The basketball season is in full swing, with both the NBA and the NCAA seasons starting to ramp up. However, there's clearly an appetite for hoops of all kinds, as Gene Hackman's Oscar-nominated high school hoops classic ***Hoosiers***is climbing the streaming standings. The 1986 film recently peaked at #8 on the free, ad-supported streamer Tubi.
Loosely inspired by Milan High School's 1954 run to the Indiana state championship, Hoosiers was written by Bloomington native Angelo Pizzo, and directed by his friend, David Anspaugh. It took the duo two years of shopping the project around to secure financing, and even then, they could only muster a budget of $5 million. And while the production did land Hackman as a lead, the famously mercurial actor was a terror on set, and believed the film was destined for failure. It needed a name change overseas as non-Americans are not familiar with the nickname "Hoosier" for residents of Indiana; it is known elsewhere as Best Shot.
What Is 'Hoosiers' About?
Norman Dale (Hackman), a onetime college basketball coach with a troubled past, arrives in Hickory, Indiana, in 1951. He's come to coach the local high school basketball team, as well as teach civics and history, at the request of his old friend, Principal Cletus Summers (Sheb Wooley, Rawhide). He finds the program in disarray; after the previous coach died, the team's star player, Jimmy Chitwood (Maris Valainis), left basketball. Dale's hard-ass style grates on the players, as does the recruitment of local super-fan and recovering town drunk Wilbur "Shooter" Flatch (Dennis Hopper, Easy Rider) as an assistant coach. However, Dale eventually brings Chitwood back into the fold and begins to get results, taking the school to basketball-mad Indiana's high school championship tournament; but it all might be for naught when fellow teacher Myra Fleener (Barbara Hershey, The Last Temptation of Christ) uncovers information that may spell the end of Dale's coaching career...
Despite Hackman's sense of foreboding, Hoosiers turned out to be a sleeper hit; it earned $28.6 million USD at the box office and is regularly included in lists of the best sports movies ever made, with particular attention to Hackman and Hopper's performances. Hopper was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars, while composer Jerry Goldsmith got a nod for his stirring score. It was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 2001.
Hoosiers is now streaming for free on Tubi. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.