![]() But both were Indiana boys through and through, and even if neither really knew what he wanted to be when he grew up, both knew where they wanted to be. Pizzo, meanwhile, wasn’t a gifted athlete and went through a rebellious phase as a teenager that got him kicked off the football team as a high school sophomore. He lived in a housing project that had a baseball diamond, a basketball court, a hockey pond, and a fishing hole, resources he took advantage of on his way to becoming an all-state honorable mention quarterback. Just 170 miles northeast, in Decatur, Indiana, Anspaugh enjoyed a similar upbringing, though his was not as explicitly tied to Hoosier sports. ![]() ![]() “My initial love was Indiana football and basketball.” “There was something about watching those first games that I went to and that arena that was so supercharged with a special kind of energy and passion and love and it just felt special to me,” Pizzo says. ![]() When he was 6 years old, he’d walk to the athletic facilities to watch basketball practice, later getting to know some of the players. Pizzo grew up in Bloomington, just off the Indiana University campus where his father taught pathology. “But the odds that both of us ? That’s like winning the lottery.” “That either one of us would have been so lucky to have even gotten into the film business, on any level, was pretty remote,” Anspaugh says. In truth, though, it feels just as unlikely, especially looking back now. It feels only fitting that two kids from Indiana would come together to make Rudy. It’s a quintessential underdog story, but in many ways, it’s also a quintessential Indiana sports story, typifying the grit and determination those within the state idealize. His persistence and determination to hurdle those shortcomings-to transcend them entirely-would eventually become one of the most inspirational fables in college football, and then in movies. Released 25 years ago this week, Rudy is a sports drama about Rudy Ruettiger, the undersized Notre Dame diehard who was determined to play football for the Fighting Irish despite poor high school grades, little money for tuition, and an overall lack of athleticism. For their follow-up, they stayed in Indiana, but changed sports, turning their eye to a man who was best known by his first name: Rudy. Sixteen years later, Hoosiers was released, quickly cementing Anspaugh and Pizzo as sports-movie mavens and paving the way for the duo to make another movie. “We were probably stoned,” Anspaugh says, “but we still thought it would be a good movie.” It’s still considered the biggest upset in the history of Indiana basketball. “Angelo said, ‘Yeah, wouldn’t that be great to make a movie about Milan High School and the year they won the state championship?’” The folklore surrounding Milan, a town of about 1,100, and the school’s improbable victory over Muncie Central at Butler Fieldhouse in 1954 had remained potent years later. “I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to go to Hollywood and make movies one day?’” Anspaugh remembers. Pizzo had one year of college left, but the pair of Indiana natives were planning to head to Aspen for the summer. The 1970 spring semester at Indiana University had just finished, and Anspaugh was musing about what he and Pizzo were going to do with their lives. During his last night on campus, David Anspaugh sat in a friend’s living room and passed a bong to his roommate Angelo Pizzo.
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