For many Indiana residents, the word “Hoosiers” denotes the people around them, high school and college basketball teams, and the title of one movie based on both of those things.
Sen. Todd Young, R-Indiana, referenced the 1986 movie as a classic example of the name’s ubiquity in a short video about the decision to officially call residents of Indiana “Hoosiers,” not “Indianians.”
However, Angelo Pizzo, the Bloomington screenwriter and film producer who wrote “Hoosiers,” said the film almost had another name.
Before the term was commonly associated with basketball and film, not many outside the Midwest knew what a Hoosier was.
“People used to ask me all the time what it meant,” Pizzo, 69, said. “They don’t anymore.”
Pizzo grew up in Bloomington, completed his undergraduate studies at IU and studied film at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
He spent years producing and writing movies in California before he brought his family back to Bloomington more than 10 years ago.
“Hoosiers” was the working title for Pizzo’s first script about an underdog basketball team from a tiny school that, with the help of unorthodox coaching and a dose of team spirit, wins the 1952 Indiana state championship.
Orion Pictures executives hated the name.
In order to make the film more marketable, Orion came up with the title “Best Shot,” which was used during the film’s United Kingdom release.
Pizzo challenged the other members of the movie team to come up with a better title for the movie, but he didn’t think that “Best Shot” fit the bill.
However, the movie was Pizzo’s first film-writing job, and he lacked clout. “Hoosier” was a relatively obscure epithet, and the small-town setting and storyline hadn’t inspired confidence in Orion Pictures co-founder Mike Medavoy.
“It was the president’s opinion that only people in the Midwest or in Indiana would like the film,” Pizzo said.
Orion screened “Hoosiers” in California to see if it would appeal to a decidedly non-Midwestern audience.
If the movie failed, it risked an extremely limited release or even a move straight to VCR.
The film earned a 95-percent approval rating from the screening — the highest in Orion Pictures history, Pizzo said. Soon after the screening the studio told Pizzo and the other producers that “Hoosiers” would be platformed in Indiana. Medavoy told Pizzo, “You can have your damn title.”
During the press tour for “Hoosiers,” Pizzo ran into another piece of the same headache — explaining the title to journalists and fans outside of the United States.
“Now it just doesn’t seem to exist,” Pizzo said. “There’s a general acceptance that the word means what it was intended to mean — someone from Indiana.”
