman is there to pull it back to reality with a gruff line delivery. Even his romance with the one-note anti-basketball teacher (Barbara Hershey) works. Hickory feels like a real place, with a real history and inhabited by real people.

And then there’s Dennis Hopper. Along with Blue Velvet, Hoosiers was Hopper’s comeback film. After spending twenty years lost in the Hollywood wilderness, better known for abusing drugs and shooting guns than acting, Hopper had just come out of rehab when he was offered the role of Shooter. Amazingly, he turned the role down and told the producers to offer it to his friend, Harry Dean Stanton.

According to Peter L. Winkler’s Dennis Hopper: Portrait of an American Rebel, this is what happened next:

Stanton (who, ironically, was also considered for Hopper’s role in Blue Velvet) called Hopper up and asked, “Aren’t you from Kansas?”

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t you have a hoop on your barn?”

“Yeah.”

“I think you may be the guy that David Anspaugh’s looking for.”

Harry Dean Stanton was right. Dennis Hopper, still very much in recovery, totally inhabited the role of the alcoholic Shooter and gave one of the best performances of his often underrated career. Both Shooter and the actor playing him surprised everyone by doing a good job and Hopper received his only Oscar nomination for acting for his performance in Hoosiers. (He had previously been nominated for co-writing Easy Rider.)

You don’t have to like basketball to enjoy the Hell out of Hoosiers.